Whitcomb: Summer’s Greasy Smoke; Short-Term Policies; Tired of the Tories
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Summer’s Greasy Smoke; Short-Term Policies; Tired of the Tories
A ladder sticking up at the open window,
The top of an old ladder;
And all of Summer is there.
Great waves and tufts of wistaria surge across the window,
And a thin, belated blossom
Jerks up and down in the sunlight;
Purple translucence against the blue sky.
“Tie back this branch,” I say,
But my hands are sticky with leaves,
And my nostrils widen to the smell of crushed green.
The ladder moves uneasily at the open window,
And I call to the man beneath,
“Tie back that branch.”
There is a ladder leaning against the window-sill,
And a mutter of thunder in the air.
-- “Dog Days,’’ by Amy Lowell (1874-1925), Massachusetts poet
“The self-evident truths announced in the Declaration of Independence are not truths at all, if taken literally and the practical conclusions contained in the same passage of that declaration prove that they were never designed to be so received.”
William Pinkney (1764-1822), of Maryland (then a slave state), diplomat, lawyer, U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator 1819-1823
“In no {other} country does one find so many men of eminent capacity for business, shrewd, forcible, and daring, who are so uninteresting, so intellectually barren, outside the sphere of their business knowledge.’’
-- James Bryce (1838-1922), British academic, jurist, historian and British ambassador to the United States in 1907-13, in his book The American Commonwealth (1888)
Ah, the cookouts of high summer! The smell of burning animal fat, the scent of hops, the scurrying of ants, squadrons of bees and yellow jackets drawn to Popsicles, watching the skies for thunderheads, paper plates blowing around, and, this Thursday, the smell of black powder.
“Did anybody bring mustard?’’ “What just flew on the potato salad?’’ “Don’t blow us up!’’
Meanwhile, some birds are starting to flock together, as if they are in a sign of fall. In each season in New England, there are signs of other seasons.
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Rankings of places and institutions are often full of baloney because they’re comparing apples and oranges, but not always.
Here’s one from last year that ranks, by certain criteria, the happiest states. This one ranked Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, in that order, as the best: SEE THE RANKING
Note that a cannabis company (!) did the rankings, in which, as in most rankings of states in health and other important criteria, the South is at the bottom.
The Boston TV station reported that Joy Organics said:
“There are lots of ideas as to what constitutes happiness for different people. With this research, we aimed to include a number of factors that either influence a state’s happiness or serve as indicators of it. Mental well being, support and suicide rates were weighted more heavily in the ranking, accounting for a larger proportion of each state’s overall score, as these were deemed to be the most important factors."
And access to marijuana products? Maybe not.
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Having done more driving than I had wished the last few weeks, I’ve passed many parking lots. It struck me how useful it would be if many of them could be roofed with solar panels.
Avoidance
In politics and public policy, we generally look for the easy way out and take the short view. For example, many want to believe the fantasy that tax cuts will more than pay for themselves in addressing the national debt, which has been swelling for a long time, but especially since the Trump tax cuts favoring the rich; the costs of social and other relief spending associated with the COVID crisis under Trump and Biden, and the effects of Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Give us a delicious tax cut before it melts in fiscal reality.
What we need is both higher taxes and careful pruning of federal programs if we’re to seriously address the worsening national-debt situation. But would Congress dare, for example, to reduce the billions of dollars in subsidies that go every year to big agribusiness operations or other well-lobbied sectors?
Then there’s the hope for quickie strategies involving reducing sunshine to offset our warming of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel. This “solar geo-engineering’’ would include such approaches as spraying reflective particles into the stratosphere and/or “cloud brightening” to reflect solar energy back into outer space.
What dangerous ideas! What would be the effect on the ozone layer (which protects life on Earth from dangerous ultraviolet solar radiation) of spraying reflective particles? And what might be the effects on weather/climate patterns of any geoengineering schemes?
Of course, all these schemes are alluring to those who don’t want to do what is necessary over the coming decades to combat global warming: moving faster to stop burning and otherwise using fossil fuels, which pump earth-warming carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases into the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect.
Our dependence on fossil fuels also creates such other pollution as microplastics (made from petrochemicals) that get into all animals, and oil spills.
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But then Americans, perhaps more than most people in the West, avoid actions that require patience. A good example might be New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to halt a plan to impose “congestion pricing” fees on those driving into the central business district of Manhattan in prime business hours.
She feared that short-sighted opposition to the program would hurt Democratic candidates, in what are very likely to be many close election races in this scary year. Of course, congestion pricing causes problems -- e.g., for small businesses such as restaurants -- until organizations and individuals adjust to it.
I hope that after the election, congestion pricing will get a go-ahead in Gotham and some other U.S. cities. Meanwhile, consider that INRIX Inc. ranks New York City as the world’s most congested city for the second consecutive year, subtracting billions of dollars from its productivity. Of course, with all that traffic comes heavy pollution.
Transit officials had estimated that the congestion-pricing program would reduce traffic in Manhattan’s Central Business District by 17 percent; that’s like taking 153,000 cars off the road. INRIX figured that a typical motorist driving in and out of New York City lost 101 hours last year because of traffic during peak commuting times.
It won’t surprise many New Englanders that INRIX ranked Boston as fourth most congested city in America and eighth in the world, with typical drivers there spending about 88 hours in traffic last year. Another reason to boost the MBTA.
Here are the rankings:
The INRIX 2023 Global Traffic Scorecard
And a look at three cities doing congestion pricing:
It’s important to remember that the full impact of congestion pricing can take some years to be fully evaluated.
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That a treasonous con man who’s a non-stop liar, thief and pervert draws the worship of millions says as much about them as about him since his character has been a matter of public record for decades!
The most important qualifications for being Trump’s running mate are 100 percent sycophancy, amorality, access to money, and some level of physical attractiveness for TV.
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George Latimer’s defeat of far-leftist (by American standards) Jamaal Bowman in the congressional primary race in a Greater New York City district was good news for the Democrats. Latimer, an old-fashioned center-left, Truman-style Democrat, is the sort most likely to succeed in November and, if elected, to help get legislation enacted, sometimes even on a bipartisan basis, of all things.
Considering what’s been happening in mainland Europe and America, it’s particularly interesting to watch what’s happening in Britain. There, the Labor Party seems likely to win a huge victory in parliamentary elections this Thursday. Voters seem set to punish the Conservatives (in power since 2010) for economic decline and such other woes as the erosion in social services and public infrastructure even as right-wing and outright fascist parties thrive in much of the rest of Europe amidst demagogic rhetoric. More and more Britons have been realizing that they’ve been suckered by the party that brought them the charming demagogue and Brexit backer Boris Johnson.
British voters supported leaving the European Union by about 52-48 in a foolishly called referendum in 2016. But as of May, 55 percent of those polled thought that Brexit was a mistake, mostly because of the damage it has done to the economy. And part of Brexit promotion was that it would stem illegal immigration, but in fact that has continued to surge.
There are some lessons in all this, including for America, especially if, as seems very likely right now, the Trump regime returns. Blame the Democrats for renominating such an old and now tired man for that prospect and Biden, who has been a good president in trying times, for letting his ego trump (so to speak) the future.
Biden should have announced at least a year ago that he wouldn’t run again. It’s probably a pipe dream, but he should do so now and let his party have an open convention to choose a new ticket. I’d nominate Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro – all very smart, experienced and articulate leaders who can battle with great force the fascist cancer that is the sociopathic Trump and his cultists. Crucially, the trio are all very good on television. Many voters don’t care much about facts and have no interest in reading/researching to help them pick a candidate. They pick the candidate whose show they find the most engaging in speaking to their hopes, fears, hatreds, and resentments.
Within a year or two of the Orange Caudillo being back in the Oval Office, many American voters, like the ones in Britain, will be angry that despite the promises, inflation will still be a problem, many groups will still see their living standards declining, and themselves socially marginalized, at least compared to other groups, illegal aliens will continue to flood into America (though maybe Trump would order some to be shot at the border) and the new administration will sell off influence to the highest bidder even more brazenly than in the first Trump term – an utter cesspool.
Many folks will belatedly realize that they’ve again been used. But much of their dissent might be suppressed, considering Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and power in some major media.
But as H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) famously quipped: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.’’
Israel’s Freeloaders
It may not have much of an impact, at least in the short term, but it was good news, for Israel anyway, that Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jewish men must submit to being drafted into the military of the tiny and often-besieged nation. Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women. But the ultra-Orthodox are an important part of the coalition that has kept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in power, so he tries to keep them happy, though most Israelis resent them, considering the need for troops.
“These days, in the midst of a difficult war, the burden of that inequality is more acute than ever — and requires the advancement of a sustainable solution to this issue,” the Supreme Court said.
The ultra-Orthodox are also a cause of the vehemence of Palestinian anger toward Israel because of their proclivity for illegally seizing Palestinian properties on the West Bank.
No Hero
I wonder how many people working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have been killed as a result of Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks, which has also been very helpful to Vladimir Putin. And now this creep, who has also been alleged to have engaged in sexual abuse, has been released from jail in Britain.
WikiLeaks has exposed innumerable U.S. military and intelligence community secrets in order to damage American and other Western interests.
Remember when WikiLeaks used stolen Democratic National Committee emails, hacked by Russia, online with the (planned?) effect of putting Putin’s favorite American celebrity/useful idiot, Donald Trump, in the White House? The Russian tyrant’s main strategy in his war on the West is to weaken it by sowing within the West as much division and chaos as possible.
In any event, the intensely anti-American Assange is a dictator suck-up who only attacks democracies. Perhaps historians will someday document the full extent of his relations with the Kremlin.
The Joy of Print, Pictures on Paper
I love four-color magazines on paper – my favorite kind of periodical. They’re much more inviting and easier to look at than publications on screens. And some are doing well in this digital world, such as magazines about the outdoors. I’d like to think they’ll be the advance troops of a general revival of the sector, sort of like the new popularity of vinyl records, most importantly among the young.
When I was a kid, my family subscribed to about 10 magazines. Each was eagerly awaited, be they weekly or monthly.