Mass. takes careful approach to luring sexy companies
“The Amazon Spheres’’ at the company’s headquarters, in Seattle.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Amazon already has thousands of employees in tech center Greater Boston and will probably add several thousands more, perhaps mostly along the South Boston waterfront, in the wake of the apparent demise of an Amazon “second headquarters’’ in New York City. But this won’t be due to the sort of massive incentives the “populist’’ reaction to which blew up the Amazon-New York deal.
As seen in the deal crafted by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (a highly successful former businessman and top-notch numbers cruncher) and the generally economically reality-based Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to lure General Electric headquarters, Massachusetts has been quite conservative in crafting incentive packages. Shirley Leung had an interesting column on the GE deal. To read it, please hit this link.
Rhode Island might also get some Amazon jobs — probably design-related — because of the New York news.
Sam Pizzigati: Economic Inequality helps launch helicopter parents
Anxious parents taking the family house to their kids college?
Via OtherWords.org
A good many of us aging Baby Boomers are having trouble relating to the “helicopter parents” of our modern age — those moms and pops constantly hovering over their kids, filling their schedules with enrichment activities of every sort, worrying nonstop about their futures.
Back in the middle of the 20th Century, Baby Boomers didn’t grow up like that. We lived much more “free-range” childhoods. We pedaled our bikes far from hearth and home. We organized our own pick-up games. We spent — wasted! — entire summers doing little bits of nothing.
We survived. So did our parents. So why do parents today have to hover so much?
The standard explanation: Times have changed. Yes, today’s parents take a more intense approach to parenting. But they have no choice. The pressures of modernity make them do it.
Economists Matthias Doepke of Northwestern University and Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale have followed all the debate over helicopter parenting, and they’re not jumping on this blame-modernity bandwagon. If the pace and pressures of our dangerous digital times are driving parents to hover, the pair points out, then we ought to see parents helicoptering across the developed world.
We’re not.
In fact, researchers have found significant differences in parenting styles from one modern industrial nation to another. Parents in some nations today have parenting styles as relaxed as anything aging baby boomers experienced back in the 1950s. In other nations, by contrast, parents seem as intense as today’s helicoptering norm in the United States.
How can we account for these differences?
Doepke and Zilibotti have a compelling explanation. Levels of helicopter parenting, they note, track with levels of economic inequality. The wider a society’s income gaps, the more parents hover.
The two countries most notorious for their helicopter parenting, China and the United States, just happen to sport two of the world’s deepest economic divides. And those more relaxed parenting days of mid-20th century America? They came at a time when the United States shared income and wealth much more equally than the United States does today.
What’s going on here? Why should economic inequality have any impact on parenting styles?
In severely unequal nations, the evidence suggests, childhoods have become high-stakes competitions. Only the “winners” go on to enjoy comfortable lives when they grow up. You either make it into the ranks of your nation’s elite or you risk struggling on a treadmill that never ends.
In more equal societies, you don’t have to matriculate at the “best” schools or score a high-status internship to live a dignified life. In societies with income and wealth more evenly distributed, broad swatches of people — not just elites — live comfortably. That leaves parents, as Doepke puts it, “more room to relax and let the kids just enjoy themselves.”
Parents in highly unequal nations can’t afford to relax. They have too much to do. They have to shape their kids into winners. But the competition their children face will always be rigged, because the already affluent in deeply unequal societies have more time and money to invest in that shaping.
Researchers Doepke and Zilibotti call for greater public investments in social services — like quality child care — to narrow the competitive advantage that wealth bestows upon affluent American families.
The investments they recommend would certainly help ease the pressure on working households. Would they be enough to get our parents more relaxed? Not likely, not so long as rewards keep concentrating in the pockets of the few at the expense of the many.
Our helicopter parents, in short, don’t need fixing. Our economic system does.
Sam Pizzigati is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor Inequality.org, which ran an earlier version of this piece. His latest book is The Case for a Maximum Wage.
Newport event on smart cities and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Street lamps in Amsterdam have been upgraded to allow municipal councils to dim the lights based on pedestrian use.
From Llewellyn King, long-time contributor to New England Diary and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS
Dear Friends,
I will be speaking about smart cities and the Fourth Industrial Revolution at The Pell Center, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI, at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 5.
There is no charge, and refreshments will be served before the lecture. You are most welcome to bring a guest/s.
Here is the registration link, please feel free to share it:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smart-cities-gateway-to-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-tickets-57413347869
The Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy building, in a former Gilded Age mansion.
I would be honored and delighted if you would attend.
Cheers,
Llewellyn
Executive Producer and Host
White House Chronicle, on PBS;
Columnist, InsideSources Syndicate;
Commentator, SiriusXM Radio;
Founder/Host, ME/CFS Alert on YouTube
Drawing out emotions
“In Trouble’’ (drawing), by David Andrews, in his show “David Andrews: Feelings of…’’ at the Augusta Savage Gallery, at UMass Amherst, through March 28. The drawings are said to confront rage, fear and confusion with hope, forgiveness and liberation.
25 'healthy food' groups get grants
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has awarded 25 ‘‘healthy food’’ nonprofit organizations with grants to support their programs. The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, which issued the grants, has awarded nearly $620,000 to groups in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
In 2016, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation launched the Healthy Food Fund program, and has since awarded grants totaling $4.6 million across New England. These funds support volunteer-based community food programs that bring fresh, local food to low-income families. These organizations include Gardening the Community, Healthy Acadia, New Hampshire Food Bank, and New Haven Farms.
Karen Voci, president of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, outlined, “Our goal for this next phase of the Harvard Pilgrim Healthy Food Fund is to mobilize the energy of local community members and corporate volunteers to grow, glean and provide more free, fresh produce for low-income families across New England, creating a movement of ‘neighbors feeding neighbors.’’’
Former adviser to British Royal Family and scholar of the sociology of what led to Brexit will speak at March 14 PCFR
British Royal Family Coat of Arms.
Mark your calendars for some exciting upcoming talks at the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com). Consult thepcfr.org for information on how to join the organization and other information about the organization.
Our speaker on Thursday, March 14, will be Miguel Head, now a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. He spent the past decade as a senior adviser to the British Royal Family. He joined the Royal Household as Press Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry before being appointed in 2012 as their youngest ever Chief of Staff.
Previously, Mr. Head was Chief Press Officer at the UK Ministry of Defense, and worked for the Liberal Democrat party in the European Parliament. While at the Shorenstein Center, Mr. Head is doing research into how social inequalities in Britain are fomenting the politics of division (which helped lead to the Brexit vote) and how non-political leadership, working collaboratively with traditional and digital media, can play a role in bringing disparate communities together. At the PCFR, he’ll talk about those things as well comment on the past and current role of the Royal Family, and, indeed, life with the Royals.
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At the Thursday, April 4 ,Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org) dinner, James Nealon, the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, will talk about Central America in general and Honduras in particular, with a focus on the conditions leading so many people there to try to flee to the United States – and what the U.S. can and should do about it.
A career Foreign Service officer, Nealon held posts in Canada, Uruguay, Hungary, Spain, and Chile before assuming his post as Ambassador to Honduras in August 2014; Nealon also served as the deputy of John F. Kelly, while Kelly was in charge of the United States Southern Command.
After leaving his ambassadorship in 2017, Nealon was appointed assistant secretary for international engagement at the Department of Homeland Security by Kelly in July. During his time as assistant secretary, Nealon supported a policy of deploying Homeland Security agents abroad. He resigned his post on Feb. 8, 2018, due to his disagreements with the immigration policy of Donald Trump, and, specifically, the withdrawal of temporary protected status for Hondurans.
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Then, on Wednesday, April 10, the speaker will be Prof. James Green, who will talk about the political and economic forces that have led to the election of Brazil’s new right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro – and hazard some guesses on what might happen next.
Professor Green is the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History, director of Brown’s Brazil Initiative, Distinguished Visiting Professor (Professor Amit) at Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, and the Executive Director of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), which is now housed at the Watson Institute at Brown.
Green served as the director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University from 2005 to 2008. He was president of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) from 2002 until 2004, and president of the New England Council on Latin American Studies (NECLAS) in 2008 and 2009.
Speakers for May and June will be announced soon.
Work ethic
‘‘Well, while I'm here, I'll do the work’’ (ALEPH) (acrylic/rag paper), by Tasha Robbins. (Photo by James Stark.) This is in her show “Malachim, Coming Out of Darkness,’’ at the Hampden Gallery at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The gallery says that Robbins's work is “an abecedarian adventure in paint and a personal meditation on the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet.’’
Review of the mid-term elections in New England
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
Editor’s Note: New England and the nation have long suffered from an underrepresentation of women and people of color in higher elected offices. In the 2018 midterms, that began to change. Below, Carolyn Morwick, director of government and community relations at NEBHE and former director of the Caucus of New England State Legislatures, takes a state-by-state look at New England elections and some key issues. Also see From the Corner Office: New England Governors Budgets and Turning Points: Reflections on What the Historic 2018 Midterm Elections Could Mean for New England and Electing a Reflection of America. — John O. Harney
Connecticut
Four of Connecticut’s five U.S. House members easily won re-election in their respective districts, while voters in Connecticut’s 5th congressional district elected Jahana Hayes, a 2016 “Teacher of the Year” award recipient to replace Elizabeth Esty who resigned last year. Hayes is the first African-American to represent Connecticut in the U.S. House. A native of Waterbury, she enrolled at Naugatuck Valley Community College, earned her four-year degree at Southern Connecticut State University and eventually her masters’ and advanced degrees from the University of Saint Joseph and University of Bridgeport while working to support her young family.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, easily won his second six-year term.
Under Connecticut law, there is no term limit on the office of governor. Outgoing Gov. Dannel Malloy was eligible to run for a third term but chose not to. Malloy will be succeeded by Democrat Ned Lamont who edged out Republican Robert Stefanowski by 40,000 votes.
In the Connecticut General Assembly, the balance of power has shifted slightly with House Democrats gaining seats in the November elections. Democrats control the House with a 92-59 margin. In the Senate, Democrats now have a 23-13 majority. House and Senate leaders are in agreement that the agenda for 2019 will likely address paid family medical leave, an increase in the minimum wage and implementing tolls including a proposal by Lamont to impose a toll on out-of-state trucks.
In other election news, William Tong became the first Asian-American elected to serve as attorney general. Tong is a native of Connecticut, born to Chinese immigrant parents. He served in the Connecticut House and was House chair of the Judiciary Committee. He is the first Asian-American elected to a statewide office.
Democrat Shawn Wooden was elected state treasurer. He will replace Denise Napier who served for 20 years in that post. Wooden is a partner in the law firm of Pitney Day and heads the firm’s public pension plan investment practice.
In the Legislature, the Senate re-elected Martin Looney as Senate president and Bob Duff as Senate majority leader, while the House re-elected Rep. Joseph Aresmowicz speaker and Rep. Matthew Ritter as House majority leader. Republicans re-elected Len Fasano the post of Senate minority leader and House Republicans chose Rep. Themis Klarides as House minority leader
Connecticut voters approved two amendments to the state constitution by wide margins. In Connecticut, the only way voters can ask the state to do something is by amending the state constitution. One amendment would create a transportation “lockbox,” which would protect funds for highway and mass transit. The other amendment would protect public lands.
Maine
In Maine’s 1st congressional district, Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree easily won re-election with 59% of the vote. In the 2nd congressional district, Jared Golden, also a Democrat, won a very close race. For the first time in Maine, “rank choice voting” determined the outcome of this election, giving the edge to Golden.
So far, Maine is the only state in the U.S. to use rank choice voting. If one candidate receives an outright majority of the votes, he or she wins. Ranked choice voting lets voters rank their choices based on individual preference. First choices are counted, and if no candidate has a majority of the vote, an “instant runoff” occurs in which the candidate with the least support is eliminated. Voters that picked the eliminated candidate as their first choice have their vote counted for their next choice. In a three-person race, the winner is the candidate with the majority of support in the final round of tabulation. In a race with more than three candidates, the process is repeated until one candidate has a majority.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an Independent, won re-election with 54% of the vote.
Former Attorney General Janet Mills defeated Republican Shawn Moody to become Maine’s first woman governor with 51% of the vote. In addition, Democrats swept both branches of the Maine state Legislature. A record 60 women will now serve in the 151-member House of Representatives.
Lawmakers re-elected Rep. Sara Gideon to a second term as speaker of the House. Rep. Matt Moonen was elected House Majority Leader and Rep. Kathleen Dillingham was elected House Minority Leader. In the Senate, where Democrats now outnumber Republicans 21 to 14, Troy Jackson was elected Senate president with Sen. Nate Libby chosen to be majority leader. Sen. Dana Dow was elected to be Senate minority leader.
With a new Democratic governor in place, Jackson and Gideon are optimistic about bipartisan support for rural broadband network initiatives, finding ways to allow local communities to pursue a local option sales tax and increasing ways to work together on the opioid crisis. Jackson is interested in addressing student debt reform by establishing incentives for out-of-state students to attend one of Maine’s public higher education institutions. Students would receive student debt relief by staying in Maine and becoming part of Maine’s workforce.
Jackson would also like to see a Medicaid buy-in option to provide low-income Mainers with access to affordable health care. He also wants to build a prescription drug importation plan to give Mainers and local pharmacies the ability to purchase
Among ballot questions, Maine voters defeated a question to adopt payroll and non-wage income taxes for home care program initiative.
Voters passed a wastewater infrastructure bond issue for $30 million general obligation bonds, a transportation bond issue for $106 million in general obligation bonds, a University of Maine System bond issue for $49 million in general obligation bonds for construction and remodeling of existing and new facilities within the University of Maine System, and a Maine Community College System bond issue for $15 million renovation and expansion of instructional laboratories, information technology infrastructure, and heating and ventilating systems at Maine’s seven community colleges.
Massachusetts
While all members of the Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House easily won re-election, the big news was the election of the first African-American from Massachusetts to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the September primary election, Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat and former member of the Boston City Council, defeated long-time Democratic Congressman Michael Capuano of Somerville. Next year will be the first time that Massachusetts will send three women to the U.S. House of Representatives.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, cruised to a big win with 60% of the vote, defeating Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl. Warren also declared herself a candidate for the 2020 presidential election, along with another New Englander, Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Voters gave Gov. Charlie Baker the nod for a second term by a margin of 67% in defeating his Democratic challenger, Jay Gonzalez, former secretary of administration and finance to former Gov. Deval Patrick.
The Massachusetts Legislature continues to have a supermajority with Democrats in control. Women made some gains in the midterm elections and hold 29% or 57 of the 200 seats in the House and Senate. Prior to the November election, members of the Massachusetts state Senate elected Democratic Sen. Karen Spilka to be Senate president. Robert DeLeo was re-elected House speaker.
Massachusetts voters defeated a question to change patient-to-nurse limits. Voters approved a question establishing a 15-member citizens’ commission to advocate for certain amendments to the U.S. Constitution regarding political spending and corporate personhood and approved a question prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity in public places.
New Hampshire
In New Hampshire’s 2nd congressional district, Rep. Annie Kuster easily won re-election for a fourth term with 55% of the vote. In the 1st congressional district, voters elected their first LGBTQ representative, Democrat Christopher Pappas, who beat Republican Eddie Edwards 54% to 45%. Pappas replaces Carol Shea Porter who decided not to seek re-election. He formerly served three terms as an executive councilor.
Despite the strong showing of Democrats in down-ballot races, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu was easily re-elected for a second term, besting state Sen. Molly Kelly, 52% to 45%.
In addition to the Blue wave that upended the majority in both the House and Senate, the race that generated the most interest was the election of secretary of state. Bill Gardner eventually won his 22nd term in office by just four votes. Both Gardner and his opponent, Colin Van Ostern, are Democrats. Van Ostern, a former gubernatorial candidate, ran a campaign based on modernizing the Secretary of State’s Office. The nation’s longest secretary of state, Gardner will begin his 42nd year overseeing New Hampshire elections.
Democrats swept out Republicans in the House and Senate. Democrats hold a 233 to 167 majority. Rep. Steve Shurtleff was elected to be the new speaker. Rep. Douglas Ley is the new house majority leader and Rep. Dick Hinch is the new house minority leader. In the Senate where Democrats now have a 14-10 majority, Sen. Donna Soucy was chosen to be the new Senate president. Sen. Dan Feltes was elected Senate majority leader and former Senate President Chuck Morse was chosen as the new Senate minority leader.
Shurtleff’s top priority as speaker is the opioid crisis. His other priorities include aid for school construction, preventing downshifting to local property taxpayers and strengthening the state’s mental health system. He also says he wants to work with the governor on passing a paid family medical leave bill.
Senate President Soucy’s priorities are part of her “Opportunity Agenda” which includes property tax relief, mental health, behavioral health, the opioid crisis and making sure people have the skills they need. She also mentioned a state version of pre-existing conditions, a new bill for paid family leave and a Senate redistricting bill.
New Hampshire voters approved a question, authorizing residents to sue their state, county or local governments, including their school boards, and another authorizing individuals to live free from governmental intrusion regarding private or personal information.
Rhode Island.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse won a third term, beating back a challenge from Republican Robert Flanders. Both Democratic congressmen, David Cicilline and James Langevin, won their re-election bids. Cicilline holds among the highest positions on the Democrats leadership team.
Gov. Gina Raimondo easily won re-election with a decisive 53% of the vote. She beat her opponent Cranston Mayor Alan Fung for the second time with a well-organized get-out-the- vote effort. She is also the new chair of the Democratic Governors Association for 2019. Her leadership was key in establishing tuition-free access at Rhode Island Community College.
In the Rhode Island General Assembly, Democrats picked up four more seats in the House while the Senate essentially stayed the same. Speaker Nicholas Mattiello was re-elected speaker and Sen. Dominick Ruggerio was re-elected as Senate president. Peter Neronha, a former U.S. attorney in Rhode Island, is the new attorney general.
Rhode Island voters approved a school buildings bond measure.
Vermont
The state’s sole member of Congress, U.S. Democratic Rep. Peter Welch, also coasted to victory. Independent U.S. Sen. Sanders easily won re-election for another six-year year term.
In the race for governor, Phil Scott earned a second term, beating Democratic challenger Christine Halquist, who became the first transgender woman to win the primary.
Despite Scott’s win, Republicans in the Vermont General Assembly took a big hit. They lost 10 seats in the House and, as a result, lost their ability to uphold the governor’s veto. Republicans now have 43 seats in the House, while Democrats and Progressives hold 102 seats. In the Senate where Democrats and Progressives already held a big majority, they now hold 24 of the 30 seats.
The veto-proof majorities of Democrats and Progressives in both branches bode well for their legislative agenda, which includes paid family medical leave, a $15 minimum wage and funding for clean-water projects. Up for debate will be forced mergers in Vermont’s school districts and a pro-choice amendment to the state constitution and establishing a state cannabis market.
Mike Ferner: New masterpiece of a documentary film shows what war is really like
Via OtherWords.org
Newspapers on the other side of the world are calling it “the biggest U.S. cinema event of all time.”
Critical acclaim has poured in from all corners for the BBC production They Shall Not Grow Old, a technical and emotional masterpiece on the First World War — the war Woodrow Wilson said would “make the world safe for democracy.”
The way the film brings old footage, and therefore the soldiers, to life is almost magical and powerfully moving. But because of how director Peter Jackson defined his film, a critical element is virtually invisible: the wounded.
Jackson distilled the stories of 120 veterans who spoke on some 600 hours of BBC audio tape done in the 1960s and ‘70s. His goal was to have “120 men telling a single story…what it was like being a British soldier on the Western Front.” He artfully presents it, using no narration other than the archive of BBC interviews.
But since dead men tell no tales, nor do the severely wounded often live into their 70s and 80s, the film narrows its focus to the camaraderie and adventures of young men growing up with shared experiences of tinned rations, trench life, and rats. The dead flit across the screen in graphic but limited numbers of colorized photos of corpses.
The wounded receive mute witness with brief footage of gas attacks, and a classic photo of seven British troops carrying one wounded comrade through the knee-deep mud of Passchendaele.
Jackson’s team brilliantly turned herky-jerky, silent, monochrome youths into breathing, talking, living color, with compelling stories. But because of his cinematic goal, this assured award-winner misses the depth of feeling and realism it could have projected by giving similar treatment to the agony of the wounded.
Among the neglected images that failed to benefit from Jackson’s alchemy is footage of shell-shock victims filmed at Britain’s Netley Hospital in 1917. The footage would have retained its halting, jerking properties not from erratic frame speeds, but because the young men were tormented with nerve damage.
Nor did Jackson include footage of amputee veterans exiting Queen Mary’s Workshop, dozen upon dozen upon dozen, hobbling in rapid succession.
He might’ve added one or two photos from New Zealand doctor Major Harold Gillies’ groundbreaking book Plastic Surgery of the Face, showing how red-hot shrapnel can carve bone and muscle into monstrous forms.
My own experiences revealed the side of war that Jackson left out.
Ever since nursing GIs returning from Vietnam, I’ve firmly believed that no member of Congress should be allowed to vote on war funding until working for a month in the back ward of a VA hospital.
Let them vote only after emptying urine bags, turning sallow bodies, and daubing the bed sores of formerly healthy youths who will never move on their own again. Or after offloading wounded young people from a passenger jetliner with the seats removed and four vertical rows of stretcher hooks extending all the way down both sides of the aisle.
They Shall Not Grow Old allows the reminiscences of 70-year-old veterans to breathe life into the determined, youthful images Jackson shows us on screen. In so doing, we gain a much greater appreciation of “being a British soldier on the Western Front.”
But it could also have given movie-goers a glimpse into the part of war so rarely seen. It might then have been named, They Shall Suffer Horribly and Die Before Their Time. Hardly a formula for box office success… which is perhaps why war movies never go there, and why the next generation always signs up when their leaders beat the drum.
Mike Ferner, a former president of Veterans for Peace, served as a corpsman on the neurosurgery and psychiatric wards of the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, in Chicago, during the Vietnam war. He lives in Toledo.
Chris Powell: Hiding criminal records doesn't help ex-cons
Most people who go to prison in Connecticut, even for a short time, will have a hard time rebuilding their lives. At best they will be considered damaged goods, necessarily inferior to job and housing applicants who have not been in prison. At worst they will be considered criminals still, since within a few years most former convicts are sent back to prison for one reason or another.
An ex-convict who can't obtain housing and a job soon upon his release is almost compelled to return to crime. So the solutions being advocated by leading liberals in the General Assembly are to conceal criminal records, at least for nonviolent offenses, and to forbid landlords from refusing to rent to former offenders solely on the basis of their criminal history.
But the problem with convicts returning to society goes far beyond the accessibility of criminal records. For most former offenders lack education and job skills and had terrible upbringings, and many suffer learning disabilities. This is why many turned to crime and especially drugs in the first place, and just as much as their criminal history, if not more so, their lack of job skills is why they are considered undesirable employees and tenants.
By contrast, anyone returning from prison after a drug conviction who nevertheless has some education and job skills -- say, an engineer, meat cutter, plumber, or computer programmer -- won't have nearly as much trouble finding a job and a home. Employers and landlords will be far more receptive with someone who has the skills to support himself by honest work.
Keeping employers and landlords ignorant of criminal records won't confer education and job skills on ex-cons. If they come out of prison no more employable than when they went in, enforcement of ignorance about their criminal records will do them little good. Even if they find an apartment, without a job paying enough to sustain it they may be back to crime and prison soon enough anyway.
So rather than demonstrate contempt for the public by enforcing ignorance of criminal records, state government should pursue several other policies with former offenders.
First, the state should repeal drug criminalization, which ensnares most young offenders and has proven futile anyway. Second, the length of criminal sentences should be tied to an offender's gaining education and job skills. And third, state government itself should provide basic jobs and rudimentary housing to former offenders as long as they can't get them on their own.
Of course the latter policy would cost some money, but then current practice -- to release prisoners without job skills and housing and watch haplessly as most go back to prison in a few years -- already is more expensive.
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A REFERENDUM ON TOLLS?: Republicans suddenly have received a great opportunity to give meaning to the five special elections being held Tuesday to fill five vacant seats in the General Assembly, three in the Senate and two in the House. All the districts are so heavily Democratic that their occupants felt comfortable abandoning them soon after their re-election so they might accept appointment to executive positions by Governor Lamont.
That is, can the Republican candidates turn the elections into referendums on the governor's reversing his campaign position and endorsing general tolling on state highways?
Are even voters in Democratic districts upset enough by how fast the governor repudiated what he told them during the campaign?
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Abortion measure assumes that women are stupid
Judging from the dishonorable and irresponsible men by whom they become pregnant, many women in Connecticut are not very smart. But are they really so stupid that they need more than a minute to distinguish an abortion clinic from a "crisis pregnancy center" that opposes abortion?
That is the presumption of legislation causing controversy in the General Assembly, as it has done in other states, to punish anti-abortion shops for deceptive advertising. Abortion advocates accuse the anti-abortion shops of posing as abortion clinics to lure pregnant women and dissuade them from having abortions. The anti-abortion shops and their supporters deny deceiving anyone, but the anti-abortion shops and the abortion clinics are in brutal competition with each other.
Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act already authorizes the state Department of Consumer Protection to sue businesses that have caused loss to customers through deception, so the proposed legislation might be redundant if what the anti-abortion shops do is construed as trade and commerce. But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a California law compelling anti-abortion shops to make certain statements to clients is probably an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
In any case the proposed legislation in Connecticut is largely a mechanism by which the pro-abortion side aims to intimidate the anti-abortion side and to frighten legislators into striking pro-abortion poses. The claim that a woman's visit to an anti-abortion shop may critically delay her access to medical treatment is hardly persuasive when, if she is seeking an abortion, all she has to do is ask if the shop will provide or facilitate one.
The proposed legislation is part of the political left's larger campaign against freedom of speech generally. But the more the left practices intimidation here, the less it may persuade the country that there is nothing questionable about abortion, not even abortion of late-term, viable fetuses and infanticide. Indeed, the Democratic Party, the party of the left, is already giving the impression that it considers abortion the highest social good.
This is crazy fanaticism.
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Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's open letter to the state, published last week, was a welcome preface to his budget proposal, due this week. But it invited questions.
The governor called attention to the problem of "fixed costs" -- pension, salary, and other commitments set by law and contract that already consume more than half the state budget. Saving the state will require unfixing them, returning them to the democratic process. Will the governor have the courage to propose that?
The governor also suggested repeal of some sales-tax exemptions. Altogether sales-tax exemptions cost state government an estimated $3 billion every year. But while fairness might argue for repeal of some exemptions, any expansion of the sales tax would remove more money from the private economy unless the overall tax rate is reduced. So fairness alone here will not be cause for celebration.
In remarks to business leaders, the governor said that he would propose sharply curtailing state government's bonding, restricting it to necessities. Indeed, for many years the bonding package has been the political pork barrel, with both parties feasting on inessentials to buy votes.
Only the details of the governor's budget will establish where he aims to take Connecticut. But in his campaign he promised change, and change can mean only restraint.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Todd McLeish: He caught the bug bug
David Gregg at work.
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
KINGSTON, R.I.
The artifacts scattered around David Gregg’s office provide a good idea of what he does for a living. Among the items are a crayfish preserved in a jar of alcohol, two coyote skulls, numerous large dead moths awaiting identification in a plastic container, framed invasive insects, a deer head hanging on a wall, illustrations of butterflies, and a foot-long, 8-inch diameter tree stump he quizzes visitors to identify. (Spoiler alert: the stump is bittersweet, an invasive vine that apparently grows much larger than most people think it does.)
Gregg is the executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, and what he calls his “cabinet of curiosities” represents many of the issues, programs and challenges he regularly addresses as one of the Ocean State’s leading voices for the study and conservation of Rhode Island’s wildlife and other natural resources.
He describes the Natural History Survey as somewhat of a social organization where “people who have been bitten by the bug of natural history” can connect with like-minded individuals.
“There are many ways to discover things about the world around you, but for people who are oriented toward identifying animals and plants and learning about them, the survey is an excuse to get together,” he said. “And that makes it valuable, because otherwise we would never get together and talk about what we know.”
The organization was founded following a 1994 ecological research conference at the University of Rhode Island, when many of those in attendance recognized how productive a gathering it had been and wanted to keep the exchange of information going. Based at URI’s East Farm, the survey is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a fall conference on “Climate Change and Rhode Island’s Natural History Future” and monthly citizen science events.
Gregg caught the natural history bug — literally – as a young teenager in Falmouth, Mass., when he tried to capture a butterfly that had landed on his shoe. He had already been somewhat interested in nature, but that moment led him to start a butterfly collection using a net he made out of cheesecloth.
David Gregg has been interested in studying and protecting the natural world since he was a kid. (Courtesy photo)
After collecting as many butterfly species as he could find around town, he switched to moths.
“I got all the colorful moths in my collection, and all the rest were brown and I couldn’t make heads or tails of them,” he recalled. “So then I switched to beetles, then to grasshoppers.”
The lure of insects was their endless variety and interesting physiological adaptations, Gregg said.
But he also had a curiosity about archaeology, and when he was considering a career, archaeology eventually won out. He said archaeology “is about discovering a mystery and finding out what it means. I also liked the outdoors-ness of it, the expedition aspect, the cadre of people thrown together in remote locations and having to stay focused on what they do. It’s the same thing in natural history.”
Gregg ended up earning graduate degrees in archaeology at Oxford University and Brown University, then worked at Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology before becoming director of the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History.
By then he had rekindled his interest in entomology and joined the survey’s board. He accepted the leadership post at the survey in 2004.
He described the job as a balancing act between gathering information about rare and invasive species to support conservationists’ need for scientific information — a mission “that doesn’t pay very well,” he noted — and administering complex ecological monitoring projects involving multiple partners and numerous funding agencies.
“The state can build a highway or an airport, but it can’t do a project with six funders and lots of partners,” Gregg said. “We can do that.”
For instance, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management used federal money to hire the survey to implement a project to assess the health of salt marshes and freshwater wetlands around the state. The survey is also leading a coyote-ecology research project with numerous partners and funding from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
“These are the kind of projects that wouldn’t get done unless we did them,” Gregg said. “These are the projects that are every other organization’s fourth priority.”
Along the way, Gregg still finds time for insects. He has shifted his attention during the past two years to ants, as a leader of a statewide effort to document all of the species of ants found in Rhode Island.
“I’ve been working on moths since I was 14, and I think I have a better understanding of ants after two years than I do of moths after 40,” he said.
In the coming year or two, Gregg’s focus at the survey will be on the establishment of a new database of everything known about the biodiversity of Rhode Island, preparing an updated publication of the state’s vascular plants, and ensuring the group’s finances are stable.
But his favorite activity is the survey’s annual BioBlitz, which brings together as many as 200 biologists, naturalists, and volunteers for a 24-hour period to document every living organism at a particular property. This year’s event is a return to Roger Williams Park, where the first BioBlitz was held 20 years ago.
“BioBlitz is an expedition to discover things in a particular place, and you bring together people with all of the different skills and talents you need to look at all of the different aspects,” Gregg said. “But they’re not just random people. They’re really nice people having a great time because this is what they love. BioBlitz is social — it’s not just science — and that’s the key. You get to meet people that can show you the cool things you don’t notice the rest of the year.”
Todd McLeish is an ecoRI News contributor.
Paranoia Parkway
The eastern terminus of the Massachusetts Turnpike.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
I’d guess that many readers have seen the video of some of the infamous road-rage incident on Jan. 25, apparently originating in some sort of minor sideswipe, on the Massachusetts Turnpike near Boston.FfrojFro
The video footage showed 65-year-old Richard Kamrowski hanging on for dear life on the hood of 37-year-old Mark Fitzgerald’s car as it careened down the turnpike. Then we see Army veteran Frankie Hernandez leaping out of his car and pointing his gun at Fitzgerald.
Now both Messrs. Fitzgerald and Kamrowski face criminal charges in the incident, which provided too much excitement for other drivers and could have easily resulted in one or more deaths.
Highways can be very scary places because you never know the mental and emotional state of your fellow drivers, who are, like you, operating large, fast and potentially lethal machines. And the drivers in and around Boston are particularly aggressive, impatient (and outpatient) and rude. Stay away from people who are driving fast and/or erratically or better yet, if you can, take public transportation. And pull over and call 911 if you see dangerously bad driving.
To watch the video, please hit this link.
Scholar proposes new statutes to protect biodiversity
This aerial photo shows deforestation and road-building in the Amazon Rainforest, which threatens the biodiversity of the ecologically rich region, sometimes called “The World Lungs’’.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
John Charles Kunich, a professor at the Roger Williams University School of Law, in Bristol, R.I., has written a very useful, if highly technical, book called Ark of the Broken Covenant: Protecting the World’s Biodiversity Hotspots. Professor Kunich proposes a new statutory program to help stem the wave of extinctions, deforestation and other human-caused ecological devastation.
David Warsh: The past and future of nationalism
A postcard from 1916 showing national personifications of some of the Allies of World War I, each holding a national flag.
SOMERVILLE, MASS.
“The Trump era could last another thirty years.” That was the headline last week on a widely discussed column by Gideon Rachman, principal foreign-affairs commentator of the Financial Times. In the three years since Brexit and Trump, Rachman observed, a global populist movement has gathered momentum: Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, Victor Orban, in Hungary, Matteo Salvini, in Italy, not to mention Xi Jinping, in China, Vladimir Putin, in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Turkey. The bad news, he wrote, is that such movements tend to last around 30 years.
Rachman was right about the cycle, I thought, wrong about the nature of the underlying movement – nationalism, not populism, is the dominant theme. Especially in the United States, the clock on the “populist era” is running down. If the path to re-election grows steeper, the likelihood grows that Trump will simply walk away.
Supporters hope that a buoyant economy will keep Trump in office. I doubt that it will, whatever the averages say. More firmly based authoritarian (not populist) governments elsewhere will last longer, depending on local circumstances, but time is not on their side. The nationalist turn, on the other hand, is here to stay, at least for the next 25 years.
Rachman identifies three distinct eras in postwar Western politics. The period of rebuilding economies and extending welfare states that followed World War II, 1945-1975 – “les trente glorieuses,” as they were called in France; a period of rapid globalization followed, 1978-2008, “neo-liberalism,” to its critics; before giving way to whatever is going on now. He dates this new era from the global banking crisis of 2008. I would have said it began with Vladimir Putin’s election in 2000.
A fourth such 30-year sequence of events remains present in living memory, at least for a little while longer: 1915-1945, the decades of the Great War, the League of Nations, the Great Depression, and the cataclysm of World War II. The period is often simply labeled “the interwar years,” Historian Adam Tooze’s title “the Deluge” evokes the years 1916-1931 pretty well; historian Tony Judt’s description of the rise of a state religion of “Planning” in the years after gets at the response.
Then the Cold War, a contest between the market democracies and the centrally planned communist states dominated the years 1945-1975, before giving way to a Market Turn (a better term, perhaps, than “neo-liberalism”) in the 30 years after that. Beginning in the Oughts, the present nationalist era emerged. Rachman thinks that “emulation followed by overshoot” drives the cycle. I think the zig-zag pattern is generated by shared experience.
Thus the Market Turn began out of a desire to throw off top-down central planning by administrative states. It showed up first in the Iberian world: Chile, Spain, Portugal, and Mexico. After Mao Zedong died, in 1976, China jailed his heirs and set out to emulate Japan. The USSR lost control of its European satellites and collapsed. India, Indonesia, Argentina, and Brazil followed suit. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan often get the credit for initiating the Market Turn, but the parade was well underway by the time they arrived.
After Rachman got me thinking, I read, on the advice of a friend, The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt against Globalization, by John Judis. It is a short book, 157 pages, five chapters packed with learning. It took less than half a day to get through.
Judis is a public intellectual, a journalist determined to stay on top of the story. He was a child in the 1950s, in Elgin, Ill., when his father lost his dress-manufacturing business to Asian competition – an early casualty of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. His first book, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, appeared in 1988. It was followed by a string of imaginative reports: Grand illusion: Critics and Champions of the American Century (1992); The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of the Public Trust (2000); The Emerging Democratic Majority [with Rudy Teixeira] (2002); The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (2004); Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict (2014); The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (2016).
I thought that Judis presented his argument backwards. The penultimate chapter, about American expansionism after 1989, should have been first, followed by the one on the European experiment with federation, and then a chapter on the U.S. experience with periodic waves of immigration and free trade. His introductory chapters, “Understanding Nationalism,” and “Why Nationalism Matters,” are especially good. I came away with a better understanding of the extent to which the centralizing tendencies of the last thirty years had sought to override centuries of pluralism.
The argument of the book, Judis writes, is that
national identity is not just a product of where a person is born, or emigrated to, but of deeply held sentiments that are usually acquired during childhood. Nationalism is not simply a political ideology, or a set of ideas, but a social psychology. Nationalist sentiment is an essential ingredient of a democracy, which is based on the assumption of a common identity, and of a welfare state, which is based on the acceptance by citizens of their financial responsibility for people whom they may not know at all, and who may have widely different backgrounds from theirs.
The nationalist revival, I think, thus must have had its roots in the need to govern. China retained its system of political control and prospered. Russia abandoned its own system and lost heart for a time, before re-establishing a new sort of order under Putin. The message was not lost on the leaders of other nations threatened by the burst of globalization that followed the end of the Cold War.
The European Union was already having difficulty absorbing eight former members of the Warsaw Pact when the sovereign debt crisis threatened its monetary union. Then a massive wave of immigration, from the Middle East and North Africa, threatened its political stability.
Meanwhile, the United States, which had been experiencing a widening gyre since 1992, when H. Ross Perot garnered 19 percent of the popular vote in the presidential election, put Donald Trump in the White House, albeit by the narrowest of margins. Trump may not be re-elected, but his concerns – trade, immigration, less interventionism, except, perhaps, in the Western Hemisphere – are here to stay.
The task now, Judis writes, “is to identify and reclaim what is valid in nationalism – and of the liberal internationalism of the post-World War II generation – from both the cosmopolitan liberals who believe in a borderless world and from the right wing populists who have coupled a concern for their nation’s workers with nativist screeds against outgroups and immigrants.”
It sounds like an altogether fitting agenda for the next quarter century. Walter Russell Mead put it this week last week in the WSJ, “Whatever comes after Mr., Trump, it won’t be a simple return to the Republican or Democratic version of the post-Cold War consensus.”
David Warsh, an economic historian and a veteran economic and political columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this piece first ran.
Vortex of thought
This show, will be Maud Morgan Arts Chandler Gallery, in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 19-March 15. The gallery describes it:
’’Thoughts and dreams don't simply appear in our heads, though they often feel sudden and random. Instead, they travel from one part of our brains to another, creating a path of neurons and reactions that ends in our consciousness.’’
"‘The title refers to both my central interest in the mind, particularly memory, and to my materials,"‘ she explained.
This show, will be Maud Morgan Arts Chandler Gallery, in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 19-March 15. The gallery describes it:
’’Thoughts and dreams don't simply appear in our heads, though they often feel sudden and random. Instead, they travel from one part of our brains to another, creating a path of neurons and reactions that ends in our consciousness.’’
"‘The title refers to both my central interest in the mind, particularly memory, and to my materials,"‘ she explained.
Josh Hoxie: How the age of billionaires ends
Avarice (2012), by Jesus Solana
From OtherWords.org
Every month or so there’s a stunning new headline statistic about just how stark our economic divide has become.
Understanding that this divide exists is a good start. Appreciating that a deeply unfair and unequal economy is problematic is even better. Actually doing something about it — that’s the best.
As 2020 presidential hopefuls start trying to prove their progressive bona fides, serious policies to take on economic inequality are at the forefront. These ideas don’t stand much of a shot of becoming law in the Trump era, of course. But if the balance of power shifts, so too does the potential for these paradigm-shifting new programs.
Let’s take a closer look at the problems they’ll have to address.
A new billionaire is minted every two days, according to a recent Oxfam study. As a result, the top 0.1 percent owns a greater share of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
The richest dynastic families in the United States have seen their wealth expand at a dizzying pace. The three wealthiest families — the Waltons, the Kochs and the Mars — increased their wealth by nearly 6,000 percent since 1983.
In other words, the rich in the United States have accumulated a metric crap ton of money. And what are they doing with this immense wealth and power?
Dan Gilbert (#71 on the Forbes 400) just bought the world’s first mega-yacht, with an IMAX theater on it, for $100 million. Hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin (#45) just broke the record for the highest price ever paid for a house — $238 million — for an apartment in Manhattan’s “Billionaires’ Row.”
Add in a few private jets, a couple of absurd presidential runs, and those Trump tax cuts, and you get a pretty accurate depiction of the priorities of billionaire spending.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country isn’t shopping for yachts and jets. Most families are forced to work longer hours for lower wages.
Despite massive increases in GDP and productivity, the median family saw their wealth go down over the past three decades, not up. The proportion of families with zero or negative wealth (meaning they owe more than they own) jumped from 1 in 6 to 1 in 5.
Relatedly, our roads and bridges our crumbling and our public schools are desperately underfunded.
It doesn’t take an economist to tell you this isn’t sustainable. So what about those policies to do something about it?
Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a robust addition to the federal estate tax. Billionaires under his plan would pay a top rate of 77 percent on whatever they bequeath to their heirs over $1 billion. Far from a new idea, Sanders is merely proposing reinstating the top rate that was in place from 1941 to 1976.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, not to be outdone, has proposed a direct tax on concentrated wealth targeting modern day wealth hoarders. Her plan would impose a progressive annual tax starting at 2 percent on assets over $50 million and rising to 3 percent on assets over $1 billion.
And at least one member of Congress who isn’t running for president, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has gotten in on the action. She’s proposed raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent (only on income over $10 million, contrary to what you might hear on Fox News).
Three bold ideas to stem our skyrocketing economic inequality, three ways to tax the ultra-rich, three policies unlikely to become law given the current administration.
Yet these ideas are more than mere platitudes. Poll after poll shows big majorities of Americans ready to see the rich pay their fair share — and worried about the economic and political power consolidating in the upper echelons.
When the political moment arrives, we won’t have to wonder what’s coming.
Josh Hoxie directs the Project on Taxation and Opportunity at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Battered along the road
“It’s a motley lot. A few still stand
at attention like sentries at the ends
of their driveways, but more lean
askance as if they’d just received a blow
to the head, and in fact they’ve received
many, all winter, from jets of wet snow
shooting off the curved, tapered blade
of the plow….’’
— From “Mailboxes in Late Winter,’’ by Jeffrey Harrison, a Dover, Mass., poet and teacher.
David Warsh: 3 big things to know about Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg.
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
If it weren’t for the intricate machinery of party governance, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 76, might be the odds-on favorite to be the Democratic nominee in 2020 and president in 2021. He is sensible and seasoned.
His major drawback is that he is a billionaire, like the incumbent, though far richer than Donald Trump. My favorite odds-maker puts Bloomberg’s chances at about 4 percent. Starbucks entrepreneur Howard Schultz, another billionaire, is going fold his bid sooner or later, just as asset-manager Tom Steyer did his last month, but Bloomberg isn’t going away. He hasn’t declared yet, so it’s much too soon to speculate about possible pathways to the nomination. Therefore, invest a few minutes in a little background.
Bloomberg’s biography is the first thing. Lengthy profiles will be written. I’ve read a few in the past, including Joyce Purnick’s 2009 biography, and I look forward to reading more. But meanwhile, I took advantage of the January thaw to visit his boyhood home in Medford, Mass. It is not far over the Mystic River and through the woods from my office in Somerville.
The Bloomberg family moved to a modest two-story colonial house at 6 Ronaele Rd., in 1945, when he was 3. His father, an accountant for a dairy company, born in Chelsea, Mass., bought the deed from his lawyer in order to circumvent a tacit ban on sales to Jews in the newly developed subdivision.
William Bloomberg died in 1963, at 57. Charlotte Bloomberg lived there until she died in 2011, at 102. Her son visited her frequently, and paid for a redesign of her synagogue, but Bloomberg himself left Medford in 1960 for Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Business School and Manhattan. His loose ties with the little city in which he grew up were nicely explored in 2012 by New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum.
A second thing worth knowing about Bloomberg has to do with some changes last year in his business. You may remember how be got into the news business, by reverse engineering it. With the $10 million severance payment he received after Phibro Corp. acquired Salomon Brothers in 1981, Bloomberg – who had previously been banished to the firm’s back office – founded a bond-data business of his own. The real-time databank he assembled, equipped with a steadily growing battery of analytic tools, was vastly superior to the tables that newspapers offered in their financial pages. Bloomberg was able to sell subscriptions to his desk-top terminals for prices eventually reaching $20,000 a year.
In 1990, he hired Matthew Winkler, a Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, to build a staff for the brand-new Bloomberg News. The newsroom grew at an astonishing pace, until it had become one of the world’s largest news organizations, with 2,700 editors, reporters and commentators, arrayed in 150 bureaus around the world. The company put much of its news reports on the Web for free, but access to the whole remained the privilege of the high-paying few.
In 2009, Bloomberg bought the venerable BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw Hill, reorganized its coverage, and put his name on the cover. In 2015. he hired John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist, to oversee all of Bloomberg News, and shape up a staff that had grown in ramshackle fashion. Last summer, the company took another important step towards becoming a proper news business, placing its previously free consumer news behind a metered paywall, offering full-access subscriptions at $35 a month, and slightly more content for $40 a month.
That strategy – It’s-Worth-What-You-Pay-for-It – brought Bloomberg News more nearly in line with the practices of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the WSJ and the Financial Times. It also made Bloomberg himself seem more of a newspaper publisher, complications and all, than a technocrat. (Bloomberg’s Rich List doesn’t mention the boss; Forbes pegs him at around $48.5 billion.)
What’s the third thing about Bloomberg? It is the observation with which I began. If he were 10 years younger, a good deal less wealthy, and fresh out of office, he’d likely be the front-runner in the presidential race now taking shape – ahead of four inexperienced senators, a former vice president and a thoroughly tarnished incumbent.
True, Bloomberg’s negatives are high with some traditional Democrats – stop-and-frisk policies as mayor, intimate ties to Wall Street, and a proudly prickly personality. Can the party leadership swallow their pride long enough to win an election? Bloomberg is old – 77 this month. Can the rising generation continue to work the ‘tweendecks of politics for another few years? What if Beto O’Rourke, 46, endorsed him? Would he enter the race if Joe Biden decided to run? (Perhaps not. Here, from The Atlantic last week, is Edward-Isaac Dovere’s well-informed account of Bloomberg’s planning.)
A term or even two of a Bloomberg presidency would give the nation intelligent and even-handed leadership. The major parties would have time to groom a new generation of leaders and narrow their differences somewhat. However unlikely it may be to succeed, Bloomberg’s candidacy is worth taking seriously.
David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this piece first ran.