Vox clamantis in deserto
Read before renting on the Vineyard
Gingerbread summer cottages in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.
“A danger exists of confusing the Vineyard with my children’s childhood, which time has swallowed, or with Paradise, from which we have been debarred by well-known angels. Let’s not forget the rainy days, the dull days, the cranky-making crowding, and the moldy smell summer furniture gives off when breezes don’t blow through the screen door that one keeps meaning to fix, though it’s the landlord’s responsibility.’’
From “Going Barefoot,’’ by John Updike (1932-2009), an essay in Peter Simon’s On the Vineyard II (1989)
David Warsh: The FBI's 'October surprise' and Trump’s election
SOMEVILLE, Mass.
As a citizen, I feel fairly confident about leaving judgment of Donald Trump’s presidency to American people in the November election. As a journalist, I’m professionally acutely interested in the ongoing battle over the FBI, because it seems central to American’s faith in in its government institutions.
The story received another jolt last week when Atty. Gen. William Barr said the Justice Department would move to close the government’s case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Then on May 8, the president expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of current FBI director, Christopher Wray, in a telephone interview with Fox News, as reported by The Washington Post.
Economic Principals readers have probably read enough about what critics think Attorney General Barr did wrong. If not, here’s a well-informed take is from the well-regarded online Lawfare site.
I wanted to know more about what its critics think the FBI did wrong. So after I read the commentary on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal – more on that some other day – I turned to Barr’s interview with CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge, in which I thought that he gave a pretty good, if incomplete, account of his decision. It was, he said, based on a review of the events of December 2016 and January 2017, undertaken at his request by Jeffrey Jensen, U.S. attorney for eastern Missouri.
Those events, between the election and Trump’s inauguration, transpired long before Barr became attorney general. Looking back on it, Barr argued that the dominant opinion at the time had been mistaken. He asserted that, since Flynn was a designated adviser to the president-elect at the time, his call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016 had been “perfectly appropriate and legitimate…. He was saying to the Russians, you know, ‘Don’t escalate.”’
The Obama administration earlier had imposed sanctions in retribution for Russian meddling in the U.S. election. When Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently took Flynn’s advice, the Russia controversy entered a new dimension. The rest of Barr’s reasoning for moving to vacate the charges of lying had to do with the timing of the FBI interviews that produced them.
It took pages of interview transcript to lay out Barr’s reasoning in the intricate matter. Even then, his argument was less than a convincing job. When Herridge pointedly asked, “Did senior FBI officials conspire to throw out the national security adviser?,” Barr answered, “That’s a question that really has to wait an analysis of all the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of President Trump’s administration.” Presumably that would be the review that Barr asked John Durham, U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to undertake. Durham’s assignment is understood to include an examination of the circumstances and events that led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
As previously noted, The Washington Post has reported that a third outside review, by John Huber, U.S. attorney for Utah, this one of the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation, has been completed, and awaits action by Barr.
One other first-person account by a participant in these events remains to appear, this one by a dispassionate newspaper reporter. Devlin Barrett was working for The Wall Street Journal when he obtained an interview, with assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe it turned out, in which the existence of the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation was confirmed for the first time. McCabe was subsequently fired for having made the disclosure. Barrett moved a few months later to The Washington Post and has remained an energetic contributor to the story ever since.
Barrett’s October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election. (Public Affairs) is scheduled to appear in October. Its description on Amazon says this:
The 2016 Election, which altered American political history, was not decided by the Russians or in Ukraine or by Steve Bannon. The event that broke Hillary’s blue wall in the Midwest and swung Florida and North Carolina was an October Surprise, and it was wholly a product of the leadership of the FBI. This is the inside story by the reporter closest to its center….
October Surprise is a pulsating narrative of an agency seized with righteous certainty that waded into the most important political moment in the life of the nation, and has no idea how to back out with dignity. So it doggedly stands its ground, compounding its error. In a momentous display of self-preservation, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and key Justice Department officials decide to protect their own reputations rather than save the democratic process. Once they make that determination, the race is lost for Clinton, who is helpless in front of their accusation even though she has not intended to commit, let alone actually committed, any crime.
A dark true-life thriller with historic consequences set at the most crucial moment in the electoral calendar, October Surprise is a warning, a morality tale and a political and personal tragedy.
Barrett believes, to judge from the flap copy, that the FBI cost Clinton the race. And, as a proximate cause, Comey’s letter notifying Congress that he had briefly reopened the investigation of her email probably did.
EP has argued from the beginning that various field offices of the FBI, as well as headquarters units, were torn, no less than the American electorate, by deep partisan divisions. Outsiders exploited these schisms with varying degrees of success.
Leadership sought to keep lids on warring factions, with profoundly mixed results. The November election will decide possession of the White House for the next four years, but neither Barr nor Durham nor Barrett will settle the battle over the FBI. Much remains to be learned.
David Warsh, an economic historian and veteran columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this column first ran.
Watch for ticks
“Garden Curiosities,’’ by Joan Baldwin, in the group show (seen online) “Our Universal Language,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston.
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Taylor Witkin/Scott Nuzum: Designing seafood systems for the post-pandemic world
Photo by Gordito1869
From SeaAhead
BOSTON
While the COVID-19 pandemic directly threatens the lives of millions of patients and frontline health-care workers, it also jeopardizes the livelihoods of seafood-system workers across North America. The pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities of supply chains that criss-cross oceans, stretching across thousands of miles and demonstrates a need, and capacity, for regional food security.
Savvy seafood harvesters are often prepared for major market disruptions -- harmful algal blooms that shut down production, hurricanes that force boats back to safe harbor, ice that takes out equipment. But this pandemic is a different kind of crisis. It attacks demand as well as supply. Harvesters that rely on sales to restaurants, where 90 percent of shellfish and 75 percent of all seafood in America are consumed, are left wondering how to stay afloat if pandemic-induced shutdowns continue. The entire industry has been forced to pivot to direct-to-consumer sales models, a daunting task given that restaurants aggregate customers and bear much of the marketing burden.
While these are indeed dark times, there are rays of hope for better days. Ultimately, this crisis may lead to a reorientation and recommitment to local food systems, providing a much needed boost to local communities and restoring some resiliency in domestic food- supply chains. In addition, this crisis also may provide an opportunity to reflect upon how we might redesign our commercial fishing fleets to take advantage of a range of innovations -- including remote sensors, advanced propulsion and alternative fuel systems.
This reorientation, recommitment and reimagining will, in large part, be aided by the bluetech sector. Working as partners, local producers and tech companies have the potential to revitalize the seafood sector and create the seafood system of the future.
With international trade stalled, the pandemic is forcing producers, suppliers, and consumers to rethink America’s seafood system, where 90 percent of seafood comes from foreign sources. Much has been written recently of the collapse of domestic seafood-supply chains (NY Times, LA Times, National Fisherman, Seafood Source). Seafood processors are saddled with more fish than they can process. Fishers can’t engage in their livelihood. All the while, consumers facer empty supermarket shelves and compete for coveted grocery delivery windows on mobile apps. Moreover, with reports of Covid-19 outbreaks spreading through many of the country’s food-processing facilities, people are increasingly concerned about the chain of custody of their food and whether it is safe to eat.
Consequently, consumers have sought work-arounds to these supply chain failures by looking closer to home for seafood, relying on local farmers markets and community-supported fisheries to deliver fresh, high-quality finfish and shellfish from short, trustworthy supply chains. Whereas the “know your fisherman” ethic was a lifestyle choice in the pre-COVID-19 world, it is now gaining momentum and becoming mainstream.
And with good reason. The United States is blessed with an abundance of seafood up and down its lengthy coast. Most U.S. fish stocks are well managed, meaning that fish can be harvested sustainably. And, increasingly, we have the tools to provide traceable and transparent supply chains. Combined, these factors point to an opportunity to transform seafood-supply chains to not only increase resiliency and sustainability in the system, but also to improve economic returns for fishers and their local communities.
The Local Catch Network demonstrates the power of an engaged virtual community, and that technology does not need to be complex to be effective. Local Catch is a community-of-practice made of fishermen, suppliers, chefs, researchers and organizers committed to providing local, healthful, low-impact seafood via community- supported fisheries. Local Catch’s Seafood Finder map provides the location and contact info for nearly 120 businesses that distribute to over 500 locations in the U.S. and Canada, making it easy for consumers to find local seafood providers and distribution points. Though businesses within the network are struggling, as consumers make a concerted effort to support their fishermen and farmer neighbors, some seafood providers are well positioned to weather the crisis, and are even doing more business than usual.
While Local Catch Network was conceived in the pre-COVID-19 world, the virus has only served to reinforce its underlying thesis -- that the seafood-supply-chain network was ripe for disruption. This and countless other groups, such as SeaAhead members Oyster Common, Oyster Tracker and LegitFish hope that their efforts bring greater value to fishers and the coastal communities in which they live, in the process demonstrating the transformative possibilities of the bluetech space.
If you want to learn more, check out the Social FISHtancing podcast
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Taylor Witkin is the Bluetech Desk Manager at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) and works with SeaAhead to manage and grow the Bluetech Innovation Hub, in Boston. Before joining CIC, he was the Network Coordinator for the Local Catch Network and organized the 2019 Local Seafood Summit. He also conducted research for the University of Maine on adaptations by stakeholders and supply chains in the lobster industry. His seafood-systems research has been published in the journal Fisheries Research.
Scott Nuzum is a strategy consultant and futurist at VNF Solutions LLC and a lawyer with Van Ness Feldman LLP. He helps organizations assess and understand the implications of technological, environmental and geopolitical change and works with clients to craft strategies to become more resilient in the face of this disruption. In addition, he advises innovative companies and start-ups operating in the environmental-, energy- and social- impact spaces on a range of issues, including providing input and feedback on engagement strategies with potential investors and regulators. Before joining VNF, he was a policy adviser at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a lawyer at the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Yap Seng Chong/Swaine Chen: Get ready for the next pandemic
SINGAPORE
Outbreaks of infections have long plagued humanity, and changed history. The Black Death ripped through Europe in the middle of the 14th Century, killing a third of the population. Smallpox brought by European explorers helped seal the fate of the Americas 400 years ago. And in a mere four months, COVID-19 has transformed much of life in the 21st Century.
The mortal impact of infections is undeniably important. But even more dramatic are the victories that humanity has won against them. These are less sensationalized, likely because they require sustained, steady effort.
The understanding of aseptic technique began a long battle against surgical bacterial infections; the modern fruits of our success in this battle range from life-saving organ transplantation to cosmetic day surgery. Vaccines have slashed rates of childhood mortality from bacterial and viral infections; this provides reproductive security, driving modern economic development by enabling couples to have fewer children while increasing their education and productivity.
Thus, infectious diseases continue to be enormously significant. Not only can they disrupt cultures and countries, but countering them is a necessary prerequisite to unleash society’s innovative and productive capacity. It behoves us, then, to learn diligently from all infectious diseases.
COVID-19 is the most powerful infectious disease we have seen in the past 100 years. We refer to “power” here not as the speed with which it kills, but its integrated impact on society and the economy. Whole continents have been locked down. The energy of entire industries is being redirected to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This response has been inspiring and further testifies to COVID-19’s unique position in the compendium of infectious threats.
This sweeping mobilization is again supported by sustained past investments in research and technology. In the next pandemic, we will have even more tools at our disposal, some generated during this period. Our response will be even swifter and more definitive, hopefully, but only if we learn from the current crisis, for there will indeed be a next outbreak, a next pandemic, and then others after that. We need to continue steady investment in research and technology. We also need full alignment within society, including politics and economics.
Several large-scale trends have contributed to COVID-19, trends that will make future outbreaks and pandemics more frequent and, possibly, more severe. One such trend is larger urban populations, increasing both density and interactions. A second is increasing global connectivity – both digital and physical. Finally, urban development drives two further complementary trends -- encroachment on previously undeveloped areas, where indigenous animals, plants and microbes previously held sole dominion; and increased demand for and specialization of food production, driving increased agricultural density and efficiency, and the search for alternative foods. There are doubtless other biological and non-biological factors that contributed to COVID-19, but we focus on these as they highlight aspects of a formula that cannot be ignored: Density + Mobility + Ecological Disruption = Outbreak Risk
Looking forward, then, what lessons can we take from COVID-19?
Researchers and policy makers should look at pandemics as a negative externality in which we all suffer the consequences. Countries have used diverse strategies to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. Even within countries, such as the United States, different regions have responded in dramatically different ways, ranging from vigorously active measures to rather passive ones.
In the short term, we will learn which policies were most effective. In the longer run, we need to incorporate the strategies that worked best into preparations for future pandemics. We observe that, among the many policy debates occurring across the globe, economic imperatives are often placed in opposition to the advice of medical and scientific professionals. We believe that the recognition of negative externalities provides a path towards alignment of the economic and medical perspectives, which could then better recruit political support.
To cement the global learning curve and drive these policy innovations, we further propose that the World Health Organization be deliberately bolstered to organize the global infrastructure for pandemic preparedness in the “peacetime” when COVID-19 subsides. Emerging infectious diseases are a global problem, and we must act collectively as a planet. The next pandemic is just around the corner. We must learn, quickly, from the past and the present to ensure our collective future.
Yap Seng Chong is Lien Ying Chow Professor in Medicine and Dean of the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
Swaine Chen is an associate professor at the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and group leader for infectious diseases at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research’s Genome Institute.
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Jim Hightower: No, we're not 'all in this together'
Via OtherWords.org
In this horrible time of economic collapse, it is truly touching to see so many corporate chieftains reaching out in solidarity with the hard-hit working class.
We know they’re doing this because they keep telling us they are. Practically every brand-name giant has been spending millions of dollars on PR campaigns in recent weeks asserting that they’re standing with us, declaring over and over: “We’re all in this together.”
Except, of course, they’re really not standing anywhere near us. While we’re waiting in endless lines at food banks and unemployment offices, the elites are still getting fat paychecks and platinum-level health care.
The severity and gross disparity of our country’s present economic collapse is not simply caused by a sudden viral outbreak, but by a decades-long plutocratic policy of intentionally maximizing profits for the rich and minimizing everyone else’s wellbeing. As the eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz rightly put it, “We built an economy with no shock absorbers.”
Jobs, once the measure of a family’s economic security, have steadily been shriveled to low-wage unreliable work, untethered to a fair share (or any share) of the new wealth that workers create. In a relentless push for exorbitant, short-term profits, today’s executives have abandoned any pretense that a corporation is a community of interdependent interests striving to advance the common good.
Instead, while the honchos are richly covered, they’re washing their hands of any responsibility for the health, retirement, and other essential needs of their workforce. “Rely on food stamps, Obamacare, and other publicly-funded programs,” they say, even as their lobbyists and for-sale lawmakers slash the public safety nets so rich shareholders and speculators can take evermore profit.
These forces of American greed have shoved millions of working families to the economic precipice — and all it takes is a virus to push them over.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker.
'Repository of joy and pain'
"Simpler Times," by Chelsea Revelle, in the show (which you can see online) “The New Nostalgia,’’ at Fountain Street Fine Art, Boston, through May 24.
The gallery says:
“These days, with mundane freedoms temporarily off-limits, it’s tempting to reminisce, to dwell on rosy ephemeral memories of a better time. The ways we remember affect us as we experience the uncomfortable present and forge ahead into an uncertain future.
“For artists Brenda Cirioni, Patty deGrandpre, Chelsea Revelle, Alexandra Rozenman, Rebecca Skinner, Sylvia Vander Sluis, the past is a reservoir, a repository of joy and pain in a complex relationship with our own private histories. Their work illuminates the cracks in the veneer of idealized past emotions and experiences and creates space for us to re-examine our relationship with the past and inform our experience of the present.’’
Heavier Boston
Moulton Street in the Old Port section of Portland
Photo by Bd2media
“I had loved Portland {Maine}. It was a clean city, with weather so delicate that at night you had to look at the streetlights to tell whether it was raining or snowing. Everything was heavier near Boston: air, accents, women.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, American writer and editor, in her short-story anthology Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry
Chris Powell: Do legislators have courage of grocery clerks?
MANCHESTER, Conn.
When, in March, the leaders of the Connecticut General Assembly suspended its regular session and then, last month, canceled it entirely, they were frightened of the virus epidemic. But now, after weeks of doing nothing except watching impotently, legislators are starting to seem more frightened of their own responsibilities.
After all, the state budget is a shambles, epidemic-mitigation expenses having exploded and tax revenue having collapsed. So what legislator isn't happy to let Gov. Ned Lamont rule by decree, shuffle the money around desperately as best he can, decide whom to help and whom to short, and determine how much longer to keep commerce closed? There is no fun in that, only risk and potential resentment.
But somehow the supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, hospitals, nursing homes and various other businesses officially deemed "essential" have managed to remain open with little more augmentation than makeshift face masks and bleach. Other government agencies have continued to meet through electronic means, even complying with public accountability rules via the internet.
This situation implies that the General Assembly isn't more "essential" than barber shops or hair salons, which become more essential every day as hair tickles ears and collars and gray roots start glaring. While the barber shops and hair salons may reopen in two weeks, this may not be so encouraging, since at that point people may start to realize how long returning to normality will take, with barbers and hairdressers needing many months to work off their customers' inventory. (People may do best to start lining up outside now, as for tickets for a Beatles reunion concert.)
As the saying goes, "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session," so maybe cynics will figure that the longer the legislature is suspended, the better. Tireless as Governor Lamont has been during the virus emergency, and as much as he is suddenly held in much higher esteem because of his efforts, public dissatisfaction with him can only grow the longer ordinary life remains disrupted.
Of course the emergency is not the governor's fault. But with the General Assembly self-suspended even as legislators, like many other government employees, continue to be paid and insured for not working, the public's normal mechanism for expressing discontent is broken and the governor has no one to share responsibility with.
So while Connecticut's law on declaring emergencies is similar to the laws of other states, it may be too broad. It has enabled the governor to commandeer the state even though the legislature was in session and not threatened with dispersal by any enemy. While Lamont has been sensitive to civil liberty, some other governors invoking the emergency laws of their states have not been, and Connecticut's law could be similarly abused in the future.
With an issue as important as reopening commerce, why shouldn't the legislature claim a say? Except for cowardice, why shouldn't legislators go on record about whether the big raises due for unionized state employees on July 1 should be postponed or canceled?
Lamont has been a benevolent dictator, but benevolent dictatorship should not become Connecticut's form of government.
The General Assembly disbanded itself needlessly and should reconvene immediately. Legislators will just have to summon a little of the courage being shown by nursing home aides, grocery clerks and the governor himself.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
'Ugly as they may seem'
Monte Cristo Cottage, in New London, Conn., used mostly as a summer place by playwright Eugene O’Neill’s family when he was growing up. The name of the house, the first part of which was built in 1840s, came from the fact that the most popular and lucrative role of Eugene O'Neill's father, the actor James O'Neill, was as Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo.
— Photo by Ntiprog
— Photo by Staib
“If a person is to get to the meaning of life, he must learn to like the facts about himself — ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity — before he can lay hold on the truth behind the facts; and that truth is never ugly!”
Eugene O’Neil (1888-1953), Nobel Prize-winning playwright. He was born in New York City and is buried in Boston’s Forest Hills Cemetery.
'Subtle sounds'
“The pleasant, subtle sounds of Spring, awaken you;
The madrigal of birds, the unmistakeable sway of a slight zephyr,
May combine, to ensure that you are taken to
Thought of a brand-new start….’’
From “Springtime in New England,’’ by Maurice Harris
Resist, resist!
Henry Adams in 1885
“Resistance to something was the law of New England nature.’’
—From The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), an historian and member of the Adams political family.
His posthumously published memoir, The Education of Henry Adams, won the Pulitzer Prize and is considered a classic.
Now we can all be narcissists
“Selfie, Downtown Crossing (Boston),’’ by Russell duPont, famed New England artist. Hit this link and this link for more excitement.
Combining COVID-19 forecasts
The UMass School of Public Health
Nicholas Reich, a professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Public Health, in Amherst, has created a forecast center to bring together multiple models to create an ensemble forecast to project COVID-19’s spread and effects. The Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence projections will include hospitalizations and new cases at state and national levels. Hit this link to learn more.
Mail call
The central U.S. Postal Service office in downtown Taunton, Mass. Built in 1930 with funding from the Works Progress Administration, it’s a lovely example of Classical Revival architecture, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Trump and some other bogus “conservatives’’ seem to want to kill the U.S. Postal Service. As I noted here a couple of weeks ago, in the case of our leader it’s because he’s hates Jeff Bezos, the Amazon mogul/monopolist whose Washington Post insists on reporting on him in more rigorous ways than Pravda covered Stalin. Amazon is a big Postal Service customer. Trump has suggested forcing the Postal Service to boost its delivery prices so much so that they might exceed those of UPS and FedEx. But then, the GOP, especially since the rise of the anti-government Tea Party (anti-government except for Medicare and Social Security, which disproportionately benefit its members), has long been gunning for the service, which goes back to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
The share of the nation’s workers represented by federal employees has fallen to record lows in the past decade, which is one reason that service has declined at some agencies – e.g., even before the pandemic you often had to wait more than an hour to ask a question of an IRS agent on the phone. Now, during the COVID-19 crisis, the agency takes no calls. Of course, Tea Party types hate the IRS, but how do they propose to fund the government? And remember, it’s Congress, not the IRS, that makes the tax laws. Then there’s the sorely understaffed Social Security Administration.
The argument is that the Postal Service should always be profitable, a demand not made of Trump Organization operations…. But the agency, like, say, the Defense Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Interstate Highway System, is a necessary public service that also helps tie together the country. It’s a mostly reliable entity that’s essential for the private sector – both individuals and businesses.
Look at the 2006 law pushed through by the GOP that requires the Postal Service to prefund its employee retirement health-care cost for 75 years into the future! Imagine a private company having to deal with that. And do we really want to have the mail controlled by private companies (which might be big campaign contributors)?
There are some services that only government can provide on a broad and coordinated enough fashion to adequately serve the public outside the vagaries of the market.
Tougher than the Devil
Daniel Webster
“If two New Hampshiremen aren’t a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.’’
Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943), in his short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster’’. The tale centers on a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the Devil and is defended by Daniel Webster (1782-1852), a fictional version of the 19th Century American statesman, lawyer and orator.
Mr, Benet’s gravestone in the Evergreen Cemetery in Stonington. Conn.
Sit there until I say you can leave
Oil and acrylic painting by Sabine Clark, with Zhanna Cantor, at New Art Center, Newton, Mass.
