Whitcomb: Storm Warning; Middletown Mini Village; The Flying Grifters; Not Much of an Economy Expand
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Whitcomb: Storm Warning; Middletown Mini Village; The Flying Grifters; Not Much of an Economy Expand
“Two things said Kant, 'fill me with breathless awe:
The starry heavens and the moral law.'
I know a thing more awful and obscure --
The long, long patience of the plundered poor.’’
-- Edwin Markham (1852-1940), American poet
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“And it would all be great, for many months,
until one day, unable to help myself,
I'd say something about that nostril ring.
Like, do you really need to wear that tonight
at Sarah and Mike's house….”
From “The Ineffable,’’ by George Bilgere (born 1951), American poet
“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.’’
--Walter Lippman (1889-1974), once-famous American political commentator. But he didn’t anticipate artificial intelligence when he wrote this, in 1913.
The speed at which the length of sunlight has been increasing each day has been slowing, though of course we’ll keep gaining light until the summer solstice, on June 20. And the fast plant growth of early May will start to ease as we head toward June, and we’ll hear fewer bird calls, after the symphony of mid-spring. If only we could slow things down, but Memorial Day weekend will be over before you know it.
The oaks are among the last trees to fully leaf out. When their foliage is full, I feel it’s summer, whatever the calendar says. Things keep moving, regardless of our wishes. Faster and faster, it seems.
Ah, the memory-arousing aroma of fresh cut grass and lawn-mower gasoline with the humming of a little propeller-driven plane above….
Will there be a recession in the next year? Probably. Will it be particularly bad in Rhode Island, largely because of the sector mix of the state’s economy? Maybe. Still, give credit to the state’s legislative leaders for considering fiscal steps to mitigate the damage.
Some of the damage around here will be from the Trump regime’s assault on the finances of the great technology and health-care complex of Greater Boston, based heavily on the Harvard-MIT research complex. Many Rhode Islanders work there. Its wealth spreads across the state line in our compact region in various other ways, too.
That, and slashes in federal programs, will probably require the Rhode Island legislature to hold a special session in the fall to discuss cutting state programs and raising taxes. This will be far from the only state to be forced into special sessions to deal with what is enacted in Washington.
Meanwhile, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee had better follow Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey’s lead and impose a hiring freeze on the state government’s executive branch to prepare for the coming storm from Capitol Hill.
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Of course, Rhode Island should ban assault rifles – those weapons of war designed to kill many people as fast as possible. But will gun dealer and state Senate Majority Leader Frank Ciccone block this common-sense move? (Senator Ciccone, a nice man, even looks like what you might think a gun dealer would look like in a movie!)
Let’s hope that a ban will make it through one of those exhausting pizza-fed late-night sessions in the State House in the next few weeks, as the session’s close nears. Most legislators work very hard, and many must hold other jobs. Their legislative pay is about $19,000.
New Middletown Village?
Kudos to Middletown’s Affordable Housing Committee for recommending the building of a 36-unit project across East Main Road from Town Hall. It’s designed in such a way as to maximize the chances for town and state approval.
Newport This Week reports:
“The complete neighborhood streetscape for the proposed affordable housing project on East Main Road across from Middletown Town Hall will include 36 units with a mix of detached and attached residences. The plan … includes complete new streets with sidewalks, garages and on-site street guest parking. A pedestrian path to the new high school and a secondary, emergency access road are also planned.’’
This is a nice mix, which would create a sort of little village which would be healthy sociologically, psychologically and otherwise. It would be even better if it included a couple of stores, reducing the amount of driving by residents.
This could become a model for other “affordable-housing” projects, which are urgently needed across New England.
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The Palestinian flag was particularly inappropriate given that the U.S. doesn’t recognize the existence of a country called Palestine. Flying the flag was a political statement, apparently led by City Council President Rachel Miller. Issue flags are also inappropriate.
Amazing What Can Happen?
Many disasters can be blamed on our lack of imagination. For example, consider that few imagined that a highly educated and “advanced” country such as Germany would turn to industrialized mass murder, and that too few considered the possibility that lunatic terrorists would hijack passenger jets and fly them into buildings. Or, for that matter, that a plurality of American voters would twice elect to the presidency a larcenous and traitorous hyper-narcissistic con man with decades of fraud and other offenses behind him. All in the public record! (Maybe last year many of his voters didn’t have the imagination to think that he really meant to try to implement his Project 2025 program, if they even bothered to look into it.)
What does that say about the United States?
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual….’
--Lord Palmerston (1784-1865), British prime minister. A successor, Lord Salisbury (1830-1903), said similar things.
It was touching last week to see Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s warm, brotherly welcome of Trump on his visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to do deals, some of which may actually come to fruition. It’s hard to know Trump deals’ full value, given the lies, exaggerations and, er, factoid fluidity that are among our leader’s main tools. Anyway, the prince, a tyrannical but “visionary’’ murderer, represents the sort of opulent dictatorship that MAGA Monster adores.
How much of Trump’s grifting trip to suck up to the Gulf States’ royal oligarchies was aimed on real geopolitical and strategic goals and how much was at further enriching the Mafia-like Trump clan and its hangers-on? You can bet that the Trumps’ crypto stakes were discussed, as well, of course. as luxury hotels and golf courses on the Gulf’s sandy coast.
Ah, the famous $400 million jetliner that the Qataris are trying to give to our boss, who can’t wait to get it (among other goodies from the Gulf States)! Accepting such a gift would be clearly illegal. But Trump attorney general and handmaiden Pam Bondi says there’s nothing wrong with the gift. She, by the way, is a former $115,000-a-month lobbyist for the tiny state.
(I spent a few days in Hamas-backer Qatar some years ago. Outside the glitzy capital, Doha, it’s mostly sand. Most of the population is from abroad, especially South Asia, and working in low-paid jobs. In the past, many of these people had about as many rights and protections as slaves, though things have gotten a little better for them in the past few years.)
Of course, oil is still at the heart of Saudi power, natural gas the main source of revenue for Qatar and oil and gas for the UAE. But advances in research into nuclear fusion power might over the next decade blessedly end their bonanzas.
Consider this exciting news from France:
Fusion holds out the possibility of unlimited clean power, thus eroding the importance of the corruptly run countries whose economies are based on oil. For that matter it would cut into the political power of fossil-fuel-rich U.S. “Red States’’ That would be a national boon.
And follow the news from Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems:
In any event, we’ll pay a stiff price for the Trump regime’s slashing of money for scientific research in all fields amidst devastating attacks on leading universities where so much of this research happens. The result will be that much of this work will move abroad.
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Part of the Trumpers’ visit to the Mideast was about artificial intelligence investments. The Saudis are huge investors in the sector. So, not surprisingly, Elon Musk was in the Trump entourage. He loves AI, because, among other things, he can use it to collect personal data about Americans.
Meanwhile, the Israelis may be feeling left behind by Trump, whose main interests are money, power and drawing maximum attention to himself. He seems to be pivoting to the Gulf States, which have a lot more money than does Israel, and maybe power, too, as well as the sort of grandiose marble palaces that the Prince of Mar-a-Lago would love to rule from.
Somehow, Facebook Doesn’t Quite Do It
U.S. technological progress has markedly slowed in the past few decades. The biggest “progress” has been the spread of purposely addictive social media, which arguably have done more harm than good to our culture by promoting endless lies and demagoguery. Consider how much better off the country would be if the quietly sociopathic Mark Zuckerberg and helpers hadn’t invented the vastly profitable Facebook, which has been a cancer in American civic life. But many of us, including me, have to use it for commercial and other reasons because of the demise of traditional media.
Perhaps the biggest “physical” technological advance has been dramatic improvements in batteries, enabling acceleration away from fossil-fuel use in some sectors, though MAGA pro-fossil-fuel policies will throw sand in those gears. Given the size of the U.S. economy, Trump policies mean that global warming will probably continue to speed up.
MAGA Monster has a sort of circa 1955 romance with oil. Back then, gasoline went for a quarter a gallon. (I still have anxious memories from back then of my father and others smoking cigarettes as their gas-guzzling cars were being filled up.)
But investing in clean, or at least cleaner, energy by government, business and individuals is not some gooey feel-good “Woke” action. Rather, it leads to lower energy costs. A heat pump can save you hundreds of dollars a year in your power bill, and solar panels on housing can generate electricity that you can sell back to utilities. Then there’s the boring, to some, chore of helping to reduce the potentially catastrophic damage from global warming caused by burning oil, natural gas and coal.
Solar, wind and some other clean-energy technologies are already more cost-competitive over their lifespans than those reliant on coal, natural gas and oil. And, yes, this takes into account public subsidies, which fossil fuels get, too.
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As the public reacts to Trump’s cuts to social/health programs, as well as they understand them, I noticed an astonishing number of complainers saying that they or others in their families are “disabled." Indeed, it sometimes seems as if about half the country is “disabled.’’ Or are all of us “disabled’’ in some way?