Vox clamantis in deserto
'Buried under weeds'
-- Photo by CC BY-SA 3.0
"In solemn pause the forest waits
The signal to return;
Within our rotting gardens gates
The weeds of autumn burn.
Father to son we held our field
Against the siege of tares,
Knowing our weaker sons would yield
The land no longer theirs.
Knowing how wind and sun and rain
Would fling their green stampedes
Where we who harvested the grain
Lie buried under weeds.''
"The Untended Field,'' by Robert Hillyer
Nov. 1 PCFR talk on what a war with North Korea might look like.
To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com):
Harry J. Kazianis (Twitter link: @Grecianformula), director of Defense Studies at the Center for the National Interest, will speak on Nov. 1 on how a U.S. war with North Korea might proceed.
He also serves as executive editor of the center's publishing arm, The National Interest, the largest online publication focusing on foreign-policy issues.
Mr. Kazianis is a well-known expert on national-security issues involving North Korea, China, the broader Asia-Pacific region as well as U.S. foreign policy in general. He is also a Fellow for National Security Affairs at the Potomac Foundation and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the University of Nottingham (UK). He holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Harvard University.
On Wednesday, Nov. 15, Maria Karangianis will speak on the refugee crisis in the eastern Mediterranean.
In May 2015, she traveled to the Greek Island of Lesbos, within sight of Turkey. At that time, hundreds of thousands of refugees were spilling onto the beaches in leaky boats, many of them dying, trying to find freedom from war-torn Syria. The Greek people of the island, who have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their generosity, have faced an economic catastrophe with tourism, their main source of income. Maria is currently a Woodrow Wilson visiting fellow and has traveled across the United States speaking at colleges and universities. She is a former guest editor and an award-winning writer on the editorial board of The Boston Globe.
On Wednesday, Jan. 17, comes Victoria Bruce, author of Sellout: How Washington Gave Away America's Technological Soul, and One Man's Fight to Bring It Home. This is about, among other things, China’s monopolization of rare earths, which are essential in electronics.
On Wednesday, Feb. 21, comes Dan Strechay, the U.S. representative for outreach and engagement at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), who talk about the massive deforestation and socio-economic effects associated with producing palm oil in the Developing World and what to do about them.
Boarding school beauty
Phillips Exeter Academy in 1911.
"Devon is sometimes considered the most beautiful school in New England....It is the beauty of small areas of order -- a large yard, a group of trees, three similar dormitories, a circle of old houses -- living together in contentious harmony.''
-- From the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
The famous novel is based to some extent on Mr. Knowles's memories of his years as a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, the large boarding school in Exeter, N.H.
'Migration + Memory'
From the show "Migration + Memory: Jewish Artists of the Soviet and Russian Empires,'' through Jan. 28, at the Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Mass.
Make sure it's gritty enough
“I guess no true Bostonian would trust a place that was sunny and pleasant all the time. But a gritty, perpetually cold and gloomy neighborhood? Throw in a couple of Dunkin’ Donuts locations, and I’m right at home.”
― Rick Riordan, from The Sword of Summer
Too many hospitals
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:
Care New England’s decision to close Memorial Hospital, in Pawtucket, or at least its inpatient services and emergency room, didn't surprise me at all. The fact is that Memorial’s days as a full-scale community hospital have long been numbered.
Our region has too many hospitals in a time when highly effective medications for such chronic ailments as heart disease, as well as proliferating outpatient facilities, such as comprehensive and specialty physician group practices, urgent-care centers, drugstore clinics and free-standing emergency departments, treat many of the ills that used to be treated only within hospitals. Just consider the number of surgeries now done outside hospitals, and that patients are discharged from hospitals after surgery there much faster these days. What might have kept them in a hospital for a week or two a couple of decades ago might now only keep them there for a couple of days.
And for the really serious and/or complicated stuff, patients can go to Rhode Island Hospital or the Miriam Hospital (the latter very close to Memorial), both in Providence, or to a hospital in the world-renowned health-care complex in Greater Boston (of which the Providence area is gradually becoming a part).
Only a small percentage of Memorial’s almost 300 beds are occupied and the place’s operating losses continue to swell.
So what will become of the facility? Probably much outpatient treatment and testing will continue in parts of the hospital buildings; after all, lots of physicians’ offices and very expensive equipment are there. (I go to see my cardiologist at Memorial every few months.) The rest of the structures might be turned into apartments, condos, offices, coffee shops, bars and so on – rather like a mill conversion.
The controversy about Memorial is really more about the threat to the hundreds of jobs at the hospital and the associated politics than about health care. But given the aging of the population, among other factors, the need for physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, health-care aides and others in the sector will only grow; most of the laid-off folks at Memorial should fairly swiftly find new positions. But many will find leaving the hospital wrenching even as they find jobs elsewhere in the region that might be better for them in the long run. It’s a community.
Of course, politicians will denounce the closing even as they fail to come up with plausible arguments for keeping this old community hospital open in a time of revolutionary change (and confusion) in health care. And it’s been a very long time since Pawtucket was the sort of thriving factory town that could easily support such institutions as hospitals.
Now the city ever more desperately seeks the state’s help to finance a stadium for the Pawtucket Red Sox, although most Rhode Islanders oppose such help, according to a poll done for GoLocal by Socialsphere -- founded by John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics at Harvard.
Far more promising is the coming Pawtucket/Central Falls train station. This facility will, among other benefits, help those cities become Boston suburbs for those who can’t afford the very steep housing costs in and around “The Hub’’ and maybe get some back-office work from Greater Boston companies in mills and other old buildings that have so far escaped the arsonists. Maybe some will live in what is now Memorial Hospital.
A letter from death row
Lethal-injection room at San Quentin State Prison, in California.
An extraordinary episode of White House Chronicle, the long-running program on PBS, will blaze across television screens this weekend. The program airs a letter from Timothy J. Hoffner, a death row inmate in Ohio. He has been on death row since 1995 and is scheduled for execution by lethal injection on May 29, 2019.
Frederic “Rick” Reamer, a guest on the program who served on the Rhode Island Parole Board for more than 20 years, commented, “The majority of prisoners I've dealt with are reflective, but Hoffner is very articulate and atypical.”
Hoffner wrote to Reamer after watching him discuss prison reform on a previous episode of White House Chronicle. Reamer said the letter was unusual because Hoffner didn't ask for clemency or a pardon for the gruesome murder he committed with an accomplice.
Llewellyn King, program host and executive producer, said, “Hoffner makes an articulate plea for the humanity of prisoners, even those who are guilty of major crimes. He also makes a plea for more education, and for educational programs to be available to long-term prisoners as well as those serving shorter sentences.”
In an excerpt of his letter, read on the program by Rhode Island-based actor David Catanzaro, Hoffner said, “What you [Reamer] said about inmates in prison being uneducated and/or having mental health issues of some kind is something I completely understand, because I see it, even in this isolated environment I’m trapped in.”
Reamer, who is a professor at Rhode Island College's School of Social Work, said on the program that he is not soft on prisoners, and has turned down more parole applications than he has approved. However, he has dealt with prisoners who have expressed remorse and Hoffner, in his letter, “was willing to reflect on what he did.”
As for rehabilitation, Reamer mentioned two of his parole cases: a crack dealer who rose from prisoner to become assistant solicitor for Providence, and another who serves as associate director of juvenile corrections for Rhode Island. Both had a thirst for knowledge.
In his many years in prison, Hoffner has educated himself and is the author of books and screenplays, which are available on Amazon or through Lulu.com. His pen name is Tim Lee.
“Over the years I have been locked up, I have educated myself about a variety of things, which is good. I like to learn about various things. The more we know, the better we are able to go through life. You never know when something you have learned will be helpful to you,” Hoffner said in his letter.
Linda Gasparello, co-host of White House Chronicle, said, “This program is so timely because the Justice Department is under a directive from Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to take a harder line with prosecutions and sentencing. Eric Holder, the previous attorney general, worked for years to reform the justice system; and there was a move in Congress to get rid of mandatory sentencing, But that has now ended.”
White House Chronicle airs nationwide on PBS and public, educational and government access stations, and on the commercial AMG TV network. It airs worldwide on Voice of America Television and Radio. An audio version airs three times weekends on SiriusXM Radio's P.O.T.U.S., Channel 124. An interactive list of stations which carry the program can be found at whchronicle.com.
For further information, contact Llewellyn King at llewellynking1@gmail.com.
Going, going, gone
October turned my maple's leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; here and there one lingers:
Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold,
Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.
-- "Maple Leaves,'' by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
'Effort and reflection'
"La Bruma" (mist), by Raul Diaz, in his show through Nov. 12 at the Adelson Galleries, Boston. Adelson says: "The ... boats; empty and idle vehicles without a conductor, float on still water. This reoccurring symbol in Diaz’s oeuvre may represent life’s voyage, and the balance between effort and reflection required to move forward. Moments of serenity often follow periods of intensity, exemplified poetically in the artist’s course of creation.''
Vegetable freak shows
-- Photo byDavid Politzer
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:
Many years ago, when I worked at the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP), I was amused that late summer and early fall brought lots of phone calls from gardeners and farmers claiming that they had grown the world’s largest vegetable – be it a tomato, a cucumber, a pumpkin, a gourd, etc.
So reading about the achievement of Joe Jutras, of Scituate, R.I., in reportedly growing a world-record-size pumpkin, a record-long gourd and the heaviest squash was a nice nostalgia trip. Of course, while Mr. Jutras’s huge vegetables are impressive (if useless), it’s very unlikely that they’d be considered records if all of the world’s many millions of farmers could have submitted their freaks.
But what do vegetables of these sizes taste like?
'This is how I will live'
"The living room he took me into was neat, cozy, and plain: a large circular rug, some slipcovered easy chairs, a worn sofa, a long wall of books, a piano, a phonograph, an oak library table systematically stacked with journals and magazines. Above the white wainscoting, the pale-yellow walls were bare but for half a dozen amateur watercolors of the old farmhouse in different seasons. Beyond the cushioned windowseats and the colorless cotton curtains tied primly back I could see the bare limbs of big dark maple trees and fields of driven snow. Purity. Serenity. Simplicity. Seclusion. All one’s concentration and flamboyance and originality reserved for the grueling, exalted, transcendent calling. I looked around and I thought, This is how I will live.
-- Novelist Philip Roth, from The Ghost Writer. He has long lived in an 18th Century house in rural Warren, Conn.
Warren, Conn., around the turn of the 18th Century.
Calm and chaos
"Chaos'' (oils and oil sticks), by Julie Gorn, in her show "Color: Chaos and Harmony,'' at the Colo Colo Gallery, New Bedford, through Oct. 26.
Our world is hectic and mesmerizing, beautiful and noisy. Ms. Gorn responds to these contradictions with work whose colors calm viewers even as they evoke the busy pace of modern life.
Frank Carini: Facing the population explosion of coyotes in New England
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
MIDDLETOWN, R.I.
During her decade of tracking coyotes on Aquidneck and Conanicut islands, in Narragansett Bay, Numi Mitchell has discovered humans have a lot to learn. The pervasiveness of Canis latrans — Latin for “barking dog” — in Portsmouth, Middletown, Newport and Jamestown, R.I., can largely be attributed to people’s carelessness with food and their compulsion to feed wild animals.
Since 2004, when Mitchell began studying local coyote behavior, she has found an Aquidneck Island Council member who was feeding coyotes, believing that would keep them from eating neighborhood cats; a gentleman who fed coyotes submarine sandwiches; an elderly woman who was feeding some 100 feral cats, not knowing much of the “kibble” she was leaving out was actually being devoured by coyotes — most of the cats were then eaten by the coyotes when the woman moved on; and Newport residents who left chicken carcasses out, across the street from a playground, to attract coyotes.
Coyotes eat whatever is easy, Mitchell told an audience of 20 or so people during an Aug. 20 presentation at Newport Vineyards. Without the direct or indirect help of humans, the wildlife biologist said coyotes dine on woodchucks and field mice. She noted that 20 percent of the coyote diet, especially for pups, is fruit such as blueberries.
But once coyotes get a taste of human food, that’s when the problems start. “Coyotes eat deer, but they’ll also whack neighborhood pets,” Mitchell said. That happens when they begin to associate the presence of humans with food. “They won’t eat pets if there’s no subsidized food from people,” Mitchell said, “because they wouldn't be that bold.”
The Narragansett Bay Coyote Study was born out of one pet’s mauling by a coyote. After Aquidneck Island resident Diana Prince’s dog was killed, she contacted Mitchell about how to exterminate the island’s population of coyotes. However, once Prince's anger subsided and Mitchell had explained coyote behavior, the Prince Charitable Trusts decided to fund a one-year study. Mitchell’s study is now entering its 11th year.
Coyote smart
Coyotes were first documented in Rhode Island, in Warren in the 1960s, and are now found in all parts of the state except Block Island. They first reached Aquidneck and Conanicut islands in the mid-1990s, according to Mitchell.
The Narragansett Bay Coyote Study tracks, with expensive collars and equipment, the local coyote population to develop science-based co-existence and management strategies. Mitchell noted that the study — and her work — aren’t pro or anti-coyote. She said the program is “straight science.”
CoyoteSmarts, in partnership with the study, is a public-information initiative of the Potter League for Animals, The Conservation Agency, Rhode Island Natural History Survey, Aquidneck Land Trust and the Norman Bird Sanctuary to address the growing presence of coyotes in Jamestown and on Aquidneck Island and to educate humans to coexist with these wild animals.
The mission of the group is to work with municipalities, local police and school departments, and state agencies to raise public awareness about coyotes, encourage best management practices and promote effective strategies for keeping pets, families and communities safe.
Coyotes are a native species, according to Mitchell. She said they are hard to catch, and clever, creative and opportunistic. Their numbers and range across North America are growing, she said, because the wolf population has been “blasted away.”
Their numbers also grow when large amounts of food are provided to coyotes intentionally or unintentionally by people. These “easy pickin’s” create coyote problems — and problem coyotes.
Mitchell said the most effective way to reduce human-coyote conflict is to reduce the animal’s food supply. The more food available, she said, the more pups they have and the smaller the territory they have to defend, which results in more coyotes per square mile and more risk of contact with humans.
Coyotes live in a family group, usually in packs of seven to 10 members, and typically take ownership of 7 or so square miles, according to Mitchell. She has counted an Aquidneck Island pack with 21 members.
Seven to eight packs roam Aquidneck Island and there are another three to four in Jamestown, according to Mitchell. As for the total number of coyotes on the two islands, she said she doesn't really know.
“We don’t call them wily for nothing,” Mitchell said.
However, unlike deer, which will keep breeding until they starve, coyotes manage their population. Female coyotes will have fewer pups if the pack is stressed by a lack of food.
On Aquidneck and Conanicut islands, improperly discarded livestock carcasses and roadkill, especially deer, dragged into the woods are easy pickin’s for coyotes. Their numbers grow.
Mitchell said she found a dumping ground of dead animals, including sheep and deer, on Peckham Brothers Quarry property in Middletown. It was feeding a large coyote pack that lived in a small territory.
She showed a nighttime video of a coyote pack feeding on cow carcasses not properly buried on a Jamestown farm. She said that a coyote pack can feed on a deer carcass for three to five days.
“An area that would be able to handle one pack can now hold three,” she said. “With easy food resources, coyotes don’t increase their territory.”
Feeding pets outside, unsecured trash cans, poorly managed compost bins/piles, fish guts left on piers, docks and rocks, and restaurant food scrap left out in the open, as a Middletown pig farmer has done, help create “super small coyote territory,” Mitchell said. She said these practices, which can include doughnuts left behind at a construction site, also make coyotes see people as food providers.
“As soon as coyotes get a taste for these subsidized food sources, they go for it,” Mitchell said. “The pack could have gone ten years without coming in contact with people, but now they are no longer afraid of people.”
Coyotes are always on high alert when it comes to sniffing out subsidized food sources, like unsecured trash cans and poorly secured livestock feed.
No lethal solution
Removal of coyotes by lethal means — though it may be necessary for some problem animals — doesn't control their population, according to Mitchell.
“Shooting them isn’t effective, because they are impossible to get rid of,” she said. “You can’t get rid of them with lethal control. Passive management is the most effective method.”
Lethal methods such as hunting, trapping or poisoning, especially in neighborhoods, are generally more dangerous to pets and the community than to the coyotes, Mitchell said.
She also noted that eliminating an entire group of coyotes, rather than solving the problem, simply creates a vacuum that other coyotes will quickly fill. Also, if a resident pack is removed, she said, it will likely be replaced by transient coyotes, which are often even less desirable.
In Rhode Island, you can hunt coyotes year-round, but relocating them is illegal.
Mitchell said recreational hunting of coyotes is fine and keeps them fearful of humans. However, a kill campaign, she said, accomplishes nothing. She said eliminating subsidized food sources can drop pack numbers by two-thirds.
Ecosystem and community impact
Coyotes play an important ecosystem role. As the top predator in Jamestown and on Aquidneck Island, the presence or absence of coyotes has a major impact on the surrounding biological community, according to Mitchell.
They help control pests such deer, rodents and geese, and with some 40 feral-cat colonies in the four island municipalities, coyotes help keep those numbers under control.
And while coyotes can benefit bird populations by preying on many of the small mammals that eat birds, their young and/or their eggs, it's possiblethat coyotes also kill piping plovers, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Mitchell is studying coyote impact on the islands’ natural environments.
Coyote attacks on humans are rare and seldom result in serious injuries, according to Mitchell. Only two deaths have ever been documented — a toddler in California, in 1981, and a 19-year-old woman hiking alone in Nova Scotia, in 2009. Children are more at risk than adults, and attacks are more common in urban areas where coyotes have lost their fear of humans thanks to intentional or unintentional feeding.
Coyotes are sometimes mistaken for dogs and may at times act like dogs. They’ve even been known to beg for food. Despite this disarming behavior, however, they are a wild and dangerous animal, especially when they’ve lost their fear of humans, according to Mitchell.
Coyotes run with their tails down and dogs run with their tails up. Coyotes are more adaptable than wolves and have learned to thrive near humans, especially the ones who feed them.
Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.
'Until the tree could bear no more'
"Birches" (encaustic painting), by Nickerson Miles.
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
"Birches,'' by Robert Frost
The outsiders move in
The Barre, Mass., town green in the late 19th Century.
"Who cared enough for the town to take these pictures,
blueprint or sepia, with their fading dates --
eighteen-seventy, say, or eighteen-eighty?
did he guess that there was an enemy at the gates?
As he stood on the green (it is there today, but smaller,
with fewer trees) to record the the new hotel,
he could hardly suspect that, so, he was recording
some of the vanguard of that army as well.
They had breached the gates unheralded, unnoticed.
not in disguise, not creeping like scout or spy
on this hardly-more-than-a-village, with its cobweb
of straggling streets called Chestnut or Church or High....''
-- From "The Taken Town,'' by Constance Carrier
The Barre Hotel, in Barre, Mass. It opened in 1889 and burned down in 1990.
Honoring artists in publicly owned places
Studio at the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:
In Europe, it’s very common to name streets, bridges, parks and other public infrastructure after scientists, visual artists, writers, actors and directors. But in the United States, very few pieces of public infrastructure are named after these creative types.
So it was pleasant to learn that Congress might turnone of the rare public places in America named for an artist --- the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, in Cornish, N.H. -- into a full-scale National Park, the first one in New Hampshire. Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was a famous American sculptor and a major figure in the Cornish Art Colony, which also included such luminaries as the painter Maxfield Parrish. The buildings (including studio) and grounds are gorgeous.
Across the Connecticut River in Vermont can be seen Mt. Ascutney, the subject of many paintings done by members of the Cornish colony. (See photo below.) The fame of the Cornish Art Colony may have led writer J.D. Salinger to move to the small town and became a famous recluse. I was in a class with his ex-wife Claire at nearby Dartmouth College; we never talked about Salinger.
And in Providence, there’s a move underway to make Megee Street, on College Hill, Bannister Street instead, after a distinguished 19th Century African-American painter and (of course) abolitionist Edward Bannister and his wife, Christiana, a businesswoman and philanthropist. The street is now named for the early 19th Century slave trader (one voyage) William Fairchild Megee, who was also involved in the China Trade (think opium). The latter business was Providence’s first great source of Big Money. (A lot of it was then invested in the city’s new textile, metal-related and other factories.)
Mr. Bannister was a co-founder of the venerable Providence Art Club and served on the board of the Rhode Island School of design.
So renaming the street would serve at least two good symbolic missions. I realize the name change would inconvenience people living on Megee, whose mail would probably be disrupted for months.
Mt. Ascutney as seen from Claremont, N.H.
Jim Hightower: Trump protects huge tax break for hedge funders
"Avarice,'' by Jesus Solana.
Via OtherWords.org
These are hard times for America’s gold miners. They’re scrambling to get ahead, but seeing their pay dropping.
Take Bob Mercer, who’s been a top miner for years, but last year even Bob was down. He pulled in only $125 million in pay. Can you feel Bob’s pain?
Well, these aren’t your normal miners. They’re hedge-fund managers, digging for gold in Wall Street. Indeed, if you divided Mercer’s pay in his “bad year” among 1,000 real miners doing honest work, each would consider it a fabulous year.
Nonetheless, hedge funds are figurative gold mines, although they require no heavy lifting by the soft-handed, Gucci-wearing managers who work them. These gold diggers are basically nothing but speculators, drawing billions of dollars from the über-rich by promising that they’ll deliver fabulous profits.
But the scam is that Mercer, whose hedge fund is Renaissance Technologies, and his fellow diggers get paid whether they deliver or not.
Their cushy set up, known as 2 and 20, works like this.
Right off the top, they take 2 percent of the money put up by each wealthy client, which hedge fund whizzes like Mercer keep even if the investments they make are losers. Then, if their speculative bets do pay off, they pocket 20 percent of all profits.
Finally, hedge-fund lobbyists have rigged our nation’s tax code so these Wall Street miners pay a fraction of the tax rate that real mine workers pay.
Last year, the 25 best paid hedge-fund operators totaled a staggering $11 billion in personal pay — even though nearly half of them performed poorly. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who promised last year to close that special hedge-fund tax break, has mysteriously omitted that vow from the “tax reform” framework that the White House released this fall.
Guess who was one of Trump’s most generous funders last year? Bob Mercer.
Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also the editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.
Dressing fancy is the best revenge
Photo by Hector Mediavilla, in his show "Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People,'' at the Cantor Art Gallery, at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, through Dec. 15.. Spanish photographer Mediavilla's images capture the art form of Congolese men known as ''Sapeurs,'' who have used dress and performance to counter the realities of political and economic hardship in postcolonial Africa.
James P. Freeman: Turning to the private sector to stop Mass. opioid epidemic
With swift vivacity and vulgar duplicity, the Massachusetts legislature — and, as expected, the executive branch — effectively signaled that “bump stock” accessories to rifles, rarely used in crimes, pose a greater threat to commonwealth residents than fentanyl-laced heroin, killing daily. Demands are made incessantly for so-called “common sense gun control.” But corresponding calls to action for “common sense opioid control” have been largely unanswered, as government has been largely ineffectual. So, action and answers are arriving on the latter front from the private sector, with the likes of the SAFE Coalition. And recovery angels.
As creators and custodians of public policy, public officials have, it must be emphasized, resoundingly failed in arresting the opioid crisis here because of a lack of seriousness. Consider:
Last week, as New Boston Post reported, the legislature overwhelmingly and uncourageously passed bills to outlaw bump stocks. The state already has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States (3.13 per 100,000 residents); there were 135 homicides in Massachusetts in 2016. It is likely in this relatively low homicide environment, nevertheless, that zero deaths occur as a result of bump stocks.
Conversely, Massachusetts has one of the highest rates of death for opioid abuse in the country (30.9 per 100,000 residents); there were 2,107 fatalities attributable to opioid-related-overdose in Massachusetts in 2016, where nearly six people died every day. Opioid deaths are 10 times higher than gun deaths here; and opioids kill far more people than guns. Yet efforts to provide consistent funding and full-scale commitment to eradicate the epidemic are regularly stymied. Consequently, public safety remains compromised.
In Massachusetts, where progressive hubris accelerates the pileup of legislative detritus, it is easier to codify in perpetuity the prospect of life in prison for a highly nearly nonexistent threat than it is to allocate multi-year appropriations for a clear, present and continuing danger.
Gov. Charlie Baker cut $1.9 million in substance-abuse-prevention programming in December 2016 to helpmaintain a balanced budget for fiscal 2017. But he touted increases in key funding to address opioid addiction for the current fiscal budget. State Representatives Randy Hunt (R.-Sandwich) and Diana DiZoglio (D.-Methuen), among the courageous few, were rejected in their efforts to seek a dedicated funding stream from the state’s Marijuana Regulation Fund for substance-use education, prevention, and treatment. But the fiscal 2018 state budget includes $2 million for start-up costs for the newly minted Cannabis Control Commission, created to regulate recreational marijuana. (The legalization of another controlled substance amid a controlled-substance emergency is both lurid and ludicrous.) More dollars for fun, fewer for death-prevention. Not many question such obvious misplaced prioritization. But someone does.
Enter Jim Derick.
He is president and a founder of SAFE — Support for Addicts and Families through Empowerment — a coalition of volunteers that provides support, education, treatment options, and coping mechanisms for those affected by substance abuse disorder. While erasing the social stigma placed on addicts is important, reducing the barriers to treatment is paramount.
SAFE was formed in 2015 under the leadership of state Rep. Jeffrey Roy (D.-Franklin), Franklin Town Councilor Bob Delorco, and former Franklin resident and Franklin High School graduate Jennifer Knight. They were frustrated by what Derick calls the “rapid escalation” of the carnage of opioids affecting Franklin and its neighboring communities in Norfolk County. No one was taking about it, he recalled. And there was little evidence of progress in arresting the scourge. As he says, with justifiable exasperation, “The U.S. consumes 85 percent of all opioid pain pills. Are we in more pain than the rest of the world?”
Believing that public policy is actually “driving this epidemic,” especially on a federal level (see the recent damning 60 Minutes segment on opioids), Derick is also dismayed by the ebb and flow of state funding to groups such as SAFE (it received a state grant of $50,000 in 2015, for which Derick is grateful, but none in 2016). And don’t get him started on the lack of “insurance parity,” where families are too often denied life-saving coverage. So, he is channeling his frustrations as a megaphone of local advocacy. He rightly believes that private-sector solutions, coupled with dedicated public contributions, are the best means to success.
Defining success is simple: zero overdoses and zero deaths. Achieving success is far more challenging: preventing overdoses and saving lives. SAFE does it one life at a time.
SAFE began offering a resource line and community outreach in 2016. Since then, its volunteers (some of whom weekly give 25-40 hours of their time) have engaged over 300 people. Last week seven families reached out for assistance. The resource line gets calls ranging from addicts looking for detox and treatment options, to a parent/spouse/other loved one requesting information on Section 35 (the civil process to effect involuntary commitment), to, sadly, families seeking bereavement services.
“At any given moment, I’d say we are actively working with 20 to 25 people,” Derick says. The coalition is “absolutely stretched extremely thin” as call volume is increasing monthly as overdoses are rising precipitously. But the coalition is motivated by these grim statistics: In 2000, Norfolk County reported just 29 opioid-related overdose deaths; by 2016, that number rose to 205 deaths.
SAFE maintains no offices. Instead, meetings are held at local businesses and forums at schools. Much of its work is modeled after the Plymouth County Outreach (it serves and links 27 towns and is pioneering data-driven recovery methodology). As an incubator of ideas, SAFE brings together diverse stakeholders, mindful of avoiding “silo thinking.” They include elected officials, school members, clergy, mental health experts, police and other first responders, and recovery angels.
Increasingly, to positive effect, recovering addicts are acting as so-called recovery angels, meaning that they are trained for intervening and mentoring during post-opioid episodes. The advent of trained angels and recovery coaches is a welcome development in the opioid battle. Ideally, this new form of intervention will lead to successful rehabilitation. Both are seen as more efficacious alternatives to incarceration, as prison has proven to be expensive and ineffective regarding substance-abuse disorders. Time should tell.
Derick’s anger melts into more hopeful animation when talking about the organic and myriad initiatives being tested and adopted throughout the commonwealth. He praises fellow advocates who travel the state, searching for creative ideas and better solutions. He is excited by PAARI (Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative), originally begun as the “Gloucester Initiative,” and funded by philanthropists. And he is encouraged by a new creation, Private Sector Cares. It aims to assemble a board of prominent business leaders throughout the state to “collaborate and help fund some of the coalition’s initiatives across the commonwealth.”
Inadequate and inconsistent funding is an impediment to progress, warns Derick.
Understandably, there are costs. “As we have grown and become known as a resource, we have been asked to assist towns, many outside our county, with some of our services.” Fund raising competes with, but is a necessary bi-product of, providing critical services. Seeking state grants is a gargantuan effort: paperwork, red tape, narrow line items. It’s a process that, Derick says, “we literally have to rely on a hundred hours of accounting time to get it.” That’s less time for emergencies.
What can Massachusetts do?
The legislature can redeem itself from desultory distractions by streamlining this process and increasing funding to these grass-roots groups. Funding should include dedicated, multi-year allocations, based on need. SAFE serves a population of well over 100,000 but currently is only granted $100,000.
It is altogether fitting that Derick provided his thoughts for this column on Oct. r 13. That date marked the centennial commemoration in the Catholic Church of the last Fatima Apparitions, where believers witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. One has to believe that, given their unsung and yeomen work, Derick, the volunteers at SAFE, and similar organizations across the state, are producing miracles every day. The opioid epidemic is among the sorrowful mysteries of this troubled age.
James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer, a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and a former banker. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.