Whitcomb: Giving Is Good for You; Tariff Tax on Hasbro; Deloitte Dilemma; St. Florian

Whitcomb: Giving Is Good for You; Tariff Tax on Hasbro; Deloitte Dilemma; St. Florian

“I have exchanged my wildness-little tricks
with the mouth and feet, with the tail, my tongue is a parrots's,
I am a rampant horse, I am a lion,
I wait for the cookie, I snap my teeth-
as you have taught me, oh distant and brilliant and lonely.’’

From “The Dog,’’ by Gerald Stern (1925-2022), American poet and essayist. Here’s the whole poem:

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"Santa Claus had the right idea. Visit people only once a year."

-- Victor Borge (1909-2000), Danish-American pianist and comedian

 

 

“Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.’’

—Ambrose Bierce (1842- circa 1914), American writer, most famous for The Devil’s Dictionary

In 1913, Bierce said that he was traveling to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution.  He was never seen again.

 

 

For middle-class and higher-income groups, Christmas can be an orgy of gifting, with presents piled high around the tree. In the not-very Norman Rockwellian family I grew up in, with five children, that certainly was the case from the early 50s to mid to late 60’s, when our great dispersal began. My father, in particular, liked to give big presents, as if to push off for a while memories of the Great Depression. And he would wrap them in colorful Christmas wrapping, something from a fairly early age I started to find wasteful. Why not just hand the recipient the naked gift? Why all this one-time use?

 

In any event,  seven or eight years before his death, he started to stick gifts in brown paper grocery bags, as if he was tiring of the whole holiday thing.

 

However wasteful it can seem in terms of physical presents, Christmas does suppress, if only for a few days, the default for most of us – selfishness – and that can make us feel good as we press into the darkness of early winter. Remember charities!

 

For some reason, we usually had Rock Cornish Game Hen for the big holiday dinner on Christmas Eve. That meant each kid would have his/her own bird, which was marginally exciting.

 

Much later were those laborious long trips, sometimes in heavy frozen precipitation, to relatives. Getting there often took longer than being there. A night at a LaGuardia Airport hotel!

 

 

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I wonder how much the fact that you can do so much shopping from home rather than going to physical stores improves your Christmas spirit. Or do many miss the hustle and bustle of stores? That so many Christmas presents are now deposited on front steps, and porches have certainly been a gold mine for thieves, AKA “porch pirates’’. At this time of year, some of these thieves could set up their own mini-department stores.

 

 

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About 40 percent of Pawtucket-based Hasbro’s products are made in China. Trump wants to impose 60 percent tariffs on imports in China, which would boost the price of the company’s products in the U.S. That would slam its sales. Meanwhile, Hasbro has been looking to set up a new headquarters. I think that would probably be in Boston, but of course, Rhode Island officials are desperately looking for ways to keep the company in the state.

 

But perhaps Hasbro will put off any move because of the fear of taking a hugely expensive hit from the Trump tariffs. The company’s execs may decide that it can’t afford to move.

 

 

Once More, Deloitte

In the wake of the huge cyberattack (with probable widespread identity theft) into Rhode Island’s key state social-service and health-care technology system – RI Bridges --  I’m sure that many Rhode Islanders are mystified as to why the state continues to do business with Deloitte, which runs it. Rhode Island’s technology infrastructure for much of its human services and health programs has long depended on one company — Deloitte -- whose work has been accompanied by many errors and lawsuits.

Rhode Island has a problem with bridges!

 

Many readers remember that Deloitte was responsible for the failed launch of the Unified Health Infrastructure Project (UHIP) – the predecessor name of RI Bridges.

 

Of course, cybercrime is all over the place, and it’s difficult to fight, to say the least. But Deloitte has had its chance,  and failed too often to protect those relying on it. I hope that state experts are assiduously investigating replacement companies. It would also do well to put nationally recognized systems expert/software engineer/entrepreneur Ken Block, of Barrington, in charge of all the systems that Deloitte has been running for the State of Rhode Island. Unfortunately, however, I fear that Mr. Block has irritated too many of the powers to be with his truth-telling to be offered the job.

 

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In the face of cynicism, sometimes government can be made to work as intended. Thus, it is with the MBTA, which, under the inspired leadership of General Manager Philip Eng, a civil engineer in office since April 2023, has kept its pledge to end the years of slow zones on its lines by the end of the year, after years of delayed trains and other snafus. This is very good news for New England.

 

 

Late Light

Yes, indeed,  let’s have year-round Daylight Savings Time, which has long been in public discussion but especially now, in the darkest time of the year. DST fits in much better than Standard Time with the way we live now. Yes, it would mean children in the northern states would go to school in the dark for some weeks in the winter. But it would also mean more light for after-school activities, which are increasingly important, and less dangerous commutes home for workers.

 

As I’ve written, Standard Time has always been particularly problematic for New England because it’s so far east. That’s led many individuals to support having our region (except southwest Connecticut, which is part of the Greater New York area) join Canada’s Maritime Provinces in Atlantic Time.

 

Anyway, note that more and more Americans live in the South (a process that I think will reverse in the next decade with global warming) and so don’t deal with the winter morning darkness that we do.

 

In any event, computerization –email, Zoom, etc. – means that many of us have more control of our time than we used to have and so are less dependent on traditional schedules.

And now, on to the metric system.

 

 

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The Trump regime wants to  fully privatize the U.S. Postal Service because it “loses money’’.  Perhaps have a MAGA billionaire campaign contributor take it over? Reminder: The Postal Service’s  mission is to serve the public, not to “make money.’’ In serving the public, the Postal Service enables individuals and businesses to do many things, which include making money, as do our roads, airports, public health agencies, and so on. Obviously, we want public services to be run as efficiently as possible, but their mission isn’t to “make a profit.’’ It is to help maintain our civilization, commercial and otherwise.

 

 

Europe’s Dangerous Division

The two most important European nations – Germany and France – have been in political turmoil. Meanwhile, far-right parties (some supported by Moscow) on The Continent threaten democracy even as Russia steps up its war on European Union members and the U.K.  via physical sabotage, menacing actions in the Baltic Sea, assassinations and relentless disinformation campaigns, especially via the Internet.

 

And yet, the European Union has economic and military resources that far exceed those of the brutal dictatorship run out of the Kremlin. What Putin has going for him is the West’s indecision, division and fear in the face of a bully. There’s nothing that provokes people like the Russian dictator to further aggression more than indecision, division and fear among their real or potential foes. (Read some history from the 1930’s.)

 

Europeans must realize that their failure to toughen up and more firmly unify against the threat from the East only encourages Putin to intensify his aggression against The West and its principles of human rights, representative democracy, mostly honest and competent government, and tolerance. (Is America still part of The West? I’m not sure.)

 

 

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There’s been much coverage of the horrors of ousted Syrian dictator and Russian ally Bashar al-Assad’s prisons – torture, summary executions,  etc. But something like that has been going on for years in Europe – specifically in Belarus, under the regime of Putin servant Alexander Lukashenko.

 

 

Tyrant Time

And so it goes….

 

Trump is suing a pollster, J. Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register, and the paper’s owner, Gannett, for a pre-election story (which  I thought at the time was way off) saying that Trump was three points behind Kamala Harris. In fact, Trump won by 13 points. Selzer is an honest and respected pollster. She said after the election that she was investigating what in her methodology led to the laughably misleading poll.

 

Trump & Co. are wont to sue news outlets for coverage they don’t like in an obvious effort to suppress any criticism through threatening expensive and very time-consuming litigation. News and opinion outlets are often tempted to fold in the face of such threats, as ABC just did in the defamation case involving George Stephanopoulos’s remarks about Trump’s sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll. Stephanopoulos called it “rape,’’ which Trump pounced on. The news outlets are very afraid.

 

Here's what the federal judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, said:

 

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump, in fact, did exactly that.’’

 

Judge Kaplan dismissed a Trump countersuit and wrote that Carroll's accusation of rape is "substantially true".

 

ABC, owned by Disney, was ordered by Disney CEO Bob Iger to surrender in the case by agreeing to express regret and pay $15 million into a Trump presidential library fund, plus legal fees (another way to glorify The Great Leader).  Knee bent. Ring kissed.

 

ABC’s supine deal will, of course, discourage other news outlets from running negative stuff about Trump.

 

At the same time, he and his valets, including those in Congress who are terrified of crossing him, are threatening journalists and past and present public officials who have investigated and/or criticized him with jail time. (The extreme sycophancy of so many leading Republicans would be amusing except for its signaling of dictatorship.)

 

Consider former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney,  whose work on the House committee investigating Trump’s attempted Jan. 6, 2021 coup enraged the caudillo. Cheney and many others will be persecuted, perhaps including prosecuted, for telling the truth.  Richard Nixon had his “enemies list’’ to go after. (I remember this  vividly from my days working for The Wall Street Journal in the Watergate era.) But Trump and his entourage are much more ruthless and dangerous.

 

The election showed that preserving democracy and encouraging honorable behavior in public officials mean little to many Americans. They’ll swallow any and all lies of a demagogue. They’ll believe what they want to believe of a crook’s promises – be it about immigration, inflation or anything else -- and find satisfaction in his hatreds. Eventually, of course, they’ll regret it.

 

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The bulk of benefits from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act are going to Red States, most of whose members of Congress voted against them. But you can be sure that as the new jobs created by these programs grow, these solons and their leaders will take credit for them.

 

But then there’s nothing new about  Red districts getting the lion’s share of federal aid: READ HERE.

 

 

 

Unelected Deputy U.S. President-elect and power-hungry mega-entrepreneur/marketer/egomaniac/frequent liar Elon Musk wants to slash federal spending, except, of course, for companies he controls. And needless to say slash taxes on the rich, not to mention safety and other regulations. But I wonder how much Trump, who increasingly looks like Musk’s puppet, would be willing to antagonize that part of his lower-income/low-information base that subsists on federal money, though the ignorance of so many of them would give him a free ride for a while. They aren’t good at looking up stuff and cross-checking to see why stuff is happening to them.

 

Hit this link on Musk’s bonanza from the taxpayers. It will swell a lot more now that his man will again be in the White House.

 

 

 

 

RIP, Friedrich St. Florian

I, and many others, mourn the loss of our friend Friedrich St. Florian, who died last Wednesday at 91. The works of the famed architect included highly imaginative and ingenious structures that ranged from beautiful modernist and classical houses to such big projects as the World War II Memorial in Washington and the Providence Place Mall, as well as many brilliant but unbuilt conceptual designs. He also served as provost and dean of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design.

 

Friedrich, who was also something of an urban planner, was a devoted booster of the potential of Providence as a place where old buildings and new could co-exist with beauty and utility, taking advantage of such natural features as rivers and hills.  Along with fellow architects William Warner and Irving Haynes, he created the plan to uncover the Providence River (then covered by parking lots and roads) and move train tracks that made way for creating Providence Place and other new developments. That got much international attention.

 

But my strongest memory is of Friedrich’s personal charms – his enthusiasm, curiosity, interest in others,  loyalty, wry humor and as a wonderful raconteur of tales from his storied life, from his wartime youth in Austria to the frustrations of trying to protect his vision of the World War II Memorial in the face of powerful people with other ideas.