Saturday greetings in spite of it all

Pollen grains from various plants.

There's a regime whose core is soaked in vast public and public corruption running the Executive Branch of the federal government. This Mafia-like group, the Trump-Kushner clan, engages in what may be treasonous collaboration with a murderous foreign dictatorship. Meanwhile, our civic life continues to rot, as large parts of the public make no effort to follow facts and, in their wishful thinking, have made themselves clay in the hands of demagogues and con men. The duties of citizenship are forgotten.

And, no, the mobsters sort of in charge of the government are not "conservatives.'' 

Still, the sun is supposed to shine a bit  around here  today after days or rain -- rain that has lightened the load of pollen in the air. So more of us can breathe more freely for a few hours. But wait until the plants dry out for a day or two, and the wind comes up, and the hay fever will be worse than ever.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Linda Gasparello: Portuguese culture thrives in a Rhode Island village

-- Photos by Linda Gasparello

Journal:

I live in the Riverpoint section of West Warwick, R.I., which I call “Portugal on the Pawtuxet River.” Riverpoint has a Portuguese American Citizens Club; the Jerry's supermarket stocks Portuguese food brands, such as Gonsalves, and there is a Portuguese bakery, Matos, in nearby Arctic Village – I recommend their three-bite, egg custard tarts, pasteis de nata. {There are heavily Portuguese-American neighborhoods in many southeastern New England communities.}

All around the circle at Riverpoint, but especially as you go up Providence Street to Arctic Village, you'll see modest houses, each with baroque front yard landscaping: flowering cherry trees shaped like umbrellas, espaliered shrubs and statuary – especially Virgin Mary statues, either brightly painted or stark white.

Most of the Virgin Mary statues are adorned with plantings – often with perennials, like hostas, and sometimes with plastic flowers or small American and Portuguese flags.

In the backyard of a house near the Bradford Soap Works, there is an Our Lady of Grace statue: a Virgin Mary with outstretched arms, standing on the serpent Satan. The blue paint has largely peeled off her robe, but the snake hasn't lost any of its black paint. It looks lifelike -- and like it is headed into the poison ivy that is creeping closer to the statue.

Just off Riverpoint circle, there is a house where another Our Lady of Grace statue stands among well-tended hostas in a tiny plot along the driveway. I call her “Our Lady of the Hostas.”

I have a chit-chat friendship with the Portuguese-American woman who lives there. Recently, when she saw me admiring the lush plants, she said, “I think Our Lady is smiling because the Pope has made saints of two Portuguese children.” She was referring to Pope Francis's canonization of siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto who, with their cousin Lucia Santos, reported that on March 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary made the first of six appearances to them while they grazed their sheep in Fatima, Portugal.

My favorite religious statuary in Riverpoint is on East Main Street. It occupies the entire side yard of a house, where you'd expect to see a picnic table and benches or a circle of lawn chairs.

It's is a tableau of brightly painted statues: A statue of Jesus is flanked by one of St. Anthony holding Baby Jesus and another of the Virgin Mary. Fourteen winged cherubs, hands clasped in prayer, stand at their feet. The boys are dressed in blue, and the girls in pink.

Bygones Worth Remembering

My first encounter with the Portuguese wasn't in Portugal. It was on a train from Paris to Dax in June 1968. I was 13 years old and I was headed to this spa town in southwestern France, whose thermal springs and mud baths have been noted for the cure of rheumatism since Roman times, when it was known as Aquae Tarbellicae. There I was to Monsieur and Mme. Albert Barrieu, with whose family I would spend a few life-expanding summers.

The afternoon before I was to take the train to Dax, Madame Berri, who owned the suburban Paris agency that paired me with the Barrieus, warned me to get to the Gare d'Austerlitz early. “The trains to the southwest are crowded on Saturdays,” she said, handing me my ticket. It was going to be a long trip, over six hours, and I couldn't wait to take it.

I was staying at a youth hostel at 11 rue du Fauconnier in the Marais – and 49 years later, the Hotel Fauconnier is one of three youth hostels in Paris. After a week in Paris, I was a Metro master; I knew that  it was about a 10-minute ride from the St. Paul station to the Gare d'Austerlitz. Even so, I packed my suitcase, showered and slept in my dress that Friday night. As I remember, I wanted to have more time to eat the breakfast the hostel laid out for the always-hungry youth: croissants, bread rolls, butter, apricot jam, and small bowls of coffee with hot milk.

Eating that breakfast turned out to be one of the smarter things I did that day.

I got to the station with a lot of time to spare. When my train was announced, I noticed that people where running down the platform and pushing into the cars, and shouting to each other in a language I couldn't identify. I had a second-class ticket, and all those people seemed to be headed to second-class cars.

I couldn't run fast because I was wearing wooden-soled clogs. By the time I climbed into one, all the seats in the compartments were taken – and all were taken in the other second-class cars.

As the train pulled out of the station, I placed my hard-sided, American Tourister suitcase in the aisle of one of the cars, and looked out the window. An unsympathetic conductor took my ticket and told me that I might have to stand a long time because “the train is filled with Portuguese, who are going back home for their national holiday.”

Clogs were the right shoes for standing for hours. I was alternately standing and looking out the window, or sitting on my suitcase looking at the Portuguese family across the aisle in a compartment.

About two hours into the trip, the father pulled down a couple of suitcases from the overhead racks. Out came the bread, the sausage, the cheese, the fruit and the wine.

A girl about my age asked her mother something. Then, through the open compartment door, she asked me in French if I wanted some of their lunch. I thanked her and helped myself to some bread and cheese. It was the first time that I had eaten a papa seco – a soft, baby bottom-shaped roll. Poof went my memory of the hostel's petits pains.

The train arrived in Dax in the late afternoon. I got off and waited for M. and Mme. Barrieu on the platform, as Mme. Berri had told me to do. A blonde woman accompanied by a teenaged girl looked at me for a while. They spoke with each other, shook their heads and walked away. No one was left on the platform but me, so I took a seat – and I was happy to do so.

After a couple of hours, the station manager approached me. “Are you still waiting for someone?” he asked.

I told him that I was supposed to be picked up by M. and Mme. Albert Barrieu who live in Pouillon. “It is a village not far from here. Do you have a telephone number?”

Just as I was reaching into my dress pocket to get it, I saw the blonde woman with the teenager walking toward us.

“Are you Linda?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

Mme. Barrieu's blue eyes filled with tears of relief. “We are so sorry. We saw you, but we thought you were Dutch,” she said.

They were confused by the tag on my American Tourister suitcase, which looked like the flag of the Netherlands, and by my clogs.

Linda Gasparello (lgasparello@kingpublishing.com) is co-host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. 

Kevin Basl: Better ways of honoring our veterans

Soldiers' Monument, at Togus National Cemetery, Togus, Maine, as it appeared around 1906.

Via OtherWords.org

In Dryden, New York, a proposed solar farm recently caused a stir.

Thousands of solar panels — enough to power 7,500 homes — are scheduled to be installed near a rural cemetery in the town. Some opponents complain that it’s disrespectful to the veterans buried there.

Energy and environmental considerations aside, what does it mean to respect our deceased service members and veterans?

We visit their graves, to ensure their small flags stand upright. We grieve during “Taps.” These activities are healthy. But true respect — the kind someone who gave their life in service deserves — begins with learning from our country’s mistakes, not ensuring a scenic resting place.

It’s easy to forget that memorials — gravestones, ceremonies, monuments — aren’t deceased persons themselves. Rather, they’re sacred markers for the living. They provide a space for public mourning, and they teach history.

Memorials can be spontaneous and unique, or they can become so commonplace that we no longer experience them meaningfully. Unfortunately, many events honoring veterans I’ve witnessed over the past decade — I’m an Iraq War veteran myself — have fallen under the latter category.

On Memorial Day, we’ll honor our service members killed in battle, along with deceased veterans. We’ll be reminded of their sacrifice to our country. We’ll hear stories of courage in combat. Respectfully, we’ll bow for a moment of silence.

But what will we learn? What will we do in the following days?

Whatever we do, we should start by admitting that 16 years of war has run up enormous costs.

According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, the United States has spent $4.8 trillion on war since Sept. 11, 2001. That number doesn’t include residual costs, such as treatment for veterans and interest on money our government has borrowed to pay for war.

Perhaps most tragically, it doesn’t include the human costs, either — from resources redirected away from our communities at home, to the millions of Iraqi and Afghan civilians killed or displaced, to veterans and service members in the form of post-traumatic stress, moral injury, or worse.

Those things seldom come up at Memorial Day ceremonies. Most won’t discuss veteran suicide, either.

Since coming home from Iraq in 2008, I’ve known eight veterans who’ve committed suicide. Almost as many have made attempts. The latest Department of Veterans Affairs report on suicide says 20 veterans commit suicide daily — and even that estimate is likely too low.

Veterans who died from cancers linked to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan and Agent Orange in Vietnam — victims of military contractors whose top concern is profit — should receive special mention at ceremonies, too. Few will.

Iraqis and Afghans who died helping U.S. forces as translators and escorts — along with deceased workers from other countries who served food, cleaned latrines, and washed U.S. soldiers’ uniforms in hazardous duty areas — likely won’t be included either.

When we exercise our freedoms — our freedom of speech especially — we pay respect to veterans who took an oath to uphold the Constitution.

But we’re repaying them poorly if we don’t use those freedoms to question our nation’s military endeavors, especially when the results have been so barren. After our moment of silence this Memorial Day, we ought to ask if the wars waged in our name have been worth the costs — for veterans and everyone else.

Kevin Basl is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and an instructor for Combat Paper NJ and Warrior Writers, two veteran-focused arts organizations. 

But unsinkable?

Kayak in the calm

"Mustard Sky'' (pastel), by Ann Coleman at the gallery named for her in Wilmington, Vt.

For cleaner transmission, too

"New England is demanding newer, cleaner, and more innovative energy sources - energy sources that create jobs here in New England. We should also demand newer, cleaner, and more innovative transmission methods.''

-- U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, former New Hampshire governor.
 

'Preparing their Memorial Day'

I know there will be many, 
Expressing their thanks and gratitude...
On this, a holiday
To those they once knew, 
Who were in their lives...
Doing the best they could do, 
To show and proved to others...
How much they loved them too.

I just know...
Those preparing their Memorial Day, 
Planning family bar-be-cues...
And spicing their favorite drinks, 
With assorted purchased booze...
Relaxing in the Sun and enjoying fun.
'Someone'...
Will be expressing their blessings. 

-- Lawrence S. Pertillar’s “Memorial Day’’

Promoting New England in the Trump era

WGBH ran a nice story by David S. Bernstein, about Jim Brett, the president of the New England Council, which is mostly a lobbying organization, and his efforts to promote New England in general and its businesses in particular in the Trump era.

Among Mr. Bernstein's observations:

"{Mr. Brett,} former state representative and Boston mayoral candidate, who has led the regional business advocacy group for two decades ... {acknowledges} that Massachusetts, and the other New England states, no longer hold the kind of sway they did in the days when {U.S. House} Speaker {Tip} O’Neill, {Sen.} Ted Kennedy, {Congressman} Joe Moakley, and other giants pulled strings in the halls of the Capitol.''

"Brett points to {Massachusetts Congressman Richard} Neal as an example of regional influence, using long-developed bipartisan relationships to help craft the tax reform bill. Neal has also used his position as longest-serving New England House member to bring the region’s members together, increasing their influence as a group, Brett says. He also singles out Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Congressmen Jim Himes of Connecticut, Peter Welch of Vermont, and Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts for their effectiveness across party lines.''

"Brett effuses about Susan Collins, the moderate Republican Senator from Maine, who he says will be a key player in health care reform. Collins spoke at NEC’s reception, where the buzz was about her rumored plans to run for Governor. 'I told her, I hope you stay in the U.S. Senate, because we need you there,' Brett says.''

''For evidence of results, he points to a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the omnibus funding bill passed this month—a huge boon for New England, whose universities and hospitals take a disproportionate share of NIH grants. The Trump administration had wanted to cut the NIH budget.''

“'An awful lot of people in the (New England) delegation had their fingers in that,' Brett says.''

To read/hear the whole piece please hit this link.

Llewellyn King: The ugly thinking behind the Trump budget

On the face of it, President Trump's $4.1 trillion budget for 2018 is risible. Its math doesn’t add up; it assumes an unlikely growth rate, starting in 2021, of 3 percent a year through 2027; and it avoids calculating the tax cut, which has been promised as the largest in history.

It lays siege to research from medicine to high energy physics – future invention is none of the government's business. It takes calculated aim against environmental science. It also takes an axe to the State Department and American diplomacy, which has been vital to our national interest since the founding of the republic.

But it really warms to its perfidy when it comes to Medicaid and other programs for the poor. It says what some people have whispered for years: The poor are poor because they don’t work, and the sick have charities and emergency rooms.

It is policy based on hearsay, on the reprehensible arguments of the country club soiree and on the folk wisdom of talk radio.

At one level, the budget is an abrogation of responsibility as it says to Congress, “You make this work.” At another, it is a look into the dark hearts of some of those around the president. You have to partially exempt Trump because pulling together the budget is not his kind of thing: He wasn't slaving over the numbers, debating the importance of medical research or the global need for diplomacy. That was done by his surrogates, those who hate what they call the “deep state,” but that might also be called governance.

Broad strokes are Trump’s thing and having authorized them, eager hands have molded what passes for a budget but is in fact a guide to the narrow and deeply prejudiced thinking of the men and women who work in the White House and Mick Mulvaney, the budget director and former congressman from South Carolina.

It is not so much a budget as it is a view into the hearts and minds of the most extreme wing of the conservative persuasion, circa 2017. It is a revelation of ignorance, prejudice and indifference to the humane needs of the United States.

It is the lifting of a caprice that has contained their worst instincts for a long time. Now the hard edge, the granite heart, the cold-steel shoulder to sickness, poverty, incapacity and the resources that might abate their attendant suffering is on full view.

If you don’t see it in the budget, look to the Justice Department and to Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who is all silvery charm on the outside and whose heartlessness can only be measured degrees below zero. For the first time in a long time, Congress was moving toward meaningful reform of the justice system with an end to mandatory and hideously long sentences. The Sessions view: Better to lock them up and throw away the key – and all the better if you put them in for-profit prisons.

Criminologists hate mandatory sentences, and most congressmen know them to be perverse and to result in punishment which is both cruel and unusual. It frustrates judges. The judges and prosecutors are denied the right to use their wisdom in the sentencing, instead substituting the wisdom of Congress and the attorney general.

The same harshness permeates the Department of Homeland Security with the vicious implementation of deportations of family members who are living good, productive lives in America. No thought is being given to any solution to the illegal-immigration problem, at heart a human problem not a national security or a criminal one. There are other ways short of deportation to recognize both the illegality of the immigrants and to give them the American life they have so desired. A renewable work permit, for example, not citizenship or the heavy knock of the state on the door – dreaded down through all of history.

This is a budget which is not only dangerous but also explicitly callous. It reveals a black heart, a locked mind, and an indifference to U.S. needs in years to come. It will be amended in Congress, but its message will linger. It is an ugly message.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His e-mail is llewellynking1@gmail.com.  This was written first for Inside Sources.

Trying to figure out a new stadium's opportunity cost to the taxpayers

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

’Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.’’

-- Economist John Maynard Keynes

The latest proposal by the Pawtucket Red Sox for a new baseball stadium in that city is considerably better than previous ones. Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor who has frequently denounced taxpayer subsidies for stadiums, called the proposal “like a pretty good deal,”  reported The Boston Globe. But, he added, he wanted more details before deciding whether to endorse it.

“To have that level of private participation is certainly above the norm in Triple-A baseball,” Mr. Zimbalist told the paper.

But there are very big questions. One of the biggest, to me, is the most difficult to answer: How popular will baseball  - and Minor League Baseball at that -- be over the decades of this public-private deal? Will changing demographics make the sport less popular (and soccer more so) in our region? If so, will the PawSox owners face what many big-store retailers face: the sort of existential change in consumer patterns that could lead to few if any stores in, for instance, Providence Place within a few years.  (Luckily, Providence Place is much more architecturally attractive and interesting than most malls and could work well for such functions as college classrooms and assembly halls, libraries and medical clinics.)

The state would have to pay about $43 million, the city about $29 million and the PawSox organization about $86 million in an overall cost of $158 million in bond principal andinterest over the 30-year deal.

What’s the opportunity cost of the total $72  million that taxpayers would cover? Would such an investment be better spent on fixing up transportation infrastructure and/or schools and/or parks, etc., etc.? Or on a baseball stadium to be used from April to October?

It would be very useful at this point if the public could be provided with rigorous, plausible projections of what the market for Minor League Baseball games could be over the next few decades of taxpayer exposure. But perhaps that’s impossible.

In any case, we need a rigorous independent study on the frequency of  possible nonbaseball uses of the proposed stadium to help pay for the project, especially given  the limitations imposed by that annual cool snap called “New England winter’’.

As for self-interested projections by Pawtucket (which, like the PawSox, is salivating for this project) and the team on the sales- and income-tax revenues that might be generated by the new stadium: Most such projections turn out wildly wrong. There are just too many variables. The late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s remark about politics increasingly applies to business, too: “A week is an eternity in politics.’’

Another point that I assume that the PawSox, the city and the state have  carefully considered: The Pawtucket exits on Route 95 are heavily used by people leaving or entering Providence’s East Side. What sort of plans are being made to handle the traffic on game days? At the same time, the new stadium could be a boon for restaurants in Pawtucket, Central Falls and northern Hope Street on the East Side.

My guess is that the Rhode Island legislature will pass and Governor Raimondo will sign a bill close to the latest proposal. They had better get as much solid information on it ASAP, especially given the high possibility that there will be a national recession starting this year or next, with plunging tax revenues. This will be a big, scary bet.

Back in the recession of the early ‘90s, Gov. Bruce Sundlun bravely pushed through major and expensive improvements at T.F. Green Airport in the face of much opposition. It turned out to be a very good bet for the state’s economy. But transportation infrastructure is essential. A baseball stadium ain’t, as much as I love the PawSox.

Whatever, deciding to have the taxpayers help pay for a baseball stadium for a private company in the end may be based more on romance than on economic rationality. But then, that’s true of many public-policy decisions.

Be sure not to enjoy it!

"The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't -- it just keeps you from enjoying it.''

--- Isaac Bashevis Singer
 

Watergate weeks and glorious expense accounts

The Watergate complex in Washington, scene of the break-in that led to the downfall of President Nixon.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com:

Lots of people are trying to draw similarities between Watergate and the Trump mess. There are some, but we should bear in mind the big differences between Trump and Richard Nixon, whom I’m more than old enough to remember “professionally’’.

I had a seat in the journalistic third balcony during Watergate, copy-editing the occasional story about the developing scandal and from time to time writing short items about it when I filled in as the writer of The Wall Street Journal’s World-Wide column on page one. I did this in New York, and then filled in at the WSJ’s Washington bureau shortly after Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974 to avoid an impeachment trial.

I’ll never forgetcoming upon the block print “Nixon Resigns’’ headline in The New York Times’s Aug. 9 edition at the newsstand at my steamy Brooklyn Heights subway stop. I still associate hot weather with Watergate since so much of the biggest developments came in summer or late spring.

(Ah, those were the salad days of journalism, including expense accounts. I was told to fly first class, and on my Washington gig, stayed in a suite in the oh-so-fancy Hay Adams Hotel.)

Nixon, like Trump, was often paranoid, but Nixon wasn’t a narcissist, of which Trump is an extreme example. And Nixon, who was very well read, had an idealistic streak that resulted in some thoughtful domestic policies and international initiatives. 

Finally, he had a far more intelligent and experienced staff than Trump’s, including, of course, some who got caught up in Watergate. Many of Trump’s, on the other hand, tend to mirror his amorality and ignorance.

One of Nixon’s key assistants, especially for domestic policy, was John Ehrlichman. When Mr.  Ehrlichman was asked, years after Watergate, what he thought of Nixon, who had basically hung him out to dry, he responded coolly:

 “Every man is a mix.’’  Indeed, including Trump, I suppose.

How will the expanding Trump scandal play out? Impeachment is wrenching and much of the GOP in Congress will be very loathe to take one of their own, as much as they’d prefer the very right wing  but apparently sane and stable Mike Pence. More likely is a semi-paralyzed administration that staggers along through Republican losses in next year’s congressional elections and finishes its term with few achievements. That President Trump will continue to have control over the U.S. national-security apparatus is scary.

Before the boats go in

"Cove View'' (watercolor), by Stoney Conley, at Patricia Lloyd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.

Bold new territory for 'the pulps'

"19 Kimball'' (mixed media on wood panel) by Sam Earle, in his show "Pulp,'' at Adelson Galleries, Boston, June 2-July 30.

The gallery notes say, among other things:
 

"The word 'pulp' is commonly used to describe a reduction of fruit or wood into a puree; however, it was commonly used at the beginning of the 20th Century as a word to describe popular or sensational writing.  Between 1896 and the 1950s, 'the pulps'  or 'pulp fiction' magazines, which were printed on cheap wood pulp paper, became all the rage.  The genre ranged from fantasy to humor to horror and occult, and the garish subject matter of the literature reflected the low-quality paper on which it was printed.
 
''In keeping with the tradition of pulp fiction, Sam Earle’s newest series is edgy and fearless.  In his distinctive style – layering imagery over images over image, Earle contorts the compositions of his small (7x5 inch) panels to redefine 'pulp' in the 21st Century.  ...{H}e adheres hand-painted images face down to the surface of the wood panel.  Once the acrylic dries on the panel, he dampens the back of the prints and gently wipes away the paper – turning it into pulp, and revealing a mirror image of the original pigment.
 
''The artist’s new series is in keeping with his oeuvre, which has become known for the obsessive utilization of found symbols or images from pop culture.  The 'Pulp' series ventures into a bold new territory – emoting risqué pictures into phantasmagorical narratives.  Earle’s intimate works depict brooding and sensory, sometimes erotic subjects.  The imagery is found and repurposed – often overlaid with text, paying homage to 'the pulps' of the early 20th Century.  The condensed saturation of figures forces the viewer to read the complete composition closely and far away, top to bottom or vice versa, then re-read it.  The more time one spends reading Earle’s pulps, the more is revealed underneath each layer.''

Spring under the elms

American elm.

"Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England.''

-- Archibald MacLeish (poet, Librarian of Congress,  essayist, speechwriter, professor and chronicler of "The Lost Generation.'' He spent most of his later years in western Massachusetts.
 

Editor's note: There aren't many elms left in southern New England because of Dutch elm disease.

Chuck Collins: Best wishes to the most indebted class

Congratulations, college graduates! As you enter the next phase of life, you and your parents should be proud of your achievements.

But, I’m sorry to say, they’ve come at a price: The system is trying to squeeze you harder than any previous generation.

Many Baby Boomers, perhaps including your parents, benefited from a time when higher education was seen as a shared social responsibility. Between 1945 and 1975, tens of millions of them graduated from college with little or no debt.

But now, tens of millions of you are graduating with astounding levels of debt.

This year, seven in 10 graduating seniors borrowed for their educations. Their average debt is now over $37,000 — the highest figure for any class ever.

Already, some 43 percent of borrowers — together owing $200 billion — have either stopped making payments or are behind on their student loans. Millions are in default.

This debt casts a long shadow on the finances of graduates. During the last quarter of 2015 alone, the Education Department moved to garnish $176 million in wages.

There’s no economic benefit to this system whatsoever. Indebted students delay starting families and buying houses, experience compounding economic distress, and are less inclined to take entrepreneurial risks.

One driver of the change from your parents’ generation has been tax cuts for the wealthy, which have led to cuts in higher education budgets. Forty-seven states now spend less per student on higher education than they did before the 2008 economic recession.

In effect, we’re shifting tax obligations away from multi-millionaires and onto states and middle-income taxpayers. And that’s led colleges to rely on higher tuition costs and fees.

In 2005, for instance, Congress stopped sharing revenue from the estate tax — a levy on inherited wealth exclusively paid by multimillion-dollar estates — with the states. Most state legislatures failed to replace it at the state level, costing them billions in revenue over the last decade.

In fact, the 32 states that let their estate taxes expire are foregoing between $3 to $6 billion a year, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates. The resulting tax benefits have gone entirely to multi-millionaires and billionaires — and contributed to tuition increases.

For example, California used to raise almost $1 billion a year in revenue from its state-level estate tax. Now that figure is down to zero. And since 2008, average tuition has increased over $3,500 at four-year public colleges and universities in the state.

Florida, meanwhile, lost $700 million a year — and raised tuition nearly $2,500. Michigan lost $155 million a year and hiked average tuition $2,200.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Washington State went the opposite route.

Washington taxes big estates and dedicates the $150 million it raises each year to an education legacy trust account, which supports K-12 education and the state’s community college system. Other states should follow this model, and students and parents should take the lead in demanding it.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said at a Philadelphia town hall meeting that there’s one thing he’s 100 percent certain about.

If millions of young people stood up and said they’re “sick and tired of leaving college $30,000, $50,000, $70,000 in debt, that they want public colleges and universities tuition-free,” he predicted, “that is exactly what would happen.”

Sanders is right: Imagine a political movement made up of the 40 million households that currently hold $1.2 trillion in debt.

If we stood up and pressed for policies to eliminate millionaire tax breaks and dedicate the revenue to debt-free education, it would change the face of America.

Graduates, let’s get to work.

Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies. 

Why sea-level rise is highest here

Surface temperatures in the western North Atlantic. The North American landmass is black and dark blue (cold), while the Gulf Stream is red (warm). Source: NASA

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Why is the Northeast experiencing higher levels of sea-level rise than other parts of the wold? Area scientists attribute it to two factors: a slowdown in the Gulf Stream and the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

The slowdown of the Gulf Stream is complicated, and conclusions for the cause have varied. The consensus cause is the warming of the North Atlantic. What is still being debated is the effect of the influx of fresh water. Nevertheless, the warming water is creating a “traffic-jam scenario” in ocean circulation. The slowdown causes offshore sea levels, which are higher than coastal sea levels, to flatten and send water inland to regions such as the Northeast.

“Picture a banked turn in a racetrack,” said Bryan Oakley, assistant professor of environmental geoscience at Eastern Connecticut State University. “As the circulation slows, this causes the slope to decrease, and as the water level goes down along the Gulf Stream, the water level will rise along the coast — two ends of a seesaw, so to speak.”

Melting ice is also pushing water our way. As ice sheets in Greenland liquefy, they lose their gravitational pull and, therefore, ocean water that was drawn to the icy masses instead flows into the southern hemisphere. The same phenomenon is happening as the Antarctic losses ice, this time the water is redirected toward the Northeast.

There is yet another cause of higher regional waters. John King, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s School of Oceanography, said warming water in the North Atlantic may halt or slow the natural cool-water vacuum that draws warmer coastal water out to sea.

All of these factors have led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to project a maximum sea-level rise of 11.5 feet by 2100.

“Currently, about 6 million Americans live within about six feet of the sea level, and they are potentially vulnerable to permanent flooding in this century,” said Robert E. Kopp, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science, who co-authored the recent NOAA report. “Considering possible levels of sea-level rise and their consequences is crucial to risk management.”

Those consequences to natural habitats include increased beach and marsh erosion.

In Rhode Island, there are about 7,000 people living within the 7-foot sea level-rise inundation zone, according to a Statewide Planning report.

Llewellyn King's journal: From WBZ to WGBH; applaud this furniture; broken infrastructure is a tax

Joe Mathieu

-- CBS photo

Joe Mathieu, who for the past six years has been a drive-time news anchor, from 5 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., on WBZ NewsRadio 1030, serving Greater Boston, is moving to WGBH's Morning Edition, as the anchor. He's succeeding Bob Seay, who will concentrate, according to the NPR station, on enterprise reporting. Probably on sleeping in as well. Drive-time hours are brutal.

 I’m delighted. I met Joe when he was putting together the very successful POTUS '08 channel on SiriusXM Radio. While the channel was supposed to run just for the length of the 2008 presidential campaign, it was so popular that it was made permanent.

Originally, the channel took its title from POTUS, an abbreviation for President of the United States (first used in the late 1800s in telegraphic communications). It dropped the year in its title and defined POTUS as “Politics of the United States.”

I'm glad not only to be a regular commentator on POTUS, Channel 124, but also that it airs the audio from my PBS program, White House Chronicle, four times on weekends.

My presence there is all due to the days when Joe was the impresario of the channel. I'm indebted to him.

But despite the national reach of his Washington commitments, Joe yearned for his native Boston. He told me he began his career in broadcasting at 14 years old. He graduated from Emerson College, renowned for its arts and communications programs.

I’m glad of the new assignment, not because WBZ is anything but an excellent public service in Boston, but because the new venue will provide more room for Joe’s extraordinary talents as a broadcaster, a political analyst and, his special mastery, as an interviewer.

On the downside, Joe won’t get any more sleep: his WGBH anchor slot, beginning in August, starts at 5 a.m. As a longtime newspaperman and broadcaster, I can tell you about those hours: They’re tough.

Applause for a Table and Its Donors – the Show, too

Centerpiece of The Dining Room, by A.J. Gurney.

-- Photo by Linda Gasparello

The Arctic Playhouse, the little not-for-profit theater on the main street of Arctic Village, in West Warwick, R.I., has a table for you.

Well, it is raffling a magnificent dining-room table, matching upholstered chairs, a sideboard and a hutch. Cardi’s, the furniture chain, donated the table to the theater. It is the centerpiece of the set for the theater’s current, lively production of A.R. Gurney's The Dining Room.

The dining-room set is worth $3,500, and the raffle winner will be chosen after the play's run. One of the table's leaves will be signed by the cast and the three Cardi brothers. Instant provenance for a serious set of dining-room furniture.

Raffle tickets are just $10 for one ticket, or $25 for three. Tickets can be bought online or in person at the theater until June 3.

Amtrak Is an Exemplar of Infrastructure Woes

Amtrak, so important to New England and the operator of the only bit of  rail passenger service between Boston and Washington, D.C.,  that looks something like a train service should, is having problems at New York's Penn Station. It is not the awful, crowded concourse at the station, but the awful, crowded rails that passengers don’t see.

Commuter trains have derailed and fixes are going to have to be made with equivalent disruptions this summer. There is even a scheme to reroute the New England trains through Grand Central for the duration.

When will we get the message that infrastructure starved of funding and preventive maintenance fails? Looks like the Trump budget will make matters worse. Broken infrastructure is a tax in its own way. Very taxing.

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, a frequent contributor to New England Diary and a veteran publisher, columnist and international business consultant.

Dept. of Over-Regulation

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' on GoLocal24.com:

Rhode Island state Rep. Dennis Canario has filed a bill to punish drivers for going too slowly on roads’ left-hand “passing lanes.’’ 

But that isn't the problem. The problem is more cars speeding in right-hand lanes, failing to signal and haphazardly swerving diagonally back and forth across lanes. Sadly, you see even police cars engaging in these unsafe actions fairly frequently.

Mr. Canario’s proposal would encourage speeding, which is already epidemic these days; it often seems as if the police have mostly given up trying to enforce speed limits. This has become even more dangerous because of the texting-while-driving epidemic, which is fast raising the highway fatality and injury rate and increasing the cost of insurance coverage. And add a thick layer of stoned drivers as marijuana use becomes far more common, driven by pot entrepreneurs and states’ thirst for marijuana-tax revenues.

Russ Rader, senior vice president for communications of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told The Providence Journal that, as The Journal paraphrased him, “there have been no major studies that show drivers going slower in the left lane leads to crashes or any other problems….{but} there is significant proof that increasing speed limits can lead to more crashes and fatalities.’’

The main effect of drivers going relatively slowly (meaning more often than not, driving at the speed limit) in left-hand lanes is anger and frustration among impatient drivers, which probably means most drivers. Deal with it! Take a bus or a train or a bike!

We need fewer, but better enforced, laws and regulations. Take Representative Canario’s bill off the road, please.

William Morgan: Albert Quigley -- a king of Monadnock Region's culture

The Cheshire County Historical Society, based in Keene, N.H., has mounted an exhibition on the Monadnock Region painter Albert Quigley (1891-1961); it runs through early September. The show includes 45 of the artist's paintings – landscape and portraits, mounted in frames that he made. Additional material on Quigley's fascinating yet little-known story, his creative contemporaries, his frame- and violin-making, and his role in the musical life of contra dancing in southwestern New Hampshire complete the comprehensive 182-page catalogue, beautifully produced by Bauhan Publishing, of Peterborough.

Quigley exhibition at Cheshire County Historical Society

--  Photo by William Morgan

Unlike most of the famous members of the famous art colonies in nearby Dublin and Cornish,  N.H., Quigley was self-taught and was never able to devote himself entirely to his art. Born in Frankfort, Maine, he joined his father as a stonecutter in a quarry there. After service in France during World War I, Quigley settled in Keene; married and later moved to a small house in the nearby village of Nelson, where he helped raise three children; worked in the Cheshire Mill, in Harrisville, and also cobbled together a living as a mural painter, greeting-card designer and frame maker. His best client was Dublin painter Alexander James; they often worked together and Quigley's quiet landscapes and no-nonsense portraits show Mr. James’s influence.

Mount Monadnock

One of the pieces of writing in the catalogue is a tribute to Quigley by his long-time neighbor, the poet May Sarton. At Quigley's funeral, the minister read Sarton's tribute in honor of her great friend. One verse reads:

            "Lately, he lay downstairs, a dying king,

            His violin at the end of his bed like a couchant beast

            In some old tapestry or heraldic painting,

            The battered orange cat blinking by the fire.

            The fat asthmatic dog snoring beside him–

            Family, neighbors gathered there all day''

Providence-based architectural historian William Morgan is the author of the book about the cultural legacy of Dublin, N.H., cultural legacy, titled Monadnock Summer.

"House in Sullivan, New Hampshire, Looking Toward Sugar Hill.''