James P. Freeman: How America achieved a beautiful dream in a famously ugly year

"Earthrise'' photo, taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on Dec. 24, 1968.

As in most other years, there were wars, riots and assassinations in 1968.  But here I write about something noble that happened that year. Three daring men circled the moon.  In its way, Apollo 8  redeemed mankind and 1968.

The drama, discipline and derring-do of the mission is marvelously documented in two recent books:  Apollo 8, by Jeff Kluger, and Rocket Men, by Robert Kurson.

Project Apollo was conceived in the waning days of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, in 1960, when Americans feared that they were losing the “space race” to the Soviets/Russians during the Cold War. But full commitment had to wait for President John F. Kennedy's grander embrace of  the challenge, which he expressed at Rice University in September 1962. That speech  galvanized the push for space exploration in general and a manned lunar landing in particular into a national calling. It was a superb expression of early 1960s idealism.

Kennedy said, “The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school.”

His celestial aspirations included “new hopes for knowledge and peace.” He also sought divine guidance: “As we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

Halfway through the decade, as America was bleeding in the Vietnam War, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration  and many thousands of people (including many scientists and engineers in New England) were preparing to meet the challenge.

But by mid-1968, with only 18 months to achieve Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth by decade’s end, the objective was in jeopardy. No Apollo astronauts had flown in space since the Apollo 1 launch pad fire killed three astronauts in January 1967. And the lunar lander wouldn’t be ready for the flight until early 1969.

Fifty years ago this summer, NASA made a bold decision: Apollo 8 would circumnavigate the moon in December. Everyone understood the risks: unlike future missions, there was no lifeboat should catastrophic failure occur aboard the spacecraft.

The journey would test the nation’s best engineers in such areas as navigation, communication, computation and instrumentation. Not to mention rocketry. And nerves.

(Today’s iPhone has more processing power than the guidance computer on Apollo’s command module.)

Apollo 8 circled the Moon on Christmas Eve.

During a live global broadcast (the largest audience in history), the astronauts recited words worthy of the moment. As the gray surface of the Moon passed by, William Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell each read from the Book of Genesis. “We close,” said Borman, “with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

Yet it was a simple but starkly beautiful photograph taken by Anders and published around the world on Dec. 30 that captured the legacy of what The New York Times described then as “the most fantastic voyage of all time.” Simply called “Earthrise,” it became an iconic image of 1968. And of all history.

Apollo 8 would mark several historical firsts: The first time that humans left the Earth’s gravitational field; the first time  that men flew on top of the massive Saturn V rocket (nearly 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty; the most powerful machine ever built, it produced 160 million horsepower); and the first time that the dark side of the moon was seen by the naked eye. (The flight would also mark the fastest that people had moved; the astronauts re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 35,000 feet per second.) The crew became, rightly, international heroes.

Kennedy’s audacity was rewarded in July 1969 with the triumph of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. That could not have happened without the success of Apollo 8.

The national investment in Project Apollo cost $25.4 billion by its conclusion, in 1973 --  $206 billion in 2016 dollars. (America will spend $310 billion in debt service just in 2018.) Apollo may have been the last federal public-works program that would invest so much, and with such risk, to rise to a challenge of world-historical proportions.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based columnist and a former banker.

Good news for brick and mortar

Vacant mall in Arizona, emptied by Amazon.

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

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling (South Dakota v. Wayfair) that Internet retailers be made to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence is good news for what’s left of physical stores and downtowns in many places. Because of earlier legal actions, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are unlikely to be affected much by the ruling.

The Government Accountability Office says that states were already collecting about 75 percent of the potential taxes from online purchases.  Still, the part not being taxed could be as much as $13 billion a year nationally.

It has been unfair that a god-awful 1992 ruling let online retailers based far away from most of their consumers avoid paying the local and state sales taxes needed to help pay for public services while stores that directly served local customers and employed local people have had to levy these taxes,  of course making their prices less competitive.

Kudos to the 40 states and the Trump administration for suing to overturn a ruling that both violated states’ rights and made for a very unlevel playing field for retailers.

An Antebellum village

"Quenched'' (oil on canvas), by Gay Freeborn, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.

Center Sandwich is  in the town of Sandwich. The village center and surrounding area are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Center Sandwich Historic District. It's just north of the Granite State's Lake District.

Center Sandwich began as the site of a gristmill, erected in 1768 by Daniel Beede, followed  in 1780 by a sawmill, also on  on the banks of the Red Hill River. Roads were then built to the area, and the village and surrounding rural parts of town grew from about 900 people in 1790 to over 2,000 in 1820.

Most of the village's development  occurred in the decades before the Civil War, resulting in residential and civic buildings that are largely  Federal and Greek Revival in style. Because no railroads were built to serve the area, Center Sandwich declined in importance after the Civil War. Only a few changes occurred in the appearance of village in the 20th Century. The oldest surviving building in the village is the 1792 Baptist church, originally Federal in style, but later given Greek Revival features.

The town hall in Center Sandwich.

Sarah Anderson: Things are bad but have been much worse for unions

The Knights of Labor seal.

From OtherWords.org

The U.S. Supreme Court has just dealt unions a bruising blow. In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that public-sector employees who benefit from unions’ collective-bargaining services will no longer have to pay for them.

At least initially, this is expected to result in a steep drop in union resources and bargaining capacity, which will likely reduce employee pay. One Illinois university study, for example, predicts that public-school teacher salaries in that state will drop by an average of 5.4 percent.

But over the course of its turbulent history, the American labor movement has survived much worse. And it will find a way to get back on its feet.

One of my ancestors was in the center of the drama during one of labor’s most roiling eras. Albert G. Denny, my great-grandmother’s brother, started out as a child laborer in a glass factory. He eventually became the national organizer for the Knights of Labor, the leading voice for U.S. workers in the 1880s.  

Compared to the challenges Albert faced in the 19th Century, the new threat against organized labor still seems bad — but not as bad.

Teachers in several states have already been striking over low pay and school underfunding. In my great-uncle’s day, that could get you shot.

As a young glass blower in Pittsburgh in 1877, Albert witnessed one of the most violent attacks on labor in our nation’s history. When railroad workers there joined a nationwide strike, the governor sent in militia, who opened fire on the workers, killing 20. After more than a month of conflict, federal troops marched in and crushed the strike.

Within a few years of this tragedy, the labor movement began to rebound. Albert became secretary of a glassworkers union that effectively negotiated over wages, apprenticeships and other labor conditions. Later he became the lead organizer for the Knights of Labor, which grew rapidly to represent 20 percent of all U.S. workers by 1886.

The anti-union violence, however, didn’t end.

I have a copy of a telegram Albert sent the head of the Knights of Labor after learning that railroad baron Jay Gould’s goons had shot into a crowd of strikers in East St. Louis, killing six. “You should have Gould arrested and tried for accessory to murder,” Albert wrote.

Instead, the strike failed, Gould got richer, and the Knights of Labor began to implode. Membership plummeted from 800,000 in 1886 to 100,000 in 1890 — an even faster nosedive than the modern labor movement’s decline, from 17.7 million in 1983 to 14.8 million in 2017.

But out of the Knights’ ashes, new forms of organizing took shape. By the 1930s, the movement was powerful enough to push President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to enact landmark labor legislation that workers still benefit from today, including the minimum wage and the 40-hour week.  

Once again, American workers will need to find new ways to build power against big money interests. Fortunately, this is already beginning.

In anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling, public-sector unions have been much more proactively reaching out to their members, hearing about their needs and concerns, and broadening the scope of their efforts beyond pay and benefits to immigrant rights, racial justice, and other social issues.

Traditionally non-unionized workers are also making some progress. Advocates for restaurant servers, for example, just won a Washington, D.C. ballot vote to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers.

My great-uncle Albert Denny’s union hall is still standing in Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood, but it’s a deli/whiskey bar now. Some things change. But the need for working people to be able to come together to negotiate over conditions that affect their lives will not.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits Inequality.org. Follow her at @Anderson_IPS. 

UMass Amherst surges to ninth in sustainability ranking

The John W. Olver Design Building, mostly made of wood,  at UMass Amherst.

The New England Council reports:

"The University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently announced that it has been ranked ninth in the nation for Sustainable Universities by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS). The STARS program recognizes sustainability accomplishments in areas such as academics, research, engagement, operations, and administration.

In 2015, the university was rated 29th in the STARS Campus Sustainability Index among U.S. doctorate-granting institutions. However, with the creation of the School of Earth and Sustainability, the design and construction of the John W. Olver Design Building -- the largest and most technologically advanced academic contemporary wood structure in the U.S. -- and the decision to be the first major public university to divest its endowment from direct holdings in fossil fuels, the university has significantly increased its STARS score from a 68.18 to a 75.77, resulting in a leap of 20 places from the previous 2015 rating.

Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy said, “This new STARS score reflects the university’s continuing commitment to excellence in sustainability. UMass Amherst is a leader in best practices for energy efficient construction and sustainable food use, conducting world-class research and preparing a new generation of students to be inspired stewards of our planet.”

Read more on the UMass Amherst web site.

The long view

Frenchman's Bay, from the summit of  Cadillac Mountain, in Acadia National Park, Maine. The town below is Bar Harbor, a major tourist center, cruising-ship port and the home of the College of the Atlantic. Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on the U.S. coast between Canada to Mexico.

"So might a Chinese sage have seen the world,

seen mist and humpbacked islands from a mountain,

with a hawk hanging in a silver sky.''

-- The start of Elizabeth Coatsworth's "From Cadillac Mountain''

'A legend of the dead'

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, dedicated in 1677 and also called the Touro Synagogue Cemetery. That synagogue, built in 1763, is the oldest surviving synagogue building in North America. It was built under the leadership of Cantor  Isaac Touro.

"How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, 

      Close by the street of this fair seaport town, 

Silent beside the never-silent waves, 

      At rest in all this moving up and down! 

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep 

      Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, 

While underneath these leafy tents they keep 

      The long, mysterious Exodus of Death. 

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, 

      That pave with level flags their burial-place, 

Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down 

      And broken by Moses at the mountain's base. 

The very names recorded here are strange, 

      Of foreign accent, and of different climes; 

Alvares and Rivera interchange 

      With Abraham and Jacob of old times. 

"Blessed be God! for he created Death!" 

      The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;" 

Then added, in the certainty of faith, 

      "And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease." 

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, 

      No Psalms of David now the silence break, 

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue 

      In the grand dialect the Prophets spake. 

Gone are the living, but the dead remain, 

      And not neglected; for a hand unseen, 

Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, 

      Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. 

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate, 

      What persecution, merciless and blind, 

Drove o'er the sea — that desert desolate — 

      These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind? 

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, 

      Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire; 

Taught in the school of patience to endure 

      The life of anguish and the death of fire. 

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread 

      And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, 

The wasting famine of the heart they fed, 

      And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. 

Anathema maranatha! was the cry 

      That rang from town to town, from street to street; 

At every gate the accursed Mordecai 

      Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. 

Pride and humiliation hand in hand 

      Walked with them through the world where'er they went; 

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, 

      And yet unshaken as the continent. 

For in the background figures vague and vast 

      Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime, 

And all the great traditions of the Past 

      They saw reflected in the coming time. 

And thus forever with reverted look 

      The mystic volume of the world they read, 

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, 

      Till life became a Legend of the Dead. 

But ah! what once has been shall be no more! 

      The groaning earth in travail and in pain 

Brings forth its races, but does not restore, 

      And the dead nations never rise again. ''

"The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, '' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Don Pesci: Supremes' union ruling pays homage to the First Amendment

Inscription of the First Amendment  in front of Independence Hall, in Philadelphia.

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.''

-– Thomas Jefferson

The sentiment above is to be found in an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, a bill drawn up by Thomas Jefferson as part of the Revised Code of Virginia laws, but the sentiment might easily apply to Janus vs. AFSCME, a decision presented this week by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Janus, the high court reversed an earlier decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The court made a distinction in that case between forced payments used for political activities, which the court found violated First Amendment rights of free speech, and fees used for such conventional union work as collective bargaining, contract administration and the representation of workers in grievance processes which, the court declared, did not hurt First Amendment rights.

Justice Potter Stewart echoed Jefferson in the majority opinion: “To compel employees financially to support their collective-bargaining representative has an impact upon their First Amendment interests.” But, Potter argued, the forcible collection of dues from public workers used for “conventional union activity” is “constitutionally justified” to ensure “labor peace” and to thwart “free riders.”

Sardonically, Janus’s lawyers noted in their brief that Potter denominated “free riders” would be, were Abood to remain unchallenged, compelled free riders.

The Supreme Court had been inching towards a reversal of Abood in other cases. “Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a significant impingement on First Amendment rights,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a Republican, wrote for the majority in a related case in 2012.

Alito, it must be admitted, had a point. In Connecticut, union contracts arranged between a union- friendly governor such as Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, and SEBAC, the union conglomerate that engorges itself on taxpayers' “contributions,” affect the whole body politic, not only the non-union member who may in some cases be forced, in Jefferson’s timeless formulation, to contribute “money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves.” In what sense, the Janus court queried, is collective bargaining and the creation of public employee contracts NOT political? Short answer: in NO case.

In Janus, the court threw out the dirty bathwater, the Abood decision with its tendentious distinctions, and saved the constitutional baby. When freedom of choice is mixed with the contributions of fees given freely by free men and free women, we get Jeffersonian freedom, in which the private wills of individuals are not throttled by unions in league with politicians and courts.

“A ruling against public unions,” The New York Times helpfully explains,” is unlikely to have a direct impact on unionized employees of private businesses, because the First Amendment restricts government action and not private conduct. But unions now represent only 6.5 percent of private sector employees, down from the upper teens in the early 1980s, and most of the labor movement’s strength these days is in the public sector.”

The Janus decision will likely reduce “contributions” muscled from state workers who do not wish to contribute to the ruin of state government. For all practical purposes, public-employee unions have become Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. In his most recent contract negotiations with SEBAC, Malloy stretched contractual agreements highly favorable to unions well beyond the end of his term in office to 2017; the contracts contain a provision that will not allow a future governor pursuing spending cuts to lay off workers until the contract has elapsed, and the contract provides automatic salary increases of 3 percent for public union workers after two years.

In addition to all these benefits, agreements between towns and municipal unions in Connecticut provide that town employees, some of whom are not unionized, should perform costly administrative work for unions.

A "Contractual Agreement, Between The Town of Manchester, Connecticut and Municipal Employees’ Union, Local 991, Council #4, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, July 1, 2016 - June 30, 2019” is typical. The agreement specifies that town government, not the unions, are responsible for deducting “membership dues, initiation fees, and reinstatement fees as may be fixed by the Union from the pay of those employees who, individually and in writing, authorize such deductions… Deductions shall be made each month and shall be remitted to the Financial Officer of the Union not later than the last day of said month. The monthly remittances to the Union will be accompanied with a list of names of employees from whose wages such deductions have been made and the amount deducted from each employee.”

Unions impassively, without expending labor or costs, simply receive payments from a municipal administrative apparatus whose salaries are paid by town taxpayers, thus reducing the administrative costs of unions. Not bad non-work if you can get it.

The court’s decision in Janus cuts to the constitutional quick. It declares in proper legal language that there is little difference between preventing free speech and compelling state employees to unwillingly finance union affairs costly to taxpayers – are we not constantly reminded by union propaganda that state workers are taxpayers too?  -- and messaging with which they may disagree. Before Janus, state workers, forced unwillingly to pay for union operations, could opt-out of paying fees devoted to campaign funding only. Post Janus, state workers must willingly opt-in before union leaders may receive fees passed along to them by municipal employees who perform administrative work that should be done by unions.

Unions no doubt will experience a loss of revenue from some workers who previously were forced to contribute funds to powerful, politically connected unions. However, in a free society – i.e., one in which people are not compelled to “furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions” with which they disagree, we should choose to take our stand with Jefferson and First Amendment rights. Is it not an irony of ironies that the bill drawn up by Jefferson was specifically designed to prevent state government from collecting fees and taxes from non-preferred religious denominations to support a state established church?

Unions have become something of a religion for progressive politicians who favor particular worker sects. To all this nonsense, the Supreme Court has now said – “Thou shalt not.”

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.

 

Llewellyn King: Even Sanders deserves privacy away from her job

Richard Burton as Mark Antony with Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the film epic Cleopatra (1963), the project in which they started their off-screen love affairs.

Public accommodations can be a thorny matter. Historically, Virginia has had its problems, as have other states and nations.

In Marshall, Va., a little greasy spoon became notorious and its owners served time in prison because they refused to serve people of color. Very soon, the only people who frequented the joint were journalists who hoped to catch the owners in the act of violating the state’s public accommodations law.

In a bar in Baltimore, I watched the owner lie to a black man who wanted service. “This is a private club, but I could sell you something to go,” the owner said. It wasn’t a club; it was racism at work.

At a roadside restaurant in South Africa, before the fall of Apartheid, my family and I and our black driver stopped for a bite. I was told that our driver couldn’t enter this humble establishment with me and my family and would have to eat in the car. We all ate in the car.

Obviously, there was no race dimension in the booting of White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders from the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., but there was the owner’s anger, fury and protest. It was a comment on actions of the administration Sanders defends daily. Lexington, in the Shenandoah Valley, is a thoroughly Trump town – home to the Virginia Military Institute, Washington and Lee University, flag-bedecked houses, pickup trucks with NRA decals, and Fox on the box.

The restaurant owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, said that Sanders didn’t meet the restaurant’s standards of kindness, compassion and cooperation and that’s why she kicked out Sanders. Clearly Wilkinson was vexed, as many are these days, with the profound national division over the treatment of immigrant children at the border and the constant defense of mendacity by Sanders.

While political speech deserves defense, I think one deserves to eat one’s vittles without victimization. Chowing down shouldn’t be an opportunity for others to speak up.

Customers who meet reasonable standards of behavior and dress shouldn’t be denied service or yelled at while exercising their right to patronize public places. I think it was wrong for protesters to attack Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant in Washington. Some privacy in public is an entitlement, even if the president behaves in outrageous ways with ad hominem attacks on allied leaders, schoolyard abuse of his detractors and a rabid-dog approach to public life.

There isn’t much for which I can claim the moral high ground, but when it comes to restaurants, I have credentials -- top-drawer bona fides, as it were.

Back in 1962, I was employed by one of the London newspapers, notorious for intruding on people's privacy. My assignment was to follow a couple of lovebirds around London. They were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and my job was to spend all day and much of the night at the famous Dorchester Hotel, where love was being committed.

Except that they never entered stage center.

Every day I made my way to the five-star hotel and sat around, had drinks (which the hotel provided free) and hoped to see them coming or leaving or, fond hope, kissing on the backstairs. No joy. Even hopes of asking the chambermaid about the bed were nobbled by hotel security.

Then one Sunday in Dulwich, a green and pleasant oasis in south London, my then-wife, a brilliant journalist, Doreen King, and I went for our Sunday lunch, an English tradition, at a very nice pub. And there they were, my prey: Taylor and Burton as large as life having lunch. Not just having lunch, but at the next table.

My wife whispered, “Are you going to call the office and get a photographer? What questions have you got ready?”

I looked at the lovers at the next table. Never have I seen two people so in love, so happy with each other. My wife and I agreed silently to leave them alone.

I’d like to be able to say that Burton winked, but he didn’t. He had eyes only for Taylor.

To my mind, the lovely (Taylor and Burton) and the less so (Nielsen and Sanders) should be able to enjoy a private meal in public. I missed a scoop on this belief.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle on PBS. His e-mail is llewellynking1@gmail.com

Knowing when it's enough

The Connecticut River, looking north from the French King Bridge at the Erving-Gill  (Mass.) town line.

The Oxbow of the Connecticut River in Northampton, Mass., circa 1910.

"A farmer … has an enormous innate need to simply hold still, to keep what he’s got, to limit greed to what he can keep….What’s the use of owning more than you can plough, or hay, or cut into sawlogs or pulp or firewood in the wintertime, or drive spikes into to bleed out maple sap in sugar time? No use, at all. In the Connecticut Valley, this trait has saved a lot of beauty.''

-- Evan Hill, in The Connecticut River (1972)

They'll look less friendly soon

-- Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark

The Bruce Museum, in Greenwich, Conn., is hosting "National Geographic Photo Ark" through Sept.  2. "The National Geographic Photo Ark" is a multiyear project led by Photo Ark founder and National Geographic photographer Sartore. 

The freedom to be trapped in traffic

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

"Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.''

-- Ambrose Bierce

That America is increasingly a plutocracy and not a democracy might be suggested by a story in The New York Times headlined “How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country.’’ The story details how the Koch lobbying group Americans for Prosperity has been working to block efforts around to address gridlock and air pollution. The Koches, who inherited their company, Koch Industries, from daddy use highly sophisticated data-analysis tools to sow fear, misunderstanding and confusion about projects they don’t like.

The Times story focuses on Nashville, whose voters, after an intense propaganda campaign by the Kochs, turned down a $5.4 billion public-transit program that polling before the Kochs arrived had been expected to easily win because the Music City is choking on car traffic and air pollution.

Good mass transit reduces traffic, boosts economic  development and reduces air pollution. (I’d add warily it also helps to address man-made global warming but most Republicans don’t seem to believe in that. After all, what do 97 percent of scientists know?) It’s no accident that the richest U.S. cities – New York, Boston, etc., have dense (if far from perfect!) mass-transit systems.

Koch servant Tori Venable, who runs Americans for Prosperity, came up with an intriguing remark on why the car culture should continue dominant in crowded cities: “If someone has the freedom to go where they want, do what they want, they’re not going to choose to public transit.’’ Eh? Millions of people take mass transit every day because they want the freedom to nap, to read, to brood, and to avoid being hit by the idiot weaving in and out of lanes while texting.

Among the assorted inane things that Koch-connected people say about public   transit  came from Randal O’Toole,  of the Cato Institute, who said “Why would anybody ride transit when they can get a ride at their door within a minute that will drop them off at the door where they want to go?’’

Well, how about those folks who don’t want to be trapped in traffic, which ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber are making much worse in many downtowns.  Buses, trolleys and light rail take cars off the roads. And what about poor people who can’t afford to pay ride-hailing services (which jack up their prices substantially at job-commuting times)?

Rarely do the Koch Brothers act for any other reasons than economic self-interest, e.g.,- promoting wide-open immigration to keep wages low and tax cuts focused on the very rich. So consider that Koch Industries is a big producer of gasoline and asphalt and makes a variety of automotive parts. The more  that people drive, the richer these billionaires become. To read The Times piece, please hit this link.

Of course, the Kochs can fly over the traffic in their helicopters.

A great but troubled patron of Modernism

Scofield Thayer.

Scofield Thayer, a rich man from Worcester, was a central figure in modern literature and visual art, as well as a fascinating case of mental illness.  An exhibition of some of the legendary collection he left will be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  in New York, July 3-Oct. 7.

From the Met:

"An aesthete and scion of a wealthy family, Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) was co-owner and editor of the literary magazine the Dial from 1919 to 1926. In this avant-garde journal he introduced Americans to the writings of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust, among others. He frequently accompanied these writers' contributions with reproductions of modern art. Thayer assembled his large collection of some six hundred works—mostly works on paper—with staggering speed in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna between 1921 and 1923. While he was a patient of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, he acquired a large group of watercolors and drawings by Schiele and Klimt, artists who at that time were unknown in America.

"When a selection from his collection was shown at the Montross Gallery in New York in 1924—five years before the Museum of Modern Art opened—it won acclaim. It found no favor, however, in Thayer's native city, Worcester, Massachusetts, that same year when it was shown at the Worcester Art Museum. Incensed, Thayer drew up his will in 1925, leaving his collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He withdrew from public life in the late 1920s and lived as a recluse on Martha's Vineyard and in Florida until his death in 1982.''

To read about the collection, please hit this link.

Always pack a vegan lunch

"Nomad II'' (vintage suitcases, weeds) by Wen-hao Tien, in the group show "Close to Home,'' at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, July 5-July 20.

'Posing as a state'

Newport, R.I., from the air.

"Look at the way it cringes there, occupying a sliver of land so inconsequential that the names of its cities and towns have to be entered vertically on the map. It is foolish for something so microscopic to go around posing as a state. Anyone who has ever been there knows what I mean. You drive into Rhode Island, nod off for 10 or 20 minutes or embark on an interesting conversation and—zap—you're in Massachusetts. You're out of the place before you can settle into it. Flying over Little Rhody is absurdity itself; you can traverse it in the middle of a sentence."

From, "Good-bye, Rhode Island," by Donald Dale Jackson, in the January 2000 Smithsonian Magazine.

'Like little disks of metal'

"All night our room was outer-walled with rain.
Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,
And rang like little disks of metal.
Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between
    them.
The rain rattled and clashed,
And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed—orange torches against the rain.
Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!''

-- ''Summer Rain,'' by Amy Lowell

Don Pesci: The dream that Conn. progressives dream is a nightmare for the state's economy

"Low Tide, Riverside {part of affluent Greenwich, Conn.} Yacht Club  (1894)''  by Theodore Robinson.

Ned Lamont, the Connecticut Democratic Party’s certified candidate for governor, having run the nomination knout, is now proceeding to run primary-election bases.

NBC Connecticut has noted a pronounced difference in messaging:
"Lamont Distances from Malloy at Technology Forum''.

Gov. Dannel Malloy has relied on targeted tax reductions and tax grants to try to persuade companies to remain in Connecticut and avoid migrating to other states in order to escape the governor’s burdensome taxes and the Democratic-dominated General Assembly’s noxious regulations.

"I think we've gone snap happy in terms of trying get and keep businesses,” Lamont said at a forum hosted by the Connecticut Technology Council. Lamont told the group he was not interested in providing bailouts to Connecticut’s tax starved cities: "I'm not interested in bailouts, I didn't like that deal at all, but there have to be other ways to help our cities,” which are, never-the-less, critical to the growth of the state.

“This version of Ned Lamont” the report pointedly notes, “is new on the campaign trail. Before the Democratic State Convention last month in Hartford, he seldom ever mentioned policies or moments of the political past, insisting on looking forward and having a message to reflect that effort.” Right, for politicians uncomfortable with offering rational solutions to pressing problems, glittering talk about a mythical future is the last refuge of scoundrels.

Unless sound measures are adopted to rein in spending, clip the power of unions to shape budgets, address Connecticut’s ruinous pension liabilities,  reduce taxes as an incentive to lure companies from surrounding states – Massachusetts, formerly called Taxachusetts, led by a Republican governor, is eating Connecticut’s lunch – strip away burdensome regulations and offer some hope to entrepreneurial talent in the state inexorably gravitating toward greener pastures in low governmental-impact states, Connecticut’s future will remain bleak. And everyone who is not a wall-eyed optimist or a Panglossian politician knows it -- especially intelligent voters weary of the usual glittering propaganda of politicians on the make.

The politically barbed question Lamont will be asked once he enters debates with his Republican counterpart is: Can he reverse the direction set by Malloy, the nominal head of the Democrat Party, and deliver prosperity?

That question is a slightly different one than asking Lamont, in one form or another, to denounce Malloy. Denunciation will come more easily to Republicans than Democrats, because Malloy’s operative principle -- Connecticut is not suffering from a spending problem; it is suffering from a revenue problem, the solution for which is tax increases – is the battle flag of the modern progressive movement.

Connecticut’s progressives go to bed dreaming, and they wake up dreaming.  If only Connecticut were better able to identify sources of wealth and tax them properly, the state will revive. What Connecticut desperately needs is a heavy progressive tax on hedge fund managers huddled together in Connecticut’s Gold Coast.
 

The state must spend more on early-childhood education, listen with a learning ear to the lights of the progressive National Democrat Party, Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and uber-progressive demagogue Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, rebuild the state’s infrastructure with congestion tolling, invest in solar and wind energy, increase the minimum wage, make all schools in Connecticut gun-free zones, open more sanctuary cities -- impeach President Trump! Ah, if these things were done, then Connecticut would rise in splendor from its ashes and once again become the progressive pearl in New England’s crown. Such is the dream that progressives dream.

“I think we do need to bring our revenue structure into the 21st Century and when it comes to transportation,” Lamont told the techies at the Trumbull Marriott. “I need a more reliable and predictable revenue stream that we can leverage and make the investments we need, and I think that starts with electronic tolling on some of our biggest trucks that are coming in from out of state using our roads, tax-free, creating tons of maintenance issues and we’ll see where it goes from there (emphasis mine)”

Aye… starts with taxing the guy behind the tree, out-of-state truck drivers, and ends with yet another broad-based tax on middle-class working people; this in addition to the  {former Gov.} Lowell Weicker income tax and Malloy's two massive tax increases, the largest and the second largest in state history. And we know where tax increases go -- mostly to satisfy special-interest groups that regularly vote Democratic.  These accumulative tax increases have boosted spending in Connecticut threefold since former Gov. William O’Neill took a hike in 1991, having been replaced by the father of Connecticut’s income tax.   

For decades, the message of Connecticut’s government to the state’s diminishing wealth pots, including its techies, has been – if you have wealth, run. And they ran; they are running still. Connecticut is bleeding wealth, and its wounds will not be cauterized by increasing taxes. Only permanent, long-term reductions in spending will do the trick.

Techies take note: Connecticut has become the entrepreneurial graveyard of New England. The only dreams that live here are those of its progressive tax obsessed politicians.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.

Frank Carini: 2 bills could help the rich wall off the R.I. coastline

The maximum building height in Charlestown is 35 feet, plus up to 5 feet of freeboard in flood hazard areas. If Rhode Island Builders Association-supported bills are passed, coastal structures in Charlestown and along the entire coast could get a lot taller

-- Charlestown Building Department

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — Two bills recently approved by the Rhode Island General Assembly support the construction of taller buildings along the Ocean State’s shoreline, which, according to some municipal planners and building officials, would essentially result in the walling off of the coast.

The bills passed in the House and Senate on June 23, the last day of the 2018 legislative session. The bills now await the governor's signature. If signed by the governor, the new law would go into effect March 1, 2019.

The Rhode Island Builders Association is using the state’s desire to replace Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps with more detailed Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) maps as a way to “dramatically increase building height along the coast,” Charlestown town planner Jane Weidman said.

She noted that the bills would essentially increase structure size in coastal areas that are increasingly susceptible to sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and other climate-change impacts.

“It’s not good planning practice in general to build homes that block the shore and obstruct the view,” Weidman said. “We should be retreating or moving away, not promoting larger structures in flood zones. Why do we want to be massing up the most sensitive areas we have?”

The Charlestown Town Council adopted a resolution opposing Senate bill S2413 and its companion House bill H7741. The council, along with Weidman and Joe Warner, the town’s building/zoning official and its floodplain manager, are against altering the state definition of “building height” to allow measurement from base flood elevation instead of existing-grade elevation.

Rhode Island building height has for years been measured from the average natural grade, or from the ground itself, according to Weidman. Under the proposed bills, that way of measuring would stay in the state Zoning Enabling Act of 1991 for all new structures except those being built in flood hazard areas, which would automatically be allowed to go to an elevation equal to base flood elevation as the measuring starting point, she said.

“This new bill would allow for three to three and a half floors instead of two,” Warner said. “We promote elevating above base flood elevation and the changes we made two years ago are working well. This bill isn’t adding any incentive or benefit for flood protection or protection against extreme weather. It does nothing to protect buildings from damage. We’d be building elevated mansions.”

Building and planning officials in South Kingstown, Westerly and Narragansett share similar concerns.

ecoRI News reached out to both CRMC and the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island to get their take on the two bills. The Coastal Resources Center said it didn’t have anyone who could speak in depth about the bills. CRMC acknowledged the request, but didn’t supply a response.

The Conservation Law Foundation testified in April in support of the House bill.

Having the state go from using FEMA maps to CRMC maps to identify flood zones isn’t the problem the Rhode Island chapterof the American Planning Association (APARI) and others have with the bills. The concern is with other wording that has been slipped in and what that could mean for both the look and vulnerability of Rhode Island’s coast.

“This is a lousy bill that will give wealthy land owners the right to block off the shore,” said Weidman, co-chair of the APARI’s Legislative Committee. “Municipalities, and neighbors on the land side, are either going to face higher structures within flood hazard areas or are going to have to amend their zoning codes to reduce total heights in these areas.”

During the 2016 General Assembly session, the state’s definition of building height was debated by planners and builders and eventually amended. Among the major changes made was to allow any property in a flood hazard area to have its building height measured in a way that excludes up to 5 feet of freeboard. Measured in feet, freeboard compensates for flood heights and wave action by raising a building.

This change provided an incentive for property owners in flood hazard areas to go higher than 1 foot above base flood elevation, which is the current requirement in the state building code. It’s a good law and it’s working, Warner said.

The so-called “freeboard bill” passed without noticeable opposition from the Rhode Island planning community. Developers were happy, because, as freeboard height requirements increased in recent years, they said local height restrictions were limiting building.

The 2016 bill that was adopted, however, was much different than the original ask. Builders wanted more, Weidman said, and these two current bills resurrect some of that old language, including “for any property located in a flood hazard area, the building height shall be measured from the base flood elevation.”

Both Weidman and Warner recently told ecoRI News that the bills’ provision requiring that building height in flood hazard areas be measured from base flood elevation should be removed, as it was two years ago.

“This bill tells us how to measure height,” Warner said. “Each community should be free to decide what works best for it. This bill would increase the risk of wind damage to the larger buildings it would allow."

They both agreed that the current definition doesn’t need to be changed, and if it were to be by these bills, it would result in a dramatic change in how building height is defined and, without corresponding changes to a municipality’s building-height limits in coastal zones, would result in buildings with excessive height and bulk along Rhode Island’s coast.

Weidman is worried that the concerns of planners and builders will again be ignored by those on Smith Hill.

“There’s no pushback against the builders. We don’t have that standing in the General Assembly like they do,” she said. “We can’t get our bills out of committee. These bills are a complete giveaway to builders.”

Warner is concerned too few people, most notably municipal planners and building officials, understand the true impact these bills will have if they pass.

“There has been no real thought of the bills’ consequences,” he said. “There will be plenty of uproar when building permits are pulled and neighbors see the size of beachfront homes to be built.”

For instance, Warner noted that the maximum building height in Charlestown is 35 feet, plus up to 5 feet of freeboard in flood hazard areas. If the Rhode Island Builders Association-supported bills are passed, he said Charlestown could see buildings as high as 56 feet along the shore.

“It’s about economic development,” Weidman said. “It’s not about good growth, good land use, or good environmental practices. It’s all about economic development. Our land use needs to be done in a comprehensive manner, not caving to what builders want.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

David Warsh: As Maine goes....?

Downtown Portland.

Maine has enjoyed a national reputation for bipartisanship and civility in its public life in the 75 years since World War II, sending, for example, Margaret Chase Smith (R), Edmund Muskie (D), George Mitchell (D), William Cohen (R), Olympia Snowe (R), Susan Collins (R) and Angus King (I) to the U.S. Senate over the years. Its habit of electing governors in September, until they changed in 1957 to November elections, gave rise to the catch-phrase,  “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”

But sure enough, for the past eight years Maine has been governed by a toxic former businessman who bears a strong political resemblance to Donald Trump. How did Gov. Paul LePage get elected?  He was the beneficiary of Maine voters’ famous independent streak.

LePage won the GOP nomination in the Tea Party year of 2010, with 38 of the primary vote.  Five months later he won the general election with 38 percent of all votes cast, defeating independent candidate Eliot Cutler by barely 7,500 votes. Cutler had been hoping to replace Gov. Angus King, who had served two terms as an independent. Democratic Party candidate Libby Mitchell trailed with 19 percent of the vote, while Republican Shawn Moody and unaffiliated Kevin Scott received 5 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

In 2014, LePage was re-elected, with 48 percent of the vote, defeating Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud, with 43 percent. This time Cutler claimed 8 percent of the vote.  Since the beginning of his incumbency there has been near-constant turmoil. At one point the governor seemed on the verge of impeachment.

Instead, voters organized a referendum to establish ranked-choice voting in state-wide elections, and passed it twice over determined opposition, affirming in a referendum earlier this month that the method will be used in future state primaries and all elections for federal offices. The Maine constitution must be amended if ranked-choice is to replace plurality voting in general elections in Maine.

Voters are accustomed to casting their ballots for a single candidate. The ranked-choice procedure asks voters to rank multiple candidates in the order they prefer them. If no candidate is ranked first by more than 50 percent of the voters, the candidate least-often ranked first is dropped and his or her next-best votes are reallocated to the others. The processes continues until a majority candidate emerges.

The process has been used in national elections in Australia for more than a century; the Academy of Motion Pictures employs it to insure against vote-splitting that might permit an unpopular choice for Best Motion Picture to slip through.  So do several municipalities, including Cambridge, Mass., and San Francisco.

Term limits mean LePage can’t run again. So earlier this month, auto-repair entrepreneur Shawn Moody, who first ran for governor in 2010, defeated three others in the Republican primary.  He received 54 percent of the vote, meaning that ranked choice was not an issue. All four candidates pledged to carry on LePage’s legacy of tax cuts and welfare stringency.  Meanwhile, two-term Atty. Gen. Janet Mills required four run-off rounds to defeat clean energy entrepreneur Adam Cote in the Democratic primary, 54 percent to 46 percent. Five other candidates were dropped from the totals.

We’ll have to wait until November to see what happens in Maine.  The Bangor Daily News noted last week that Maine voters appear slightly more enthusiastic about Trump than you might expect, and cautioned that November might not turn out to be a “wave” election. Republican Bruce Poliquin is running for a third term in Maine’s enormous interior congressional district, which in 2016 delivered its one electoral vote to Trump.

And with respect to the possibility of eventually adopting ranked-choice voting in presidential elections, Harvard economists Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen wrote in The New York Times earlier this month, the “interstate compacts” required to bundle votes in the Electoral College  get far ahead of the story. For now, they say, the focus on ranked-choice voting is in Maine

David Warsh, a long time economics and political columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, based in Somerville, Mass.

Brian Wakamo: We subsidize the wrong kind of agriculture

-- Photo by Sstevenson24

From OtherWords.org

Summer: the season of barbecues, baseball games, and backyard fun. It’s also the time of year when the American farming industry comes into full swing producing the crops we hold near and dear.

The pastoral ideal of golden fields of corn and wheat is what comes to mind for most people, and they’d be on the right track. Corn, soybeans, and wheat are the three biggest crops grown in this country, and — along with cows, pigs, and chicken — make up the bulk of our farming output.

There’s a reason for this: The federal government heavily subsidizes those products. In fact, the bulk of U.S. farming subsidies go to only 4 percent of farms — overwhelmingly large and corporate operations — that grow these few crops.

For the most part, that corn, soy, and wheat doesn’t even go to feed our populace. More of it goes into the production of ethanol — which is also heavily subsidized — and into the mouths of those cows, pigs, and chickens stuffed into feedlots. Those grains purchased by the feedlots are also federally subsidized, allowing producers to buy grains at below market prices.

When we do eat these foods, they’re sold back to us in unhealthy forms, pumped full of high fructose corn syrup and growth hormones. Large corporate farms and feedlots also poison waterways, drain aquifers, and pollute the air.

Meanwhile, small farmers continue to go broke, thanks to the low cost of foods subsidized by the government for corporate buyers. Even the few companies that provide seeds and equipment for farmers receive their own tax breaks from state governments, while farmers are stuck with the bill of goods sold to them from companies like John Deere and Monsanto.

Does this help feed America? Not really: We still buy most of our food from far-flung places. So why is our government subsidizing this production model?

Plain and simple: Corporations buy these subsidies for pennies on the dollar.

In 2011, the agribusiness industry spent around $100 million to lobby and campaign for federal support. They got billions in subsidies in return, making them the biggest recipients of corporate welfare.

This is disgraceful. Why should our government support big businesses that poison us and our environment?

Congress is now considering a new Farm Bill. The recently shot-down first draft cut funding for rural development and conservation programs, while opening up loopholes for corporate farms to access more subsidies. That should open the field for newer, better ideas.

All politicians champion small businesses, especially those in the heartland where most agricultural production takes places. If they’re going to subsidize agriculture, why not give more support to family farms, which often farm more sustainably and grow much healthier foods?

Instead of supporting factory farms and mono-crops, we could provide incentives for crop rotations, reduced usage of pesticides and herbicides, pasture-raised meat, and organic practices. Studies show that practices like organic farming produce only marginally less than conventional farms.

These practices are a part and parcel of a growing segment of the agricultural industry bolstered by health and environmentally conscious consumers. Farmers who sell their products at farmers markets and through community supported agriculture groups should be heralded and paid for their support of the community.

This could also lower the costs of healthier foods, which often are priced prohibitively for the people who need them most. Expanding the market for food farmed sustainably and ethically grown would benefit all consumers — and address the health crisis brought on by the mass consumption of unhealthy foods.

Why should we subsidize things that harm us all when we can help out the farmers who support a better life and environment for us all?

Brian Wakamo is a Next Leader on the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.