Whitcomb: R.I. to L.A.; Museum Magic; Time for New ‘Land Taxes’; Hallucinatory on the Road
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: R.I. to L.A.; Museum Magic; Time for New ‘Land Taxes’; Hallucinatory on the Road
“Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTSlide unconsciously by us like water.’’
-- From “Another Spring,’’ by Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), American poet, essayist and translator
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“I think (Trump) feared (Putin). I think he was afraid of him. I think that the man intimidated him. Because Putin is a scary man, just frankly, I think he was afraid of him. I also think he admired him, greatly. I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him. So, I think it was a lot of that. In my experience with him, he loved the dictators; he loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press.”
-- Trump Presidential Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham on ABC’s The View, March 9
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“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.’’
― Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Romanian-American writer, human-rights activist and Holocaust survivor. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
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Other new, twice-weekly destinations to be offered soon will be Columbus, Jacksonville, Savannah and Richmond, though Savannah will, like L.A., be summer-only to start.
Kudos to the folks at the Rhode Island Airport Corporation for pulling this off.
However, given the international situation, I doubt that new flights from Green, or indeed other airports, to foreign places, are in the offing.
With a mass-murdering tyrant on the loose in Europe and, as a result, aviation and other fuel prices are likely to rise even more; a recession possible, and COVID still hovering, all plans can be seen as even more imaginary than usual these days.
On those fuel prices, will Americans finally embrace smaller, fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars and/or electric or hybrid cars instead of gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs (which most people buy on credit)? Probably not….
If you want to make a patriotic gesture, get a smaller car.
When the worst of the current crisis is over, Congress should (but probably won’t have the courage to) raise the federal gas tax from its present 18.4 cents a gallon -- set in 1993! -- to discourage gasoline-fueled driving, accelerate electric-vehicle use and use some of the money to aid lower-income people to deal with higher energy costs; the last thing was done in the 2008-2009 recession.
Federal payments to individuals under the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan last year have softened the blow: Far more people than usual have hefty savings. (The law of unintended consequences!)
America would be in safer shape today if we had raised the gas tax long ago.
Total average U.S. state and federal gasoline taxes were 52 cents a gallon in 2019, compared to an average of $2.24 in other industrialized countries.
Oh, yes. There’s also that not-very-slow-moving catastrophe called global warming from burning fossil fuel, which we’ll still have to do lots of for some years to come. And indeed, for a couple of years, we’ll probably have to extract more U.S. oil and gas than before the current world security crisis, made possible, ironically, in part by our addiction to fossil fuel.
Of course, the gasoline-cost surge will also encourage a reversal in the back-to-the-office migration that has accompanied the waning (for now) of the COVID pandemic. Far too many Americans live in exurbs and suburbs far from their workplaces, and they drive gas-guzzlers. Putin has given them a good reason to go back to Zooming, in a new blow to downtowns.
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Large and small companies must gird themselves for cyberattacks ordered by Putin. I especially worry about small companies that can’t afford the full protection they need. And beware of the flood of disinformation from Russia and its satellite Belarus. I’m seeing some in Facebook and in the usually better protected LinkedIn. Please call out the lies when you see them.
This guide may help you spot them.
We have too often forgotten that Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China have long been our enemies, not just “competitors.’’
Will Putin use chemical weapons against Ukrainian civilians as, with his assistance, his Syrian ally Bashar Assad did against his own people to stay in power?
With all those refugees swarming west to escape Putin’s assault, look for an increase in COVID cases in Europe and beyond.
Temple to New England Ingenuity
All hail the Samuel Slater Experience, an interactive museum in Webster, Mass., that spotlights the work of Samuel Slater (1768-1835), the English immigrant whose work in setting up manufacturing mills was a major element in the launch of the American Industrial Revolution. It also displays much of the history of Webster, an important early mill town. Slater may be best known for Slater Mill, on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, but he set up other mills, too, most notably in Webster, where he lived from 1812 and from which he ran his empire. (He also loved using child labor….)
It's a reminder of the tremendous dynamism and economic and technological creativity of New Englanders, right up to the present. This has helped keep the region one of the most prosperous places in the world.
One example seems particularly germane now as America tries to move away from our perilous reliance on global-warming fossil fuels sold by such vicious regimes as Russia and Saudi Arabia that we have funded far too long.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, based in Cambridge and Dever, Mass., is making progress in developing a safe form of nuclear energy that could ultimately replace all gas, oil, and coal now used to generate electricity, as well as the controlled fission nuclear plants that present spent-fuel-storage challenges.
Hit these links:
Then, there’s Cambridge-based Moderna, developer of what might well be the best COVID-19 vaccine.
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In other happy news, the stunning new Sailing Museum, in Newport, will open in May, in time for the City by the Sea’s main tourist season. It’s hard to think of a better place than Newport for such a museum. It’s not only associated with major local and international sailing races, from America’s Cup on, but with the full range of small-scale recreational sailing.
But there’s more! Construction is supposed to begin this summer on the National Coast Guard Museum, on the waterfront in New London, home of the Coast Guard Academy.
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I’ve sometimes wondered why Rhode Island, such an interesting, complicated (even bizarre) and by American standards, very old jurisdiction, has no official state history museum, unlike Massachusetts, Connecticut, and even bleak North Dakota.
$3,000 Each for Existing
How to raise public cynicism:
In a brazen example of self-dealing, the Rhode Island Judiciary is giving $3,000 COVID era “retention awards” to judges, who have lifetime appointments, and magistrates, who have 10-year job protection, while, of course, people in the private sector, most with insecure and much lower-paid jobs, get nothing.
It's time for Newport and other resort and touristy communities to adjust their zoning codes, in the age of Airbnb, Vrbo, and the like, that regulate (or try to regulate) “short-term rentals” (generally less than 30 days) and “guest houses,’’ and tighten enforcement mechanisms. These rentals help drive housing costs out of reach of many year-round citizens by taking much housing off the regular market. Should these rentals be for less than 20 days?
In any event, it will continue to be fiendishly difficult to monitor all those house owners (who may or not be real local residents) who make killings by charging visitors sky-high prices to stay in these places, especially from May to October. And there’s a big temptation to illegally pack in customers.
The whole thing seems out of control….
Bring on the ‘Land Tax’
As housing costs surge and supply remains far too low, even in such long-settled areas with slow population growth as southern New England, major changes in policy are needed. These include encouraging more multi-family housing and pushing back against “snob zoning,’’ imposed by the pull-up-the bridge crowd.
And there’s the so-called “land tax” approach, in which property taxes would be raised on undeveloped land and reduced on developed land to encourage housing construction as well as pay for such essential services as schools, water, police, firefighting, roads, other transit-related things and so on.
Adding More Color
And there’s more good news! (Maybe!) The colorful Joro spider, native to Asia, has been spreading across the Southeast and, experts say, may eventually advance most of the way up the Eastern Seaboard, aided by global warming.
The big (up to four inches long) bright-yellow, blue-black, and red spiders and their lovely golden webs may be all over the place in southern New England within a few years. So far, anyway, they don’t seem to be hurting local ecosystems in the Southeast and, indeed, might be good food for birds. Maybe we’ll get some as pets….
I suppose that most animals and plants are “invasive’’.
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The small, soft March snowfalls, whose moisture gently sinks into the soil, are perfect for the flowers soon to come up. When evil seems particularly potent in the world, it’s good to dwell, if only for a few minutes, on the beautiful things right around us and see the universal in the local.
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An older man who has had a TV public-affairs show for decades lamented to me that “No one wants to look at old people on television.’’
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In Florida and elsewhere, I think it’s a bad idea to teach kids about sexual activity, sexual identity, etc., in, say, kindergarten through the fourth grade. (And I’m not sure if such teaching is all that great later.) Little kids have enough to process in this crazy world. The left and the right are pathologically obsessed with sexual politics.
Head Job
Please, do we really need to encourage more people to use more psychotropic drugs? Not enough people spaced out on the roads?
Rhode Island state Rep. Brandon Potter wants to decriminalize possession of psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in certain “magic mushrooms’’.
Inevitably, as with marijuana, proponents will tout medical use and say only small quantities would be used. But inevitably Mr. Potter’s bill, if enacted would lead to much, much wider use as a big market springs up for this stuff.
Boost Trade With Free World Nations
Democracies, with their innovative and dynamic economies, need to decouple themselves from trading with big tyrannies, such as China and Russia, which have been using trade with democracies to steal intellectual property from them and attack them in cyberspace.
Our ultimate aim should be that America have free-trade agreements only with free nations.
On oligarchs: While many American oligarchs, especially those in tech, have added to our national wealth, some are just as parasitical as the Russian ones, not creating valuable products and services, but rather engaging in massive frauds, hiding money in offshore accounts and laundering money for themselves and foreign cronies, especially via real estate. Perhaps one of the good things to come out of Putin’s murderous war and the sanctions against his regime, and related investigations, is that they may help pull out of the shadows the activities of these crooks among us.
Of course the Trumps and their in-laws the Kushners are vivid examples of American oligarchs. Then there are people such as Richard Uihlein, heir to the Schlitz beer fortune, co-founder, with his wife, of Uline (shipping supplies) and a big contributor to far-right campaigns, including Trump’s, and Julie Fancelli, heir to the Publix supermarket chain, and like the Uihleins, a big funder of the Jan. 6, 2021, Trump rally turned attack on the Capitol.
Legendary investor Warren Buffett is famous for saying “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”