Whitcomb: List the Investors; Protect Path to the Water; Trump Trouble; Place for RI History

Whitcomb: List the Investors; Protect Path to the Water; Trump Trouble; Place for RI History

“And as to being in a fright,

Allow me to remark

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

That Ghosts have just as good a right,

In every way, to fear the light,

As Men to fear the dark.”

-- From “Phantasmagoria,’’ by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898),  English writer and mathematician. His non-pen name was Charles Dodgson.

 

 

“Hollow gifts to cold children:

The chestnuts they hid in small caches

Have gone hollow, their gleam gone,

Their grain gone, and the children are home.’’

-- From “Another Reluctance,’’ by Annie Finch (born 1956), American poet

 

 

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.’’

-- Shakespeare, in his play Measure for Measure

 

 

“Men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall  … and regulate everything by their own caprice.’’

-- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French political scientist, political philosopher, diplomat and historian, in Democracy in America

 

 

These late November days are sometimes eerily quiet. One reason is that most of the leaves are off the trees, so you don’t hear the whispery sound of the breeze through them.  Another is that most people are indoors. The most seasonally distinguishing sound is the crunch of feet on dried leaves – those that have escaped the leaf blowers. And distant sounds, such as train whistles, seem to carry farther at this time of year.

 

The other afternoon I saw a lone leaf fall slowly, slowly to the road and thought, “The End.’’

 

Speaking of quiet, I often miss the old “Blue Laws,’’ which in parts of the country, most notably New England, banned most retail commerce on Sundays. This created an island of calm in the getting-and-spending churn of American life.  Kudos to the stores that closed on Thanksgiving.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Gardeners might breathe a sigh of relief now that a few hard freezes have ended the growing season and they don’t have to weed, etc., for a while, though they soon come to long for the color of growing things. They also don’t have to think about bugs for a while – that is, until a warm spell of a few days, even in mid-winter, swiftly, if briefly, brings out the insects.  Ah, the persistence of life.

 

Witch-hazel shrubs can flower into December, recalling E.B. White’s famous observation: “Here in New England, each season carries a hundred foreshadowings of the season that is to follow—which is one of the things I love about it. Winter is rough and long, but spring lies all round about.’’ But in later life, the New Yorker-turned-Mainer would spend some of the winter in Florida. Hypocrite!

 

 

Because the controversial soccer stadium in Pawtucket is being heavily subsidized by taxpayers, Brett Johnson, who runs Fortuitous Partners, the private investors behind the project, is obligated to identify all of his partners in this thing. He’s so far refused to do so, which is outrageous.

 

The stadium is a done deal, and so all we can do is hope that a growing interest around here in the world’s most popular sport (see the World Cup competition) can sometimes fill the 10,000-seat stadium where Mr. Johnson’s minor league team will be based (McCoy Stadium, in Pawtucket, home of the former PawSox, now WooSox, has about the same number of seats.) It seems implausible that the new stadium can be filled with soccer fans but I’d be happy to be wrong.

 

 

 

Opening to the Ocean

This will drive some affluent summer people bonkers but Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha rightfully expressed his “strong support” for making the “Spring Avenue Extension” and a sand path in Westerly’s exclusive Weekapaug section a state-recognized public right-of-way to the beach.

 

Well-heeled locals understandably have tried to block the public from this passage but there’s plenty of historical evidence that supports the public’s right to use this route.

 

“It is time to ensure Spring Avenue is permanently and forever public and free of the private encroachments that have unlawfully hindered access to the shore in recent decades,” Mr. Neronha told the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council.

 

Will this be a precedent for ending other Rhode Island shoreline-access disputes?

 

 

A State Museum Is Overdue

Rhode Island’s estimable incoming secretary of state, Gregg Amore, is making a priority of opening an official state museum (most states have them)  on Smith Hill, in Providence, that would serve Rhode Islanders and tourists – domestic and foreign. Mr. Amore has been a highly regarded East Providence  High School history and civics teacher and so is well suited to lead this project.

 

God knows, the history of this minuscule jurisdiction is colorful, complicated, and important, even internationally so, especially in religious liberty, advances in manufacturing and global trade, including, sadly, the slave trade.  “The China Trade’’, which unfortunately included the opium business, was important, too,  though not nearly as important as in Massachusetts. Our region’s early international trade helped to finance new industry and nonprofit institutions in the state. Then there’s the high society industrial complex, based in Newport. And we shouldn’t forget fishing.

 

Coastal states seem intrinsically more interesting than ones that are entirely inland, partly because they’re more connected to the rest of the world. That the Ocean State’s central feature is a large bay, with an archipelago at its southern portion, adds to its allure. And there are many gorgeous visuals, both natural and manmade.

 

Rhode Islanders and Americans, in general, don’t know nearly enough about their history. So good luck to Mr. Amore as he presses the case for a history museum.
 

 

 

 

Dim the Lights;  More Air-Defense, Please

European governments and businesses are cutting back on the hours of holiday lighting to conserve energy in the crisis created by Putin’s blood-soaked assault on Ukraine. They’re also speeding the move to much more energy-efficient technology, particularly  LED lighting. Indeed, this year’s demonstration of the danger of relying on murderous kleptocracies like Russia for energy has jump-started the move to new energy sources, some of them renewable, and stronger conservation measures.

 

Christmas lighting is fun, but we ought to follow the Europeans’ lead and, as a sign of support for Ukraine, cut back on holiday lighting. That will, in some small way, tend to reduce world gas and oil prices, which will weaken the Kremlin.

 

Meanwhile, there’s good news for Europe’s biggest economy, Germany. It has been weaning itself off Russian natural gas surprisingly fast by already having filled  its storage tanks to get through the winter and building in record time its first import terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the North Sea. As the old cliché goes, never waste a crisis.

 

Government officials and private industry cut through normally slow (though not nearly as slow as America’s) German bureaucracy to do these things to prevent an economic disaster.

 

This probably means that things won’t be quite as bad as feared in the European Union this winter and that Putin won’t have quite as much revenue to pay for weapons and troops to freeze/starve/murder his favorite targets – unarmed  Ukrainian civilians. But of course, this winter will still be a nightmare in that country.

 

LNG is a fossil fuel, albeit a “transitional’’ one on the way to green energy. So there are plans to build infrastructure for a  green hydrogen plant next to the new LNG terminal.  Green hydrogen is generated by renewable energy or from low-carbon power and can be blended into existing natural gas pipelines.

 

The more alternate energy the less blood money for Russia, which is seeking to destroy Ukraine as an independent democracy. That brutalized nation desperately needs far more and better air-defense systems NOW!

 

And that’s partly for the European Union’s own protection. A vast winter Ukrainian refugee crisis threatens to overwhelm our eastern European NATO allies because of Putin’s relentless missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.  And reminder, if Putin wins in Ukraine, he’ll push militarily against the European Union’s eastern borders.

 

Aren’t the Russians brave in attacking hospital maternity wards….

 

 

xxx

 

 

It takes far too long to complete the permitting of New England’s energy projects, especially the green ones – mostly wind and solar -- that not only address global warming but also, by being local, create good jobs in our region and reduce our dependence on energy from outside the region to generate electricity.

 

The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan {but mostly Democratic} Infrastructure Law will help along the shift to clean energy. But the slow-as-molasses permitting process in our far-too-litigious legal system makes getting stuff actually built far, far too laborious.

 

We need major statutory and regulatory reform to speed projects. This includes ensuring that well-heeled local opposition to needed projects can no longer sabotage the broad public interest.

 

 

Scottish Separatism

There’s still considerable support in Scotland for leaving the United Kingdom and becoming an entirely independent country, but it’s hard to see that tiny Scotland would be better off that way, given its tight connections with the rest of the island it shares with England and Wales.

 

An impetus for independence has been the U.K.’s economically disastrous decision, led by England, to leave the European Union, which the Scots very much wanted to stay in.

 

Rather than separating from the rest of  Great Britain, Scotland ought to lead the long, laborious of the process of getting the U.K. back into the E.U.

 

 

 

Affordable Housing, Campuses for Elderly

I hope that New Englanders are thinking more about what to do with those many small private colleges in the region that must close over the next few years because of a dearth of applicants amidst demographic and economic change. Some, of course, have already closed entirely or been absorbed by larger and richer institutions.

 

Many could be used for affordable housing and/or retirement communities. There’s certainly a need for them!

 

 

‘Dark Money’; Return of the Returns

Good, bipartisan news from the Nov. 8 election in Arizona on forcing the disclosure of secret “dark money” in political campaigns from the likes of the far-right Koch Brothers, etc.  This money is aimed at expanding the wealth and power of powerful companies and rich individuals, mostly via tax policies and deregulation. More next week.  The Arizona vote shows that Democrats, Republicans and independents want to know who’s behind candidates and ballot initiatives.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Trump’s legal strategy to protect himself in his squalid career as a crooked, sociopathic businessman and politician has been to file as many lawsuits and other delaying tactics as possible to run out the clock. So it’s been with his relentless efforts to keep his tax returns out of the public eye because they would disclose more of his corruption and emphasize again that the rest of us have been paying his taxes.

 

Now even the far-right U.S. Supreme Court has finally let U.S. House investigators have his recent returns. But given that the  GOP/QAnon will take narrow control of the chamber in January is it too late for Congress to analyze and make public this latest documentary display of Trump’s corruption?

 

Maybe we’ll get to see how much foreign money might have been flowing into his accounts….

 

 

Lonely Killers

“All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

-- British novelist D.H. Lawrence (1885-1929), who lived in some of his later years in America

 

“Americans certainly have reason to inquire whether, when compared with other advanced industrial nations, they are not a people of exceptional violence.” {He meant violence by individuals.}

-- American historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970)

 

And we give them the firepower they want to carry out their violence. That America is intensely segregated by income, ethnicity, and race, and that so many people have weak social ties, don’t help either.

Andre Bing killed six people and then himself with a pistol in a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., last Tuesday; he himself was a Walmart manager.   Co-workers said Bing told them he didn’t have much of a social life….

Americans alone. Hit this link:
 

Over the years, Walmart has pumped vast quantities of guns and ammo into America’s overflowing arsenal, easily available to our country’s surplus of angry, frustrated and lonely young men. If Bing had used a GOP/QAnon-protected assault rifle he probably would have slain more. The next mass shooting may well come before you read this.

 

Walmart, it is true, has tightened gun sales in the past few years as mass shootings have increased.   For example, it stopped selling handguns and certain rifles, including AR-15 assault rifles, and raised the minimum age to buy guns to 21. That’s better than some stores.

 

But there are plenty of old Walmart assault rifles,  pistols and ammo in circulation.

 

Besides bringing lots of cheap foreign-made stuff to American consumers, many of whom haven’t had a real, inflation-adjusted raise in years and so can only buy cheap stuff, and hollowing out many communities’ downtowns, Walmarts seem to be alluring places for angry people with guns.

 

Walmart stores and their parking lots have long had a reputation for being local-crime magnets, as police around America who are far too often called to them can attest. So if possible, you might want to shop at another store, maybe even one that’s locally owned and not part of a rapacious chain, if you can find and afford one.

 

You might find this link interesting.

 

Black Friday indeed.

 

 

xxx

 

 

That so many financially strapped people are willing to pay thousands of dollars a person to go hear Taylor Swift sing is a sign of just how crazy American pop culture can be. But since Ms. Swift is a part-time resident of Watch Hill, R.I., I suppose it’s good for the regional economy – she can spend more money around here!

 

 

 

Just Walk Faster

California is ending anti-jaywalking laws, which I suppose speaks to the fact that just about everyone jaywalks. But pedestrian deaths have risen in recent years around America, in part because of so many people driving huge, heavy SUVs that are more lethal than smaller cars when they hit people. And now, because of states’ grossly irresponsible legalization and/or semi-legalization of “recreational marijuana,’’ we have more people than ever driving around in various degrees of intoxication and so likely to hit someone.

 

Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut still have anti-jaywalking laws. Though they’re all too often ignored, they still presumably save a few lives every year. Let’s keep them.