Whitcomb: In Search of Doctors; For Fairer Property Taxes; Looking for Real Allies
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: In Search of Doctors; For Fairer Property Taxes; Looking for Real Allies
“Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTOf time return, and where no path
Is worn but wears its makers out….”
From “Sabbaths,’’ by Wendell Berry (born 1934), American novelist, poet, essayist, and farmer
“Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.’’
- Florence King (1936-2016), American novelist, essayist, and columnist
“If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.’’
-- Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), Spanish/Mexican filmmaker
In the wintry and wet stretch last week, we may have forgotten that the black flies and mosquitoes will be along soon enough to feed birds and harass us. Meanwhile, home gardeners wonder if it’s too early to plant vegetables: Is that 70-degree day a trick?
It’s remarkable how such animals as those little frogs called spring peepers seem to calculate the high and low temperatures and the length of warm and cold periods, as they “decide’’ to go into action or sing in these weeks.
Medical Emergency
The imminent closing of Anchor Medical Associates, with its 25,000 patients, emphasizes the crisis of health care in Rhode Island. The central problem is that reimbursements for physicians and other medical professionals are lower in the Ocean State than in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and, of course, the professionals’ costs continue to rise, as do those of hospitals. That the Trump regime is eyeing cuts to Medicaid adds another ominous note. (Medicare, because it serves older people, who are the biggest voters and by a substantial margin support Republicans, is probably safe. The billionaires who run the regime don’t care much about those served by Medicaid.)
Many physicians and other health-care folks like living in Rhode Island, but they know that they can make more practicing just a few miles away across state lines. There may be an advantage to Rhode Island being so small; its residents aren’t as vulnerable as they’d be in a big, sparsely populated state such as Montana. Quite a few Anchor refugees may seek doctors in Massachusetts. The current situation, to say the least, makes it difficult to recruit physicians, even if they’re charmed by the Ocean State’s other aspects. As Rhode Island physicians retire, it’s harder and harder to find replacements. A pretty coastline is not enough.
We’re in an emergency. I suppose it’s too late to save Anchor, but to stem more hemorrhaging of the state’s medical “system,’’ the legislature and governor need to immediately take steps to address this disaster. This includes raising subsidies for Medicaid and Medicare (via, say, through the Medicare Premium Payment Program), finding new ways to subsidize young physicians to start practicing in, and stay in, Rhode Island by helping with their medical school debt.
Creating a medical school at the University of Rhode Island focusing on training primary-care physicians (whose shortage is particularly alarming) who would be encouraged by assorted financial and other incentives to stay in the state would also help, though that will take years.
Yes, this is worth raising taxes for.
A bit of an irony, maybe, that one of the world’s greatest medical centers, Greater Boston, is so close.
Equalize Property Taxes
Providence faces a fiscal crunch. That will only get worse with federal cutbacks under the chaotic Trump administration and a recession that may start soon. The fairest way to address it is to raise residential property taxes, which have been remarkably low for years because of the political power of those owning single-family houses.
To offset that favoritism, the city has stuck it to commercial property owners, including landlords of apartment buildings, large and small. This obviously slows job and business creation and reduces the incentive to build more rental housing, which the city urgently needs to stem surging housing costs, which slam the poor the hardest.
It's too bad that cities and towns must rely so much on property taxes. It sure plays havoc with trying to fund public education.
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We might do well to watch New Hampshire, where conservative Republicans are joining with Democrats to change communities’ zoning ordinances that, by mandating such things as big minimum-lot sizes (aka “snob zoning”), blocking housing in commercially zoned areas, and very long permitting times have made it very difficult for many places to add to the housing supply.
The Granite State (where I used to live) has long worshipped the glories of local government control, but spiraling housing costs have become enough of a crisis that many state officials increasingly realize that the state must step in to overrule localities’ long-entrenched rules.
The long-term effect of Trump’s menacing, infantile, and gyational trade policies, based on fraudulent formulas, will be to incentivize other nations to decrease their economic interactions with the United States and strengthen their ties with more reliable and honest nations over the next few years. Many may decide that it’s safer to do business with China than with America.
For the time being, some nations targeted for U.S. tariffs must work out deals that will speak to Trump’s ego-driven threats, given the size of the American economy. However, at the same time, they’ll be crafting agreements that over the next few years will reduce how much they have to deal with the world’s biggest banana republic. Among other things, look for big changes in supply chains.
One thing that might happen fast is European Union members moving to cut back on regulations and subsidies in order to boost the E.U.’s economic energy to partly offset Trump’s trade assaults.
Why did Trump blink last Wednesday in his threat to wallop many nations with new tariffs (though keeping huge new tariffs on China)? It may well have been the hints by Japan and others that they’d dump more than $1 trillion in Treasury securities – a move that would have exciting results! U.S. government securities are seen less as safe havens these days.
Whatever, given the economic incompetence of MAGA Monster and his supine helpers, you can bet that we’ll see four years of frequent chaos, perhaps best illustrated by the sort of wild swings in financial markets we’ve seen in the past week and a half. “Policies” will change by the hour, as they’re revised to reward Trump allies and punish his perceived enemies, or just in response to his emotional states, making it more and more difficult for businesses to plan, which in itself will chill the economy. Uncertainty is very expensive, and trust in federal policies and intentions will remain low, at home and abroad.
But one thing that is certain is that market manipulations, like those last week, seasoned with insider trading, will make some favored rich folks richer.
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Ukraine has captured Chinese soldiers fighting side by side with Russians and North Koreans. It’s tyrannies sticking together to battle a democracy such as Ukraine, whose very existence next to a dictatorship encourages dictatorships’ restive subjects to seek freedom. Putin’s bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine and use of allies reminds me in some ways of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), in which Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy assisted Gen. Francisco Franco to defeat a (flawed, as all are) democracy and establish a quasi-Fascist dictatorship.
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Will America ever fully recover from Trump’s assault on major universities and the scientific research there that has for decades enriched America?
His demagogic crackdown on foreign students and scientists has already done great damage. Some scientists have already left the U.S., to go to Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Others are seriously considering it:
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Of course, Trump’s promise to push out illegal immigrants (whose influx had been out of control for years, thanks to congressional refusal to act) and cut taxes, a perennial Republican obsession, were big draws in 2016 and 2024.
But to address the yawning national debt, serious economic policy would call for boosting taxes on the rich and upper-middle class. And it would cut into such things as gigantic “cost-plus” multibillion-dollar military contracts and gigantic subsidies to the fossil-fuel and agribusiness sectors. Further, get rid of, for example, such programs as Medicare Advantage (beloved of politically powerful insurance companies), which costs taxpayers more for services per enrollee than does traditional Medicare. Of course there’s probably not enough political will in either party to do those things.
No Trump here next week!