Whitcomb: Help Central America; Educating the Elite; Railroad Hotels; Fall River Farce?
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Help Central America; Educating the Elite; Railroad Hotels; Fall River Farce?
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees. ‘’
-- “Early Spring,’’ by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated from the German)
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“When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain resentment.’’
-- Barack Obama, in The Audacity of Hope
Trump and his minions are right to say that there’s a “crisis at the border,’’ or at least there’s a humanitarian crisis, not, as Trump alleges, a big security crisis. Yes, thousands of refugees (including many families with young children) are pouring onto the border to escape violence and poverty in their home nations.
Some naïve liberals push the idea that all these people should be allowed to enter and stay in the United States. No. That would encourage even more throngs to try to come in.
The Democrats may well lose the next presidential election if they don’t get more hard-headed about the political, economic and social effects of America’s immigration problem.
Of course, many, probably most, immigrants bring a hearty work ethic, and some turn out to be brilliant entrepreneurs.
But we urgently need to regain better control of our borders. In the long run, no borders, no country. The immigration invasions of the United States and Western Europe in recent years have also, of course, helped fuel right-wing populism, with its strong aroma of racism. Hillary Clinton accurately said last fall: “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration, because that is what lit the flame’’ of anti-democratic right-wing populism. Ditto America.
The most economical, fairest and reliable way to address the current immigrant crisis, besides hiring more Border Patrol people, immigration judges and social workers to process asylum seekers, and in some stretches putting up walls, is to make life better in Central America through greatly expanded economic and security aid. It’s in the enlightened self-interest of the United States to create a sort of Marshall Plan for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador so that so many people there don’t feel they must flee north.
But Trump wants to cut foreign aid to Central America…
As I’ve often written, the insatiable U.S. hunger for illicit drugs is a prime destabilizer in Central America. A lot of these drugs flow through that region, giving great power to local drug gangs, whose violence, in turn, leads many people to head north. And the overdependence on monoculture agriculture, encouraged by many decades of economic dominance by American companies (backed up in the past by U.S. military forces), has also helped make these countries more fragile. We’re the author of some of their problems, some of which eventually become our problems.
In any event, some of the more “progressive’’ Democrats better start paying more attention to voters’ very understandable fears about immigration.
Many of us are working on taxes now, and unfairly cursing the Internal Revenue Service. But do not blame those hard-working agents. Congress and presidents are the parents of the Internal Revenue Code. The IRS has the unenviable task of trying to enforce the mess, much of which originates on K Street in Washington, the epicenter of lobbying.
Meanwhile, to please the rich folks (including tax-avoider-in-chief Donald Trump) who run America and have been given big tax cuts and other tax-avoidance goodies by Republicans on Capitol Hill, IRS funding and staffing have been slashed, making it ever more difficult to deter tax fraud. Thus, for example, the rate of auditing of households with annual incomes of more than $10 million has fallen by two-thirds since 2011. So we’ve been in a golden age for tax fraud. And the victims are honest taxpayers, who must offset some of the huge loss of revenue to pay for essential public services and infrastructure. And, of course, the lack of revenue helps increase the gigantic national debt, which eventually forces interest rates to rise.
The Price of Admission
“Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear windows of their automobiles.’’
-- The late University of Pennsylvania historian and social critic Paul Fussell in his 1983 book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.
“Who’s prepared to pay the price for a trip to paradise?’’
-- From Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale’’
The sort of bribery, fraud and related corruption that some rich and powerful (and anxious upper-middle class) parents engage in to get their kids into the most prestigious private colleges, as dramatically reported last week, was no surprise. It’s a sign of an increasingly feudal society owned by a self-perpetuating elite.
(Okay, there’s some good in all this since some of these bribes may end up as scholarship money for poor and middle-class kids and not just as a building with bronze plaques honoring rich donors for being rich. But most students at these schools range from affluent to very rich.)
What might reduce the tendency of Ivy League and other prestigious colleges to be handmaidens for the rich would be more resources for public state universities, many of which have suffered big cuts in public funding in recent years. With more tax money, obviously, they’d be more academically and socially competitive with the most prestigious private institutions, which depend overwhelmingly on private money. This would curb a bit the power of private money and privilege in American higher education and dilute the allure of name private colleges.
It’s the obsession with status and the drive to maintain and strengthen socio-economic connections with other members of the elite, gaining high-paying future jobs among other perks, that explain the ferocity which these families strive to get their kids into the “right” schools. The funny thing is that, with some exceptions (e.g., pre-meds) once you get into these schools it can very easy to graduate. Indeed, just about everyone does these days.
With a $70,000-a-year price tag, colleges are loath to offend kids by flunking them out, which would also irritate rich parents who might otherwise consider giving a few million to these institutions.
Read Daniel Golden’s 2007 book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges – and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
Land of “equal opportunity’’ indeed.
A Christian Obligation
Alex Beam had a funny column in the March 8 Boston Globe headlined “Giving up you-know-who {Trump} for Lent’’. Putting more distance between ourselves and our leader sounds like one step to better mental health. But, still, how do you escape him, given his power and visibility? And if clicks on news Web sites are any useful indication, tens of millions of Americans continue to be obsessed by him, because of hate, adoration or titillation.
To read Mr. Beam’s column, please hit this link.
Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Muslim Somali-American, has been rightly condemned for her anti-Semitic outbursts, including saying that Israeli influence in American politics is “all about the Benjamins’’ – meaning $100 bills – and denounced the powerful pro-Israel lobby called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Her remarks were only a few steps from alleging the existence something like “the International Jewish Conspiracy’’ cited by the Nazis.
She is full of it. Most Americans strongly support Israel because it is a humane democracy with the rule of law. Indeed, it is the only real democracy in the Mideast! We deeply share political, cultural and economic values with that tiny but brave nation.
Omar’s words also falsely imply that you can’t be a good American and love other countries, too. While most Americans presumably give primary allegiance to the U.S., it only adds to our cultural richness that so many of us have great affection for other nations, often those that we or our ancestors came from. Consider Irish-Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day…
Reviewing Misdemeanors
Greg Berman writes in Governing.com that law enforcement and urban life would benefit from a “rethinking of misdemeanor justice’’ that would result in what he calls “pre-court diversion’’ for many people stopped for such offenses as disorderly conduct, graffiti, trespassing, etc. This would reduce the load in the courts and just might reduce the number of repeat offenders.
He writes of a new approach taken by New York City:
“While the NYPD has not disavowed the {need to fix} broken-windows {which emphasizes the importance of public order and aesthetics) approach and its focus on an orderly urban environment, since 2010 the department has reduced the number of misdemeanor arrests by 36 percent. The City Council has advanced the ball still further, effectively re-routing a number of low-level violations (such as public urination and unreasonable noise) from criminal to civil court.
“Another important piece in the puzzle is pre-court diversion. In New York, police and prosecutors, with the help of the Center for Court Innovation and other nonprofits, are now offering individuals arrested for selected misdemeanors, including shoplifting and trespassing, a chance to avoid going to court altogether. Participants who successfully complete a restorative-justice cycle or a class with a local artist focusing on positive self-expression leave the process without a criminal record. A recent evaluation of the program, known as Project Reset, found that cases were resolved 72 percent faster and participants had fewer new arrests compared to those who experienced conventional prosecution.’’
What seems to have worked well in Gotham might not work well in other cities. But it’s worth looking into. It could save the justice system a lot of money, among other things, while perhaps transforming many offenders into better citizens, or at least stopping them from becoming hardened criminals.
To read Mr. Berman’s essay, please hit this link:
Those Old Railroad Hotels
The New England News Collaborative (NENC), a consortium of NPR stations, has a nice piece on its Web site about efforts to fix up that old textile mill town of Willimantic, Conn. (which called itself “The Thread City’’).
Much of the story focused on whether to tear down two old abandoned and adjacent Main Street hotels. One is the Nathan Hale Hotel, built in the Twenties and named after the Connecticut man who became a soldier and spy in the Revolutionary War and was executed by the British for his brave work. (He’s the official “State Hero’’ of Connecticut.) The other is the unfortunately named Hooker Hotel built in 1887 (where in some of its later years some women of that age-old profession were known to ply their wares). In fact, the building is named for the respectable Seth Chauncey Hooker, its developer.
Both the hotels were what used to be called “railroad hotels’’. They were close to the train stations in their towns or cities and were heavily used by salesmen, such as Willy Loman, the sad protagonist of the play Death of a Salesman.
Most of these hotels have long since disappeared with the demise of rail passenger service to many towns and even cities and its replacement, by car travel, aided and abetted by the Interstate Highway System. The rise of car culture led to most hotels and motels being built away from downtowns, on suburban shopping strips and/or close to the nearest Interstate – with lots of parking.
Marriotts and other chains, etc., can be very nice but I miss the quirky atmosphere of these old downtown hotels in New England, where local luminaries and others would gather, often almost every day, to eat in their dining rooms (Yankee pot roast! Finnan haddie!) and attend meetings of local civic organizations. Their lobbies were almost like town halls.
To read and hear the NENC’s piece, please hit this link:
Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia, whom a federal grand jury has indicted for fraud, was recalled (with a vote of 61 percent) and then quickly re-elected in a March 12 special election! This bizarre outcome can be explained by a combination of his apparently having a cult of voters who admire his “charisma,’’ or at least hutzpah and manic energy, but mostly by low voter turnout in a very crowded field of five candidates. Correia got 4,808 votes. There are 45,519 registered voters in Fall River. Only about 12,740 deigned to vote in the March 12 election. The nonvoters will continue to complain about their young mayor unless and until he’s taken off to the slammer.
Manafort’s World
After U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis gave mega-crook, promoter of tyrants and Trump lackey (but I repeat myself) a mere 47 months in prison for his conviction on eight counts of tax fraud and bank fraud, in another Manafort case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson repaired the reputation of American justice a tad by tacking on an additional 73 months, though 30 will run concurrently with the impressively materialistic and greedy Manafort’s other sentence. Still, many people who have committed far less important crimes have gone to jail for longer stretches. Judges still often favor people of socio-economic privilege, perhaps in part because judges, especially federal ones, tend to come from privilege themselves.
Manafort appeared for his sentencing in a wheelchair, recalling the performance of Mafia and other criminals seeking sympathy from judges. Besides anxiety about the prospect of more prison time, it’s unclear what his disability might be. He says it’s gout.
There are many other crooks like Manafort swimming like sharks in Washington. Manafort got caught because of the publicity of running Trump’s campaign for a few months. Most of his fellow sharks continue to happily feed off their political and business connections and influence peddling.
The American “meritocracy’ indeed!
The chaos in Britain over how to leave the European Union reflects the dangers of government by referendum, in which demagoguery can triumph over factual knowledge and, indeed reason. The question of E.U. membership should have been left entirely to Parliament, as with most orderly representative democracies, and not to “the Mob’’. At least most members of the House of Commons are somewhat well-informed.
As it turns out, the Brexiteers had and have no orderly plan. Their program has turned out to be a kind of nihilism.
Chinese Checkers
Americans must assume that Huawei and other big Chinese companies are, and will remain, at the command of the Chinese government, which implicitly demands that they continue to engage in massive industrial espionage and theft from our companies in order to strengthen that expansionist dictatorship and the Chinese economy. The Trump administration is right to be tough about this. Huawei poses an obvious security threat to the U.S. and its allies.
Tough Life
The resilience of life shows itself with a flourish in the frustrating two-steps-forward-one-step back of late winter/early spring in New England. The early flowers – crocuses, snow drops, etc. – bloom in a thaw, then get frozen solid, then thaw out again and bloom again. A yearly wonder. Then there’s the sometimes amazing adaptability to living close to humans of some wild animals from the countryside. I thought of that when being told of yet another coyote on Providence’s Blackstone Boulevard. Its diet presumably includes cats.
Big Man With Short Stories
The late William Trevor, who was raised in Ireland but moved as a young man to England, has to be one of the greatest short story writers, whose work is rich in character, especially that of lonely characters, sense of place, and of time’s inexorable changes on his characters – and all of us. He was a genius in exploring the pain and joy of the human condition in its modern Western World version. I recommend his book Last Stories as a good entry point into his world.