Whitcomb: What Next? Suggestions for a Better RI; Clements for Governor?

Whitcomb: What Next? Suggestions for a Better RI; Clements for Governor?

 

“With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcase increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.’’

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-- From “Taking Down the Tree,’’ by Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet

Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“The winter, it was the winter all

the usual things happened,

I have forgotten what

would travel from the north

as a series seen from above

or from below….’’

-- From “Three Seasons,’’ by  American poet Geoffrey G. O’Brien (born 1969).

 

“It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.” {because of nuclear energy}

-- Lewis Strauss (1896-1974), in 1954, as chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which he led in 1953-1958. He is a complex villain in the movie Oppenheimer, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project.

 

 

“The body says what words cannot.’’

-- Martha Graham (1894-1991), American dancer, choreographer and teacher

 

 

xxx

 

Getting through January reminds me of the old line about raising children: “The days are long but the years are short.’’

Curiosity, tinctured with voyeurism, is much of what keeps most of us going in the face of bad news and fatigue while we seek the good news in the human condition, especially compassion, generosity and creativity, some of it very unexpected.

 

As we slide into 2026, we wonder:

Of course, how will the Patriots and Red Sox do?

 

Will we have a January thaw? Will our very cold and boring start to winter flip if it turns cold Out West, where it’s been much warmer than average, and so turns warmer here? Dream on?

 

Will the rebuilding of the westbound part of the  Washington Bridge go on as scheduled, as frustrated drivers are reminded that the opening isn’t scheduled until November 2028?

 

Will the state finally put up a sign at the labyrinth/roundabout on the east side of the Henderson Bridge that tells people how to get to Route 195 East which would seem to be basic needed information?

 

Will Rhode Island House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi decide to run for governor, even though in some ways his current job is more powerful than the governorship?

 

Will the plurality of those who voted for Trump in 2024 come to realize that, whatever a demagogue’s tempting economic promises  (streets will be paved with gold because billionaires get tax breaks!) and alluring attacks on disfavored ethnic and other groups,  tyranny and corruption are not good long-term conditions for their prosperity?

 

How intense will be the politicization of the celebration this year of the 250th anniversary of the United States, which was declared a little more than a year after Massachusetts, more than anywhere else, started the American Revolution?

 

Will Russian agent/ally Trump continue to blow apart the Western Alliance – an alliance that brought more prosperity and peace to the nations that shared its principles than could have been hoped for as it took shape in the ruins of World War II?

 

Actually, the answer is obvious: The sociopathic traitor,  thief, racist and 24/7 liar will be 80 next June 14 and won’t change. The biggest question is how long-lasting will be the damage he’s doing to the country, aided and abetted by his coterie of suckups.

 

Francis Fukuyama, the famous U.S. political scientist, has noted:

“Donald Trump is not driven by policy arguments or ideology, but rather by personal self-interest, often in the form of direct payoffs to himself and his family.

“Ask the Swiss, who got themselves a lower tariff rate by giving Trump an expensive gold bar.  Trump's primary interest in the current negotiation with Russia seems to be the prospect of exploiting Ukraine's resources and reintegrating Russia into the global economic order so that {certain} Americans could start profiting from investments there again.”

 

Will the artificial intelligence-generated stock market boom implode? Most analysts predict that the market will keep going up, but my guess is that it won’t. The conventional wisdom is usually wrong.

 

How big will the job cuts be this year because of AI? How fast will white-collar jobs disappear, while those requiring various degrees of physical work, such as in the skilled trades (plumbers, etc.), look much more protected and better paid?

 

Will measles, whooping cough, various strains of flu and other highly contagious diseases continue to spread from the  “low-information” Red States because of anti-vax lies by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other cranks?

 

Will China invade Taiwan, with Trump’s permission?

 

Will Iranians finally be able to overthrow that nation’s brutal and corrupt dictatorship? There’s a bit more hope about that these days.

 

xxx

 

What and who were to blame for the U.S. border and immigration crisis that, with COVID-linked inflation, probably more than anything else, put Trump into office? Of course, it’s a complicated tale that extends over decades, as border crises wax and wane but this Cato Institute reports is enlightening:

 

National Republicans are far more aggressive and untruthful in promoting their positions on this and other issues than are national Democrats, who have too often brought squirt guns to the fights, rather than the knives that the MAGA crowd brings. When I started to follow politics, partly for a living, 55 years ago, it seemed that the nastiness was more evenly matched.

 

His Rx for Rhode Island

You might not agree with all or even any of James E. Fayal’s suggestions in a GoLocal column last week on how to make Rhode Island’s state government work better, but it’s a very thoughtful piece, into which he’s obviously put a lot of work, and ought to be read by as many citizens as possible, especially in an election year. READ HERE

 

The suggestions I liked the best are:

“Institut{ing} a non-partisan primary election and/or a ranked choice voting system. A ‘top-two primary’ system would create a ‘primary general election,’  where all voters could cast ballots without having to declare a party affiliation—thereby increasing voter participation—and the top two vote-getters in that race would then face each other in the November general election.  This process ensures that the winner is the one who is the choice of more than 50 percent of ALL voters. (What a radical idea!) Candidates could list their party affiliation on the ballot, but no official party endorsement could be identified.’’  

These approaches would likely get us better and less partisan (and more centrist?) candidates over the long run.

See how Maine has done with ranked-choice voting so far: READ HERE

 

Restoring the governor’s power to put nonbinding referendum questions on the ballot.

 

Considering the creation of an office of state inspector general (presumably to watch for inefficiencies and fraud) and merging the secretary of state’s functions with the office of the lieutenant governor, which has little to do now.

 

While most readers would probably disagree with me,  I don’t favor his support for eliminating the “legislative grants’’  program, which gives great power to the House speaker and Senate president to dole out state money to punish or reward legislators. Sometimes, providing such goodies is a needed way to get important legislation through; it’s a lubricant. After all, legislators are just people, and as the possibly apocryphal quote attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) goes:

“Laws are like sausages, it’s better not to see them being made.’’ He is also said to have observed: “With bad laws and good civil servants, it’s still possible to govern.’’ Most legislators aren’t corrupt, or at least no more corrupt than the average American.

 

xxx

 

All hail the quality of its observations and prescriptions, and for its eloquence (however much the exact wording was crafted by him), in the letter to the Brown University community from Hugh T. Clements Jr., the former Providence police chief and now Brown’s interim vice president for public safety,  in the wake of the mass shooting there. 

 

You’d get the impression that he’d be a fine mayor or governor.

Here's the letter:

 

Into the Electronic Ether

Denmark has stopped delivering physical letters by postal carriers, though not parcels. Danes must now drop off the letters at kiosks in stores and elsewhere, whence they’ll be delivered by a DAO, a private company.

 

The rationale: To save money, and, as Andreas Brethvard, the PR chief for the small and very prosperous nation’s postal service, PostNord, told CNN, “Almost every Dane is fully digital, meaning physical letters no longer serve the same purpose as previously. Most communication now arrives in our electronic mailboxes, and the reality  today is that e-commerce and the parcel market far outweigh traditional mail.’’

 

Maybe, but I hope that physical-mail delivery continues far, far into the future in the United States. It’s helps bind together our huge and often fragmenting country. And mail carriers sometimes play urgent roles in helping residents in emergencies, spotting local threats, and strengthening neighborhoods through cross-communication.

 

CNN piece:

 

Local Treasures

I was saddened to learn of the closing, as of last Wednesday, of another diner, Louis Family Restaurant, which has been on the East Side of Providence since 1946. Such diners are New England institutions, especially for their “comfort food” breakfasts (all of whose cuisine might not necessarily  be recommended by your cardiologists). They have served as community meeting-and-bonding places, and unlike some fancier establishments, don’t make people eating alone feel uncomfortable, whether sitting at a counter or in a booth.

 

They’re entrances into local news, color and quirks and without the boring standardization of chain restaurants. Be it in an urban neighborhood or in a small rural town, patronizing a diner is an agreeable way to learn what’s going on in the environs, by overhearing gossip.

 

Like many readers, I’ve been to lots of diners over the decades in the region’s six states and have rarely been disappointed. My favorite breakfasts are blueberry pancakes and my favorite diner is the late, great Polka Dot in White River Junction, Vt. (apart from witnessing a couple of altercations there involving hepped-up truck drivers coming off Route 91 and some surly local teens.)

 

RIP, Brigitte Bardot (1934-2025)

Ms. Bardot, the French actress, singer, and model, must have had one of the stranger celebrity lives of the past century – from child of socio-economic privilege, to symbol of sexual freedom (she was dubbed “the sex kitten”), to outspoken right-winger who occasionally, intentionally or not,  expressed racist views, to international animal-rights campaigner.

You can pack a lot of very different stuff into a life, especially when you retire as she did at age 39 from the time-consuming trade – movie star -- that made her famous.

In any event, she remained a symbol of France, literally: Her image was used for some years as the model for Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic.  Patriotic sex appeal!

For many old people, her death brought a certain nostalgia for the early days of the Sexual Revolution, though her greatest long-term influence might be in encouraging humans to be kinder to their fellow animals, if not necessarily always to other humans.