Whitcomb: Take the Day Off; Don’t Throw Books in Trash; His Chaos Campaign
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Take the Day Off; Don’t Throw Books in Trash; His Chaos Campaign
Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTGleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways,
With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember,
Some crimson poppy of a late delight
Atoning in its splendor for the flight
Of summer blooms and joys.
This is September.
--“September,’’ by Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), Anglo-French writer
A Man may make a Remark –
In itself – a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature – lain –
Let us divide – with skill –
Let us discourse – with care –
Powder exists in Charcoal –
Before it exists in Fire –
-- “A Quiet Thing,’’ by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
“My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.’’
-- Timothy Leary (1920-1996), American psychologist and writer who advocated psychedelic drugs. He wrote this famous line in 1966 – appropriate for the counter-culture “Sixties” (circa 1965-1973).
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“Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.’’
-- Charles DeGaulle (1890-1970), French president (1959-1969) and general. He led the Free French forces against Nazi Germany in World War II.
In the wake of yet another school shooting, look at this devastating piece:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DN4Bg1ykn8h/
It’s interesting that the U.S. doesn’t celebrate May 1 as its annual Labor Day. Our Labor Day was created in 1894, during the deep depression of that time, as a mild way of lessening labor-management animosities. But much of the rest of the world has long celebrated it on May 1.
American politicians wanted to separate our holiday from the socialist tone of May 1 in other countries. Most European nations, which celebrate May 1 as International Workers' Day, have much stronger labor protections than does America. Giving many workers a long warm-weather weekend was our little gesture. It has also served as the unofficial end of summer, and so evokes a certain melancholy for many, though a feeling of liberation for many parents of school-age children.
Many current and former workers this Labor Day will be anxiously mulling the employment effects of globalization, 24/7 remote work, artificial intelligence and AI’s sidekick automation. Along with the decline of unions, these forces lead many of us to question the significance of Labor Day.
We love those giant sunflowers, which remind us of tall clowns.
Don’t Throw Them Away!
A change of seasons tends to encourage people to change some things. For many, that means trying to simplify their lives by getting rid of stuff. For the decreasing number of Americans who still read physical books, that means deciding how many to keep. I myself favor keeping a few much-loved hardcover books – fiction (for its imaginative insights into human behavior and emotions) and nonfiction (especially histories and biographies) – that I tend to reread every couple of decades. And I keep most reference works.
Reading these works on screens is too cold and sterile. The physicality of books on paper has much more charm, and they’re easier to read, especially in bed.
Don’t throw away books! Donate them to your local libraries or bookstores. Or slip them into “Little Free Library’’ boxes that you can find in more and more urban and suburban neighborhoods.
Keeping the Carbon Cooking
Trump’s most dramatic attack on offshore wind so far may be his regime’s order to halt – with little explanation -- the Revolution Wind project, off southern New England. That’s even though the project had been fully permitted, is mostly completed, and the action may well kill thousands of jobs and ensure higher electricity costs in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Whatever you think of offshore wind power -- I have friends who hate it! This is no way to oversee big energy projects, unless you want to dry up most major investment in the alternative-energy sector, which will slam the economy and make America less competitive.
Probably, states will increasingly seek ways to promote projects – generally land-based -- with as little federal jurisdiction as possible. But the likes of Revolution Wind and other offshore projects must take orders from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
As usual, it’s all about Donald Trump. He has detested offshore wind projects since one went up in view of his Scottish golf course; he’s politically indebted to the fossil-fuel industry, cooking the Earth and based in the Red States, and he dislikes New England because most residents in the region – the nation’s most educated -- know who he is really is. His arbitrary action in the Revolution Wind case is another example of how difficult it is becoming for businesses (and not just in the energy sector) to plan and do projects in a country ruled by an intensely erratic megalomaniac and his bottomlessly sycophantic servants.
Pray that Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Massachusetts makes faster progress in making virtually nonpolluting nuclear energy available and finally liberates us from reliance on oil, gas and coal and the political corruption they spawn.
Reverse Migrations Coming
Many political forecasters have been saying that the current Red States will continue to grow in political power as their populations swell. Well, yes, for a while more. Meanwhile, as their residents increase, so will the cost of living there, including taxes, as more people demand the social services and physical infrastructure that make most Blue States attractive over the long run. And the heavily armed Red States in general have much more poverty, crime, violence, and worse public education than Blue States, as people moving there soon find out.
The other thing is climate. Red States are particularly prone to the drawbacks of global warming – severe droughts, floods and storms. Blue States, which are mostly in the North – much less so. So I’ll go out on a limb and predict that over the next decade, states such as Maine, Vermont, Michigan, and Minnesota will start seeing big population increases.
Anyway, in demography and most other human activities, nothing lasts. As an old person, I’ve seen many, many trends reverse themselves, sometimes very quickly, inflected with such forces as the law of unintended consequences.
RIPTA’s Problems Continue, but…
A little relief?
Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority have apparently come up with a deal to avoid driver layoffs and most bus-route cuts. The previously announced cuts being kept would mostly affect weekend and other off-peak services.
The deal is clever in at least one way: It includes moving $3 million in federal climate funds to RIPTA. Since public transportation gets people out of cars, it helps address pollution and global-warming issues and reduces road congestion.
But bus advocates are not at all happy with the latest deal, which will leave the system thinner.
By offering people hard-pressed to afford cars another way to get to work and otherwise function in society, public transit helps the economy and society in general. Still, RIPTA, and most such agencies in America’s car-dependent society, remain badly underfunded, with networks so thin that they’re difficult to market to many daily commuters and other travelers.
With the aging of the population and an increasing percentage of young adults not wanting to drive, better public transportation should be seen as more, not less, important. That’s especially so in Rhode Island, whose dense population and many old-fashioned town centers would seem to make it a good place for a healthy public-transportation system.
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I was recently in a Trumpian part of northern New Hampshire for a few days and saw far fewer MAGA/Trump signs there than I did a year ago at this time. I suppose that’s partly because Trumpers are simply satisfied that their man is in the Oval Office, whence he can smite their perceived enemies and cut their income taxes (and Medicaid, but that will come in a couple of years). Or there may be a growing recognition in this state with a strong libertarian, small-government tradition that he’s a fascist, and thus a big-government, wanna-be dictator who wants to control all aspects of national life for the quasi-erotic joy of power and self-enrichment. It beats me that so many of his voters swallowed the lie that he’s a “conservative.’’ Suckers!
Trump is a swamp creature, but then so are many of those who voted for him. It’s an increasingly corrupt country.
The Trump administration wants to put the Orange Oligarch’s servants on the Federal Reserve Board. With his cowardly and willfully ignorant slaves (or, more precisely he himself) controlling Congress and with probably the most corrupt U.S. Supreme Court in history, we can assume that he’ll probably get his way.
This politicization of monetary policy, in Trump’s case so that he can lower interest rates to give short-term boosts to the economy, especially shortly before elections, will over the longer term slam the economy.
When central banks such as the Fed are politically controlled, they tend to print much more money, which spawns intense inflation. And if investors come to think that its policies are based entirely on short-term political considerations rather than on rigorously collected and analyzed economic data, they’ll cut back on U.S. investments. As trust in the Fed’s long-term anti-inflation powers decline, long-term interest rates will climb, constricting the economy for years to come. And a politicized Fed will undermine the dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency, causing foreign central banks and investors to get out of dollar-denominated assets.
Europe Rearming
The economies of European Union members and Britain will get both short-and-long-term boosts from their belated decision to dramatically boost defense spending to address the growing threat of Russia’s brutal aggression. The new spending will swiftly help energize Europe’s generally sluggish economic growth. And as happened with America as a result of the demands of World War II and the Cold War, the research and development associated with weapons and related work will spawn innovations that will enrich Europeans in other ways, including in their broader consumer societies.
This will create substantial new competition for America, where innovation has been slowing for decades. A major exception has been social media, which have served as distracting bread and circuses for much of the public. And now we have the great job killer, and fraud fomentor, of artificial intelligence, though that will bring some benefits, too, especially in medicine.
Of course, there will be political pushback in Europe as some of its famously generous social services will to be reduced to pay for the existentially needed stronger military.
These epochal changes will hurt U.S. defense contractors, which have long played an important role in Europe’s defense. Europeans rightly now see us as an increasingly erratic, unreliable, corrupt and indeed sleazy partner, if a partner at all. Better to depend on themselves as much as possible.
The Way We Live Now, Continued
We’re all such lemmings, but perhaps most so the young. Around three decades ago it started (most encouraged by Hip-Hoppers and some athletes) to become fashionable to wear baseball caps and similar headwear with the visors backwards, thus eliminating protection from the sun and facial skin cancer. (Rarely a hat wearer, I have a lot of scars from this malady myself; too bad I can’t say the scars are from dueling on a point of honor.)
Likewise, tattoos have become all the rage, though as the skin ages they become uglier and uglier; and they’re painful and expensive to remove. But they serve as another kind of bread and circuses, a distraction from life’s irritations, boredom and sorrows, and a peculiar kind of self-expression.