Vox clamantis in deserto
Peter Certo: News media ignore scandalous defense budget
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which is actually in Kittery, Maine.
From OtherWords.org
On an otherwise sleepy August day, President Trump signed the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act. Named for the dying Arizona senator who’s championed military budgets for his entire career, the bill increases U.S. military spending to an astonishing $717 billion.
According to my Institute for Policy Studies colleague Lindsay Koshgarian, that’s about double what American taxpayers were spending at the end of the Cold War, and upwards of $300 billion more than what we spent before the War on Terror.
The bill also contains language encouraging a confrontation with Iran, while also making it possible for the administration to continue offering weapons and support to the Saudi-led coalition that’s bombing Yemen. (Where, the very week the bill was signed, they bombed a school bus, killing 51 people — 40 of them children.)
You’d expect a bill of this magnitude to generate lots of critical coverage — and you’d be right! But only kind of.
The most controversial thing about this bill, to hear most of the media tell it, is that the president refused to thank John McCain when he signed it.
Countless outlets, from Newsweek to TIME to the Washington Post, reported the omission as a “snub” against the bill’s namesake senator, an occasional Trump critic. CNN’s Jake Tapper used an entire segment on his show to scold the president about it — and even sanctimoniously thanked McCain himself.
The New York Times ran the numbers: Trump spoke for 28 minutes about the bill, with 0 mentions of McCain.
I ran some numbers of my own: A Google news search on the story turned up nearly 150,000 pieces like this. That’s almost 3 times the number of results I got when I searched the same story, but replaced “John McCain” with the actual price tag of the bill: $717 billion.
To put it kindly, this is garbage.
If the media deems a petty snub more controversial than a massive, war-mongering spending bill, you can be sure Congress will follow. The bill passed by huge bipartisan margins in both the House and Senate.
I can assure you, Trump’s not going to speak more kindly of John McCain as a result of this coverage. But more school buses are probably going to get blown up — and so are more pressing human needs in our own communities.
For instance, my home state of Ohio has, by some measures, the most student debt of any state. According to Koshgarian, taxpayers there spent $15.5 billion on the Pentagon base budget alone this past year. For that money, we could’ve funded nearly 700,000 four-year Pell grants.
For Texas, the most uninsured state in the union, their $45 billion in Pentagon dollars could’ve covered 15 million adults and 16 million kids. That’s the entire state — and then some.
Flint, Mich., taxpayers, Koshgarian calculates, spent some $38 million. That could’ve paid for nearly 700 infrastructure jobs to fix things like, say, lead in their water pipes.
Nationally, that money could’ve provided solar power to the entire country. Or funded universal health care. Or debt-free higher education. Instead, we’ll be shelling out more money on fruitless, destructive wars and boondoggle weapons systems like the F-35 (which McCain himself has called “a scandal and a tragedy”).
The real scandal is that such expenditures aren’t deemed controversial — not by our lawmakers, and not by many of the outlets that cover them. Next time they say McCain’s name, they should report what his bill costs the rest of us.
Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of OtherWords.org.
Driving sober on bumpy roads
Driver undergoing sobriety test.
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
Happy news: Safewise.com, which studies community safety, shows that Rhode Island has the fourth-lowest driving-while-intoxicated fatality rate among the 50 states, despite its reputation for having bad drivers. Just three states – New Jersey, Utah and New York – had lower rates. Massachusetts was the sixth lowest, but Connecticut was only 15th best. Thank good public-education campaigns on the perils of drunk driving, strong policing and in the case of Utah, the fact that Mormons aren’t supposed to drink!
xxx
Wall Street 24/7 reports that Rhode Island has the highest percentage of poor roads in the country, at 24.6 percent, and the highest percentage of states with deficient bridges, at 23.3 percent. And perhaps not coincidentally the 16th lowest percentage of state highway spending per driver a year: $408.
Years of state underfunding have led to this situation, exacerbated by the usually Republican-controlled Congress’s refusal to increase the federal gasoline tax since it was last raised, in 1993, to 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. That money is supposed to go to build and repair transportation infrastructure.
This anti-tax mania has reduced federal money available to the states for transportation, as have better fuel efficiency and, in the past few years, the arrival of electric cars.
But anti-tax mania when it limits public-infrastructure building and repair ends up costing individuals and businesses a lot, in travel delays and broken equipment.
Gov. Gina Raimondo’s Rhode Works program, which includes new truck tolls – commercial trucks do the lion’s share of damage to roads and bridges -- to help pay for it, is much appreciated. Governors for decades have tried but failed – and then surrendered in efforts to address this serious threat to safety and the state’s economy.
Chris Powell: Conn. Democrats, Republicans vie to be nuttiest and most irresponsible
Which is Connecticut's nuttier political party? Most observers might say the Republicans because of their association with President Trump, the loose cannon-in-chief. Last week's primary results suggest otherwise.
Yes, the Republican nomination for governor went to Bob Stefanowski, a former executive for a trifecta of disreputable corporations -- General Electric, which just moved its headquarters out of Connecticut; Union Bank of Switzerland, which helped the Nazis expropriate Europe, helped Long-Term Capital Management wreck the U.S. financial markets, and helped rich Americans evade taxes, for which the bank was fined $800 million; and DFC Global Corp., a payday lender in Britain.
Stefanowski, who calls himself conservative, is so conservative that until last week he had declined to vote for 16 years, donated to Democratic candidates, and two years ago switched from Republican to Democratic as he contemplated running for governor in the other party. Stefanowski's insistence on repealing the state income tax without specifying where he would cut the equivalent half of state spending seems to have persuaded most of his supporters.
But Stefanowski received only 29 percent of the Republican primary vote and won the nomination only because the remaining field was split four ways.
Meanwhile in the Democratic primary 38 percent of the vote for lieutenant governor went to Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, a government employee union organizer who misrepresented her mediocre qualifications to be first in line of succession to the state's highest office. Zimmerman was appointed to the Newtown Town Council, not elected as she claimed, was defeated for election in her own right, and ridiculously exaggerated her work as a congressional intern.
Zimmerman's main claim on the nomination was her Hispanic ethnicity as she exploited the retrograde movement among the Democrats toward the identity politics Connecticut might have thought it overcame 50 years ago. On taxes Zimmerman was just as bonkers as Stefanowski, advocating a vague tax on "big box" stores as the solution to state government's financial disaster. (Democrats always want more money for government but have to search for a new minority to extract it from, since they can't persuade a majority that the revenue will help anyone but government's own employees.)
At least Zimmerman was an insurgent. She challenged a party old-timer, former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, for whom party leaders arranged the lieutenant governor nomination in exchange for her withdrawing for governor in favor of Ned Lamont.
But to win as an insurgent in Connecticut's Democratic Party it's best just to pretend to be one. That's the lesson of Jahana Hayes's victory in the primary for U.S. representative in the 5th Congressional District.
Hayes, the former national teacher of the year from Waterbury, now living in Wolcott -- a detail carefully underplayed by her campaign -- is black and portrayed herself as the exemplar of the oppressed when in fact she is the exemplar of government's occasional success in advancing the disadvantaged. With no political experience, just platitudes, she got half the vote at the party's district convention and then the endorsement of its most influential interest groups.
Because of the insurgency buzz contrived for her, she probably will be elected and in Congress will be another vote controlled by the National Education Association, just like the retiring congresswoman she succeeds. Comes the revolution!
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
How a B.U. physician made a killing by promoting the dubious vitamin D craze
A tanning booth.
By LIZ SZABO
Dr. Michael Holick’s enthusiasm for vitamin D can be fairly described as extreme.
The endocrinologist, a professor of medicine at the Boston University Medical Center, who perhaps more than anyone else is responsible for creating a billion-dollar vitamin D sales and testing juggernaut, elevates his own levels of the stuff with supplements and fortified milk. When he bikes outdoors, he won’t put sunscreen on his limbs. He has written book-length odes to vitamin D, and has warned in multiple scholarly articles about a “vitamin D deficiency pandemic” that explains disease and suboptimal health across the world.
His fixation is so intense that it extends to the dinosaurs. What if the real problem with that asteroid 65 million years ago wasn’t a lack of food, but the weak bones that follow a lack of sunlight? “I sometimes wonder,” Holick has written, “did the dinosaurs die of rickets and osteomalacia?”
Holick’s role in drafting national vitamin D guidelines, and the embrace of his message by mainstream doctors and wellness gurus alike, have helped push supplement sales to $936 million in 2017. That’s a ninefold increase over the previous decade. Lab tests for vitamin D deficiency have spiked, too: Doctors ordered more than 10 million for Medicare patients in 2016, up 547 percent since 2007, at a cost of $365 million. About 1 in 4 adults 60 and older now take vitamin D supplements.
But few of the Americans swept up in the vitamin D craze are likely aware that the industry has sent a lot of money Holick’s way. A Kaiser Health News investigation found that he has used his prominent position in the medical community to promote practices that financially benefit corporations that have given him hundreds of thousands of dollars — including drugmakers, the indoor-tanning industry and one of the country’s largest commercial labs.
In an interview, Holick acknowledged he has worked as a consultant to Quest Diagnostics, which performs vitamin D tests, since 1979. Holick, 72, said that industry funding “doesn’t influence me in terms of talking about the health benefits of vitamin D.”
There is no question that the hormone is important. Without enough of it, bones can become thin, brittle and misshapen, causing a condition called rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. The issue is how much vitamin D is healthy, and what level constitutes deficiency.
Holick’s crucial role in shaping that debate occurred in 2011. Late the previous year, the prestigious National Academy of Medicine (then known as the Institute of Medicine), a group of independent scientific experts, issued a comprehensive, 1,132-page report on vitamin D deficiency. It concluded that the vast majority of Americans get plenty of the hormone through diet and sunlight, and advised doctors to test only patients at high risk of vitamin D-related disorders, such as osteoporosis.
A few months later, in June 2011, Holick oversaw the publication of a report that took a starkly different view. The paper, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, was on behalf of the Endocrine Society, the field’s foremost professional group, whose guidelines are widely used by hospitals, physicians and commercial labs nationwide, including Quest. The society adopted Holick’s position that “vitamin D deficiency is very common in all age groups” and advocated a huge expansion of vitamin D testing, targeting more than half the United States population, including those who are black, Hispanic or obese — groups that tend to have lower vitamin D levels than others.
The recommendations were a financial windfall for the vitamin D industry. By advocating such widespread testing, the Endocrine Society directed more business to Quest and other commercial labs. Vitamin D tests are now the fifth-most-common lab test covered by Medicare.
The guidelines benefited the vitamin D industry in another important way. Unlike the National Academy, which concluded that patients have sufficient vitamin D when their blood levels are at or above 20 nanograms per milliliter, the Endocrine Society said vitamin D levels need to be much higher — at least 30 nanograms per milliliter. Many commercial labs, including Quest and LabCorp, adopted the higher standard.
Yet there’s no evidence that people with the higher level are any healthier than those with the lower level, said Dr. Clifford Rosen, a senior scientist at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute and co-author of the National Academy report. Using the Endocrine Society’s higher standard creates the appearance of an epidemic, he said, because it labels 80 percent of Americans as having inadequate vitamin D.
“We see people being tested all the time and being treated based on a lot of wishful thinking, that you can take a supplement to be healthier,” Rosen said.
Patients with low vitamin D levels are often prescribed supplements and instructed to get checked again in a few months, said Dr. Alex Krist, a family physician and vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an expert panel that issues health advice. Many physicians then repeat the test once a year. For labs, “it’s in their financial interest” to label patients with low vitamin D levels, Krist said.
In a 2010 book, The Vitamin D Solution, Holick gave readers tips to encourage them to get their blood tested. For readers worried about potential out-of-pocket costs for vitamin D tests — they range from $40 to $225 — Holick listed the precise reimbursement codes that doctors should use when requesting insurance coverage. “If they use the wrong coding when submitting the claim to the insurance company, they won’t get reimbursed and you will wind up having to pay for the test,” Holick wrote.
Holick acknowledged financial ties with Quest and other companies in the financial disclosure statement published with the Endocrine Society guidelines. In an interview, he said that working for Quest for four decades — he is currently paid $1,000 a month — hasn’t affected his medical advice. “I don’t get any additional money if they sell one test or 1 billion,” Holick said.
A Quest spokeswoman, Wendy Bost, said the company seeks the advice of a number of expert consultants. “We feel strongly that being able to work with the top experts in the field, whether it’s vitamin D or another area, translates to better quality and better information, both for our patients and physicians,” Bost said.
Since 2011, Holick’s advocacy has been embraced by the wellness-industrial complex. Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, Goop, cites his writing. Dr. Mehmet Ozhas described vitamin D as “the No. 1 thing you need more of,” telling his audience that it can help them avoid heart disease, depression, weight gain, memory loss and cancer. And Oprah Winfrey’s website tells readers that “knowing your vitamin D levels might save your life.” Mainstream doctors have pushed the hormone, including Dr. Walter Willett, a widely respected professor at Harvard Medical School.
Today, seven years after the dueling academic findings, the leaders of the National Academy report are struggling to be heard above the clamor for more sunshine pills.
“There isn’t a ‘pandemic,’” A. Catharine Ross, a professor at Penn State and chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in an interview. “There isn’t a widespread problem.”
Ties To Drugmakers And Tanning Salons
In The Vitamin D Solution, Holick describes his promotion of vitamin D as a lonely crusade. “Drug companies can sell fear,” he writes, “but they can’t sell sunlight, so there’s no promotion of the sun’s health benefits.”
Yet Holick also has extensive financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. He received nearly $163,000 from 2013 to 2017 from pharmaceutical companies, according to Medicare’s Open Payments database, which tracks payments from drug and device manufacturers. The companies paying him included Sanofi-Aventis, which markets vitamin D supplements; Shire, which makes drugs for hormonal disorders that are given with vitamin D; Amgen, which makes an osteoporosis treatment; and Roche Diagnostics and Quidel Corp., which both make vitamin D tests.
The database includes only payments made since 2013, but Holick’s record of being compensated by drug companies started before that. In his 2010 book, he describes visiting South Africa to give “talks for a pharmaceutical company,” whose president and chief executive were in the audience.
Holick’s ties to the tanning industry also have drawn scrutiny. Although Holick said he doesn’t advocate tanning, he has described tanning beds as a “recommended source” of vitamin D “when used in moderation.”
Holick has acknowledged accepting research money from the UV Foundation — a nonprofit arm of the now-defunct Indoor Tanning Association — which gave $150,000 to Boston University from 2004 to 2006, earmarked for Holick’s research. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified tanning beds as carcinogenic in 2009.
In 2004, the tanning-industry associations led Dr. Barbara Gilchrest, who then was head of Boston University’s dermatology department, to ask Holick to resign from the department. He did so, but remains a professor at the medical school’s department of endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition and weight management.
In The Vitamin D Solution, Holick wrote that he was “forced” to give up his position due to his “stalwart support of sensible sun exposure.” He added, “Shame on me for challenging one of the dogmas of dermatology.”
Although Holick’s website lists him as a member of the American Academy of Dermatology, an academy spokeswoman, Amanda Jacobs, said he was not a current member.
Dr. Christopher McCartney, chairman of the Endocrine Society’s clinical guidelines subcommittee, said the society has put in place stricter policies on conflict of interest since its vitamin D guidelines were released. The society’s current policies would not allow the chairman of the guideline-writing committee to have financial conflicts.
A Miracle Pill Loses Its Luster
Enthusiasm for vitamin D among medical experts has dimmed in recent years, as rigorous clinical trials have failed to confirm the benefits suggested by early, preliminary studies. A string of trials found no evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease or falls in the elderly. And most scientists say there isn’t enough evidence to know if vitamin D can prevent chronic diseases that aren’t related to bones.
Although the amount of vitamin D in a typical daily supplement is generally considered safe, it is possible to take too much. In 2015, an article in the American Journal of Medicine linked blood levels as low as 50 nanograms per milliliter with an increased risk of death.
Some researchers say vitamin D may never have been the miracle pill that it appeared to be. Sick people who stay indoors tend to have low vitamin D levels; their poor health is likely the cause of their low vitamin D levels, not the other way around, said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Only really rigorous studies, which randomly assign some patients to take vitamin D and others to take placebos, can provide definitive answers about vitamin D and health. Manson is leading one such study, involving 26,000 adults, expected to be published in November.
A number of insurers and health experts have begun to view widespread vitamin D testing as unnecessary and expensive. In 2014, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said there wasn’t enough evidence to recommend for or against routine vitamin D screening. In April, the task force explicitly recommended that older adults outside of nursing homes avoid taking vitamin D supplements to prevent falls.
In 2015, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield published an analysis highlighting the overuse of vitamin D tests. In 2014, the insurer spent $33 million on 641,000 vitamin D tests. “That’s an astronomical amount of money,” said Dr. Richard Lockwood, Excellus’ svice president and chief medical officer for utilization management. More than 40 percent of Excellus patients tested had no medical reason to be screened.
In spite of Excellus’s efforts to rein in the tests, vitamin D usage has remained high, Lockwood said. “It’s very hard to change habits,” he said, adding: “The medical community is not much different than the rest of the world, and we get into fads.”
Liz Szabo: lszabo@kff.org, @LizSzabo
Clean up dirty urban rivers with a high-fiber diet?
Using Biomatrix river-cleaning system.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
Here’s an interesting way to partly clean up urban rivers: Put coconut-fiber beds, made by a company called Biomatrix, along a river’s edge as fake islands and embed a variety of growing plants in them. The plants suck up nutrients from the water as well as pollutants, which they store and break down, and the roots in the water provide habitats for aquatic species.
Try this in some sections of the mighty Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket rivers in Providence and the Neponset in Massachusetts and along the lower Blackstone in Massachusetts and Rhode Island?
To read more, please hit this link about how they’re doing this in Chicago.
'Under a sea of summer air'
Looking north from Walnut Hill Mansion, in New Britain, where the distinguished poet Constance Carrier (1908-91) taught for many years at New Britain High School, most notably Latin.
"Someone on Walnut Hill has taken a picture,
reducing the town by distance to design
under an arch of sky whose empty vastness
the ample clouds can only underline.
All that is left of landscape lies at the bottom
of a sea of summer air: the town is drowned
under that sky, remote above the buildings
that in the picture scarcely clear the ground.''
From “The Prospect Before Us,’’ by Constance Carrier
Galleries try to make Newport more of art market
"Newport Rocks'' (oil), by John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872).
This article, by Robert Whitcomb, originated in GoLocalProvo.com
'Whither the Newport art world? Most of a range of experts told GoLocal that it’s getting livelier, and they suggested ways to boost the city as a place to make, sell and buy art.
Karen Conway, who now runs exhibitions at the nearby Jamestown Art Center but who is still deeply involved in the Newport art world, where she used to be a curator at the Newport Art Museum, told us that, yes, the city’s art sector is growing, fueled by an expanding regional, national and international community that buys art. But, the experts complained, too few buy art in Newport.
Ms. Conway noted the City by the Sea’s very old and close links with New York, where the U.S. art market is based, and also with Paris and other major cities where a lot of work is bought and sold.
Kara Popowich, a vice president at Sotheby’s (which is among other things one of the world’s largest art brokers), cited “the high quality of work’’ and “the incredible mix of people’’ in Newport, while noting that prices for art sold there are “more competitive’’ than in the Big Apple. “And not just New York hedge funders are buying.’’
“The Newport art scene is growing,’’ said New York-based painter Amanda Fenlon, who has shown in the Atelier Newport gallery. But, of course, it’s “always very tough to predict what the market will do.’’
She, as did some others, lauded Atelier Newport, started in 2016, to, among other things, promote high-quality contemporary artists and in so doing raise the stature of the city in the international art world. There are several other very interesting galleries -- Blink Gallery might be the best known -- highlighting regional contemporary artists. And a new gallery called Coastal Contemporary bears watching.
Norah Diedrich, the executive director of Newport Art Museum, said that while there’s “more cultural engagement’’ these days, and more shows, the city is not yet a major “destination point’’ for the arts besides its famous musical events. Still, she says, there are “more lectures and shows, more experiences’’ these days as art has become more of a “total experience.’’
The dynamic and frequently referred-to Bobbie Lemmons, who runs Atelier Newport and had a gallery in Manhattan before moving to Newport full time, cited the many connections between Newport and Gotham and lauded the “overwhelming community of artists” in Newport. “There’s an express lane between New York and Newport,’’ a city that she said that she has fallen in love with.
She sees her role as “trying to stretch the buyers’ eyes’’ in promoting the work of innovative, idiosyncratic contemporary artists, as opposed to more typical Newport work such as paintings of sailboats and old houses. She’s helped by the role of the Internet in “changing the buzz.’’
Ms. Lemmons, like the others we talked with, noted the crucial role of very rich people in supporting the art market in Newport. Some of them are buying art for their yachts.
A young New York-based painter, Hannah Stahl, who has shown at Atelier Newport, was pleased that the publicity she got by exhibiting in Newport “radiated back to New York,’’ where it can be tough to be one artist of so many. “Newport is a big hug compared to New York. It’s very welcoming’’ to young artists, she said.
Newport’s art world is obviously most dynamic in the summer, but, she said, the art world “seems to be expanding’’ there in general, with a “hugely diverse and international community,’’ “growing energy’’ and more contemporary work being shown, in addition to the traditional “sailboat pictures’’ that many people associate with the city. “Now people can see interesting art in Newport; they don’t have to go to New York to see it.’’
New York-based painter Richard Nocera was somewhat more restrained. “The best thing about showing in Newport is that it gets me into New York. I often find the same collectors in Newport as in New York.’’
While he’s had “consistent sales’’ in Newport the past three years, “Newport is a stop along the way – not where I’d like to end.’’
And long-established and well-known painter Bunny Harvey, who has done business in Newport as well as in New York for years, told us:
“I don’t see Newport as a major place to buy and sell art in,’’ although the local art community is “trying to be more than just a regional place to buy art and trying to connect more with the New York art world.’’
To this end, she said, she hopes that the city “will attract better galleries.’’
Newport Art Museum, Discover Newport Photo
A challenge is that “Many collectors, including in Newport, want work to be vetted by New York galleries. Many buyers are insecure. And they feel purchase implies knowledge.’’
Art dealer William Vareika, with his wife, Alison, owns the nationally known William Vareika Fine Arts, on Bellevue Avenue. The gallery specializes in paintings of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries but the Vereikas also have an extensive collection of contemporary art in their house. He says that so far as a place to buy and sell art, Newport remains only a modest market. Not many people come to Newport to buy art, he told us, although “world-class art’’ has been created in the city for many generations. Only about 1 percent of his sales come from people coming to his gallery and buying there and the vast majority of his buyers are from out of town.
How to boost Newport’s ranking in the art world?
One is to address the shortage of studio space for artists so that more could move there, full or part-time, from, well, especially New York. Some artists we talked with said that they’ve so enjoyed being in Newport that they’d like to reside there. “I’d live there maybe half the year if space were available,’’ said artist Hannah Stahl.
Unlike many old New England cities and towns, Newport has never had a lot of former industrial space, such as closed textile mills, that could be transformed into artists’ lofts.
Ms. Diedrich cited closed public schools – enrollments in the Newport school system are falling -- as one possibility for conversion into space for artists. She said that workspace is “too hard to find and too expensive’’ now. Bunny Harvey and others suggest that former Navy buildings might be options.
Ms. Stahl, for her part, put forward the idea of artists getting space in some of Newport’s boatyards.
Ms. Popowich suggested a summer-residency program for emerging artists, such as the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in Maine, while Ms. Harvey liked the idea of summer residencies for established high-quality artists, some of whom would be from New York and happy to escape it for the cooling breezes of the City by the Sea. Maybe something like the MacDowell Colony, in Peterboro, N.H. She said that perhaps Rhode Island School of Design architecture students could be brought in to design studio space.
William Vareika Fine Art
Mr. Vareika said artist-residency programs might boost the art market in Newport simply by drawing more attention to the city as a very active arts center.
Ms. Popowich thinks that linking the community more tightly with studio-art programs such New England schools as the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, Yale and Dartmouth would Newport boost the power of its art synergies. (Salve Regina University has a studio art program, too.)
And to boost sales, most of those we talked with agreed that an annual or -- more practical -- high-end biennial art fair, along the lines of the Art Basel shows in Basel, Switzerland, Miami Beach and Hong Kong, should be considered. Maybe, said Kara Popowich, there could be some synergy between Newport’s famous music festivals and an art festival. While Newport is much, much smaller than the aforementioned cities, it has an international reputation for wealth, glamour, seaside beauty and dramatic architecture that would help promote a major art fair.
Fenlon cited the success of the New Orleans art biennial, created after Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, in boosting that city.
Perhaps a Newport biennial could be best held soon after Labor Day, when the weather is still fine but after the summer tourist crowds have thinned out.
“An art fair attracting art-buying agents’’ is a great idea, said Hannah Stahl. “It would tell the public that Newport is clearly an important place to buy and sell art’’ much more effectively than individual galleries could. Some see one or more of Newport’s famed mansions and/or Salve Regina University as possible venues.
But, Ms. Harvey cautioned, “Who has the energy and clout to organize such events? Galleries are stretched thin. And beware of alternative art fairs with discounted art. You’ve got to go high.’’ The Newport Art Museum’s Diedrich, for her part, noted that while the city’s art institutions “do some things together, it’s not a tight unified group.’’
And Mr. Vareika emphasized that a well-heeled sponsor or sponsors would be needed to get an art fair going and to connect it with the New York art scene. Well, Newport does have a few billionaires….
Of course, the art world goes up and down with the broad economy, but the extreme wealth of some summer residents of Newport could provide a high floor. Perhaps one or two could be persuaded to step forward as the city’s uber art patrons and get an art fair going.Tuhu
Harv Hilowitz: Social entrepreneurship goes to college
Cole Memorial Chapel at Wheaton College, in Norton, Mass., which got a $10 million gift from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation of Bethesda, Md., to establish an endowed Professorship in Social Entrepreneurship and provide for the renovation of a business department building on campus to house SE studies at Wheaton.
Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
Today, many higher education institutions are faced with declining enrollment, increasing tuitions and calls to infuse their degree tracks with more practical experiences for students, leading more directly to meaningful careers. At the same time, college students are searching for programs offering practical, academically rigorous work-related experiences that tie into their social consciousness as citizens of the world. Social entrepreneurship (SE) education, on campus and online, may offer a solution.
SE 101. Social entrepreneurs are people who create businesses with the core intention to help mitigate a social problem, using the proceeds and spinoff services derived from that business. An example of an SE enterprise is the local thrift store operation that also acts as a women’s center, training and hiring the supported women in the retail and outreach roles, while cycling the proceeds into the center’s general operations. SE’s can be for-profit, nonprofit or hybrid operations, depending on the entity’s mission.
Social impact investing, meanwhile, is most often a corporate form of SE, wherein existing companies or institutions provide funding for socially oriented projects or “cloud-seeding” funds for other SE operations. The Newman’s Own philanthropy model is a well-known form of successful social investment.
Origins. In the late 1800s, some noteworthy businessmen embraced novel approaches to combine making money with what they thought were socially transformative products. Among the trailblazers were flour mill operators J.H. Kellogg, C.W. Post, nutritionist James Caleb Johnson, inventor of granula (now Granola), and Sylvester Graham, inventor of the famous Graham Cracker. These idealists sought new food products to feed the nutritionally (and morally) starved workers caught in the horrors of the early Industrial Revolution. The social entrepreneurship concept caught on, gradually gaining traction with the social work movement of the 1880s. Today, SE is moving onto campuses as a subset of business, sustainability and other majors, educating students in the principles and practices of SE, while also potentially enhancing campus recruitment yields and student-retention rates.
The term “social entrepreneur” was coined in 1953 in Howard Bowne’s book Social Responsibilities of the Businessman. The idea certainly existed but had no special identity prior to that. Amplified in the 1990s by business consultant Charles Leadbeater, the concept has now melded with growing e-commerce and social media innovations to become a global phenomenon.
Going global. Social entrepreneurship has evolved from healthy cereals into the corporate suite, becoming the platform for a wide variety of social ventures. Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank developed his microloan concept in Asia in 1983, winning the Nobel Prize in 2006. Fair Trade is another well-known branch of social entrepreneurship. Starting after World War II by religious groups and NGOs, it blossomed in the 1970s, now accounting for nearly 2% of total global sales (7.88 Billion Euros) of major agricultural commodities coffee, cocoa, tea, fruits, sugar, flowers and numerous handicraft items. And corporate philanthropy seeds the clouds of hundreds of social entrepreneurship ventures globally.
Higher education takes the hint. Since 2008, the Harvard Business School has developed MBA-level courses entitled Social Impact Investing, the Social Innovation Lab, Public Entrepreneurship, and Investing for Social Impact. Harvard regularly holds major conferences on social entrepreneurship and has published over 300 books, studies, theses and cases on the topic since 1997.
Oxford University’s Saïd Business School offers MBA core courses and fellowships at its Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. Classy.org, an online platform, lists 19 universities offering degrees, certifications and courses under the SE umbrella, including the Wharton School, Yale, Stanford and Cornell. In India, several universities are jumping on board, with MBAs in Social Entrepreneurship offered at Indira Gandhi National Open University, Sri Guru Granth Sahib University, and Bangalore University’s Seshadriuram Institute of Management Studies.
Acting as a facilitator of SE best practices, training and curricula for higher education institutions, the nonprofit Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship Network (GCSEN) Foundation has been working with college partners to accelerate offerings of social entrepreneurship courses, degrees, boot camps and internships. GCSEN provides curricula, resources, best practice advice and support services to colleges interested in offering innovative programs for budding social entrepreneurs. Students working in GCSEN boot camps have already started up a number of small businesses having social ventures, such as creating a Latino community center, bringing wireless internet service to schools in Nepal, and building an on-line app for isolated and depressed college students.
Founded in 2015 by Mike Caslin, a venture consultant and lecturer at SUNY New Paltz and professor at Babson College, GCSEN recently was instrumental in helping Wheaton College, in Norton Mass., secure a $10 million gift from the visionary Diana Davis Spencer Foundation of Bethesda, Md. The gift established an endowed Professorship in Social Entrepreneurship and provides for the renovation of a business department building on campus to house SE studies at Wheaton.
Benefits of SE ed. GSCEN’s research has conclusively shown that SE education results in significant content knowledge gains retained by students; shows significant gains in self-confidence; is ranked highly as “life-changing” by students; and is highly recommended by students to their peers. Additionally, SE gained a business formulation rate near 50 percent, by students participating in GSCEN programs.
Caslin says his organization’s goal in 10 years is, “To make social entrepreneurship courses and degrees available on every college and university campus around the world.” Still, the programs face administrative hurdles—obstacles that Caslin thinks GCSEN can overcome with its innovative internship program, blended learning online courses and social entrepreneur boot camps, as well as its model SE curricula that can be easily absorbed into any college’s existing business or liberal arts programs.
“All the data shows that students are looking for skills that enhance their careers,” says Caslin. “Our SE coursework and Social Venture Internship program gives them practical business startup knowledge and field experience, as they work on their own business and social venture. The program is a career and resume builder, offering practical experience and professional references. GCSEN programs emphasize the “Four P Impacts” on People, Profit, Planet and Place, so students can jump-start right into action. Colleges offering SE programs will attract highly motivated students who want to work in the real world, and also make a difference.”
It’s clear that SE and its altruistic mission is growing steadily on and off campus. The key: millennials. By 2025, this cohort of 80 million will be 75 percent of the entire workforce. Although millennials have not been breaking any records when it comes to general entrepreneurship, they have taken to the social consciousness concept in a big way.
Millennials get it. A global conference titled "Prac-ademic Social Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable World" held at Belgium’s Namur University in 2017 was packed with faculty and administrators hailing from more than 200 Jesuit business schools and colleges. Business publications such as Forbes tout the youth movement in SE with annual feature articles, such as “Meet the Thirty Under Thirty Social Entrepreneurs Bringing Change in 2017” highlighting “young people who are all working tirelessly to creatively solve some of the world's toughest problems.”
Maybe social entrepreneurship is an answer to the lagging admissions, lack of student retention and flat-out lack of relevance our campuses are currently facing.
As Caslin says, “It is vital that a new generation of business-oriented, socially conscious millennials emerge on campus, creating with purpose a “4-P Impact” with people, profit, planet and place, to make meaning, make money and move the world to a better place.”
Harv Hilowitz is director of strategic development at the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship Network (GCSEN) Foundation.
For Amazon HQ2 pitch, cities needed to promote their REGION
Worcester
-- Photo by Viking 1943
"For small cities like Worcester, bids like this are a missed opportunity not because small cities are not eligible, but because many misunderstand how to sell themselves to large employers. The video that Worcester produced to entice Amazon HQ2 shows off some of the city’s shining stars, such as its medical school, its hockey team and Union Station, but fails to showcase the regional workforce—let alone any other regional assets. When an organization chooses a site, the city name in its address is of less importance than the complete network of resources accessible to the organization from that location. Worcester’s application represented a missed opportunity to leverage the full potential of its regional situation. The failure to act regionally for economic development goes well beyond the Amazon proposal, however.''
From Chris Steele, COO and president (North America) of Investment Consulting Associates, Worcester. One of 238 first round proposals to try to lure Amazon's "Second Headquarters'' that was eliminated.
From "Righting the Wrongs of Amazon,'' in City Lab. To read it, please hit this link.
Frank Carini: R.I. is turning blue-green as we ravage the planet in many ways
Algae bloom toxifies water.
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Rhode Island isn’t a blue state. It’s a blue-green one, in honor of toxic bacteria that regularly closes beaches to swimming and other water bodies to recreational fun and puts public health in jeopardy.
In fact, we can stop labeling states as simply red or blue. They’re all turning shades of blue-green-red. Outbreaks of potentially toxic algae are rising sharply this summer in lakes, rivers, and streams across the United States, according to the Environmental Working Group’s ongoing tracking of algae outbreaks.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has counted 144 algae outbreaks from California to the Northeast so far this year, compared to 169 in all of last year.
This pollution problem isn’t restricted to fresh waters. Florida has been hit particularly hard by toxic algae this summer. A total of 267 tons of marine life, including 72 goliath groupers and a 21-foot whale shark, have washed up on Florida beaches since July, thanks to a catastrophic red tide.
Here in the Ocean State this summer the Rhode Island Department of Health (DOH) and Department of Environmental Management (DEM) have recommended that the beach at Larkin Pond Campground in South Kingstown be closed to swimming after high bacteria counts were found in the water. Two other beaches on the pond — Camp Hoffman and Kingston’s Camp — were closed for the same reason.
Beaches at Echo Lake Campground in Glocester and Goddard Memorial State Park and the Kent County YMCA in Warwick have been off-limits to swimming.
The DEM has advised people to avoid contact with Mashapaug Pond and Roosevelt Lake in Providence. DOH has recommended the closing of Bonnet Shores Beach Club in Narragansett.
State officials have advised people to avoid contact with water from Turner Reservoir, Central Pond, Omega Pond, and the portion of Ten Mile River that flows between Turner Reservoir and Omega Pond.
In late July, the state agencies advised people to avoid contact with Slack Reservoir in Greenville because of a blue-green algae bloom. Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, can produce toxins, including microcystins, that can harm humans and animals. These blooms are nurtured by an overload of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that wash into waters from over-fertilized lawns, agricultural operations, and combined sewer overflows.
On Aug 10, Third Beach in Middletown became the 29th Ocean State beach, both fresh and salt, to be closed to swimming this summer. Some beaches, such as Camp Grosvenor in North Kingstown, have been closed more than once. A few, such as Briar Point Beach in Coventry and Kingston’s Camp Beach, have been closed for more than 10 days this summer.
In moderation, algae provide balance for a healthy water ecosystem. However, climate change, nutrient pollution, development, and other manmade stresses are exacerbating a problem and causing blooms to develop earlier and stay longer.
A 2015 study found that humans are responsible for increased cyanobacteria growth.
Massive algal blooms, however, are just one of the many visible signs of global climate change currently playing out on the world stage: roaring wild fires out West; historic flooding up and down the East Coast; 12 tornadoes that stormed through central Iowa during one week last month; the number of “marine heat waves” roughly doubled between 1982 and 2016; Australia struggling with devastating drought; 21 of the world’s 37 largest aquifers have passed their sustainability tipping points; a sixth mass extinction has seen billions of populations of animals lost in recent decades.
These happenings are a collective harbinger of the new normal.
A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines potential climate feedbacks that could push the planet into a “hothouse” state.
According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2018 is on pace to be the fourth-hottest year on record. Only three other years have been hotter: 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Another recent study, published in IOPscience, suggests that to avoid a 2-degree Celsius global increase in temperature all existing proposed fossil-fuel power plants must not be built.
“Even if all currently planned projects are immediately suspended, up to 20 percent of global fossil-fuel generation capacity would still have to be stranded (that is, prematurely decommissioned, underutilized, or subject to costly retrofitting) if humanity is to meet the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement,” according to the IOP report.
The governor may have signed an executive order last year “reaffirming Rhode Island’s commitment to the principles of the Paris Climate Agreement,” but the Ocean State certainly isn’t doing its best to address climate change.
The passing of environmentally friendly bonds, the building of the nation’s first offshore wind farm, handing out grant-funding morsels for environmental projects, and a fractured system of protecting open space aren’t enough, not even close. Rhode Island, with its advantageous size for implementing real change, keeps punting its responsibility into the future. It’s not a fair catch.
Anthropogenic climate change has exposed the foolishness of human neglect of the natural world. It’s way too late for timid responses like executive orders. Our selfish actions — individually, collectively, and politically — are creating a dystopian future. Many of these current and future manmade catastrophes could have been avoided with some foresight and sacrifice.
Human well-being and economic prosperity are tethered to nature, but modern humans have never acted like they are. Variety and abundance of life are the fundamental necessities of a habitable planet. Life can’t prosper on a sphere filled with humans, livestock, ticks, rats, mosquitoes, and jellyfish, and covered with over-fertilized soybean fields and overfished oceans.
Here in Rhode Island, a job plan focused “on putting cranes in the sky” is a cliche not a solution, especially when much of the development ignores the state’s acres and acres of already-disturbed areas and instead cuts further into forests, wetlands, farmland, and other open space.
Jobs are important, but they become meaningless if the planet is burning. The growing flames of climate change are being fanned by the building of stuff we don’t need in places that weaken ecosystems and jeopardize public health. We can put people to work building things in places that make economic, societal, and environmental sense. But it takes some sacrifice. We’re not good at sacrificing. It’s too hard.
The beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and Rhode Island’s past as a costume-jewelry-manufacturing juggernaut are remembered fondly for the jobs that were created. What is largely forgotten is that the pollution, contamination and environmental degradation created during this revered jobs explosion helped pave the way to our current situation.
The soils of productive landscapes have been turned to dirt. Groundwater has been drained beyond the reach of roots. There's barely a ripple in once-rich fishing grounds. Gyres of plastic marine debris are expanding. Bays, estuaries and deltas have been choked of life. Rivers and lakes are turning a toxic blue-green. Brownfields and Super Fund sites have left behind toxic legacies. Fields, forests, and wetlands have been replaced by lawn and pavement.
Biodiversity is diminishing, and along with it our chances to adequately address the impacts of climate change before it’s much too late.
Frank Carini is the ecoRI News editor.
Purdue Pharma played down OxyContin addiction danger
Side-effects of oxycodone, the generic name for OxyContin, the brand name of a controversial Purdue Pharma product.
By FRED SCHULTE
Two decades ago, Purdue Pharma, based in Stamford, Conn. {see headquarters below}, produced thousands of brochures and videos that urged patients with chronic pain to ask their physicians for opioids such as OxyContin, arguing that concerns over addiction and other dangers from the drugs were overblown, company records reveal.
Kaiser Health News earlier this year posted a cache of Purdue marketing documents that show how the pharmaceutical company sought to boost sales of the prescription painkiller, starting in the mid-1990s.
Purdue turned the records over to the Florida attorney general’s office in 2002 during its investigation of the company. Additional Purdue documents from the Florida investigation detail how the company targeted patients and allayed addiction worries.
“Fear should not stand in the way of relief of your pain,” a pivotal marketing brochure said.
Purdue said it handed out thousands of copies of the brochure, which emphasized consumer power in treating pain, as well as a videotape. “The single most important thing for you to remember is that you are the authority on your pain. Nobody else feels it for you so nobody else can describe how much it hurts, or when it feels better,” the pamphlet states.
More than 1,500 pending civil lawsuits, filed mostly by state and local governments, allege that deceptive marketing claims helped fuel a national epidemic of opioid addiction and thousands of overdose deaths.
Last week, the New York attorney general’s office filed another suit that accuses Purdue of operating a “public nuisance” in it sales tactics and marketing of opioids. Like many others, the suit demands compensation for addiction treatment costs and other problems. Purdue and other drugmakers have denied all allegations.
President Trump said last Thursday he wants the federal government to sue drugmakers in response to the addiction epidemic.
The Purdue brochure from the late 1990s spurred recent criticism from drug safety experts. Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, a physician at the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the sales pitch was “simply not true” and called it “a smoking gun.”
“We have learned the hard way that many patients develop opioid [addiction] when using these medicines as prescribed,” he said.
Alexander said other drugmakers also appealed to patients hoping to influence their doctors — a tactic that was relatively new in the late 1990s. But Alexander said he was “shocked” to hear that Purdue did so with OxyContin, given the risks posed by long-term use of the morphine-like narcotic.
“These drugs [opioids] are in a class of their own when it comes to the harms that they have caused,” Alexander said.
The internal Purdue documents, dating from 1996 to 2002, show that the company began marketing OxyContin to doctors in late 1995 for treating moderate to severe cancer pain. With modest sales of $49.4 million in 1996, Purdue posted a loss of $452,000 on the drug. In 1997, sales reached $146.5 million for a pretax profit of $16.5 million, the company records show.
In 1998, as Purdue hawked OxyContin for conditions such as arthritis and back pain, it decided to “increase communications” with patients, company records show.
The goal: “convince patients and their families to actively pursue effective pain treatment. The importance of the patient assessing their own pain and communicating the status to the health care giver will be stressed.”
Purdue’s six-page pamphlet for patients, provided to the Florida attorney general, was titled “OxyContin: A Guide to Your New Pain Medicine.” “Your health care team is there to help, but they need your help, too,” the pamphlet says. It says OxyContin is for treating “pain like yours that is moderate to severe and lasting for more than a few days.”
To patients or family members worried about addiction, Purdue’s pamphlet said: “Drug addiction means using a drug to get ‘high’ rather than to relieve pain. You are taking opioid pain medication for medical purposes. The medical purposes are clear and the effects are beneficial, not harmful.”
Asked to comment this week, Purdue spokesman Robert Josephson said the company “discontinued the use of this piece many years ago.”
Dr. Michael Barnett, a physician and assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that some of Purdue’s early marketing claims may have seemed reasonable to many doctors 20 years ago.
But he faulted the medical profession for not demanding scientific evidence that opioids were in fact safe and prudent for widespread use.
“I think a lot of physicians are coming to the realization that a lot of what we were taught about pain management was pure conjecture,” he said. “I feel foolish for believing it.”
In hindsight, he said, Purdue’s sales tactics seem “almost a satire of an unscrupulous corporation that really has no interest in understanding the implications and complications of people using their drugs.”
Dr. Art Van Zee, a physician in southwestern Virginia who was among the first to recognize the ravages of OxyContin misuse, said that some people who became addicted were already drug abusers.
But he added: “There clearly are people that I’ve taken care of who took it as directed orally and became opioid-addicted.”
Purdue also paid a New York City production company to shoot a videotape called “From One Pain Patient to Another,” featuring testimonials by seven patients from the Raleigh, N.C., area under the care of pain doctor Alan Spanos. Filming took place at the patients’ homes, places of work and other area locations on July 17, 1997, according to the documents.
Purdue did not pay the patients, though Spanos received $3,400 as a “physician spokesman” on that video and another, the company records state. Contacted recently by phone, Spanos would not comment. In the documents, Purdue said that the patients “participated willingly, wishing to speak out regarding the importance to them of being able to receive effective therapy for their chronic pain.”
Between January 1998 and June 2001, Purdue distributed 16,000 copies of the video to doctors, who showed them to selected patients.
The video did not mention OxyContin directly, but the Food and Drug Administration did balk at a claim in the video that fewer than 1 percent of people taking opioids became addicted. The FDA said that claim was not substantiated, according to a December 2003 General Accountability Office audit.
Purdue destroyed remaining copies of the video in July 2001, including 4,434 Spanish-language versions, according to the company records.
By then, annual OxyContin sales had topped $1 billion as Purdue pushed to “attach an emotional aspect to non-cancer pain so physicians treat it more seriously and aggressively,” according to the company’s marketing reports.
Asked about the video, Purdue spokesman Josephson said the drugmaker has not made that claim — regarding 1 percent addiction — “in more than 15 years.”
Purdue submitted the marketing records to the Florida attorney general’s office during its investigation of the company. The state settled the case in 2002 when Purdue agreed to pay $2 million to help set up an electronic prescription-tracking program.
Florida officials released the records to two Florida newspapers in 2003 after Purdue lost a court battle to keep them confidential. KHN posted some of those documents earlier this year for readers to review on its website.
Purdue's headquarters is in this building in downtown Stamford.
Guns and love
A 19th Century view of the main building at the Springfield Arsenal (aka Armory), founded in 1777 and until its closing by the Pentagon, in 1868, the single most important facility for making firearms in America. It was very important in the Union victory in the Civil War, and in the 19th Century was the site of very important technology and engineering advances in the Industrial Revolution. The site is now a National Historic Site, the only one in western Massachusetts. The city became famous for the arsenal but soon will be more famous for a new and glitzy casino. Oh yes, Dr. Seuss was born in Springfield.
"This is the Arsenal {aka Armory}. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.
I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder
The diapason of the cannonade.
Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?
Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!"
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.''
-- "The Arsenal at Springfield,'' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).
View of the Water Shops, in Springfield, in 2014. The Water Shops served as the epicenter for Springfield Armory firearms production.
Reduce the red tape
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
The right of Rhode Island’s cities and towns to enact and enforce their own regulations in a multitude of areas greatly adds to the red tape and cost of doing business in the state, what with its 39 cities and towns.
And so it was good to learn that the “State Mobile Food Establishment Registration Act” was recently enacted. It will standardize the business registration process for trucks or carts that sell food, ice cream or lemonade by creating a state mobile food establishment registration, and would exempt such establishments from laws regulating peddlers.
Rhode Island’s multi-layered regulatory hurdles hinder business development. There are too many requirements. Consider that there are expensive licensing rules for hair braiders and sign-language interpreters! Get rid of them.
A reason for such licensing is to prop up prices charged by what are effectively guilds by restricting supply. Special-interest restraint of trade!
And for activities in which the public interest really requires regulation: Lawmakers and the governors should as much as possible unify and simplify regulations under state oversight after ascertaining that eliminating localities’ powers would not hurt the public. The localities are, after all, legal children of the state. The hotel and restaurant businesses, in particular, would be the sort of enterprises that would greatly benefit from having to adhere to fewer local regulations.
Obviously streamlining regulations will encourage more people to launch new businesses and expand existing ones.
An image for our time
"Crooked'' (acylic on laser-cut hardboard), by Jessica Sperandio, in the "Resilience and Resistance'' group show at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Sept. 5-30.
Chris Powell: In Conn., Dems reject their record and Republicans won't learn
Hartford in 1877, as the nation came out of depression and the Industrial Revolution roared, especially in southern New England.
What does this week's primary election for governor say about Connecticut's Democratic Party?
First, it says that at least the party cannot rationalize Joe Ganim's corruption in office.
Second, it says that the party has come down with a bad case of schizophrenia, as Ned Lamont, having won about 80 percent of the vote, delivered an extemporaneous and overwrought if not hysterical acceptance speech admitting that the party's eight years in control of state government have laid Connecticut low and it desperately needs to change direction.
How does a party seek to keep power on a platform of repudiating its own record?
What does this week's primary election for governor say about Connecticut's Republican Party?
The victory of business executive Bob Stefanowski says that the party has declined to draw any conclusions from its four recent disastrous experiments with nominating for high office self-funding but unknown dilettantes whose ideology, ability, and character have never been tested in public. Each of those experiments produced damaging discoveries about the candidates in the closing days of their campaigns. Now it easily could happen again.
Behind every great fortune, the French novelist Balzac wrote, is a great crime. Of course that's not entirely true, but their recent record suggests that Connecticut's Republicans might do better to start believing it.
The Republican results also should teach all of Connecticut something. Stefanowski won with only 30 percent of the vote and the winner of the party's primary for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Joe Markley, may have won with just less than half. To prevent such impairments of democracy, when the field of candidates is large and the leader has not won a majority, state law should provide for runoff primaries and elections or what is called "ranked-choice" voting.
A second primary between the two top candidates for the Republican nomination for governor well might produce a different result. In any case a runoff system encourages consensus and discourages candidates who cannot win a majority and indeed may even be extreme.
Extremism is already the Democratic charge about Stefanowski, though Lamont himself has embraced a far-left agenda and has pledged obedience to the government employee unions.
PARTY ON, HARTFORD: The Democrats' subservience to the government class was exposed again the other day when the Hartford Courant reported that the Malloy administration's $500 million bailout for Hartford city government has squelched even the tiniest bit of pension reform there.
Prior to the bailout, Mayor Luke Bronin and the City Council planned to save money by disqualifying new, nonunion city employees from the city's defined-benefit pension plan. The new hires were to be offered a defined-contribution pension, a 401(k) plan.
Now that the bailout has been secured, city government is no longer inclined to economize with pensions. Council President Glendowlyn Thames says her colleagues are thinking: "These are city employees. We should be providing them with good pensions."
But since state government is reimbursing half of Hartford city government's budget every year and assuming all the city's long-term debt, the city's employees have become more the burden of all state taxpayers than Hartford's own burden. So thanks to the governor, Hartford, where nearly everyone is a Democrat, can party on.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
'Paint by number'
"Autumn in New England,'' by Maurice Prendergast.
"Toss in some wavy lines, an equal sign, and a squiggle,
then a lilac log, boulders with faces, a few phrases
like rock walls, twin marks from wagon wheels on granite.
The tell-tale lilacs give away the cellar hole:
magnetic lilacs, like nineteenth-century girls
in pinafores and blossom sprays, stationed
beside their no-longer houses. They look about to sing....
'By the middle of the nineteenth century, when de
forestation reached its peak, more than half
of New England's native forests'—according to Robert M. Thorson,
Stone by Stone— 'as much as 80 percent in the heavily settled
parts of southern New England—had been cut down,'
replaced with 'open space,' the autumn foliage
is paint-by-number and different tabs throughout
are half-finished murals of a single type of tree in a single time of year.''
-- From "Deconstructing New England,'' by Alexandria Peary
A first-class, brilliant New England eccentric
Architect, inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome for the 1967 Montreal World's Fair. Born in Milton, Mass., he spent much of his life in Massachusetts and Maine.
Buckminster Fuller {1895-1983} was down in Pennsylvania, then he'd come up and go to his island in Maine. He wanted to remain a New Englander. He taught from '48 to '49 and '50 at Black Mountain College. That's where he met Kenneth Snelson {sculptor and photographer). Fuller kind of stayed a Yankee right in the New England area. So it was pretty easy to get him to come on over, and we would have lectures at the Harvard Science Center.
-- The late Paul Laffoley (artist and architect)
Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s.
"I am now close top 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human. I am also a living case history of a thoroughly documented, half-century, search-and-research project designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed.''
— "Bucky'' Fuller, 1983
I heard Bucky's talk at my high school in 1964. It was incomprehensible but entertaining. A first-class New England eccentric!
Graves of the Fullers in Cambridge, Mass., where rest many New England notables
Running out of time for proposed Providence skyscraper
Jason Fane's proposed Hope Point Tower in Providence.
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
If the Providence City Council decides to nix New York developer Jason Fane’s proposal for a 46-story skyscraper in the Route 195 relocation area, don’t expect a new proposal from him or indeed any proposal for the site any time soon. Interest rates are rising and while income-tax cuts targeted for the rich and companies are producing a sugar high in the economy (the stock-buyback craze is one sign of it), the economic recovery that began in 2009 is very old. A rough consensus is developing that a recession will start next year or in 2020, which would probably put the kibosh on new development in Providence for several years. Hope not!
Of course, Mr. Fane wouldn’t be facing much opposition to his tower if he built it in the large vacant lot downtown with the rest of the high-rises. But he has emphasized that he won’t consider that. Too bad!
I suspect that a lot of local real estate agents don’t like his plan because Mr. Fane’s group would grab some of the high-end business on Providence’s East Side and downtown. I have spoken to some residents of expensive houses and condos who have told me that they’d love to live in the Fane tower. (What a view down to Newport!) But they tend to keep their opinions quiet because of the intensity of the opposition.
But watch what you step on
"Beach Combing Zone'' (pastel), by Rachel Avenia, at Bobby Baker Fine Art, Cataumet (on Cape Cod) Mass.