Whitcomb: Separation of Pot Powers; Casino Crises; Newport Glamour; Old Ocean State Newspapers
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Separation of Pot Powers; Casino Crises; Newport Glamour; Old Ocean State Newspapers
— From “Thinking of Frost,’’ by Major Jackson, a poet and a professor of English at the University of Vermont
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“Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination’’
-- Immanuel Kant (1725-1804, Prussian philosopher)
Probably the most important recent news is that a new Alzheimer’s Disease drug developed by Cambridge-based Biogen may be effective after all.
Last March, the company stopped clinical trials of the medication, called aducanumab, after studies seemed to indicate that it probably wouldn’t be effective -- another depressing sign of the challenges in coming up with a drug against Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. There were 146 unsuccessful efforts to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s in the 20-year period ending in 2017, The Boston Globe reported.
But Biogen said Tuesday that a “new analysis of a larger dataset” indicated that aducanumab improved cognition, memory, orientation and language, and made patients more able to handle such daily tasks as personal finances, household chores and traveling by themselves away from home. More studies will be needed, but given the devastation caused by Alzheimer’s of patients, their families and society as a whole, in a time when the population is rapidly aging, the latest Biogen report is heartening. And that Biogen is a New England company is very nice, too.
See an appearance by Dr. Stephen Salloway from Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School and top researcher in the field.
“I missed the original resurrection, so I am glad to be around for this one,” quipped Salloway, adding, “This is a great development.”
Legal Corruption
Meanwhile, in more signs of the “legal corruption’’ that swamps Washington, there’s an ad “paid for’’ by the National Sheriffs’ Association that lied that deadly counterfeit medicines from abroad would flood the U.S. market if cheaper drug imports were permitted. As it turns out, the campaign was paid for by at least $900,000 from the “Partnership for Safe Medicines,’’ part of the mega-lobbying trade association called the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Their central aim is to keep U.S. drug prices (and thus profits) the highest in the world. By the way, the quality control/oversight of medicines in most Western countries, from which most of the meds would be imported, is at least as good as that provided by the understaffed (gotta pay for those tax cuts!) Food and Drug Administration.
Or is this corruption legal? Smells like fraud to me.
As Bloomberg News noted: “It was a lucrative arrangement for the financially strapped sheriffs’ group, which had been rejected by six banks last year as it sought to refinance its real estate assets to pay overdue bills, according to its internal records. The organization pocketed proceeds of at least $125,000, according to internal emails obtained through more than a dozen public records requests.’’
To read more, please hit this link:
Maybe the owners of the gigantic and mega-glitzy Encore Boston Harbor casino, in the formerly industrial city of Everett, should get out of the saturated southern New England casino racket and stick to the bus and boat business. Instead of the originally projected $1 billion revenue for 2019, Encore appears headed for only $600 million. They must be praying there won’t be any big snow and ice storms between now and the end of the year. I wonder what will happen in the next recession. Maybe it will be good for casinos because suckers will become that much more desperate for a quick killing.
To drum up its business by waving the banners of bonanzas to cure their customers’ financial anxieties, Encore is now offering free parking, free bus trips to the palace on the Mystic River waterfront and very cheap boat travel. Its boat service is heartening – the more commuter boats the better on Boston Harbor.
Cut the Middlemen?
With the long and confusing war between IGT and Twin River over the Rhode Island gambling business, one almost wants the state to get rid of these middlemen and go directly into the casino business itself, sort of like the liquor stores owned and operated by some states. Reduce the layers of corruption and cut operating costs!
A Statistic to be Proud of
LendEdu reports that Rhode Island had the fourth-lowest student-loan-default rate in the United States, at 6.29 percent, in fiscal 2016. Massachusetts was the best, at 5.82 percent, followed by Vermont, at 6.17 percent, and oil-rich North Dakota, 6.2 percent. Bravo! Most of the worst-defaulting states were, as with most indices of social failure, the Red States in the South.
To read more, please hit this link:
Passages
The other day, I watched a middle-aged man carry to the curb in front of his house a bunch of pet cages (for gerbils and parakeets?), maybe to be picked up by passersby with young children. Behind his house, I saw a basketball hoop whose netting had rotted off. Ah, the passage of parenthood! An old-line again comes to mind: “The days are long and the years are short.’’
This may or may not be moot now: Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo has filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration from the state Superior Court that provisions of Article 15 of the fiscal 2020 budget requiring legislative approval of marijuana and hemp regulations are unconstitutional. (Statutes are created by the legislature, regulations by the executive branch.) She correctly states that this seeming violation of separation of powers can encourage “inside dealing’’ involving legislators and/or people connected with them regarding businesses selling pot. That House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s deputy chief of staff, Grant Pilkington, owns a hemp business, has raised eyebrows.
The legislature’s leadership responded by saying that the offending provisions would be removed. Let’s hope so. The marijuana industry, like the gambling business, offers many opportunities for public corruption.
I have no interest per se in the beautiful movie star Jennifer Lawrence and the man she married last weekend in a big bash at Newport’s Belcourt Castle mansion, owned by none other than Carolyn Rafaelian, owner/empress of the junk-jewelry empire Alex and Ani. The groom was Cooke Maroney, who runs a high-end New York art gallery and seems to usually be unshaven – in what we used to call the “Yasser Arafat look,’’ after the unshaven face of the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader. But that such “glamorous’’ events keep happening in The City by the Sea, even in the off-season, is good news for Rhode Island’s economy. Keep ‘em coming.
How wonderful that we have Newport, our mini but spectacular international city, chock full of interesting stuff.
Fall Perfection
Last Thursday, Oct. 24, had to have been one of loveliest fall days ever – a mosaic of green, gold, red, russet, yellow and orange – under soft blue skies and with a few leaves delicately falling into a mild, sweet breeze.
The average date of the first freeze in Providence is also Oct. 24. Still no hard freeze this fall, and none predicted for this week. Global warming? New England falls are getting longer at the back end.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are bonkers for not offering to let people (below the current Medicare age) keep their private insurance as long as they want while letting them go into Medicare if they so desire. Since Medicare is usually a better deal (simpler, cheaper) than private insurance, a lot of private insurance would gradually wither away in a “Medicare if you want it’’ approach. Fine. Senators Warren and Sanders, of course, are opening themselves up to charges by Trump and his minions of being “left-wing extremists’’ by backing Medicare for All. Yes, most Western free-market nations have versions of Medicare for All but the senators should focus on addressing the national emergency that is Trump. Don’t give the gangster ammunition.
I’ve noticed over the years that the Republicans denounce most new Democratic social programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, and call them alien “socialism,’’ but then change their tune as these programs inevitably become popular, especially in the key voting block of the elderly. More than half the population (53 percent) approved of relatively new Obamacare in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, even though it mostly affects the nonelderly. Polls have shown that 80-90 percent of the elderly like Medicare and Social Security – two long-established programs bitterly opposed by the GOP when they were created.
So, you have the silly spectacle of Tea Party types presenting themselves as great defenders of Medicare. And consider the not uncommon idiocy of the lady yelling at Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse “Get the federal government out of my Medicare,’’ and the senator calmly informing the lady that Medicare is a federal program.
Dems Chance
I say again that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a calmly charismatic moderate and a superb manager who gets lots done in part by often working with Republicans in his very Red state, would be the strongest Democratic presidential candidate. The Democratic National Committee needs to stop dictating who the “front runners’’ are.
Unpopular Women Governors
A recent poll showed that four of the 10 most unpopular governors are women, with Ms. Raimondo the most disliked. How much of this is sexism, which played a role in Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, with its rhetoric of “that bitch,’’ etc.? Meanwhile, the two most popular governors are Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker and Maryland’s Larry Hogan, both Republicans in liberal states and known for their competence and integrity – all of which means that, unlike 50 years ago, they would not be qualified now to be GOP presidential candidates. (Besides Mr. Baker, New England has two other very able GOP governors – Vermont’s Phil Scott (whom I’ve met) and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu.)
Many of the Republicans in Congress don’t actually do anything substantive (such as crafting legislation). They spend much of their time going on the likes of Fox “News’’ and denouncing such cooked up bogus ogres as the “Deep State’’ (meaning patriotic and often physically brave government officials, including diplomats, CIA officials, and military officers, who might push back against the treason and other corruption of the Trump mob). And of course, as with most of their Democratic colleagues, they spend much of their time raising money from, and trying to please, their big donors – an activity that has intensified with the treasure trove of political money unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, in 2010 – one of the greatest producers of political corruption in American history.
But governors, for their part, have to actually govern in a real, fact-based world. The Republican Party on Capitol Hill is a cesspool of corruption. If there is a future for thoughtful center-right Republicanism it must come from the governors.
Theologically Creepy
“Scary’’ decorations, masks and other junk for Halloween (officially All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Hallows Day, the Christian feast day dedicated to the memory of the dead) threaten to exceed those for Christmas. Does that suggest we’re in the End Days?
Bats
Bats (often associated with Halloween and intimations of doom) are creatures that scare most people. And yet by eating many insects, they’re our allies. Bats are fascinating: With forearms that have evolved as wings, they’re the only mammals capable of sustained flight.
The deadly fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome has been killing off millions of them for more than a decade, very much including in New England. But scientists are finding signs of hope. Hit this link to read a fascinating WNPR article:
And for guidance on building a bat house (and cutting your local insect population), please hit this link:
Preserving Newspaper History
An exciting project I’ll be helping out with a bit: U.S. Sen. Jack Reed has announced that $250,000 in federal funding “will help support an ongoing partnership between Providence Public Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) to complete an extensive newspaper digitization project that will celebrate and honor Rhode Island’s rich history by preserving historic newspapers and converting their contents into digital files. The funds are being awarded as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress to create a national digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1690 and 1963 from all the states and U.S. territories available through the Library of Congress for the first time in history.’’
That Rhode Island’s history is so long and rich -- with so many striking and still controversial events and vivid personalities -- will make this project exciting and create a very useful new resource for historians and other citizens, even as physical newspapers continue to disappear.
Sieg Heil!
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.’’
-- Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it’’.
-- From a report prepared during World War II by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile
We’ve had incompetent presidents, such as George W. Bush, and feckless ones, such as Bill Clinton (the latter letting his vast appetites drag him down to impeachment).
But it’s astonishing that we’d get a truly evil man such as Trump, whose occupation of the Oval Office is a national emergency. He’s also a profoundly incompetent president, except as a demagogue for the sort of easily swayed, wishful-thinking and willfully ignorant people who get most of their “information’’ from the echo chamber of Fox and extreme rightwing radio talk show con men.
To watch a MAGA rally, whose attendees are overwhelmingly white, skew older and tend to be overweight (too much TV watching?), is to see an alternative universe where easily confirmable facts mean nothing and lies and false conspiracy theories flourish. The fiercer his lies and threats, the more they love their fuhrer. Sieg heil! (“Hail victory!’’)
The core of Trump’s politics is peddling debunked conspiracy theories to his base.
Trump’s (and his family’s) corruption should have been obvious for decades to anyone who has eyes and ears. The Ukraine scandal is just the latest. In it, he has used his power to try to get a foreign leader to help Trump sustain a debunked conspiracy theory as part of his effort to distract attention from his campaign’s successful collaboration with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Trump’s betrayal of his own country is obvious. But then his life – in private life, as businessman and as politician -- has been one betrayal after another.
In devastating testimony last Tuesday, acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told us of Trump’s criminal behavior in refusing to give Ukraine desperately needed military funds to defend itself from Trump’s pal Putin until it launched an investigation into his political rivals. The response by White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham was to trash Mr. Taylor as one of those "radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution". Most Americans know by now who has been violating the Constitution and lots of other laws, too.
Mr. Taylor, 72, graduated from West Point and was an Army infantry officer for six years, including with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam and has served in every administration of both parties since 1985.
Trump will go on pushing the buttons of his cultists by repeating one lie after another, be it about the Bidens or anyone else who might threaten his grip on power (and associated money) – lie, lie, lie….
His failing Doral resort in Florida could use some new business to stay afloat. Maybe Trump could invite some of his most loyal fans to a big conference at the resort, which the Constitution’s pesky bar on presidents enriching themselves with foreign money inconveniently stopped him from using for the G7 summit next year. Trump denounced the Constitution’s “phony emoluments clause.’’
By the way, one of Trump’s lawyers, Willliam Consovoy, actually argued in a federal appeals court on Oct. 23, that Trump could not be investigated or prosecuted for anything, including murder, while in office.
On the right-wing congressional extremists who invaded and disrupted a closed congressional hearing on Trump’s Ukraine treason last Wednesday, hypocrisy makes their world go round.
Closed hearings are common in sensitive congressional investigations. Republicans limited attendance for four months at their secret hearings into the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya – a true witch hunt that came up dry, except to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which was the aim. The Democratic-run closed hearings to gather evidence are moving much faster, and things will go to public hearings in November.
The current rules regarding closed congressional hearings were written and enacted by the then GOP House majority in 2015.
Fanatics
Why does Trump retain a core of such fanatical followers in the House? The main reason is ruthless Republican gerrymandering after the 2010 Census, which created congressional districts whose boundaries were drawn in tortured ways to concentrate extreme right-wing voters in such a way that virtually nothing could dislodge the incumbents. Two examples – Trump toadies and neo-fascist thugs Jim Jordan, of Ohio, and Mark Meadows, of North Carolina.
I wish that WLNE, the Providence market’s ABC affiliate, had not fired saleswoman Doreen Costa after she was named a co-chair of Trump’s re-election campaign in Rhode Island. While it remains painful to think that any patriotic American could support someone like Trump the Traitor, Ms. Costa did not have a journalistic job at the station and should have been allowed to do what she wanted in her own time. But of course, the station has every legal right to fire such people “at will.’’ Most of my jobs in 50 years of work had the same status, which is why I always remembered the advice of a former colleague of mine, Bill McBride: “As soon as you get a job, start looking for the next.’’
Twilight Zones
Even the lives of seemingly “normal’’ people can be very strange and unexpected. They can wildly diverge from what you might think are their real characters, as time, memory and obsessions play tricks. Thus, it is in the late Robert Coates’s short-story collection The Hour After Westerly and other stories. Yes, it’s Westerly, R.I., not far from which unsettling things repeatedly confuse a salesman commuting between Providence and New Haven. Time and space are scrambled.
Appeasement, Redux
Now is a very good time to read Tim Bouverie’s new book Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War. With dictatorships now on the march and the leader of the most important democracy their admirer, you’ll find a lot of uncomfortable contemporary parallels. One of the book’s reviewers, historian and biographer Caroline Moorehead, put it well when she praised it as a “portrait of a decade {the ‘30s} when credulity, self-interest and poor judgment prevailed tragically and inexorably over morality and good sense.’’ Sound familiar?