Whitcomb: What’s a Public Service Worth? Solar Power on Your Balcony; Data Deceivers
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: What’s a Public Service Worth? Solar Power on Your Balcony; Data Deceivers
“The free evening fades, outside the windows fastened
with decorative iron grilles.
The lamps are lighted; the shades drawn; the nurses
are watching a little….
the book held up like a mask….’’
-- From “Evening in the Sanitarium,’’ by Louise Bogan (1897-1970), poet from Maine
“Waves among wires, sea scudding over poles,
down every alley the magnificence of rain,
dead gutters live once more, the deep manholes
hollo in triumph a passage to the main.’’
From “Hatteras Calling,’’ by Conrad Aiken (I889-1973), American poet, in honor of hurricane season, which some people like for its drama. Most such storms curve well out to sea before they can seriously affect New England. If one does come our way, the more vegetated the shoreline – tidal wetlands, vegetated banks and dunes -- the less destructive the storm surges.
“A shopkeeper will never get the more custom by beating his customers; and what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.’’
-- Josiah Tucker (1713-1799), Welsh clergyman, economist and political writer
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It’s too bad that college students must go back to school so early these days. Late August and early September have the best weather of the year around here. In my time, many of us didn’t have to go back until mid-September. Among other things this gave us more time to make money on summer jobs. (May and early June weather not so good for such work.)
It’s old people who most sense summer (and all other time) seeming to go faster every year, even as summer is getting longer climate-wise. And we’re excessively looking forward, or fearing, the next season. Too bad this can distract us from the pleasures of the moment, especially in person (not on a screen), in a constantly changing nature, such as seeing the Asters, which have several vivid colors, Black-Eyed Susans, and the purple-blue of Chicory on the roadsides.
Enjoy the sweet corn from local farms and the softer sunshine. And those noisy cicadas have a delicious nut-like taste!
False Economies?
Some of the proposed cuts to the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority in this time of spreading fiscal anxiety may initially sound reasonable – cutting routes where patronage has declined, etc. The trouble is that each layer of cuts, by making the network thinner, tends to dissuade people from trying to use it at all, even as an aging population and ever-widening income inequality makes RIPTA more important. That’s even with more people working remotely; plenty of people – e.g., nurses – can’t work remotely.
Better than cutting service would be raising fares, which last went up in 2016, when the current boarding charge of $2 was set. Taking the bus is always cheaper than driving. And please, remember that public transportation can’t be expected to pay for itself. Like roads and bridges, it’s public infrastructure that, among other things, helps individuals and businesses make a living.
Meanwhile, Amtrak will soon be replacing its old Acela trains with its Next-Gen version; they are a little faster. By America’s low passenger-train standards, Acela trains are “fast.’’ Could the MBTA use some of the old Acelas on its very important Providence route, which unfortunately still uses diesel locomotives? Acela cars, old or new, are spiffier than current MBTA ones, as well as faster – two things that could draw more people to the Providence-Boston route, which of course connects New England’s two biggest metro areas and so boosts the regional economy. It would make it easier for more people who work in Greater Boston, with its astronomical housing prices, to find a home in Rhode Island, with its somewhat less astronomical housing prices.
In other potentially happy news for us, there’s “plug-in solar,’’ (sometimes called “balcony solar’’) which has attracted a lot of interest in Europe. These are small-scale solar systems that can be installed without an electrician or a local utility’s permission. Of course, this complicates life for the latter.
One such product is the Flex 200 plug-in panel system, by Bright Saver, a nonprofit group based in California. Another is EcoFlow, which has begun selling its STREAM systems and is mostly based in China.
It would be nice to have one of these systems after a storm has cut off your utility’s electricity, perhaps replacing some home generators, which typically run on natural gas, propane (LP), or diesel.
However much the Trump regime, which is in a tight sleeping bag with the Red State-based fossil-fuel industry, tries to kill clean alternative energy, more and more people will turn to it as it becomes cheaper and easier to use. Nations outside the U.S. are moving faster and faster away from fossil fuel, though that will be with us for a long time to come.
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Those huge electricity eaters known as data centers, being put up at a dizzying rate to serve artificial intelligence, crypto (which is great if you want to launder ill-gotten gains), and the like, are putting a great strain on some utilities and will probably raise many consumers’ electricity bills. A solution is to have these facilities generate their own electricity independent of the grid. But how many would use the likes of heavily polluting diesel or other dirty fossil fuels, undermining the health of nearby residents and, of course, adding to global warming? Or would they use solar or wind? Or in the fullness of time, little nuclear reactors?
Here's what’s happening in New Hampshire:
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Will artificial intelligence’s massive destruction of white-collar jobs lead many Americans to take those low-paid jobs, many involving manual labor, now held by immigrants facing deportation? Meanwhile, AI’s white-collar job destruction will continue to erode interest in getting college educations and push more people into vocational schools and apprenticeships for skilled trades that require using their hands.
Given the bottomless corruption of the Trump regime and its almost comically supine servants in Congress, you can bet that A.J. Antoni, from the fascist (not “conservative”!) Heritage Foundation, will do everything he can to undermine the nonpartisan data collectors and analyzers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics once he takes over. He’ll seek to hide data and put out bogus data to make the increasingly tyrannical and kleptocratic administration look good, or at least less bad, as economic troubles caused by the regime mount.
Bloomberg News had a very accurate description of Antoni:
“Currently the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, he got his doctorate just five years ago and has no publications or citations of note. He has no experience with large public surveys, no research about survey methodology, and no history of managing large organizations such as the 2,000 people who work at the BLS. Unusually for an economist, he appears not to have a strong grasp of recessions work.”
The regime is not interested in disinterested expertise. Absolute loyalty to The Führer is the key qualification. So it will continue to be a highly productive lie factory.
As I and many others have warned, people in business will have to start looking more beyond government for honest economic macroeconomic data. Some will turn to private data collection-and-analysis companies, U.S. and beyond, and/or to rigorous nonprofit public-policy organizations such as the conservative American Enterprise Institute (whose conferences I have attended and whose reports I read all the time).
My friend Llewellyn King, famed columnist, host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and energy-sector consultant, has noted: “AI could check the data put out by the government. Which leads to the possibility of a kind of AI shadow government, revealing falsehoods and correcting speculation.
“If AI poses a huge possibility for misinformation, it also must have within it the ability to verify truth, to set the record straight, to be a gargantuan fact checker.’’
Meanwhile, big-business execs remain scared of confronting Trump on his tariffs.
Yes, China has cheated big time on trade since it became quasi-capitalist. But other, and probably more important, villains in America’s manufacturing-employment social/economic/political crisis have been automation (of which we’ll see more and more), an overvalued dollar and the disinclination of successive GOP and Democratic administrations to more fully help laid-off factory workers with direct financial aid, retraining and so on. Of course, many of these people could have moved to places with better economic prospects but didn’t want to leave regions where they and their family and friends were deeply ensconced. Many became devout Trumpers.
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Regarding the regime’s temporary (maybe) armed takeover of heavily Democratic Washington, D.C.: Of course, cities in general have higher crime rates than rural areas – more people from many more backgrounds rubbing against each other and more opportunities to steal stuff! Density and heterogeneity!
But the most dangerous states are all bright Red:
The safest states are in New England.
If and when the Trumpian nightmare ends and a slightly left-of-center regains power in Washington, we can assume that recent events will lead to a renewed drive for District of Columbia statehood.
Vladimir Putin wants all of Ukraine and some other pieces of Eastern Europe, with the Baltic Republics most at risk. Ukraine’s greatest challenge is to outlast the mass murderer in the Kremlin. Any security guarantees Putin will give in return for keeping the land he has seized from Ukraine will be as worthless as Hitler’s security guarantees as he started to dismember Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Russia’s security guarantees to Ukraine in 1994 in return for it giving up its nuclear weapons. Most importantly, Putin has relentlessly violated security promises and international law.
His “peace plan’’ includes taking over much of Ukraine’s eastern military zone – with American tolerance -- to make it easier to invade and occupy the whole country.
Appeasing dictators just eggs them on.
Here’s a useful corrective timeline on Trump-Russia relationship.
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Netanyahu’s plan for Israel to occupy all of the Gaza Strip could condemn Israel to have to fight a guerrilla war that could last for years. Urban ruins are perfect for it. I wonder how much patience the Israeli public would have for this.