Whitcomb: Then Don’t Complain Later; Tideland Issues; Save Lives With New Gun Taxes
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Then Don’t Complain Later; Tideland Issues; Save Lives With New Gun Taxes
“i drank a lot. i lost my job.
i lived like nothing mattered.
then you stopped, and came across
my little bridge of fallen answers.’’
-- From “Drank a Lot,’’ by Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist
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“Voted, that the earth is the Lord’s
and the fullness thereof; voted,
that the earth is given to the Saints;
voted, that we are the Saints.’’
-- Notes from a Milford, Conn., town meeting in 1640
“The risk of death from truly external causes, as defined here, is three times higher in rural and small-town America than in the country’s largest city.’’
-- Justin Fox, writing in Bloomberg News
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I can hear the future complaints now from many of the 96 percent of Providence’s registered voters who didn’t bestir themselves to vote in last Tuesday’s special election. The vote was on whether the city should borrow $515 million with which to reduce Providence’s current $1.2 billion unfunded pension liability. This huge problem originated decades ago in sweetheart deals with municipal unions in the mayoralties of local real-estate mogul Joseph Paolino and the corrupt showman Vincent Cianci.
If the borrowing, which also must be approved by the state, leads to a fiscal disaster as the bond and stock markets churn there will be much gnashing of teeth, including among the majority of those who were too lazy to vote. I wonder what the vote would have been if voting were mandatory, as it is in some nations, such as Australia.
The biggest beneficiaries of the plan would be the municipal unions. Their members were advised to turn out for the election, in which the borrowing was approved by a 70 percent to 30 percent margin.
That only 4 percent voted on this important and well-publicized issue bespeaks a deep decadence in local civic culture and a continuing decline in democratic energy.
But will interest rates and the stock market allow this highly dubious bond issue to happen even if the state approves it? Anyway, in the end, the city might have to undergo the painful but cleansing effects of bankruptcy.
Despots’ Mutual-Defense Pact
In other anti-democratic news, Brazil’s autocratic and corrupt president Jair Bolsonaro (like Trump, a would-be dictator), who currently trails former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in polls ahead of elections in October, said last week that he still harbors suspicions about Joe Biden's victory in 2020 and he again praised Trump's regime.
In 2020, the Brazilian leader voiced allegations of U.S. election fraud as he backed Trump. (Putin also strongly backed Trump in 2020, as he did in 2016. READ MORE HERE
Bolsonaro was one of the last world leaders to recognize Biden's win. The 2020 election fraud was perpetrated by Trump’s campaign, swimming in lies and much of it paid for by “dark money’’ from business interests. As relentless reviews in Democratic and Republican-dominated states since 2020 have proven, Biden won the election by more than 7 million popular votes and 306-232 in the Electoral College.
"The American people are the ones who talk about it (election fraud). I will not discuss the sovereignty of another country. But Trump was doing really well," Bolsonaro said.
"We don't want that to happen in Brazil," he added.
Not surprisingly, since he’s behind in the polls, Bolsonaro has questioned the legitimacy of Brazil’s electronic voting system.
Dictators and would-be dictators stick together in trying to pull down democracies. The most dangerous ones – China and Russia – do as much as they can to prop up fellow bloody tyrants, lest their downfall inspire brave domestic foes to try to overthrow their own tyrannies. Consider, for example, Myanmar (Burma), a Chinese client state (whose natural resources Beijing exploits), and Syria, a Russian satellite that Putin has used as a Mideast base and a laboratory for mass murder of civilians to keep allied despots in power.
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Recent primary elections across America suggest that Democratic voters generally favor the old-fashioned FDR-Truman-style mildly left-of-center policies over the more left “progressive” positions sometimes suicidally suffused with identity/’’woke’’ politics. But that probably won’t help the party in November – it’s blamed for economic problems that are mostly international and so out of its control. But such moderation would help them in elections after that. That is, if there are free elections after that. The Trump/QAnon Fascists have other plans.
Going Where the Money’s Handed Out
I wasn’t surprised by the announcement that huge defense contractor Raytheon will move its headquarters from Waltham, Mass., to Arlington, Va., the location of the Pentagon and right across the Potomac from the White House and Congress, which decide on defense appropriations. That means that soon the world headquarters of the five biggest defense contractors — which include, besides Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrup Grumman — will all be based in the area whose denizens hand out the defense money and where high-priced lobbyists dine with their clients in fine restaurants.
Raytheon’s move may have been predictable but it’s still sad: The company has been in the Bay State since its founding, in 1922. It has thrived from the Boston area’s engineering and scientific knowhow.
Tideland Issues
There may be ideas for Rhode Island officials, the public and developers here:
The Conservation Law Foundation has an online tool to use to estimate how much a Massachusetts waterfront property’s value could rise if a developer is allowed to build beyond the restrictions set forth in the state’s Chapter 91 rules.
Hit these links:
https://www.clf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/CLF-Peoples-Guide-Public-Waterfront-Act-Dec18.pdf
https://www.tidelandcalculator.com/
Of course, as sea levels rise, it gets harder to determine what a “tideland” is.
Meanwhile, we’d do well to get a copy of architect Weston Wright’s new book, More Water, Less Land, New Architecture: Sea Level Rise and the Future of Coastal Urbanism.
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As the city and state mull ways to make Providence’s North Main Street less ugly, people whose opinion I’ve asked focus repeatedly on “plant trees and pick up the trash!”
Taxes Against Mass Murder
To at least reduce the number of mass murders committed via military-style assault weapons, states should tax the hell of out of the sale of these guns and high-capacity magazines as a way of getting around purported Second Amendment barriers. Make the tax as high as possible -- so high that at least some of the young men considering becoming killers can’t afford to buy these weapons of war.
A well-publicized tax would serve to save some lives by discouraging purchases, and would be financially fitting: The mayhem, and anticipation of mayhem, by the users of these things – meant to kill as many people as fast as possible – cost the state and federal government taxpayers billions of dollars a year. They increasingly make being in public venues in large parts of America, especially in Red States, fraught.
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You can perhaps understand the lure of racism and of far-right, conspiracy-theory, Trumpian extremism. It gives those who embrace these pathologies a sense of belonging and meaning in anomie-ridden America.
The support given Trump and the GOP/QAnon Party in general by big-business interests in pursuit of lower taxes for the rich and less regulation reminds me of the support given Hitler by big businessmen in Germany in the ‘30s. Some U.S. plutocrats support far-right politicians like Trump with money used to rile up angry and unrich Trumpers via social issues as cover for business interests’ greed and associated power lust. They get millions of people to vote against their own socio-economic self-interests.
As Marx called religion the “opium of the masses,’’ you might call the appeals to bigotry and the relentless promotion of bogus conspiracy theories a kind of drug peddling.
Read William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Jane Mayer’s investigative piece:
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The celebration of 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee had the air of a farewell. I find looking at Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, eerie since I remember him (and myself) as a boy and now he looks even older than his 73 years. Imagine waiting as long as he has for the top job!
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We get relentless electronic reminders for medical and other appointments. The assumption is that we’re too addled or lazy to write down our appointments. Electronics makes us addled. At the same time there are endless electronic surveys asking us to rank our customer or patient “experience’’. Tedious.
Write appointments down on a paper calendar, and look at the calendar every morning! Or stick them on the fridge with a magnet.
Fewer, Stronger Players
High inflation: To pandemic-related supply-chain blockages and Putin’s assault on Ukraine add that increasing corporate concentration in some business sectors has become so strong that many companies, without any fear of competition, can charge what they want in tense times like these. Corporate concentration has also slowed technological advances and startup creation in the past few decades as monopolies and oligopolies take up the oxygen. Bringing the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission out of their comas would help.
I wouldn’t call such fairly recent developments as the invention of big social media much of a tech advance. Indeed, Facebook and Google, especially, are dangerous oligopolies ruthless about squashing competitors. And Facebook in particular has done immense damage to civil society.
Meanwhile, some weekly context:
https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/shopping/cars/604410/gas-prices-around-the-world
https://ilostat.ilo.org/inflation-more-than-doubled-between-march-2021-and-march-2022/
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We’re often surprised by the tameness of the multitude of rabbits in our neighborhood, with its relative lack of predators and the fact that virtually all dogs are leashed. You can go right up to the bunnies. Their biggest threat is the house cats that their owners irresponsibly let roam, killing lots of song birds and some rabbits, too, though coyotes, who attack cats and are very smart, even the odds a bit.
On Course
The men’s U.S. Open golf tournament will be held next Thursday through Sunday at The Country Club, in Brookline -- the first golf club in America to be called a “country club.’’ I well remember being taken there by my father for the U.S. Open on June 20-23,1963, won by Julius Boros, who beat Jacky Cupit and Arnold Palmer in an 18-hole playoff. (No, we were not members!) The drama was delightful but it sure was hot. Watching Palmer, who was funny and charming, was great fun. (I had dinner with him and a couple of other folks at the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971.) I remember Palmer teeing off after throwing his cigarette on the ground. A more relaxed time.
Although golf courses can be environmental disasters – most are laden with chemical fertilizers and pesticides -- they can be very beautiful, which for me was more of a lure than the sport of chasing a tiny and very hard ball around 18 holes. I sometimes wish I had taken some more lessons from my father, with whom I played a few times. But I was off at school and then working in cities most of the time, and it’s a very expensive sport.
My father was a fine player, and won some tournaments, the last on the Massachusetts North Shore shortly before he dropped dead of a heart attack. After his memorial service, one of his friends said with a sigh: “He had a sweet swing.’’