James P. Freeman: Questions for two GOP candidates eager to take on Senator Warren

It’s been said that you can’t split dead wood.

Surprisingly, the Massachusetts Republican Party, usually barren tundra when competing in statewide races, is fielding a forest of formidable candidates to challenge Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2018. Two of them — Beth Lindstrom and John Kingston — are twin oaks of establishment politics and just recently announced their candidacies. They are worthy contenders, nevertheless, and deserve recognition.

Lindstrom is a Groton resident. She was executive director of the Massachusetts Lottery in the 1990s and, later, worked as director of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation while Mitt Romney was governor. She also managed Scott Brown’s successful U.S. Senate campaign during the 2010 special election and is the first female executive director of the state Republican Party. Lindstrom appeared, notably, on television ads in 2014 for a super PAC backing Republican Charlie Baker. She announced her candidacy on Twitter on Aug. 21, with a formal announcement on Oct. 14.

John Kingston is a Winchester resident. He is a rich businessman and philanthropist. He was a lawyer at Ropes & Gray and went on to hold leadership positions at Affiliated Managers Group, the global asset-management company. He serves on the board of the Pioneer Institute, the public-policy organization, and is a member of  the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington D.C., think tank. He is also involved with several charitable endeavors. Active in state and national Republican Party affairs, Kingston was part of Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign and was an executive producer for the 2014 documentary film Mitt. He formally announced his candidacy on Oct.  25.

So, before debate moderators and deceitful mainstream media can ask them their favorite color or when they last wept, they should be asked serious questions. Herewith are some to ponder:

1. Your mentor, Mitt Romney, was mocked during the 2012 presidential campaign for suggesting  that Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat to the United States. Considering the allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, is Russia today still the biggest threat to American security? Why or why not?

2. What should be done to mitigate North Korean provocations? Can America live with a nuclear-armed North Korea?

3. In May, with over $70 billion in outstanding debt, Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy (believed to be the largest ever U.S. local government bankruptcy) under Title III of a U.S. Congressional rescue law known as PROMESA. Puerto Rico’s poor fiscal condition, highlighted again after Hurricane Maria, mirrors many mainland municipalities. What should this debt restructuring look like? Do municipal bankruptcy laws need modification given the sheer number of over-incumbered, bankruptcy-prone municipalities?

4. Some would argue that the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter are effectively operating as monopolies, and that their size and influence far exceed those of Standard Oil, and AT&T, for instance, which were ultimately broken up. Do the current examples raise anti-trust concerns? Does the Justice Department need to rethink its anti-trust policies?

5. For better or worse, President  Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, your party. In what regard is the president doing well? In what regard can the president improve?

6. In Massachusetts, you will not win election without winning over some Democrats. How do you garner their vote? What do you say to Senator Warren’s core constituency, progressive populists, to gain their vote?

7. The commonwealth has one of the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths in the country. This year police in several Massachusetts cities and towns are seeing massive increases, not decreases, in non-fatal overdoses. The rightly called opioid epidemic has been trending for over a decade in the wrong direction. What are your proposals for action? How should state and federal governments better address this matter?

8. The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon lured 238 bids from cities and regions for its second corporate headquarters. With no public vetting or commenting process, a total of 26 Massachusetts sites are competing for Amazon’s business, which, according to estimates, will bring tens of thousands of jobs to the winner. Is public policy perverted when one of the world’s richest companies is seeking — and will be granted — generous subsidies and tax benefits from these places where there is already high indebtedness, massive unfunded pension liabilities, and where there is need for drastic infrastructure improvements? What are your thoughts on these arrangements?

9. Does Obamacare need to be repealed and replaced? If yes, what are your proposals? If no, what improvements need to be made to make it a sustainable health care system? And looking at health care locally, Romneycare is now eating up close to 45 percent of the Massachusetts budget, prompting state Rep. Jim Lyons to call the budget “an insurance company.” How do you bend the cost curve? Is the expansion of Medicaid slowly bankrupting Massachusetts? How do you finance it on the federal level?

10. Former Sen. Scott Brown said during the 2012 senatorial campaign that he was a “Scott Brown Republican.” He lost by a wide margin. Likewise, both of you have described yourselves as abstractions. (Lindstrom: “a common-sense Republican.” Kingston: “an independent thinker.”) What do you mean by these Twitter-inspired thought bubbles? Do you have better descriptions?

11. Speaking of 2012, Brown and Romney could not decide if they were moderates or conservatives or something else. Lacking such identity probably hurt them. Warren is proudly progressive. What are you? And does it make political and electoral sense to fight a progressive with a conservative?

12. What are your reactions to the Massachusetts Republican Party settling charges for $240,000 in 2015 with Tea Party member Mark Fisher? (He claimed that the party stymied his efforts at getting on the Republican gubernatorial primary ballot in 2014, which raised larger issuers of attempting to purge the party of conservatives.)     

13. On March 10, The Boston Globe’s Frank Phillips wrote: “A major concern for the governor’s political team is that the party’s U.S. Senate candidate in 2018 be compatible with Governor Charlie Baker and his political positions.” You both speak of not being beholden to President Trump but you’re both considered insiders in the state Republican Party. How do you refute Phillip’s premise that you are not beholden to Baker? Do you think his team favored the party’s proposal of doubling the number of super-delegates at next year’s nominating convention?

14. Who are your political role models?  Why?

15. Has the national legislative branch abdicated its constitutionally prescribed powers to the executive branch? If yes, how do you bring the balance back?

16. Candidate Lindstrom:  In the announcement video for your candidacy, you say you are “not a professional politician.” (Technically Olympic athletes aren’t professional athletes either.) Granted, you were never elected to public office, yet a substantial portion of your career has been involved in government. Do you think that the average voter would believe your statement?

17. Candidate Lindstrom:  In 2008, Former Republican Lit. Gov. Kerry Healy would have been the first woman elected Massachusetts governor. You would be the first Republican woman elected Massachusetts senator. What advice has she given you?

18. Candidate Kingston:  It was reported that you switched party registration last year from Republican to unenrolled and led an effort to create a movement to field an independent candidate in the presidential election. You have lent your own campaign approximately $3 million. You are a harsh critic of President Trump. Candidate Trump also had a history of switching party affiliations and lending his campaign personal funds. Philosophically and operationally, aren’t you behaving like Trump? Why are you running as a Republican and not as an Independent?

19. Candidate Kingston:  You made a fortune in the asset-management business and spent a significant amount of your career in financial services. Did Wall Street learn any lessons in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008-2009? What were they? Are Americans more protected from Wall Street shenanigans today than last decade? Should hedge funds, which play increasingly powerful roles in trading and asset accumulation, be taxed and regulated more?

20. Candidate Kingston:  In your formal announcement video, you say you are a “different kind of leader.” How so? In a separate statement you also said, “We cannot risk that chance [defeating Warren] on candidates who cannot deploy the resources necessary to win, or on candidates who are unelectable or uninspiring.” Is that an elitist sentiment, and don’t ideas matter too? Are you suggesting that your primary opponents’ lack of comparable wealth is a disqualifier? How are you inspiring?

Lindstrom and Kingston aren’t the only GOP candidates. State Rep.  Geoff Diehl, businessman Shiva Ayyadurai, and Allen Waters of Mashpee are also running. But these questions are for the two candidates formally jumping in this month.

It’s too early to tell if Lindstrom and Kingston will split the vote or split their differences with Massachusetts Republicans. Each will need 15 percent of the vote at next April’s state party convention to secure their respective names on the primary ballot. But already there is controversy and trouble among them. Kingston, it was reported by the Globe, has bizarrely urged Lindstrom to drop out of the race. Surely a brush fire Baker wants extinguished immediately.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer, former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and former banker.  This column first appeared in New Boston Post. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal as well as here,   newenglanddiary.com.

James P. Freeman:Tuesdays are big opioid-overdose days on the Cape

The news this past Aug. 22, a Tuesday, seemed promising. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health released its quarterly report showing a 5 percent decline in opioid-related deaths in the first half of 2017 compared with the like period last year (978 deaths, as opposed to 1,031 deaths; January to June). The statistics led The Boston Globe to conclude this was “the strongest indication to date that the state’s overdose crisis might have started to abate.”

But the news was a tantalizing chimera. The Barnstable police already knew. August was cruel.

With overwhelming preponderance and without overlooking prejudice, the opioid crisis still rages unabated in Massachusetts. Especially on Cape Cod.

Figures provided by the Barnstable Police Department, the largest police force on the Cape, reveal a massive spike in opioid overdoses this past August compared with August 2016 (41 overdoses this year as opposed to 8 overdoses last year). Through the end of September, opioid-related overdoses in Barnstable, which at about 45,000 people is the largest town on the Cape, stood at 148. During the like period last year that number was 82.

Overdoses for the combined two months of August and September (61) were the highest for back-to-back months since January and February 2015 (51), when the Barnstable police first began keeping opioid-specific records. That’s when things seemed really bad. In many ways, now they’re worse.

Except for May, every month this year in Barnstable has seen an increase in overdoses compared to corresponding months in 2016. Already, there have been more overdoses in just nine months of 2017 than during all of 2016. And if current trends continue — nothing suggests that they won’t — this year will see more overdoses than in 2015, the year many thought was the high-water mark.

The death rate on the Cape isn’t encouraging, either. It is rising, not declining. Barnstable police report that 19 people have died due to overdoses through Oct.  10 of this year. In the like period, just nine people died through the end of October 2016. It is nearly certain that, beginning with respective Januarys, more lives will be lost by the end of October 2017 than were lost by October 2015 and October 2016, combined. This is progress in reverse.

Officer Eric W. Drifmeyer oversees the Research and Analysis Unit of the Barnstable Police Department. He is a busy man. Before 2015, the department, like many Massachusetts law-enforcement agencies, did not have adequate reporting mechanisms to track and maintain useful information relating to opioid-specific activity. In the past, Drifmeyer says, any data collected were categorized as generic “medical events.” But as the opioid crisis escalated — it is estimated that 85 percent of crimes on Cape Cod are opiate-related — the need for more accurate crime data increased, too.

So Drifmeyer and his colleagues built their own database.

Data-driven information provides police with intelligence. With superior intelligence trends become apparent — such as populations at risk in an opioid crisis. Here, that means young adults who are prone to abusing opioids. In Barnstable — an area of 76 square miles comprising seven villages of affluence and affliction — overdoses in 2017 disproportionately affect white males ages 20-29 and 30-39, far more than any other demographic group. Barnstable police statistics show that men are overdosing at nearly twice the rate of women. And for females, white women ages 20-29 and 30-39 show the highest levels of overdose in 2017. These have been trend lines for years.

A superior database of historical information doesn’t just reveal trends. Consistent trends become accurate predictors of criminal activity. Drifmeyer notes that a spike in overdoses correlates directly with an immediate surge in crimes, such as shoplifting and car and house break-ins. Accordingly, proceeds from illicit sales of ill-gotten goods finance the next purchase of heroin and other opioids on the street. And the cycle repeats itself. From this learning curve emerges better policing — devising effective strategies, dispatching efficacious resources, and thwarting criminal behavior.

Every day on Cape Cod, in a sad ritual, somewhere, someone is rolling up a sleeve, readying an arm for a taut elastic rubber tourniquet, anticipating the needle chill about to puncture a warm vein for perhaps the last sensationally euphoric high.

Tap. Tap. Tap …

Naloxone, the powerful opioid antidote, popularly known as Narcan, reverses the effects of overdose. Its widespread and immediate administration by first responders on those suspected of overdosing is probably the reason that the death rate has declined slightly this year in Massachusetts. Police in Barnstable have revived many people. Of the 148 officially designated overdoses this year, police have administered Narcan 46 times individually and another 25 times with assistance from a third party, such as a firefighter-emergency medical technician. In the short term Narcan saves lives. But Narcan solves nothing.

Stunningly, many addicts today have Narcan present while they are using, says Drifmeyer. Employing what one detective said was a “buddy system,” Narcan is administered by the corresponding partner in the event of overdose by the user. It is a bizarre insurance policy against a bad batch of drugs in this high-stakes risk/reward game; much heroin is now laced with the powerful additive fentanyl (itself a synthetic opiate), 50-100 times more powerful than morphine and 30-50 times more powerful than heroin itself.

Today, Barnstable police cruisers are stocked with two 4-milligram doses of Narcan. Not long ago it was 2-milligram doses. Those lower doses were not effective at neutralizing higher concentrations of fentanyl increasingly found in heroin.

First responders are also at risk from exposure to just small quantities of fentanyl. It is so dangerous, in fact, that police and paramedics can effectively “accidently overdose” if they come into contact with only a bit of the drug. Today, Barnstable police dog units now carry Narcan because service dogs sometimes accidentally overdose, too, by inhaling fentanyl into their nasal passages or absorbing in into their paws while working a case. This unimaginable collateral damage is the newest alarming phenomenon in what PresidentTrump in August rightly called a “national emergency.”      

Last decade, the most covered story in The Cape Cod Times, the largest paper on the Cape, was the controversial off-shore wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound known as “Cape Wind.” By the end of this decade, depressingly, the opioid matter will likely be the top story. Since 2000, nearly 400 people have died on the Cape and Islands due to some form of opioid overdose. With crashing regularity, stories appear on a near-daily basis, one falling into the other, like cascading dominoes.

Click. Click. Click …

In the last month, these stories received front-page treatment:  Oct. 7, “Construction Workers Hard Hit by Opioid Addiction”; Oct.  4, “Study at McLean Hospital Reveals Marijuana’s Benefits in Lowering Opioid Usage”; Sept. 22, “Judge:  Drug Dealing Merits Homicide-Level Bail”; Sept. 17, “Addiction Experts Warn of Detox Dangers”; and Sept. 12, “Drop-In Night New Option for Drug Users.”

Obituaries in the paper are sad narratives of dying youth. They are all too frequent. Last year, 82 people on the Cape and Islands died because of opioid overdose. (Barnstable County ranked third statewide for fatal overdose rates in 2015 and 2016.) And all too often these announcements contain no cause of death, wrongly stating the deceased died “peacefully” or “quietly.” One was named Arianna Sheedy. She was 23 and a mother of two when she fatally overdosed on Feb.  16, 2015, one of seven who died of similar causes on Cape Cod that month.

Sheedy was featured in the 2015 HBO film Heroin:  Cape Cod, USA. The documentary portrays the day-to-day lives of eight young addicts. It is equally haunting and horrifying and must-viewing for anyone — everyone! — intent on understanding the mindset of people completely consumed emotionally, psychologically, and physically by this kind of addiction. (The film will be rebroadcast on HBO2 on Wednesday, Oct. 18.)

There are many memorable vignettes but one stands out. Opioid nirvana, one participant said, “felt like Christmas morning every time I shot up. Who wants to give that up?” Sheedy and another addict, Marissa, died before filming was finished. The film is dedicated to their memory.

Among the intriguing statistics in the Barnstable police database are 2017 overdoses by day-of-the-week. Surprisingly, Tuesdays rank second-highest, only slightly below Fridays. As Drifmeyer dryly concedes, heroin “is not a recreational drug,” so weekdays are just as active as weekends. (Heroin is a retail business; perhaps even big deliveries slow on Sundays.) Still, why Tuesdays figure so prominently is puzzling to police. But as time and statistics accumulate, it is likely that mystery will be solved by their unsung and noble work.

Most of the heroin on Cape Cod arrives from Fall River and New Bedford, transported along the I-195 corridor, what is considered a local Heroin Highway. Every day, anonymous lives, hopes and dreams travel that lonesome road. Until something desperately changes, they are slowly passing …

Gone. Gone. Gone.  

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times.  This piece first ran in the New Boston Post. Besides that outlet and newenglanddiary.com, his work has also appeared in The Providence Journal and nationalreview.com.

James P. Freeman: MTV pulls its young viewers into progressivism and degeneracy

In the 2011 book, I Want My MTV, John Taylor, bass player for Duran Duran, commenting on early video content said, “All this stuff like Culture Club was the result of an underground, progressive, liberal, London art school sensibility.”

By 1992, however, an unscripted soap opera (The Real World) and a character named Bill Clinton became programming staples, nodding to its future direction. Gifts to cultural regression later included Beavis and Butt-Head, Jackass and The Jersey Shore. About the last, Snooki impressed producers in 2008 by her candid -- celebrated? -- talk about sex and alcohol for a show about “Guidos and Guidettes." Her years of embarrassingly bad behavior (2009-2012) were rewarded by, among other things, a paid appearance ($32,000) to speak to students at Rutgers University in 2011, (where she advised students to study hard but party harder) and as a participant on Dancing With the Stars (which was announced on the selectively prim and proper Good Morning America) in 2013.

Rob Tannebaum, author of I Want My MTV, told National Public Radio’s, All Things Considered, on a whimsical trip about the golden years of the cable station, “MTV quickly realized and learned that narrative television, even reality TV, rated better than music videos."

For years its reality programming has glorified and valued moral relativism (watch the appallingly dreadful Teen Mom and Undressed). But now the company believes that it is a moral arbiter to correct all that ails our culturally sensitive society. A culture that has been largely led by progressives for over a half a century and of which MTV has been a big promoter for the last 36 years.

Conservatives constantly complain about universities being incubators of progressive preening and pedagogy (where “white shaming” is the newest rage). But it starts well before the first delicate snowflake lands on a college campus. It starts with MTV and it is time  that conservatives start paying attention.

MTV is the greatest cultural influencer of young people today.  

According to marketing blogger Brandon Gaille, MTV reaches 387 million people worldwide and is considered the no. 1 media brand globally. In 2015, he wrote that, “It is the one channel where people in the 12-34 age bracket continually tune in to catch up with what is coming next in pop culture, music, and fashion.” Furthermore, he added, the network “provides a variety of programming, ranging from politics to reality TV, and it is all targeted to the young adult demographic.”

Its reach of young people is staggering. Over 47 million people follow MTV on Facebook, three times as many as those who follow Fox News. One in three U.S. citizens falls into the 12-34 age demographic, accounting for over 90 million people.

MTV’s sway may be wider than currently understood too. Notwithstanding a steady decline in overall television ratings -- VMAs showed an 18 percent drop in viewership from 2013 to 2014; Adweek reported last year that the network lost half its 18-49 audience from 2011 to 2016 -- it makes a greater impact on ubiquitous social media. Which is difficult to measure.

For the average MTV viewer, Gaille observes, the largest annual expenditure, unsurprisingly, is on personal computers, tablets and smartphones. As of Gaille’s 2015 writing, ratings for computers and mobile devices were not reflected in Nielsen ratings, “which is where many of the 12-34 key demographic consume media content.” (Nielsen in 2017 received accreditation for such digital measurements.)

MTV’s president, Chris McCarthy, 42, is progressivism’s newest cultural and political warrior. He is also proof that the personal values of powerful cultural decision makers can be newsworthy and wildly, unduly influential. Last month he told The New York Times that the station is “about amplifying young people’s voices,” adding, “we shouldn’t be telling people how to feel.” But telling people how to feel and what to do, like the federal government, is exactly what MTV is doing. Subtly and not so subtly.

There is no pretense to objectivity with MTV News. Thirty years ago, when it first aired, it reported on the comings and goings of music stars; now it has descended into the progressive abyss. Its “Politics” section makes The New York Times’s op-ed pages look moderate. A gem from this past January asked, “Why Do American Conservatives Look So Different From the Rest of the World?” And a recent post from the “Movies” section contained this headline: “Matt Damon Explains How Suburbicon Shows the ‘Definition of White Privilege’ at Work.”   

Ever since the first VMAs debuted in September of 1984, award winners received a trophy called a Moonman. No More. In politically correct 2017, McCarthy asks The Times, “Why should it be a man?” As only a progressive can describe a miniature silver statue, “It could be a man, it could be a woman, it could be transgender, it could be nonconformist.” It could be a conservative in disguise…

At this year’s VMAs, , no one, apparently, got McCarthy’s feelings and doings message.

Sadly, it is now taken for granted that elite entertainers use award ceremonies, however briefly, as a vehicle to express opinions and level grievances. No longer content to simply be recognized for questionable talent, today’s award winners (and special guests) are now social commentators and news broadcasters for young people. This year’s VMAs unrepentantly dissolved into a progressive political platform.  

Pink told the story of her six-year-old daughter feeling unattractive because she believed she looked like a boy. As CNN reported, “The singer said she used it as a teachable moment to discuss androgynous artists who have found success, including herself.” The program also showcased  the Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV, a descendent of Civil War Gen.  Robert E. Lee. Nervously, he lamented, “We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism and hate.” Citing a “moral duty” to speak out against “America’s original sin,” Lee called on “all of us with privilege and power to answer God’s call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on.” That statement implies there is a powerful sense of white privilege and channels white shaming.

Not to be out done by our ever-inclusive, multi-diverse cultural correctness, MTV, following grade-school catechism, chose to honor all six videos nominated in its -- seriously! -- “Best Fight Against the System” category. All artists received little Moon Persons for their so-called “groundbreaking” efforts.

The Technicolor irony is that MTV is the system.

The ratings results for this year’s VMAs are a compelling, if not revealing, story. Only 6.5 million brave souls watched the show -- linear viewing -- across 11 Viacom networks on traditional television (down from 10.3 million viewers in 2016). But as deadline.com reported, (“MTV Focuses on Social Successes”) the 2017 VMAs clocked 62.8 million video streams on Facebook. The 2015 show drew only 4.4 million streams.    

Conservatives are largely to blame for allowing these cultural excesses to flourish and become mainstream, and for allowing them to go unanswered. Especially guilty are those running for political office under the pretentious slogan “fiscal conservative and social moderate.” On fiscal matters, they have not corrected any of the $20 trillion in national debt. And on social, hence, cultural matters, they have retreated and surrendered any sense of resistance.

Twenty-five years after Pat Buchanan’s much criticized speech, the moral and cultural cesspool has clearly been realized. MTV has eclipsed higher education as a new, larger, and more troubling progressive front in the ongoing culture war.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.  He formerly worked in the financial-services industry. This piece first appeared in the New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Department stores in fast descent as Amazon takes their business and destroys jobs

Macy's flagship store in Manhattan.

“Macy’s of today is like in soul and spirit to

Macy’s of yesterday; Macy’s of tomorrow…”

— Edward Hungerford, The Romance of a Great Store (1922)

If today is yesterday’s tomorrow, the Macy’s of 2017 would be unrecognizable to its founder, Rowland Hussey Macy. Except, perhaps, for the ubiquitous red star, the company’s logo, which was inked onto his forearm as a young sailor, while working on the whaling ship Emily Morgan, based out of New Bedford, Mass.. The star was inspired by the North Star, which, according to legend, guided him to port and an optimistic future. Today, the company — and, by extension, the traditional retailing industry — rocked by an exceptional gale, looks to the heavens for safe harbor and secure future. The turbulence, however, is a healthy sign of the creative destruction of capitalism. Accordingly, let traditional retail perish.

Last April, a New York Times expose, “Is American Retail at a Historic Tipping Point?,” revealed that 89,000 Americans have been laid off in general-merchandise stores since October 2016. “That is more than all of the people employed in the United States coal industry, which President Trump championed during the campaign as a prime example of the workers who have been left behind in the economic recovery.”

About one out of every 10 Americans works in retail. That’s nearly 16 million people (both online and in stores), confirms the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unsurprisingly, only 5 percent are represented by unions.

More than 300 retailers have filed for bankruptcy just in 2017. Among them:  Gymboree (operating 1,300 stores), rue21 (1,200 stores), Payless ShoeSource (4,400 stores), The Limited (250 stores), and a century-old regional department store company, Gordmans Stores (106 stores, in 22 states). In the past year, Macy’s has announced it would close 100 stores (identifying 68 locations, eliminating 10,000 jobs). J.C. Penney will close 138 stores. Sears (which also owns Kmart) is shuttering 150 stores and said last March that the company has “substantial doubt” about its survival after 13 decades in business. Since 2010, Sears has lost $10.4 billion and has closed several hundred stores.

A report released this spring by Credit Suisse, the financial-services firm, estimates that 8,640 retail stores will close by year’s end and, more staggering, approximately one quarter of the nation’s 1,100 malls will close in the next five years.  

“Modern-day retail is becoming unrecognizable from the glory era of the department store in the years after World War II,” notes the Times. “In that period, newly built highways shuttling people to and from the suburbs eventually gave rise to shopping malls — big, convenient, climate-controlled monuments to consumerism with lots of parking.” The glitz and glamour of shopping reminiscent of the Mad Men period is over. Instead, a wrenching, permanent restructuring is likely under way. As it should be.

What happened?

Shifting consumer shopping habits driven by, and probably, a result of, e-commerce. Stated simply:  “market forces.” A concept understood by ordinary people. Alarmingly, though, highly compensated retail executives were slow in identifying these new dynamics. For which many big retailers are now desperately, but not adequately, adapting to these changes. They are failing.

Devoid of any romance, today’s retail is a hard scrabble of Sisyphean drudgery. Product comes in. Product goes out. Product comes back in … Repeat. Generic and dingy department stores are full of tired-looking mannequins and haggard-looking, underpaid sales associates pushing promotions and credit cards. But many stores are empty of customers.

America is called “overstored” — having too much retail space, which now totals about 7.3 square feet per capita. On a comparative basis, that is well above the 1.7 square feet per-capita in Japan and France, and the 1.3 square feet in the United Kingdom. Jonathan Berr of Moneywatch says:  “Overstoring can be traced back to the 1990s when the likes of Walmart, Kohls, Gap, and Target were expanding rapidly and opening new divisions.” And then the Internet happened.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the evolution of a new business model. Those who embraced a so-called “brick and click” model (combining brick-and-mortar operations with online presence) were certain to survive, and those who executed it well would likely thrive for the foreseeable future. Many retailers were late to the party. When they did arrive, they never harmonized their physical space and cyberspace. Consequently, traditional retailers never kept pace with the value created by the likes of Amazon. The new disruptors perfected the model and, more importantly, created a better customer experience.

Between 2010 and 2014, e-commerce grew by an average of $30 billion annually. Now, e-commerce represents 8.5 percent of all retail sales, (trending straight upward since 2000) disproportionately affecting the big-box retailers that are anchor tenants in malls that, in turn, draw foot traffic from which other mall retailers ultimately benefit. ShopperTrak estimates that retail store foot traffic has plunged 57 percent between 2010 and 2015. And more stunning, Amazon is expected to surpass Macy’s this year to become the biggest apparel seller in the United States.

Macy’s, self-described as “America’s Department Store” — a brand celebrating ubiquity over uniqueness — is symbolic and symptomatic of retail’s quandary.

With its corporate sibling, Bloomingdale’s, the company is a constellation of complexities. Far from its meager beginnings as a single dry goods store in Haverhill, Mass. when it opened in 1851, it is now a cobbled-together conglomerate operating 700 stores in 45 states, employing 140,000 (of which 10 percent are unionized). Because of so many mergers and acquisitions, there is no unifying culture. It has 50 million proprietary charge accounts on record (nearly one in six Americans).  

Macy's flagship store in Herald Square in Manhattan attracts 23 million visitors annually. Known as an “omnichannel retailer” (myriad ways of consumer engagement; i.e., store, Internet, mobile device), with sales over $25.7 billion, Macy’s is still profitable (earning $619 million last year). But it is in trouble.

In July 2015, Macy’s market capitalization (total value of its publicly traded shares) was more than $22 billion. It has plummeted to about $7 billion today. Constantly tweaking marketing and merchandising, the company nevertheless reported that net sales declined for the ninth straight quarter, in May. Saddled with $6.725 billion in debt and with fewer customers, over half its earnings are derived from its credit-card business. (Just three years ago, credit cards accounted for a quarter of its earnings.) Lead times for its lifeblood, the supply chain, are long and slow. Real estate holdings (estimated to be worth between $15 billion and $20 billion) are substantially more valuable than its business operations. Double-digit growth in online business is cannibalizing negative growth in store business.

Macy’s is ever-reliant upon the next generation of shoppers, but Millennials may not be that reliable; they defy consumption patterns that previous generations followed for years (less materialistic and more loyal to experiences than to physical brands). And Amazon’s new Prime Wardrobe might prove to be a death star, obliterating many red ones. Gloomy and overwhelmed, Macy’s reflects the industry at large.

This past January, Amazon announced it would create 100,000 jobs over the course of 18 months. Yet it is foolish to think that Amazon — which is much more efficient than traditional retailers — will absorb all the displaced workers.

As Rex Nutting, writing for MarketWatch, warns, what Amazon “won’t tell us is that every job created at Amazon destroys one or two or three others.” And what Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos “doesn’t want you to know is that Amazon is going to destroy more American jobs than China ever did.”

Even if the American consumer is the beneficiary of these disruptive but necessary market forces, sooner or later this economic issue will become a political issue.

Conservative commentator George Will raises a good question:  “Why should manufacturing jobs lost to foreign competition be privileged by protectionist policies in ways that jobs lost to domestic competition are not?”

President Trump should, but probably won’t, answer a question that would help clarify the puzzling public policy he is now crafting (see his “major border tax” proposals). As the president will surely learn, economics — like health care — is complicated fare. And like most things involving Trump, it is personal.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump said Amazon has “a huge antitrust problem.” (An analysis found that 43 percent of all online retail sales in the United States went through Amazon in 2016.) Notably, Bezos owns The Washington Post, largely critical of the president. In late 2015, Trump called for a boycott of Macy’s after the company stopped selling Trump merchandise and severed ties with the presidential candidate because of comments he made about Mexicans earlier that year.

Then there is his daughter, Ivanka Trump. Despite her father’s call last January that “We will follow two simple rules — buy American and hire American,” she still owns an apparel company with much of its product line foreign-made. And with gilded irony, some is still sold at Macy’s.

With or without first family entanglements, markets will dictate those retailers it deems omnipresent and obsolescent.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. He formerly worked in financial services.

James P. Freeman: Past time to break up America's mega-banks before they cause another crash

JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters, in Manhattan.

As Americans were lounging comfortably over the 4th of July holiday, some were surely feeling a sense of new-found serenity. Not because they were full of burgers, barkers and beer. On the contrary, they were digesting the news that 34 of the nation’s largest banks, for the first time since the financial crisis began a decade ago, all passed the Federal Reserve’s annual “stress tests,” which, according to The Wall Street Journal, “could bolster the industry’s case for cutting back regulation.” But hold the match before lighting leftover fireworks in celebration. Break up the banks first.

Remarkably, the five largest banks today — JPMorgan Chase  & Co. Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, US Bank — now control about 45 percent of the financial industry’s total assets or roughly $7.3 trillion in assets. To put that number in perspective, the size of the U.S. economy is roughly $18 billion.

Twenty-five years ago, the five largest banks owned just 10 percent of all financial assets. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s statistics reveal that in 1992 there were 11,463 commercial banks and 2,390 savings and loans. By March of 2017, that number had dwindled to 5,060 commercial banks and just 796 savings institutions. The assets held by the five largest banks in 2007 – $4.6 trillion – increased by more than 150 percent over the past decade, when they held 35 percent of industry assets.

The sharp rise in the concentration of these assets (a measure of size and wealth) has real economic, political and social ramifications. As oxfamamerica.org fears, “These massive banks use their wealth to wield significant political and economic power in the U.S., in the countries where they operate, and in the international arena.” Finance today, author Rana Foroohar reasons in Makers and Takers, “holds a disproportionate amount of power in sheer economic terms.” (It takes about 25 percent of all corporate profits while creating only 4 percent of all jobs.)

Moreover, writing five years ago in The Washington Post, just as the banking system was being recalibrated and reregulated, U.S. Sen.  Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, recognized then (and still true today) what the federal government should recognize now:  “Even at the best-managed firms, there are dangerous consequences of large, complex institutions undertaking large, complex activities. These companies are simply too big to manage, and they’re still too big to fail.” While Brown is correct in citing “Too Big To Fail” (a warped public policy), he is right to emphasize (as many more public officials should) that these firms are simply too big to manage and maintain.

JPMorgan Chase is a financial colossus. In January 2017, it reported assets of $2.5 trillion that generated $99 billion in revenue and earned $24.7 billion in profit. It is the largest U.S.-domiciled bank and the sixth largest bank in the world. Today, it alone holds over 12 percent of the industry’s total assets, a greater share than the five biggest banks put together in 1992. Its global workforce of 240,000 operates in 60 countries. From 2009 to 2015, the bank paid $38 billion in fines and settlements (involving among them  the Bernie Madoff and London Whale scandals), mere rounding errors in its ethics and financials.

Jamie Dimon is the company's chairman and chief executive officer, perhaps the second most difficult job in the country, only after the presidency of the United States. To say that he “manages” the firm would be an overstatement. More accurately, he “presides.” Dimon was named CEO in 2005 (when assets were only $1.2 trillion) and is widely given credit for adroitly navigating the financial turmoil of 2008-2009. In 2015, he made $27 million and said that banks were “under assault” by regulators. He keeps two lists in his breast pocket:  what he owes people; what people owe him.

Now 61, he is the subject of much discussion centering on speculation about who his  successor will be. In an interview for Bloomberg Television last September, Dimon said he would leave “when the right person is ready.” But who is ever “ready” and able to run a $2.5 trillion company? No one competently.

Wells Fargo ($2 trillion in assets with 8,500 locations) was thought to be among the best managed banks before, during, and after the crisis until it was revealed last year that it had fired 5,300 employees and clawed back $180 million in compensation, due to the unauthorized opening of 2 million customer accounts. A flawed “decentralized structure” and perverse sales culture were to blame for illicit activities that occurred over a decade.

Fortune Magazine in March 2007, with sterling irony, named Lehman Brothers (No. 1) and Bear Stearns (No. 2), respectively, as the most admired companies in the securities industry. By the end of 2008 Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy (the largest in U.S. history, $692 billion) and Bear Stearns had been sold in a fire sale by fiat to JPMorgan Chase.

Big banks are driven by avarice and algorithms (complicated code-directing computers to effect financial transactions by the millisecond), not altruism. Lending is secondary to speculating. Complexity has replaced familiarity. Vaults hold more data than gold. And traders can destroy banks faster than boards of directors. On any given business day, no executive or regulator can be certain of the health of these institutions.

This is the new Wall Street alchemy.

The first public signs of distress in the financial system before the Crash of 2008 appeared 10 years ago, when a July 2007 letter to the firm’s investors disclosed that two obscure hedge funds managed by Bear Stearns had collapsed. The long fuse had been lit. The Great Recession was triggered. And the torch paper was provided in the form of legislation.

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley) neutered the Banking Act of 1933 (known as Glass-Steagall), which separated the riskier elements of investment banking from the more conservative aspects of commercial banking. The 1999 law spurred a new model of financial supermarkets (banking, investments and insurance under one company). It also unwittingly fostered a new risk-taking model:  Losses could be socialized (depositors, shareholders, taxpayers) while profits could be privatized (executive compensation). Exotic financial instruments and ineffective regulatory oversight fueled the meltdown.

Today’s big banks largely resemble Zuzu’s petals in the film It’s a Wonderful Life, seemingly mended but not made better. During the  Crash/Panic of 2008, the federal government engineered the financial equivalent of pasting damaged rose petals in a desperate attempt to prevent the total collapse of the banking sector. It effectively merged the unwieldy likes of Merrill Lynch with Bank of America, Bear Stearns with JP Morgan and Wachovia with Wells Fargo. 

In the wake of the crisis (which ultimately required $1.59 trillion in government bailouts and another $12 trillion in guarantees and loans), The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 became law. It sought to make the financial system safer and fairer than it had been, to reduce the risk of financial crises, to protect the economy from this kind of devastating costs of risky behavior, and to provide a process for the orderly disposition of failing firms. But after a staggering 848 pages and 8,843 new rules and regulations, Dodd-Frank does nothing to reduce the size of, and hence the systemic risk posed by, the biggest banks.

“We may have gotten past the crisis of 2008,” Foroohar concludes in her book, but, disturbingly, “we have not fixed our financial system.” Bankers still “exert immense soft power” via the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street. And today’s top government regulators are littered with former banking executives, who are “disinclined to police the industry.”  

The idea of overhauling big banks, however, is attracting some surprising converts.

In May, President  Trump acknowledged that he was “looking at” breaking up the big banks. And the principal architects and former co-heads of the first financial supermarket — Citigroup — have had an epiphany of sorts. In 2015,  ex-Citicorp CEO John Reed wrote in the Financial Times that “the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that.” And in 2012, Sandy Weill, another former Citicorp  CEO, called for a return to Glass-Steagall.

Dodd-Frank mandates that the Federal Reserve conduct annual stress tests on financial institutions with assets over $50 billion. This year’s test on 34 banks relied upon enhanced computer modeling to assess how those banks would perform under “adverse and severely adverse” economic conditions. But such modeling is an unreliable predictor of reality. As JPMorgan Chase knows well.

In May 2012, The New York Times provided insights into massive trading losses at JP Morgan Chase. The bank had little idea that the losses were brewing. It entrusted computer modeling pioneered by its bankers in the 1990s to identify and measure potential losses. But the bank tripped up its measurements. It deployed a new model that underestimated losses; when it redeployed the old model, it nearly doubled the losses. As The Times chillingly remembers, such computer programs “proved useless during the financial crisis.”

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer, former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and frequent contributor to New England Diary. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: RINO Baker drifts left along with the anti-Trump Bay State

For many Massachusetts Republicans, Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration is the advancement of a dishonest marketing campaign:  Baker and Switch. (Run as a Republican, cozy up to Democrats, disown the Republican Party.) Rejected Republicans, perhaps feeling duped from day one, should take note. Baker’s dispiriting drift to the left may just prove to be a stroke of genius for re-election in 2018. It’s a plan without Republicans — the abandoned, fatherless children of Massachusetts politics.

The plan was actually hatched well before President Trump skunked The Party of Ronald Reagan. As  a Baker senior adviser, Tim Buckley, told The Atlantic, the governor’s campaign in 2014 focused from the beginning on “showing he could say ‘screw you’ to the Republican Party.” Those words have proven to be prophetic and strategic.

The cold calculus of political reality, as Baker’s team knows, does not favor any Republican in the Commonwealth, let alone an incumbent Republican governor. As of February 2017, there were 4,486,849 registered voters in Massachusetts, with just 479,237 registered Republicans (11 percent of the total). Unenrolled voters numbered 2,424,979 (54 percent) while registered Democrats numbered 1,526,870 (34 percent).

Since the 2014 election, unenrolled voters have increased by 133,824, while Republican voters have increased by only 9,973. Increased unenrolled voter registration is trending upwards, and may accelerate, as Trumpism (a governing style resembling the Coney Island Cyclone) roars through the land.

Even though Baker beat Martha Coakley by just 40,165 votes in 2014, the election was a blue lagoon of civility.

Next year’s election, by comparison, will be a dark pool of uncertainty but will certainly feature a rabid anti-Trump sentiment and, by extension and association, Republican defensive posturing. And in the Commonwealth — what fun! — the proselytizing progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren will also be on the ballot. Republicans will be the expendables. Something the governor, understandably, wishes to defy for himself.

Baker is an elusive electoral enigma.

He is a social liberal and a fiscal conservative who has melted the cryogenically frozen corpse of {Nelson} Rockefeller Republicanism into new life. He enjoys a 75 percent approval rating in a state where Democrats control 79 percent of the House and 83 percent of the Senate, and Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly won last November (61 percent to Trump’s 33 percent). He maintains a working relationship with House Speaker Robert DeLeo (where massive power resides), whose understated temperament is like his own. And,  he operates without a political base, given the minuscule minority status of his party.

Seemingly harboring zero national ambitions, Baker would be the first Republican Massachusetts governor to be re-elected since William Weld, in 1994 (who resigned in 1997 after being nominated as U.S. ambassador to Mexico – a nomination killed by right-wing North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms).

Baker’s survival instincts are validated by this paradoxical fact:  Even as prospective Democratic gubernatorial candidates (Setti Warren, Jay Gonzalez and Bob Massie) rightly cite his lack of grand vision for Massachusetts, many Democrats on Beacon Hill quietly concede that state government is functioning better under the bipartisan executive leadership of Baker than it did under his predecessor, Democrat Deval Patrick (who, with contempt for hands-on management, always spoke with a grand vision).

As The Boston Globe noted the other week, “State Democrats turn attention to Trump, not Baker, at convention.”

Still, for conservatives (a fringe of the fringe in the Commonwealth) hoping there might be some application of conservative ideas in this playground of progressivism, there is deep dissatisfaction with the governor. His risky political plan (popularity is perishable; a large unenrolled bloc can shift allegiance quickly) is, some believe, at the expense of foundational principles.

Howie Carr recently wrote in the Boston Herald:  “As his first term in the Corner Office  {of the State House} continues, it seems that the Republican-in-Name-Only (RINO) governor finds himself more and more ‘disappointed,’ not just with his party affiliation, but also with the drift of public affairs in general.”

That might explain Baker’s puzzling appointment last week of Rosalin Acosta, a Lowell bank executive, as his labor secretary. Acosta (a progressive activist and anti-Trump enthusiast) and her husband this year founded Indivisible Northern Essex, a liberal advocacy group that began supporting progressive candidates around the country. Should a progressive run against Baker, whom would Acosta vote for?

James P. Freeman, an occasional contributor to New England Diary, is a New England-based essayist, former Cape Cod Times columnist and former financial-services executive. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Boston shows that Charlie Baker was right about charter schools

Plaque on School Street in Boston marking the first site of the Boston Latin School, founded in 1635 as the first public school in what would become the United States.

Boston's charter schools have received a record number of applications. This welcome development should prompt  Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who rightly and robustly supports charter schools, to renew efforts to reconsider expansion of these schools.

As reported in The Boston Globe, 16 charter schools in Boston “collectively received 35,000 applications for about 2,100 available seats,” according to the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. Those same schools received 13,000 applications in the previous period. It is believed that a new online application system contributed to this year’s spike, making it easier for applicants to apply to multiple schools.

It is yet unclear if the number of applicants increased. Unquestionably, though, demand far outweighs supply; the odds of getting into one of these schools this fall have risen to 16 to one. Previously, there were three or four applicants per seat, The Globe notes, citing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.

Such a surge in applications may be surprising since a ballot measure  in Massachusetts last fall seeking to expand the number of charter schools failed overwhelmingly, by a margin of 38 percent to 62 percent. Baker supported the measure.

“Opponents,” wrote wbur.com last November, “apparently swayed voters with their arguments that charter schools do not serve the neediest students, drain money from district schools, and could have proved ‘apocalyptic’ for city budgets and led to less state oversight of how charters are run.” (Under a reimbursement formula, the state pays school districts 100 percent of per pupil revenue lost to charters in the first year and 25 percent for the next five years.

In the same article, WBUR quoted Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson (now a mayoral candidate) as saying: “We need to have a communal mentality -- one where we elevate all of our young people.” And Jackson was “calling on state lawmakers to fully fund education -- and focus on building up schools in areas like Boston.”

Describing himself as a “longtime supporter” of Boston’s charter schools, in an opinion piece that appeared in The Globe before the ballot measure vote, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (now running as an incumbent for mayor) nevertheless also opposed the ballot question. The “reckless growth” of more charter schools, he feared, “would change our charter culture and greatly increase the likelihood of school failures that hurt kids and discredit the reform movement.” And he added, bizarrely, that charter expansion would have been “fundamentally hostile to the progress of school improvement, the financial health of municipalities, and the principle of local control.”

Last January, in another editorial for The Globe, Walsh called for a 10-year, $1 billion investment plan to build “beautiful, innovative new buildings,” and to presumably renovate Boston’s existing 127 schools. The initiative, part of BuildBPS, is “an incredible opportunity,” he said. He ruefully asserts that “generations of struggle for equity in urban schools have left trust gaps.”

Both Jackson’s and Walsh’s statements -- along with those who oppose increasing the number of charter schools -- reflect today’s progressive orthodoxy and expose the weakness of today’s progressive impulses. For progressivism demands greater access to everything -- healthcare, contraception, happiness -- but not greater access to better education, which charter schools provide. And the progressive state -- harking back to the days of classic liberalism -- believes that an endless stream of monetary inputs (“equity”) results in higher cognitive outputs for public school students, who are threatened by additional charter schools.

What do progressives tell those students whose names this week were not be selected in the lottery that determines enrollment? That Boston Public Schools are a better alternative to charter schools?

Charter Schools, independent public schools that operate under five-year charters granted by Massachusetts’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, were first authorized by the  Education Reform Act of 1993. The first 15 schools opened during the 1995-1996 school year, serving 2,500 students. In 2000 and 2010, legislation was passed to add more schools, to satisfy demand. Today, 78 charter schools educate over 42,000 students annually (representing 4.2 percent of all PK-12 public school population), with nearly 30,000 on waiting lists; Boston is home to 22 charter schools while another 38 are in spread among urban areas outside of Boston.

According to statistics released by the Massachusetts Department of Education, they are remarkably diverse. For the 2016-2017 period, students deemed economically disadvantaged constitute 35.5 percent of charter school population (compared with 27.4 percent for the overall state school population). African-Americans comprise 29.9 percent of charter school population (8.9 percent for the state), while Hispanics are 31.7 percent of charter population (19.4 percent for the state).

And charter schools are remarkably effective. “Charter School Performance in Massachusetts,” a comprehensive study at Stanford University, concluded in 2013 that, “Compared to the educational gains that charter students would have had in TPS [traditional public schools], the analysis shows on average that students in Boston charter schools have significantly larger gains in both reading and mathematics.”

The Baker administration refutes charges that charter schools siphon funds from public schools, to their detriment. In an email communication, Brendon Moss, Baker’s deputy communications director, said that the administration “will continue to make investments in our public schools at historic levels.” Indeed, Moss wrote, funding local schools under the current administration is at an all-time high, now $4.68 billion. The proposed fiscal 2018 budget includes increasing support by more than $90 million, twice the amount required under state law.

Baker understands fully the benefits provided by charter schools and he was right to support their expansion last year. Armed with a record number of applications this year, he should now demand that the legislature correct the mistake clearly made by misguided voters by approving charter school expansion – action that conservatives should robustly support, too.

James P. Freeman, an occasional contributor to New England Diary, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times.

James P. Freeman: With the Trump vaudeville show, it's back to 'Laugh-In'

John Wayne and Tiny Tim helped Laugh-In celebrate its 100th episode in 1971. Co-host Dan Rowan yucks it up in his tuxedo.

“… let’s go to the party!”

                    — Dan Rowan

Without a trace of transgression, Time recently described Donald Trump and his nascent administration as “a vaudeville presidency.” The other week, with absurd appearances by several of the president’s principal architects, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) unwittingly staged this politically charged vaudeville act, replete with comedy, contortion, and commotion that, at times, resembled the television program Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In  that ran in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“Groovy!”

Hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, the unique variety show was, says tv.com, “a fast-moving barrage of jokes, one-liners, running skits, musical numbers as well as making fun of social and political issues” of the period. And so was, CPAC 2017.

Writing for The New York Times Magazine in 1968, Joan Barthel observed that “whatever else it is — and at one time or another Laugh-In is hilarious, brash, flat, peppery, irreverent, satirical, repetitious, risqué, topical and in borderline taste — it is primarily and always fast, fast, fast! And in this it is contemporary. It’s attuned to the times. It’s hectic, electric …”

And so is the Trump administration, which, in its first month has proven to be a series of recurring, improvisational sketches, careening with disorder. Hence, the surreal Laugh-In connection.

“You bet your sweet bippy!”

In the television program, “guests” at the “Cocktail Party” would mill around with drinks in hand or dance to music that would suddenly halt when a party-goer would face the camera to deliver a one-liner or a quick joke. (Today’s party stops and starts again after President Trump transmits on Twitter his version of one-liners. (Remember the infamous tweet about the “so-called judge”?)

CPAC was, without a hint of hysteria, hijacked by a few of its guests vicariously reprising several popular segments of Laugh-In: “Mod, Mod World,” (Russian sabotage?); “Laugh-in Looks at the News” (fake news?); and the “Joke Wall” (the great Wall of Mexico?). With life imitating art, these cameo appearances made this year’s CPAC disturbingly memorable. And laughable.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, a few weeks ago on Meet the Press said that the White House press secretary used “alternative facts.” (Of which Rolling Stone rightly said, “the Trump presidency had its first laugh line.”) Telling attendees on Feb.23 in anticipation of Trump’s appearance the next day of the conference — stop the music! — “Well, I think by tomorrow this will be TPAC.”

But what was lost among the intermittent laughter was this stunning punchline: “Every great movement,” Conway said, “ends up being a little bit sclerotic and dusty after a time.” That line was directed at Reagan conservatives. Just as Laugh-In had obliterated conventional variety show boundaries, Trump World is eschewing traditional conservatism, simultaneously ransacking it and redefining it. Even as Conway formally announces the end of the Reagan Revolution, President Trump cleverly says his victory was a “win for conservative values.”

“Verrrry interesting!”

Apparently, Vice President Mike Pence was never let in on the punchline.  After finishing his introductory remarks to CPAC with the jab, “all kidding aside,” Pence delivered this bizarre, if not ridiculous comparison: “From the outset, our president [Trump] reminded me of somebody else. A man who inspired me to actually join the cause of conservatism nearly 40 years ago. President Ronald Reagan.” Later, Pence quoted Scripture. Stop the music, again!

And then there was the question-and-answer session with the dynamic duo, Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist, and Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff. Trying to convey a patina of unity and order to this “fine-tuned machine,” Priebus said, “the truth of the matter is … President Trump brought together the party and the conservative movement.” And Priebus also compared Trump to Reagan saying the former also sought “peace through strength.”

Gannon (who led the crusading “alt-right movement” while at Breitbart, used to host his own counterprogramming conference to CPAC, called the “Uninvited”), straight faced, said, “The reason why Reince and I are good partners is that we can disagree.” Hilarious.

Laugh-In fashioned its aesthetic from the counterculture of the 1960s (“sit-ins,” “love-ins,” and “teach-ins”), reasons britannica.com. The show “tapped into the zeitgeist in a way no other show had, appealing to both flower children and middle-class Americans.” And Bannon, a counterculture conservative, likewise believes that “the power of this movement” will appeal to a broad spectrum of people too. Or will it?

One board member of the American Conservative Union (CPAC’s host) told The Daily Beast that, “‘The craziest elements of the [party] have managed to get every single thing they wanted over the past year … This is the shape our movement is in today.’”

“And that’s the truth!”

But first, a few words from our president, who openly mocked CPAC in his monologue-cum-speech Feb. 24 by declaring, “You finally have a president.” (Read President Reagan’s elegant 1981 CPAC speech, and his 1987 CPAC speech in which he imagined the future of conservative values; “a vision that works.”) Trump in his stand-up said, “We’re going to put the regulation industry out of work and out of business. And, by the way, I want regulation.” On his Cabinet: “I assume we’re setting records for that. That’s the only thing good about it, is we’re setting records. I love setting records.”

Recalling his first CPAC speech years before, with “very little notes, and even less preparation,” Trump quipped, “So, when you have practically no notes and no preparation, and you leave and everybody was thrilled, I said, ‘I think I like this business’.”  

During the 1968 presidential campaign, candidate Richard Nixon taped a six second clip for “Laugh-In,” reprising one of its signature gag lines. Nixon won the election and Dick Martin jokingly confessed, “A lot of people have accused us.” After CPAC 2017, Reagan conservatives are the butt of the joke and target of that gag line:

“Sock it to me!”

James P. Freeman,  an occasional contributor to New England Diary, is a writer and financial-services professional.  He’s a former columnist for The Cape Cod Times. This piece first ran in the New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Now it's U2 vs. the Trump regime

Suit and tie comes up to me
His face red
Like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colours of a royal flush
And he’s peeling off those dollar bills

— “Bullet the Blue Sky,” 1987

U2’s angry, angst-driven anthem was meant to be a stinging political commentary on President Ronald Reagan’s ‘80s foreign policy, and the band’s seminal work, The Joshua Tree, was, by extension, an explorative essay about Americana, with Nevada’s desert plain serving as its cinematic lyrical leitmotif.

But today, still infatuated with America as an idea, U2 has substituted Donald Trump for Ronald Reagan, and the inspiration for the band’s newly announced tour, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the album, is really an elaborate ruse of anti-Trumpism, not a trip through the wires of celebratory nostalgia.

Fans should be prepared.

The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 (stopping in Greater Boston at Gillette Stadium on June 25) seems steeped in sentimentalism — with the band even having re-created a photo based upon the iconic album cover — given the original recording’s massive popularity and youthful idealism. But guitarist The Edge, in a recent Rolling Stone interview, provides fair warning and the reasoning behind this surprise tour:  “The election [happened] and suddenly the world changed … The Trump election. It’s like a pendulum has suddenly just taken a huge swing in the other direction.”

Meaning, evidently, the wrong direction.

He further explained that “things have kind of come full circle, if you want. That record was written in the mid-‘80s, during the Reagan-Thatcher era of British and U.S. politics. It was a period when there was a lot of unrest. Thatcher was in the throes of trying to put down the miners’ strike; there was all kinds of shenanigans going on in Central America. It feels like we’re right back there in a way.”

And The Edge added that while this tour is “not really about nostalgia,” the songs “have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn’t have three years ago, four years ago.” That was under President Obama’s America of “safe-spaces” and universal health care. (The band played at a pre-inaugural concert in Washington, D.C., eight years ago, heralding his election.) Trump’s America, by contrast, is now a dangerous netherworld, as U2 sees it.

Two U2 shows in 2016 offer a kinetic prelude to shows coming this spring.

Last fall, before the election, performances at the iHeartRadio Music Festival and Dreamforce, in Las Vegas and San Francisco, respectively, were infused with vitriolic rants about Trump and the kind of degenerated America one should expect under his leadership.

During the song “Desire” at the iHeart show, with a video backdrop of Trump speaking, Bono asks those in attendance, “Are you ready to gamble the American Dream?” And if they were to vote for Trump they would, he admonished, lose “everything.”

James P. Freeman, an occasional contributor, is a writer and in financial services. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Friedman's partly conservative look at adapting to accelerating change

Gentle reader, if the feverish pace of change in technology, globalization and climate change both fascinates and frightens you, read Thomas Friedman’s new book, Thank You for Being Late.  His forensic examination and farsighted explanation of the acceleration of everything is an exercise in expeditionary learning and his prescription for adapting to this new world disorder should also appeal to conservatives.

Friedman, a New York Times columnist, is perceived to be as progressive as the paper he writes for. But that assessment doesn’t apply here. As he described it last year, he belongs to the party of “nonpartisan extremism” and his political alignment is “to the far left and the far right at the same time.”

Thank You for Being Late (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), currently ranks number 10 on the New York Times Combined Print and E-Book Nonfiction List and, published last fall, essentially is an epilogue to Alvin Toffler’s 1970 best-seller sensation, Future Shock (a book about feeling overwhelmed by change). Toffler’s assessment 47 years ago, was, basically, he wrote, “first approximations of the new realities.” So is Friedman’s for a world dominated by cyberspace.

The central argument of Friedman’s book is that technology (due to “Moore’s Law” — whereby computing power has been doubling every two years for the last 50 years), globalization (the “Market”) and climate change (“Mother Nature”) have all collided and now constitute the “age of acceleration.” These three accelerations “are impacting one another” and, at the same time, are “transforming almost every aspect of modern life.”

Friedman believes that the collision occurred roughly 20 years ago, 2007, with technological advancements in computing power (processing chips, software, storage chips, networking, and sensors) that formed a new platform. This platform “suffused a new set of capabilities to connect, collaborate and create throughout every aspect of life, commerce, and government.” These capabilities are smarter, faster, smaller, cheaper and more efficient. It is not coincidental, therefore, that that year saw the advent of the first iPhone, symbolic of this massive transformation.

The challenge posed by these exponential rates of change is our ability to absorb and adapt to them. “Many of us,” Friedman writes, “cannot keep pace anymore.” Eric Teller, head of Google’s X research and development lab, said, “[T]hat is causing us cultural angst.” And Teller warns that “our societal structures are failing to keep pace with the rate of change.”

Our fragile customs, traditions and mores are certainly being pressured in this all-digital, frenetic — if not homogenized — globalized environment. But Friedman is concerned that government itself has not kept up. The process of government — its lawmaking and structural components — should live in parallel with, and not be an impediment to, this  age of accelerating change, he advises.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a sort of conservative futurist, nearly a decade ago understood that government is not forward-thinking. In his book Winning the Future, he observed that “We live in a world defined by the speed, convenience, and efficiency of the 21st century, but with a government bureaucracy invented in the 19th century.”

This may partially explain the phenomenon of the presidency of Donald Trump and many Americans’ presumed desire to radically reform government. Trump may have tapped into the belief that today’s government is not only not operationally progressive but too philosophically progressive — that it is out of sync both with technological advances and with the will of the people.

But what will attract cautious conservatives who wish to retain American ideals within a constitutional republic in an era of trans-global bits and bytes that have no allegiance to American values? They face this while addressing this troubling fact, in Friedman’s words : “That we are creating vast new ungoverned spaces — free from rules, laws, and the FBI, let alone God — is indisputable’’.

Amidst the columnist’s 461 pages of analytics and anecdotes he understands that “geo-politics has to be reimagined in the age of accelerations, just like everything else.” He also realizes that we must “reimagine our domestic politics too.” Much of his list of 18 ideas should appeal to conservatives (which includes support for free-trade agreements, tightening border security, reforming bankruptcy laws and review of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations), despite his constant clamoring for immediate action on climate disruption. (In the 1970s, some in the news media warned of a coming ice age.)

Conservatives should also be elated with this novel nugget: “Today we need to reverse the centralization of power that we’ve seen over the past century in favor of decentralization. The national government has grown so big bureaucratically that it is way too slow to keep up with change in the pace of change.” Today, a centralized government is inefficient and out of step with the maddening drive towards efficiency and push for better performance.

Still, Friedman is bullish on the future. He is indeed optimistic that a better world will be made by, and we can adapt to, these accelerations. He sees local government starting to embrace these concepts.

Thank You for Being Late does not delve into the psychological ramifications about the effects of such rapid change on individuals and societies that Future Shock does; nor does it capture the sense of dislocation being experienced today. But it is just as compelling.

And there is exquisite irony in the timing of this new effort. Toffler died last year just months prior to the publication of Friedman’s captivating book. He nonetheless would have agreed with Friedman’s conclusion about these new realities. “I hope that it is clear by now that every day going forward we’re going to be asked to dance in a hurricane.”

James P. Freeman, an occasional contributor, is a writer who also works in financial services. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Schilling could destroy the Mass. GOP

Tracing the “psychologies” and “pathologies” of this season’s presidential election in her new book, The Year of Voting Dangerously, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes that the “fury” of the 2016 electorate is spawning a number of “wildly improbable candidates [for down ballot races] in both parties.” Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one such improbable candidate just announced his intention to seek public office.

Curt Schilling, the former Red Sox pitcher and an avid Trump supporter, has announced he plans to challenge U.S. Sen.  Elizabeth Warren in 2018.

What has Schilling been up to lately? Since his Red Sox days, Schilling has become – wait for it — an entrepreneur and entertainer. His disastrous foray into business, the doomed 38 Studios, is but one piece of fodder for Warren to feast upon. Purportedly a limited government and small business conservative, Schilling was lured to Rhode Island by  a $75 million taxpayer-backed  loan guarantee to launch a video-game company. It went bankrupt in 2012 and four years later is still scandal plagued. His insincere and insipid explanation of the matter in The Providence Journal last week is reminiscent of Trump’s explanations of his sexual shenanigans: Deny it and blame another party.

Like the Republican presidential nominee, Schilling has taken to Facebook and Twitter and blogging as a means of distributing his often rambling and incoherent thoughts. But this gem from an April 19 posting can be taken earnestly: “I’m loud, I talk too much, I think I know more than I do, those and a billion other issues I know I have.”

This past April, Schilling was fired from ESPN as a baseball analyst for a meme he posted on Facebook “that appeared to mock transgender people,” noted The Atlantic. Before this incident, in August of 2015 he was suspended by ESPN for posting an anti-Muslim meme.

Last month Schilling debuted a new radio program. Describing him as an “outspoken conservative,” The Boston Globe underscored that he “solidified the show’s right-leaning reputation” when he interviewed commentator Ann Coulter. And the hits keep on coming… It has been announced that Schilling is joining Breitbart with an online radio show, giving him national exposure. As nymag.com posted: “‘He got kicked off ESPN for his conservative views. He’s a really talented broadcaster,’ Breitbart editor in chief Alex Marlow said.”

But Mass. Republicans beware. What Trump has done to national politics — reducing the once respectable national Republican Party to rubble — his Massachusetts Mini-Me just may do to the state GOP.

Just as the state party has regained its respectability with the 2014 election of Gov. Charlie Baker,  a Schilling candidacy would mark its sure death-knell in 2018. State Republican leaders should be mindful that Schilling would appear on the same 2018 ballot as Baker, should the governor run for reelection.

Baker, popular and pragmatic, has proven that a Republican can be successful in campaigning and governing in a state where he is vastly outnumbered by Democrats. Baker, therefore, should be the party’s primary concern and should not have to effectively compete with the incendiary Schilling, a probable Great Distractor, and a likely formidable Democratic challenger. State GOP Chair Kirsten Hughes will hopefully understand this now, seeing as how National GOP Chair Reince Priebus surrendered to Trump; Priebus never understood the Trump effect and allowed Trump to pillage the party.

Senator Warren should almost be allowed to run unopposed as a national and local beacon of the bankrupt ideas and principles of progressivism, and her crowning achievement, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In an imagined superpower summit between Hillary Clinton and Warren in her book, Dowd envisions the senator saying, “I only loaned Bernie [Sanders] my progressive hordes. I’m the real leader of that movement.” But that is art imitating life.

Nevertheless, it will be ugly watching Warren make mincemeat out of Schilling.

James P. Freeman, a friend of New England Diary, is a New England-based essayist and former banker. This first ran in the New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: The political and economic bankruptcy of Occupy Boston

Dewey Square; South Station is on the right.

“Ba de ya, say do you remember
Ba de ya, dancing in September”

-- Earth Wind & Fire, “September”

Dancing with debauchery and disorder, despite projecting a message of harmonious dissension, “Occupy Boston” first pillaged Dewey Square, Boston, on Sept. 30, 2011. For 72 days its participants appeared to be darlings of left-leaning media and left-leaning office holders until the lawless occupation of public space was finally dismantled. Today, remarkably, the Occupy movement is a fast-fading memory, its professed “cause” aimless and irrelevant. What happened?

The so-called “contagious protest,” better known nationally as Occupy Wall Street (eventually spreading to eighty-two countries), began in New York City’s financial district on Sept. 17, 2011. It spawned mini movements across America, including Boston, as a means to express outrage over social and economic inequality.

Remember the random “General Assemblies,” “people’s mics” (individual: “We…!” echoed by group: “We…!,” repeating the rude call and response ad nauseam…) and nefarious public behavior (Bella Bond was conceived in a tent in the Occupy Boston encampment)?

In a post-mortem, The Boston Globe determined that Occupy attracted  “populist dreamers, anti-corporate crusaders, and street-weary homeless people to the site near South Station.” And further concluded that “city officials embraced much of the message, but eventually tired of the methods.”

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frances A. McIntyre initially let the lawlessness to continue before allowing an “orderly dispersal.” For a group without permit, the late Thomas Menino, Boston’s Mayor, cited “patience” and “respect” regarding their repeated intransigence. It is hard to imagine that judges and politicians would allow conservative groups -- like the Tea Party -- such leniency, given that past decisions were largely political reactions, not legal imperatives.   

Wired.com even went so far as to write that Occupy changed “Americans’ political and social dialogue.” Really? Occupy was mostly devoid of ideas and dialogue. That may explain why it is largely confined now to social-media meanderings. Today, @Occupy_Boston (boasting “we are the wicked pissah 99%”) and occupyboston.org seem more interested in the Dakota Access Pipeline than local matters involving social justice.

Then, as now, scattershot Occupiers commanded little attachment to policymakers, had no vertical or horizontal governance and no inclination to create a structure that would allow greater integration into the political process. In New York, an internal battle erupted at one point between incessant drummers and speakers interfering with one another’s “space” and “respect” (today, those same people would consider such acts as microagressions). It was an unsustainable, ungovernable morass.

Just two weeks before Occupy Boston began, Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat that was “occupied” by Scott Brown. Brazenly, Warren said, “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they [Occupy] do,” adding that, “I support what they do.” If anyone was going to be its leader, Warren surely was that person. It never happened. But that is a reflection on Occupy, not Warren.

Where was Occupy when Warren the other week rightly and publicly rebuked Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf over the bank’s illegal and unethical behavior (creating as many as two million bogus bank and credit-card accounts without its customers’ authorization, resulting in 5,300 Wells bankers being fired) that continued for years? Where are the demonstrations in front of Wells Fargo Boston offices?  (Mr. Stumpf has since been forced to resign.)

Undeterred, diminished prestige notwithstanding, Occupy Boston still believes that it is a viable political project, as apparently do local mainstream media.

Barely concealing its enthusiasm, Boston Magazine recently reported that Mike Connelly (a self-described “proud, progressive Democrat”), “will almost certainly be the first member of Occupy elected to the State House.” The community organizer, lawyer and activist “vanquished” (according to boston.com) incumbent state Rep. Tim Toomey in a primary contest. Toomey, who has held a seat on Beacon Hill for over 23 years and believes that too much government is not enough, will still continue holding a seat on the Cambridge City Council. Just what Massachusetts needs, more progressive, big-government advocates.

Its ephemeral legacy still intact, Occupy still possesses an enduring lust for believing that more and larger government is the solution to correcting all unfair social and economic inequality. Not a thriving private sector. 

Occupy was, and still is, an out-of-tune, undisciplined political cacophony that lacked, and is lacking, a needed conductor. Martin Luther King Jr., Lech Walesa and Ronald Reagan with Margaret Thatcher, were serious leaders for whom a movement could attach an emotional and intellectual connection; they produced lasting results.

Occupy failed to remember that statues and monuments are built in remembrance of great men and women, their ideas, their leadership and their noble achievements. For those anonymous roving circles clattering in hoodies in 2011 -- where artificial rebellion and flimsy political construct was a form of hobby -- their movement’s memorial was always going to be discarded power-washed cardboard signs and kitschy cyber junk, fitting codas.

After five years, the ideas are still bankrupt, the dialogue is dying and Dewey Square is once again a public place of grandeur.  

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and a former Cape Cod Times columnist. This piece firstran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: The indomitable spirit of my Cape Cod aunt

On the Cape Cod National Seashore.

My aunt, Irene Doane, lived a life that was uniquely Cape Cod -- where she lived her entire life -- but also recalled, in many ways,  the broader America of the 20th Century… full of ups and downs, hopes and heartbreaks, and vast change during her nearly 90 years on the Cape.

She was born in1927, in the Roaring Twenties,  which Scott Fitzgerald dubbed “The Jazz Age,’’ two years before October 1929 crash that led to the Great Depression. And like many Americans of that generation, her character was cemented by the Second World War. These events guided and informed her patriotism, independence, indomitable spirit, and, as would be evident later in life, her survival instincts. With gusto.

These traits were validated when she met my uncle, George, who himself embraced many of these values. Just as he had landed on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day, he landed in her heart. For 50 years as a married couple. It is hard to believe that he died almost 20 years ago. Yet she fought on with her own brand of style and swagger.

When I moved to New England permanently, in late 2002, I got to know her much better. When I was living in Orleans that first winter; we had dinner together nearly every two weeks. I still marvel at her love of nature (it was merely coincidence that she lived on Chick-a-dee Lane and that the state bird in Massachusetts is the Black-capped Chickadee) and her dedication to the many social organizations -- her extended family – the guilds, lodges and women’s groups, not to mention aspiring public officials.

These were the days of real, actual human interaction, before the days that my generation would think of social interaction as the digital space of Twitter and Facebook. Coffee at her home base, “The Homeport,” in Orleans, will never be the same. Sunday suppers will lose some of their charm.

I will miss her at family gatherings like Christmas and the Fourth of July, where she was always checking on the family. And the stories. The Freeman gift of gab. One in particular is priceless and was recalled by a 1955 Cape Codder column entitled “Scuttlebutt.”

“George and Irene Doane of Orleans recently turned in their Ford for a new model. Last week Irene drove the new car to the center to do her marketing. She came out of the store loaded down with the makings for a good chicken dinner. And over in the parking lot sat the old Doane car, having been purchased by someone else. Well, you guessed it! Irene marched right up to the familiar vehicle, opened the back door and deposited her groceries on the seat. Then she went back to do some more shopping. Later, half way home in the new car, she noticed that there were no groceries on the back seat. Realizing what she had done, Irene hurried back to the center. But the other car had pulled out. Needless to say, George didn’t have chicken that night.”

We do not know God’s plan but in a way, God’s plan was entirely fitting this time, in that she passed away as fall began. With the approaching explosion of colors, a reminder of one of the thousands of rich, elegant bouquets she made down the road at Thayer’s Florist Shop, her passion and vocation.

The following passage from Gladys Taber’s My Own Cape Cod, captures beautifully her fondness for nature, literature and storytelling. Even in her last days she was sharing stories.

“Summer slides so gently into autumn on Cape Cod that it is easy to believe there will be no end. Day dreams toward twilight, skies are sapphire, the tide ebbs quietly. I begin to think time itself is arrested and the green leaves will stay forever on the trees. Gardens glow with color, with the roses and with carpets of zinnias and asters….

Times have changed but the Harvest Moon of September exerts the same magic, shines so bright. The fishing boats that are at anchor in the channel nudge the piling softly, perhaps dreaming of tomorrow.”

Our tomorrows will be a little sadder now that she has departed us. But we are comforted in knowing that she will see George soon and that means there will certainly be a good story somewhere too, a story, no doubt, rich with New England humor, imagery and traditions. We can all dream about that…  

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based essayist.    

James P. Freeman: Boston's role in the saga of U2

“I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but even at this stage, I do feel that we are meant to be one of the great groups”

                                                -- Bono, as told to Rolling Stone, 1981  

No one could have imagined the significance of that first gathering, held in a kitchen, over the north side of Dublin, on a Saturday… Sept. 25, 1976, to be precise. Equipped with makeshift instruments and make-believe invincibility -- admittedly with more ambition than ability -- four teenage friends, known simply as Paul, Dave, Larry and Adam, formed a collective that would eventually be called U2.  

Forty years later, still friends and known universally as Bono, Edge, Larry and Adam, and still intact as a band, U2 remains rock music’s most enduring super group.

As Bruce Springsteen said in March, 2005 -- while recalling seeing U2 perform in the early 1980s -- during his marvelously reverential Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech, “I was listening to the last band of whom I would be able to name all of its members. They had an exciting show and a big, beautiful sound. They lifted the roof.”

That sound has sold 157 million records worldwide and won 22 Grammy awards in America.

Still, after all these years, there is something uniquely appealing about U2 today. Certainly, there is the romantic idealism of their music (the “plangent sensuality” of Bono’s voice and “radiant lyricism” of The Edge’s guitar) along with their quest for social justice through global activism. But that only partially explains it. Perhaps most importantly, they embrace a transcendent spirituality that is captured in all their work.

“From the start,”  reasons The Rolling Stone Files, “U2’s post-alienationist rock has stressed communion over segregation, compassion over blame, hope over despair.” Just this past week on the PBS program, Charlie Rose, Bono insisted that music is the “language of the spirit.” U2’s work is the “beautiful arc” of melodies and ideas. And in U2’s post-punk vernacular, their spirituality is “pure joy as an act of defiance.”

In many respects, U2 has been defined by defiance. They are the sound of defiance. Defying odds, critics, trends, tones, politics, celebrity and mortality.

Boston figured prominently in U2’s long history of melodies and ideas. 

What were the odds that an aspiring, but largely unknown, deejay named Carter Alan from the progressive radio station WBCN-FM, would stumble across two nondescript import forty-five singles on a hot August day in 1980, at Kenmore Square’s New England Music City store, by an Irish outfit named U2? The singles were “A Day Without Me” (beginning with the line “Starting a landslide in my ego”) and “11 O’Clock Tick Tock.” Soon, an import copy of their first full album, Boy, would be featured on the station.   

In his book, the wonderfully engaging Outside Is America, U2 in the U.S., Alan quotes U2’s then-manager, Paul McGuinness, after the band’s first Boston concert on December 13, 1980: “In fact, since you are already playing it [Boy], you can consider yourself to be the first American station to do so.” Their Boston debut -- and just seventh American performance -- occurred at the old Paradise Theater (now known as Paradise Rock Club) on Commonwealth Avenue, where 150 people attended to see U2 support a Detroit band known as Barooga. U2 played 10 songs total, including two encores and “11 O’Clock” was played twice.

Overall, according to U2gigs.com, a kind of Elias Book of Baseball Records for U2 geeks, the group has played 44 concerts in Massachusetts (Boston, Worcester, Foxboro, Somerville, and Amherst) from 1980 to 2015 (their last tour). Since 2005, they have played the venue now sporting the TD Garden name 15 times. The two most-performed songs in Boston are “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (tied at 32 times each). Boston-proper ranks 6^th in the top 25 played cities worldwide.

And what were the odds that the lead singer of U2 would give the Class Day Address at Harvard University on June 6, 2001?

With a charming irreverence -- often times silly and serious -- and inspired bravado, Bono spoke of his efforts at debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries (Jubilee 2000), antiretroviral AIDS drugs for Africa, and the challenges faced by popstars and politicians with a cause (a “new level of ‘unhip’ for me”). There, he asked, “Isn’t ‘Love thy neighbor’ in the global village so inconvenient?”

He also raised this idea: “Civil Rights in America and Europe are bound to human rights in the rest of the world. The right to live like a human. But these thoughts are expensive – they’re going to cost us. Are we ready to pay the price? Is America still a great idea as well as a great country?”

On Charlie Rose, Bono also suggested that U2 is driven by forward movement. “We always think where we’re going,” he said. That is rare for any group of people in business for such a long time who might be more inclined to see where they have gone, not where they are going. Bono at times has intimated that U2 will end when they stop being relevant. So far, they have defied being irrelevant too.

What does the future hold for a band about to enter its fifth decade together?

The song “40” (named after Psalm 40, a song actually played live 400 times, surely a sign of grace over karma) contains a lyric that might lead the way.

“He set my feet upon a rock
“And made my footsteps firm
“Many will see
“Many will see and hear

“I will sing, sing a new song.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and a former Cape Cod Times columnist.

James P. Freeman: Howard Johnson nationalized New England food

“There’s many a king on a gilded throne

 But there’s only one king on an ice‐cream cone.

So we crown him today with friendly acclaim,

All over the country we’ll blazen his name.

With hot dogs barking in approbation,

He’s the man who believes he can feed the nation.”

n  Howard Johnson’s (1940)

Like many like‐minded entrepreneurs, his dream was built on a simple idea with blazing clarity: “I figured that America really preferred good food nicely served,” and if it was made “as attractive as I knew how, easy to look at and hard to forget,” it would surely be successful, reasoned the founder of the eponymous restaurant, Howard Johnson, during The Great Depression.

Johnson, raised in Quincy, did indeed feed the nation and helped create the modern hospitality industry. But as widely reported just before Labor Day weekend, just one restaurant, in Lake George, N.Y., now bears the name “Howard Johnson’s. ‘’

With a prologue set firmly in New England, the spectacular rise and fall of this cultural icon is a quintessentially American story; it represents brilliantly the paradox of the creative destruction in democratic capitalism — in which the outdated is constantly replaced by new and better products and, ultimately, new and better processes. And with a delicious irony — being the very purveyors of disposable consumerism they helped to create — the epilogue also reflects today’s Baby Boomers’ sentimental nostalgia about a past they helped destroy, itself a gorgeous paradox of cultural progress.

But what a story it was. Much of it is recalled in his wonderfully reverential book, A History of Howard Johnson’s: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon, by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco.

It began as a store in Wollaston, Mass., in 1926. In the 1950s he pioneered efforts at freezing complete meals, which became staples in supermarkets. By 1969, at its corporate peak and prestige, a new restaurant was opening every nine days and a lodge every two weeks.

So large was this conglomerate that by 1975 the company had grown to 929 Howard Johnson’s restaurants, 32 Red Coach Grill restaurants, 63 Ground Round restaurants, and 536 motor lodges in 42 states, Puerto Rico and Canada. Successful entrepreneurs rely upon risk and luck and Johnson had a hunch. He rightly thought that Americans would be mobile with the advent of the automobile and with the creation of the Interstate Highway System (after the Great Depression and after World War II) they would be hungry too. And eventually tired.

As Sammarco notes, the “phenomenal growth” of Howard Johnson’s was “based on the application of two relatively new and untried concepts.” Johnson pioneered the retail franchise (where others bore start‐up costs) and also standardized the operations (branding, menus, décor). Howard Johnson’s restaurants and motor lodges became familiar terrain on roads from Maine to Florida and points west, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

In many respects, Johnson nationalized New England. While the fried clam had been on Boston’s Parker House (hotel) menu beginning in 1865, Johnson introduced the fried clam strip (known as the “Tendersweet”) to America in 1951. Later, chef Jacques Pepin was brought in to prefect New England clam chowder. And, Sammarco writes, Johnson’s colonial‐style motor lodges “were attractive to nostalgic Americans,” and the architectural style was from a “melting pot of New England style that triggered the ‘old‐fashioned comfort’” with Americans.

But in the 1970s America experienced economic discontentment and dislocation because of its first great energy crisis and inflation. Travelers were driving less and flying more. Fast food chains such as McDonald’s and up‐scale hotels such as Marriott perfected the business model that Johnson had begun 40 years before. Many in the public came to see Howard Johnson’s as “dated” and “old‐fashioned” and its traditions uncool.

The bulk of the company was sold to a  British conglomerate, Imperial Group Limited, in 1979.

Still, the story of Howard Johnson’s captures the rapid cultural changes of 20th‐Century America that continue to reverberate today. For many Boomers, their collective memory of “HoJo’s” is best remembered in faded family photographs taken over the years in the same rest stops along America’s highways and byways or Polaroids taken at the same restaurant for a sundae after a game or postcards sold in the lobbies of the same motor lodges during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. It was a shared experience for which today’s generation can barely comprehend.

Today, for Millennials, there is no station wagon, no family road trip, no journey, no picture, no place like Howard Johnson’s; their idea of permanence and remembrance is a digital image “selfie” that disappears in 10 seconds on Snapchat.

Soon, service will mean a meal delivered by drone.

At the intersection of Routes 6A and 28 in Orleans still stands the structure that housed the first franchised Howard Johnson’s, in 1935 (about 25 miles from where the Pilgrims ate their first meal in the New World, in 1620). Since it was sold in 1979, it has changed names four times. Today it is painted in neutral browns and beiges. It looked and felt much better with the distinctive orange roof and turquoise blue shutters and 28 flavors, during an era that is by-gone, but not forgotten.

James P.  Freeman, a New England essayist, is a former Cape Cod Times columnist and was formerly in the financial-services industry. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: State representative a brilliant warrior against the opioid crisis

Massachusetts state Rep. Randy Hunt was casually flippant — but with an intentionally serious undertone — when he imagined the day when constituents would call him complaining that they “can’t find any heroin anymore.”

Given the still-raging opioid crisis in the Commonwealth, that call will take time arriving as four people die every day of overdose here. But Hunt (R.-Sandwich), who sits on the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse and recognized as one of the state’s top thinkers on this crisis, is still hopeful that that day will indeed arrive.

Today, every community in Massachusetts is fighting a two-front war involving illegal street heroin (the contents of which are largely unknown to both dealer and user), and legally prescribed — and highly addictive — medications (oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone). Both fronts of chemical cousins have collided, forming a complicated battle line which is forcing elected officials to devise new means of productive combat.

Hunt realizes that this also is a public-policy crisis, involving addiction, criminal justice, immigration, a maze of public entities not normally known for successfully collaborating and patience (see Special Commission on Substance Addiction Treatment in the Criminal Justice System). In 2014, he was instrumental in passing ASSIST Act (creating a path for formulating long-term strategies). HisWeb site  is must-reading for those interested in information, not just data on the subject matter. Much of his public service is dedicated to seeking solutions to this man-made epidemic.

Sitting comfortably in his office and appropriately dressed for a typically humid August day, Hunt was stoically reflective on why he has taken such a zealous interest. He said that “the opiate epidemic was going to be one of the biggest problems we would be facing,” after reading the work done by the OxyContin and Heroin Commission, during the 2009-2010 legislative session, just before he was elected to the House of Representatives.

Shortly after joining the legislature, he determined that “very few of my colleagues had any appreciation of the scope of the problem.” Today they do. Awareness, seemingly, is no longer an issue. But action, what kind of action, and specifically, efficacious action, is another matter.

Last year, the governor — who consulted with Hunt about the crisis during the 2014 gubernatorial election — commissioned the Governor’s Opioid Working Group (GOWG). This past March, a landmark bill limiting certain prescriptions on opioids was signed into law. Progress was made for those seeking treatment for addiction, requiring weeks of treatment without pre-authorization, a recognition of the critical need for immediate assistance. Over the course of the last year, more than two-thirds of the 65 recommendations made by GOWG have been implemented. And work continues on prevention, education and early interdiction.

But the statistics are a staggering stampede of defiance.

The year Hunt was elected, in 2010, the Commonwealth reported just 526 opioid-related deaths. Last year, that figure rose to 1,531 deaths and, incredibly, 221 of the 351 towns and cities in the state reported at least one overdose death in 2015. Hunt had hoped that 2015 would have been the “high water mark” for these grim figures but already the deaths for the first half of 2016 are estimated to be higher than those for the first half of 2015. “Policy,” he reasons, “takes time to filter” through the system. And annual appropriations may be short-term fixes for a problem demanding long-term oversight. So he is looking for ways for the state to make commitments in 10-year blocs.

Hunt is as rare as a longhorn in a cranberry bog.

He hails from the dust of El-Paso, Texas, not the dunes of Cape Cod. He is an accountant by profession, not a lawyer or career politician. He is a three-term incumbent Republican in a House controlled 80 percent by Democrats, and yet he is running unopposed in this year’s general election. And his perfect voting record was interrupted this past session only because he served jury duty (having “dropped to 99.11 percent,” as only a CPA could describe it).

Best described as a low-key personality, Hunt nonetheless radiates analytics like a prairie fire, no doubt the burning residue from the exacting science of accountancy; since he applies an outcomes-based approach to solving problems, he is not interested in the vauntingly ambitious or the vaguely ambiguous. Therefore, his method at creating and shifting public policy is markedly different than those of most public officials.

He looks at the supply-demand equation of addiction, where he calls street heroin an “economic rescue,” as it sells far cheaper than pills, when addicts run out of resources and alternatives. But today’s heroin is often laced with an even more powerful additive, fentanyl (that combination was responsible for half of the deaths in 2015). Now, there are legitimate fears that heroin infused with carfentanil, known as an elephant tranquilizer (10,000 times more powerful than morphine), will soon be hitting Massachusetts streets, as it has already in other drug ravaged states.

He wonders if legalizing recreational marijuana is a “gateway behavior” rather than a “gateway drug.” And he is already preparing for the likelihood of the marijuana ballot measure passing this November. If so, does creating a state-chartered bank solve many secondary issues associated with its passage, such as accounting for these new “revenues”?

While Hunt appreciates the emotional and spiritual toll on addicts and their families, he is mindful that solutions will arrive based upon cold metrics — the process of measuring what works, identifying trends that may emerge from using the same tools that yield different results or directions. Accordingly, he is encouraged by the conclusions reached in a recent study of Falmouth High School students, the 2015 Communities That Care Youth Survey. Administered over an eight-year period, it charts a dramatic reduction in drug and alcohol use by students and suggests prevention methods are working.

This simple but powerful indicator gives Hunt hope that someday he will get that phone call about no more heroin.

James P. Freeman is a New England based political writer. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Charlie Baker's quiet reinvention of state government

As the national Republican Party self-immolates as a consequence of its traumatic homage to the incendiary and self-destructive Donald Trump, Massachusetts Republicans should seek solace in knowing that Gov. Charlie Baker is quieting reinventing state government and, in the process, creating a model of New Republicanism.

Baker – and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito – are governing in style and substance that is moderate, pragmatic and unpretentious (there are no hints at being a “compassionate conservative,” for instance) which, even in the firmly progressive commonwealth, is highly effective. It should be considered a new form of Republicanism and a model of success -- especially for the few national Republicans vocalizing an oath of fidelity to the party’s core values.

Even The Boston Globe has taken notice. In a front page story on Aug. 8, it noted that Baker has -- “without grandstanding for the media or waging partisan battles – successfully courted the overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature, declaring victory on many of the major issues he’s tackled in the past 19 months with rarely a word of opposition from longtime lawmakers.”

Citing “no bold agenda but with a potent combination of high-level government experience, a strong grasp of complicated public policies, and just plain charm,” Baker, remarkably, has emerged as “the dominant figure on Beacon Hill.”

Among his achievements: slowly (it took decades to reach this point; dozens of legislative sessions and eight governors since the1970s) repairing and reforming the troubled MBTA; addressing the opioid crisis (in March he signed into law limits on opioid prescriptions); increasing tax credits for low-income workers; creating fairness in the workplace with equal pay for comparable work; reducing the state workforce as a means of balancing the budget; and, just the other week, celebrating completion of a $1 billion economic development bill.

And the work continues…

Baker-Polito, a political synchronized diving team, are now plunging into the swampy green pool of state regulation in search of efficiency and efficacy, not accolades. As reported by The New Boston Post, their administration is “eliminating nearly 15 percent of Massachusetts state regulations and amending at least another 40 percent in a top-to-bottom overhaul aimed at making state government more efficient and business-friendly.” These are waters that the previous administration, under former Gov. Deval Patrick, never dared wading into, given the progressive proclivity that more and greater government regulation is better and best for its citizens.

When the governor launched this regulatory initiative, he laid out three options for all executive office departments to consider during this methodical promulgation process: either retain, amend or rescind regulations. Those deemed unnecessary and obstructive in making the commonwealth a “better place to live, work and grow a business,” would be amended or rescinded, according to Brendan Moss, Baker’s deputy communications director.

Thus far, 336 regulations are slated to be amended and 122 are to be rescinded, with hundreds more under the hot white spot light of review. As Moss further explains, “members of the administration met with municipalities, businesses, and individuals at over 100 listening sessions across the state and we look forward to finalizing this comprehensive review in the near future.”

Baker’s best act of 2016 is, actually, inaction. He rightly decided not to immerse himself into the presidential contest; he neither embraced Trump or attended the convention in Cleveland, thereby immunizing himself – unlike so many so-called “principled” Republicans -- from association with the embarrassing national ticket. Instead, he has quietly gone about the people’s business. According to veteran observers, reports The Globe, Baker “listens and wants to understand everyone’s views – and is willing to adjust his own.”

As a testament to Baker’s sensible reforms and keen political instincts, he is, for the second year in a row, the most popular governor in the country. For many this development would have been simply unimaginable just two years ago during the gubernatorial race. But for those listening in 2014 it was inevitable.

Two years ago, while at a campaign stop at The Pilot House in Sandwich, Mass., he spoke of the practical agenda he intended to implement, relying heavily on a theme of restoration and repair. As far as his latest projects -- reducing the saturation of codes, rules and regulations along with economic development – they are rooted in his pronouncements from 2014. Back then he said that Massachusetts “is a complicated place to do business” and that Bay Staters need “to think differently about economic development.” Baker is proof that one can be successful in linking campaigning with governing. A lesson lost on many Republicans today.   

With much work to do (such as state debt and pension reforms), one fact will, however, emerge by the end of the day on Nov. 8: Charlie Baker will be seen as the top of the presidential class of 2020. And perhaps more importantly, his brand of governing – and the heavy lifting of effecting sensible policymaking -- will be seen as a model for the national party and should be emulated by members of the national party to ensure that the Grand Old Party retains its grandeur.

As Labor Day 2016 approaches, Baker’s New Republicanism must be a novel concept to those Republicans still pledging allegiance (without a trace of buyer’s remorse) to its two national candidates, who are positioning themselves, ever so effortlessly and recklessly, for massive electoral losses.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. 

James P. Freeman: 1966 was a very good year for Frank Sinatra

“To do is to be – John Stuart Mill

To be is to do – Jean-Paul Sartre

Do be do be do – Frank Sinatra”

                                    --Graffiti, Cambridge University Library, 1966

It was in the Mad Men era, before things got really weird, excessive and decadent.

People dressed up for airline travel. Mini-skirts were all the rage while gentlemen still adorned stingy-brimmed fedoras. Batman, Star Trek and How the Grinch Stole Christmas all made their television debuts in living color but Vietnam was beamed into living rooms nightly in black and white. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed “Miranda Rights’’ and LSD was made illegal. Project Gemini was exploring new frontiers in outer space and, for the first time in 400 years, the leaders of the Catholic and Anglican churches exchanged fraternal greetings, on earth, in Rome.

As a counter to Berkeley’s counter-culture, Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. The average home cost $14,200 and a gallon of gas cost just 32 cents. Mercury Record Company introduced the music cassette to the U.S. market and fans burned vinyl records in reaction to reading that John Lennon said the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded “Hey Joe.” And a 50-year-old, with a style and swagger all his own, won the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Male, for “It Was a Very Good Year.” The man was Frank Sinatra and the year was 1966.

This was the environment Sinatra was operating in 50 years ago. He was enjoying success again in the mid-sixties -- in music and movies, having returned from the brink of extinction in the early 1950s. But 1966 was different. There was a definitive creative tension in popular music that year, where the contemporary electric sounds --the cacophony -- were colliding with the more traditional acoustic sounds -- the symphony. In his astute cultural observation, author Jon Savage in 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded concludes, the year began in “pop” and ended in “rock.”

“It was the year,” Savage writes, “in which the ever lasting and transient pop moment would burst forth in its most articulate, instinctive and radical way.” The 7-inch single outsold the long-player for the last time. “After 1966, nothing in pop would ever be the same.”

The pace of change and the drive for even greater expression in popular culture, in general -- and music, in particular -- could render someone hopelessly dated and irrelevant rather quickly, if they did not act. Fear of being left behind competed with a desire to be current. Sinatra, too, must have sensed something in the air, that tension.

The year before, in 1965, Sinatra’s music (especially on the album September of My Years, which, incidentally, won Album of the Year at the 1966 Grammy Awards, and on “It Was a Very Good Year,” the single that yielded Sinatra the above Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Male) was tinged with reflection and tortured with resignation, surely as a consequence of hitting middle age.

His first release of 1966 was in March, with Moonlight Sinatra. Recorded in late 1965, it was familiar territory, romantic and ruminative; another in a series of concept albums, playing off of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” theme. It was new but not innovative.

In his famous April 1966 Esquire magazine essay, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” written mostly in 1965, Gay Talese noted that the entertainer “survives as a national phenomenon, one of the few prewar products to withstand the test of time.” But he still craved relevance, not just survival.

In 1966, Sinatra -- beyond The Voice but not yet The Chairman of the Board -- wanted to be cutting-edge, yet retain his classic style. Personally and professionally he reflected perfectly the “tumult” and “urgency” of the year Savage wrote about: Sharp-edged and sharply dressed, he held the freakish, Technicolor of bohemian hippiedom in absolute disdain. But he married Mia Farrow, then sporting a modern Twiggy-like hairdo, just 21 years old. And musically, as then-young music producer, Jimmy Bowen, said, “he wanted Top 40 radio… he wanted hits.” Where The Beatles were happening. As he had done over a decade beforehand, he would have to radically retool his sound. That would require adding a new instrument to the repertoire to introduce new tones and colors. Something hip.

The Vox Continental organ (and later the Hammond B3) was a staple in many of the mid-sixties hits in popular music. Transistor-based, it was able to replicate a “reedy, eerie” sound, but also looked and sounded futuristic. It was the signature sound on the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” and used by the likes of The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Monkees, and, later, The Doors -- all hit makers.

Recorded on April 11, 1966 and distributed hastily via plane and courier (fearing a version by Jack Jones would hit the airwaves before his version), Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” (a product of producer Bowen and engineer Ernie Freeman) became a massive success, reaching number one in the United Kingdom (June 4) and the United States (July 2). It would be the last Sinatra song to hit the top of the Billboard charts and features a “surprisingly quixotic scat” coda: “dooby-dooby-do.” A new, but immortal, Sinatraism.

Despite the achievement, as Will Friedwald notes in his extraordinary book, Sinatra! The Song is You, “the rest of the Strangers [In the Night] album had been originally earmarked for another project; Sinatra and Reprise annexed the material under the ‘Strangers’ banner out of a quick need for an album to complement his mega-hit single.”

Ironically, the singer initially hated “Strangers.” Even with a melodic hook and moody hesitancy the sound came from familiar territory. The remaining collection, wrote Friedwald, was a “set so beautifully done it almost seemed as if Sinatra were apologizing for the original track.” And that’s where things got interesting.

Paired with long-time arranger Nelson Riddle (largely responsible for creating the classic Sinatra soundtrack, as defined by the test of time), it was Riddle who, according to an iTunes review of the album, “wanted to modernize Sinatra within believable limits.” Irrepressibly, “The Popular Sinatra,” announced the back cover to the LP, “Sings for Moderns.” In a kind of throw down, Stan Cornyn’s liner notes warn that Sinatra, “defies fad. He Stayeth.”

Two tracks, sequenced behind “Strangers,” heralded the new Sinatra sound, the organ-infused “Summer Wind” and “All or Nothing at All.” They were among “the last fully realized, top-drawer examples of the Sinatra-Riddle collaboration.”

The “Summer Wind” was the “greatest triumph” of the collaboration in its ‘60s phase, concludes Friedwald. The song employs two orchestras – the organ and the big band – that “become a countermelody and background riff to Sinatra’s exposition of the central melody.” Riddle constructed a stunningly catchy “leitmotif to represent the breeze,” where the organ lifts into a crescendo and softly fades away, the protagonist’s “fickle friend.” If anything, the organ adds a contemporary texture to the track. It reached number 25 in the charts on Oct.  1, 1966, but retains a remarkable staying power, a favorite of fans even today.

“All or Nothing at All,” a Sinatra ballad first recorded in 1939, was given a complete reworking; an up-tempo, jazz-inspired swinging swirl, the organ is even more emphatic. Riddle’s liberal use of it, combined with a more pop-oriented rhythm section, presents a modern, sophisticated masterpiece -- where the singer is at his most commanding, confident and in control, in years. Here, the organ and orchestra “don’t play at the same time but trade phrases back and forth like two warring big bands in a Savoy Ballroom battle.” It is arguably the quintessential post-modern Sinatra tune. So utterly cool, it never approaches parody status, a dreadful hallmark of some of Sinatra’s later work.

Released on May 30, Strangers in the Night would remain on the charts for 43 weeks and would be Sinatra’s last number one album, and, incredibly, his last with Riddle and his orchestra. Clocking in at 27 minutes and 10 seconds, a complex compression of old and new, the album would revitalize him. Indeed, Sinatra was back, standing tall, a hit maker again.

Keeping the momentum going, in July Sinatra at the Sands was released as a double album, featuring live performances of the 1966 incarnation of the brash,  Rat Pack leader. Taken from a series of shows recorded at the hotel’s Copa Room, in January and February of that year, it contains none of the year’s new material. Remarkably, it does not even anticipate the new sound or direction. Playful and cascading with attitude as wide as America, it does, however, showcase Quincy Jones’ fine traditional arrangements and Count Basie’s solid orchestra.

That’s Life, released on November 18, did further the exercise in experimentation, reaching number 6 on the album charts. The single, “That’s Life”, is propelled, right from the opening bars, by a rhythmic and melodic organ, more rooted in the blues, than jazz, and way up in the final mix. Gritty and a bit more raucous than its predecessors, the song peaked at number 4 on the charts, fittingly, on Dec,  24. After “Strangers,” it would be the second in a trilogy (the third being 1969’s “My Way,” which reached number 27 on the charts that year) of songs most closely identified as “ballad-rock” or “contem-pop” during the1960s Reprise era. As Friedwald writes, this formula became the “dominant mode” of future Sinatra singles and albums. 

On March 2, 1967, Sinatra’s efforts from the previous year were fully recognized. The song “Strangers in the Night” won Grammy’s in four different categories, including Record of the Year and Best Vocal Performance, Male. Sinatra at the Sands won Stan Cornyn the award for Best Album Notes. And, in an exquisite twist of fate, Strangers did not win Best Album honors. Instead, exhibiting a bizarre sense of humor, Grammy voters awarded Sinatra: A Man and His Music (an album issued in 1965, too late for inclusion in the 1966 Grammy nominations) that distinction.  

Five years before a self-imposed “retirement,” and two decades before becoming a caricatured figure, Frank Sinatra was at the height of his artistic and commercial appeal in 1966. You can almost still see him, impeccable, with a lit cigarette and tumbler of whiskey, as he might have described that year in his own unique vernacular: “Oh, it was a gas.”

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and  a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times

James P. Freeman: Why Mass. AG Healey should be ousted

In his dutiful and forceful concession remarks in November 2014, John Miller, the Republican candidate that year for Massachusetts attorney general, gave fair warning: “The fight for impartial, fact-based justice from a non-partisan attorney general goes on.” Miller, even in defeat, believed – and presumably feared — that the Bay State was still in “desperate need” of an attorney general who would take a “professional, not a political approach” to the office.

His fears are confirmed.

In June of 2016, it is now evident that the winner that November night, Maura Healey, is using her office to punish those whose views of public policy differ from her own. As a consequence, Healey is no longer fit to hold the office of attorney general.

As reported last week, Healey is now using the power of her office to investigate conservative groups with supposed ties to ExxonMobil. Her subpoena charges that the oil giant lied to shareholders and consumers about the risks of global warming in its communications and shareholder filings.

Healey is seeking 40 years-worth of ExxonMobil documents and communications with right-leaning “think tanks.” Locally, these include the Beacon Hill Institute and Acton Institute. According to The Boston Herald, the basis of the investigation is “deceptive business practices.” The energy company countered by filing a federal lawsuit claiming, rightly, that Healey’s action is no more than a “fishing expedition,” part of a “political agenda,” and the attorney general is “abusing the power of government.” It is a disgracefully overt political maneuver.

Remarkably, both the Left and Right have been critical of state attorneys-general engaged in this scrutiny of ExxonMobil. Harvey Silverglate, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, called the investigation “pure harassment.” Added Silverglate, “It’s not the way scientific or factual or even political battles are settled in this country, which last I checked is still a free country.” The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote that the attack on ExxonMobil is really a “front,” and that the real target is “a broad array of conservative activist groups.”

So this is what we have come to in Massachusetts: a hyper-partisan attorney general, motivated by political expediency, who believes that ExxonMobil defrauded the public and its shareholders by systematically advancing the idea of “climate denial.” Seriously.

Where is the outrage on Beacon Hill? Where is the outrage from the prestige media in greater Boston?

Perhaps more so than any other Massachusetts elected official – including Sen. Elizabeth Warren — Healey is the penultimate programmed progressive. Her core belief-system centers around identity politics and so-called diversity… of everything; except political thought.

On her Web site, maurahealey.com, Healy calls herself the “People’s Lawyer” (she is, apparently, the lawyer of all of the people, except, that is, conservative people). In a January posting she brags that she is “looking ahead to the challenges around the bend and we’re already pushing hard on our top priorities.” ExxonMobil’s thoughts on so-called climate disruption are a priority for the people of Massachusetts?

Healey’s behavior is reminiscent of the Lois Lerner and IRS scandal from a few years ago. Then, as now, conservative groups were targeted under a legal pretense. If Healey’s actions were based in fact and based on the law, warranting the full force and authority of her office, why hasn’t she called for the complete divestiture of ExxonMobil investments by the state’s pension system (which in 2015 was valued at $151 million in the Domestic Equity portfolio)?

Among the first official undertakings by Healey in 2015 was a social-media “campaign.” It involved the collection of testimonials from same-sex couples for an amicus brief that was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting national recognition of gay marriage. However laudable, such time and expense amounted to a political lagniappe but not a legal imperative.

In Massachusetts, it seems identity politics is a greater priority than identity theft, which should be a priority.

Identity theft – the unauthorized use of personal information to defraud or commit crimes – is the fastest-growing crime in America. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security notes that victims spend “between 30-60 hours of their time” and “approximately $1,000 of their own money clearing up the problem.”

The Boston Globe noted two years ago that 1.2 million people in the Commonwealth had personal information and financial data compromised in 2013. In February 2015, a “data breach” occurred at insurer Anthem, compromising personal information of 78.8 million Americans. One million of those reside in Massachusetts.

But don’t tell that to Healey.

On mass.gov/ago, victims are cautioned: “You should be aware that not all identity-theft complaints can or will be investigated.” These people, unlike ExxonMobil, will likely not be accorded a vigorous campaign. What is unsettling is that Healey and fellow progressives believe they can effectively combat climate disruption to their satisfaction but not identity theft.

Healey will probably not resign from office. She also probably not be impeached under the articles of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As a last resort, however, she should be recalled. Interestingly, the voter initiative and referendum provisions in the constitution specifically exclude the recall/removal of judges. But the Constitution is silent regarding recall/removal of executive branch officers.

Let the petition begin.

James P. Freeman is a columnist for The New Boston Post.

James P. Freeman: Michael Dukakis: The last traditional progressive

Beaming over the convention of the consonant caucus, the speaker uttered what would be the second most memorable line in the 1988 presidential race: “This election isn’t about ideology, it’s about competence…” This dramatic statement was later bested by George H.W. Bush’s “read my lips…” tax pledge.

Atlanta’s Democratic National Convention that July proved to be, in retrospect, the last stand for Michael S. Dukakis, the last traditional progressive. As progressivism gallops to a new beat of populism, modern-day revivalists should look to Dukakis as their godfather.

He is last major living link to the progressive forefathers. Born in Brookline in 1933, he was also born into the first progressive era of Presidents Roosevelt, Wilson and Roosevelt. It would mark the first time the republic would rely upon government, not self-sufficiency, for sustenance, emblematic of modern times.

Citizens needed progress up from the Founders’ ideas. A strong central government, believing in its boundless abilities, could master public and private affairs, thereby delivering happiness. The Constitution was inelastic; its limitations were to be disdained as impediments to the very progress government sought to engineer. Politics became a science.

Dukakis’s long career in public service is writ large with progressive themes. In 1965, as a young Massachusetts state representative, he introduced a measure to legalize contraceptive use for married couples, an early imprimatur of his activism. For the commonwealth’s conservative Catholic bloc in the House, however, voting on birth- control laws written by Protestants in the 1890s proved to be controversial and complicated.  Boston's Cardinal Richard Cushing, remarkably, advised its members in the legislature: “If your constituents want this legislation vote for it. You represent them. You don’t represent the Catholic Church.” The bill passed.

Arguably, this episode — more than John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election to the presidency — helped convert a majority of Catholics from Republicans to Democrats in Massachusetts. Suddenly, it seemed, culture impacted Catholic politics as much as theology. Those majorities remain intact today. Dukakis was elected to the first of three  terms starting in 1974 and he remains Massachusetts’s longest-serving governor.

His first attempts as a reformer were rebuffed and he lost the 1978 primary. Not nonplussed, he was reelected in 1982 with an even more robust belief in government’s efficacy.

He originally opposed the initial concept of the Central Artery/Tunnel project in Boston but expanded its scope to accommodate business and government interests. Boston’s Big Dig cost nearly $4 million a day at its peak. Initially a $2.2 billion expenditure in the early 1980s, final estimated outlays are $22 billion, to be paid off in 2038. The administration of this public-private partnership exposed a skewed risk-reward model (socializing losses, privatizing profits).

Under his leadership, after delays and denial for exemption, Massachusetts was found to be in violation of the landmark Clean Water Act. Every day 100,000 pounds of sludge and 500,000 gallons of barely treated wastewater were dumped into Boston Harbor. A federal court, not political epiphany, ensured the cleanup.

Former EPA Administrator Michael Deland said that the commonwealth’s willful disobedience was “the most expensive public policy mistake in the history of New England.” Raw sewage stopped flowing into the nation’s oldest harbor in September 2000.

Dukakis in 2009 reflected on “two of the biggest projects in history at the time.” The harbor restoration — mandated, mind you — “came in on time and 25 percent under budget.” Of theBig Dig, he said: “We all know what happened with the other.”

The difference? “It was about competence of the people running the projects…”

Few remember that Al Gore (not the elder Bush) first raised the weekend-furlough matter during the presidential primary. Dukakis vetoed a bill in 1976 that would have denied murderers, like Willie Horton, such freedom. The program was ultimately abolished after questions were raised about criminal rehabilitation.

Before there was Obamacare and Romneycare there was Dukakiscare. He signed into law the nation’s first universal healthcare insurance program in 1988. A tiny Republican minority quietly disrupted its funding, leaving it an obscure footnote to history.

At 82, still residing in Brookline,  still a  progressive sanctuary, Dukakis leaves a lasting legacy. He has affected the lives of more residents in Massachusetts than anyone in a century. Clearly, that is a triumph of ideology over competence. As government at all levels struggles with executing competent stewardship, people should look at Dukakis in another light. He at least addressed competence as a core competency.

New-fashioned progressives have abandoned it.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer for the New Boston Post. and a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times.