‘Realistic memories’ and dreams
“In Winter” (cast resin), by Memy Ish-Shalom, in his show “Dreams and Memories, ‘‘ at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Dec. 2-Jan. 8. He’s an immigrant from Israel now living in Newton, Mass.
He says:
“My sculptures are an artistic response to realistic memories and to dreams or daydreams. But sometimes dreams turn into memories and memories become dreams.
“I reflect on childhood memories of being a son to my father and adult memories of being a father to my son. I also reflect on the deep sorrow that grew from losing my father.’’
Money just for education and transport?
Will the “millionaires tax’’ drive any of the rich folks living in fancy streets like this on Boston’s Beacon Hill to move their official residences to Florida or New Hampshire?
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Massachusetts voters, by a 52-48 percent margin, approved what’s been dubbed “the millionaires’ tax’’ in the Nov. 8 election.
The Bay State has had a flat rate of 5 percent of federal adjusted gross income. A new constitutional amendment will add an additional 4 percent tax on taxable income over $1 million, starting in 2023, in a modest move to progressive taxation. (Federal taxation has progressive elements and unprogressive ones, the latter including shielding more income from capital gains than from earned income, favoritism that benefits the affluent.)
A Tufts University study projects that the “millionaires’ tax’’ will bring in about $1.3 billion next year, and that the levy would only affect 0.6 percent of households.
Proponents promise that all the money to be raised by the new tax would go to education and transportation. If that actually happens, it could strengthen the commonwealth’s – and New England’s – economy. Despite all the promotion of the Sun Belt’s tax systems – good for the rich, but not particularly for the poor and middle class, which are saddled with highly regressive sales taxes in these mostly Red States – the wealthiest states continue to be those willing to pay for good public services.
But would a recession, causing Massachusetts’s state tax revenues to fall, end up forcing the state to use much, or all, of that $1.3 billion to balance its budget? Could well happen next year in the predicted recession because there’s nothing to legally compel officials to spend the money just on schools and transportation (presumably mostly the MBTA, including trains to and from Rhode Island).
In any event, because of the new tax, a few rich folks will leave, and/or threaten to leave, the Bay State to go to Florida, that paradise of income-tax avoiders, money launderers, gigantic, floodable oceanside mansions, inland tarpaper shacks, big donors to GOPQ campaigns, 7-Elevens, terrifyingly wide intersections and Burmese pythons, or to, say, New Hampshire, which prospers in no small degree because it’s next to the great wealth creator of Greater Boston, in a state that’s willing to pay for extensive public services that support that wealth creation.
(While New Hampshire famously has no income or sales tax, it relies very heavily on property taxes. About 65 percent of government revenues come from property taxes – the highest dependence on such levies in the U.S.)
By the way, eight of the ten states most dependent on federal money are GOPQ-dominated and seven of the nine states that send more to the Feds than they receive are Democrat-dominated. But maybe that will change as people move around.
Bella DeVaan: Swift superfans may have struck blow against monopoly
Taylor Swift’s fans paid for the singer’s mansion — the white Colonial Revival structure at the top of the hill —- in the Watch Hill section of Westerly, R.I. The house, called High Watch, was formerly named Holiday House and also called the Harkness House (after a family enriched by Standard Oil who lived there for a time) by locals, is an 11,000-square-foot edifice on five acres that she bought for $17.75 million in 2013. The house was built in 1929-1930.
— Photo by JJBers - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjbers/33980495256/
Via OtherWords.org
As the cost of food, travel, and gifts complicate holiday plans across the country, millions of Americans have been awakened to the sinister power of monopolies.
But now there are exciting new possibilities to rein them in.
This November, legions of new anti-monopolists were born. They’re Taylor Swift’s superfans — and they just might be the reason the government breaks up Ticketmaster.
Hoping to get pre-sale tickets to their favorite pop star’s upcoming tour, millions of “Swifties” waited in endless electronic queues, only to be hit with sky-high prices and exorbitant fees — if they were able to snag a ticket at all.
“Ticket prices may fluctuate, upon demand, at any time,” read an ominous warning on the Ticketmaster website.
And they did: Under Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” system, fans reported ticket prices running up to thousands of dollars — not including hefty fees. Prices spiked even higher on the secondary resale market. On StubHub, ticket listings reached upwards of $95,000.
Finally, Ticketmaster threw in the towel and canceled subsequent presale windows. Their site crashed thousands of times. It was mayhem — and thanks to an unchecked monopoly, fans had no other option.
But the Swifties struck back. Hours after Taylor Swift released a statement apologizing to fans and chastising Ticketmaster, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an investigation of Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster.
While their investigation wasn’t prompted by Swift, reported the New York Times, Swifties’ wave of discontent was overwhelming enough to warrant the department’s public disclosure. Immediately after, the company that had been bragging about a record-smashing 2022 saw its stock plummet.
How did we get here? When it comes to antitrust issues, the U.S. government has essentially been asleep at the wheel, allowing Ticketmaster’s monopoly to crush its competition for over a decade.
In 2010, Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged into Live Nation Entertainment. The merger was subject to a relatively weak consent decree, which asked the merged companies not to abuse their live venue dominance. But it’s been easy for Live Nation Entertainment to intimidate their naysayers and flout guidelines.
“Ticketmaster bullies venues into not working with their competitors,” explains Chokepoint Capitalism author Cory Doctorow. “They bully smaller artists by denying them management. They bully big artists by controlling their ticket prices and letting their fans down. And they bully their customers into paying exorbitant prices for tickets.”
Well before the Swift fiasco, a coalition of research organizations and live event workers launched the Break Up Ticketmaster campaign asking the Department of Justice to “investigate and unwind” the live events monopoly. The campaign quickly gained ground, generating tens of thousands of signatures on an advocacy letter.
Policy makers are now echoing that call.
“Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior,” tweeted Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), punning off a song from Swift’s latest album, Midnights.
And on MSNBC, Senate Antitrust Committee chair Amy Klobuchar (D.-Minn.) promised a Senate hearing. She’s also co-authored bills with Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to facilitate antitrust enforcement with new filing, funding, and state empowerment rules.
The attorney general of Tennessee — home to the “angriest Swifties” — opened an investigation into Ticketmaster’s misconduct, too.
President Biden recently directed his administration to “reduce or eliminate” junk fees like Ticketmasters’ infamous extra charges, which sometimes total up to 78 percent of the cost of a ticket. He’s also appointed a passel of antitrust enforcers and signed a robust, competition-oriented executive order in his first months in the Oval Office.
Monopolies aren’t just fleecing concert-goers. All of us experience the villainy of monopolies — in the high price of a tight seat on a plane, in the destruction of local journalism, in skyrocketing monthly rent and food prices, or in the marginalization of small online businesses.
So, present day monopolists, steel yourselves and remember: When you provoke a superfan, they’ll come for you.Bella DeVaan
Bella DeVaan is a program associate at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org.
The end
“The hills are in gray.
Someone will kick.
Someone will hold.
The year has grown old…..
An overcast day.
A sweet, sad day.
They’re leaving the stands.’’
— From “Fall Overcast,’’ by E.B. White (1899-1985), famed essayist, children’s book author and minor poet. He lived much of his life on a small farm on the Maine Coast.
Chris Powell: More accountability needed from chronic criminals, too
The spiked heads of executed criminals once adorned the gatehouse of the medieval London Bridge.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut state government lately has tried to increase the accountability of police officers, equipping more of them with dashboard and body cameras, establishing the office of inspector general to investigate police use of force, and diminishing the immunity of officers from lawsuits for actions on duty.
But strangely state government has done nothing to increase the accountability of criminals, even as serious crimes have increased and many are committed by chronic offenders who never should have been let out of prison. Many crimes by chronic offenders have been well publicized but the governor and state legislators seem to pay no attention.
Odds are that an especially horrible case involving a chronic offender this month will be ignored officially as well. That is, the man charged and being sought in connection with the murder of his baby girl in Naugatuck, Conn., has a serious criminal record -- drug dealing, assault and resisting arrest -- for which he served time in prison, and, the Waterbury Republican-American says, at the time of the murder was both on parole and free on bonds totaling $375,000 on new charges of carjacking, assault, robbery and burglary.
Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, in downtown Naugatuck (c. 1890).
Of course, the suspect in the baby's murder hasn't been convicted of it yet. Even so, given his record of convictions and the additional serious charges that already were pending against him, someone in authority should be asking why he was free on both parole and bonds for new crimes and why prosecution of his pending charges was not hastened. When someone has been killed and the suspect is a career criminal, the case should be worth at least a hearing before a General Assembly committee.
Yes, police should be held more accountable. But how about courts, prosecutors, probation officers, and social workers and therapists who work with criminals who reoffend?
Accountability is still lacking in the case of Henryk Gudelski, the jogger who last year was run down and killed in New Britain, Conn., by a stolen car allegedly driven by a 17-year-old boy who had been arrested 13 times in the preceding 3½ years but had been repeatedly freed by juvenile court.
The governor and legislature have never taken note of that case either, and no accountability has been achieved by their recent legislation allowing police to detain arrested juveniles for an extra two hours while seeking a detention order from a judge. While the governor and legislators touted the change, police say it is no practical help.
Indeed, instead of dealing with chronic offenders, the criminal justice issue gaining momentum in Connecticut seems to be faster restoration of voting rights to felons. How "woke"!
If only "woke" really meant having awakened to what's going on.
xxx
OPEN PRIMARY MISCHIEF: While he is no friend of Republicans, columnist and talk-radio host Colin McEnroe says he has the remedy for the party's poor performance in Connecticut: open primaries. If unaffiliated voters were allowed to help choose Republican candidates, McEnroe writes, the party would not nominate extreme conservatives who can't win. McEnroe cites Connecticut's two most recent Republican governors, John G. Rowland and Jodi Rell, as proof that Connecticut will elect Republicans.
But Rowland and Rell were not extreme conservatives. They were hardly conservatives at all, and they were nominated without open primaries.
Besides, open primaries are undemocratic because they can impair like-minded people from maintaining a party, and they invite mischief like what recently occurred around the country as Democrats intervened in Republican nominations, assisting candidates associated with former President Donald Trump because they would be easier to defeat. This intervention by non-Republicans helped nominate the less electable Republican candidates.
Connecticut Republicans could restrict their open primaries to unaffiliated voters, nominally excluding Democrats. But in Connecticut changing registration from a party to unaffiliated and back is easy and quick, so mischief in open primaries would be easy too.
Of course, Democrats in Connecticut long have been winning elections without open primaries -- indeed, often without any primaries at all. So maybe the ability to dispense a lot of government patronage is more helpful than open primaries.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester. (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)
Llewellyn King: How over-complexity might bring down electricity and other key systems
A perspective on the development of complexity science.
Graphic by Brian Castellani
Has the Internet of things — the vast, interconnected, computer-centered ecosystem of today — reached a point where it is so complex, so multilayered, has so many architects, and has so many national interests embedded in it that it has become a threat to itself?
Will the electric grid, the financial system or the air-traffic control apparatus implode not by the hand of a malicious hacker but because the system — which is now systems of systems — has become the most subtle threat it faces?
Worse, as the speed of telephony increases with 5G, will that speed up the system implosion with devastating consequences?
Will this technological meltdown be triggered from within by a long-forgotten piece of code, a failed sensor or inferior products in vital, load-bearing points in this system?
This kind of disaster from complexity is known as “emergent behavior.” Remember that concept. Likely, you will hear a lot about it going forward.
Emergent behavior is what happens when various objects or substances come together and trigger a reaction that can’t be predicted, nor can the trigger be predetermined.
Robert Gardner, founder and principal at New World Technology Partners and a National Security Agency consultant, tells me that the computer ecosystem is highly subject to emergent behavior in the so-called complex, adaptive system of systems which is today’s cyberworld. It is a world which has been built over time with new layers of complexity added willy-nilly as computing, and what has been asked of it, has become a huge, impregnable structure, beyond the reach of its present-day architects and minders, including cybersecurity aficionados.
In at The Creation
Gardner, to my mind, is worth listening to because he was, if you will, in at the beginning. At least, he was on hand and worked on the computer evolution, starting in the 1970s when he helped build the first supercomputers and has consulted with various national laboratories, including Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos. He has also played a key role in the development of today’s super-sophisticated financial computing infrastructure, known as “fintech.”
Gardner says of emergent behaviors in complex systems, “They can’t be predicted by examining individual components of a system as they are produced by the system as a whole — facilitating a perfect storm that conspires to produce catastrophe.”
Complexity is the new adversary, he says of these huge, virtual systems of systems.
Gardner adds, “The complexity adversary does not require outside assistance; it can be summoned by minor user, environmental or equipment failures, or timing instabilities in the ordinary operation of a system.
“Current threat detection software does not seek or detect these system conditions, leaving them highly vulnerable.”
Gardner cites two examples where the system failed itself. The first example is when a tree branch that fell on a power line in Ohio set in motion a blackout across Michigan, New York and much of Canada in 2003. The system became the problem: It went berserk, and 50 million people lost power.
The second example is how something called “counter-party risk” sped the demise of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street colossus. That was when a single default embedded in the system initiated the implosion of the whole structure.
No Nefarious Actors
Of these, Gardner says, “There were no nefarious actors to defend against; the complex, heterogeneous nature of the systems themselves led to emergent behaviors.”
Going forward, the best practices in cyber hygiene won’t defend against catastrophe. The entwined systems are their own enemy. Utilities take note.
And the danger may get worse, according to Gardner.
The villain is 5G: the super-fast phone and data system now being deployed across the country. It will come in what are called “slices,” but for that you can read stages.
. Slice one is what is being built out now: It is faster than today’s 4G, which is what phones and data use currently. It features mobile broadband.
· Slice two, called “machine to machine,” is faster yet.
· Slice three will move vast quantities of data at astounding speeds which, if the data is damaging to the system and has occurred at an unidentifiable location, represents a threat to a whole tranche of human activity.
Self-destroying machines will be unstoppable when they have 5G slice three to speed bad information throughout their system and connected systems. Tech Armageddon.
Llewellyn King, a veteran columnist, editor, publisher and international energy consultant, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS.
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White House Chronicle
Forbes
Buy art to support refugees
“Colibri” (lithograph), by Somerville, Mass.-based Phyllis Ewan, in the show “Kingston Members: Celebrate Renewal,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Nov. 30-Dec. 24.
— Photo courtesy Kingston Gallery
Colibri refers to a species of hummingbird
In this show, Kingston Gallery members present a variety of work in a multitude of mediums. The show's mission is to "renew our connection to art and to celebrate community after years marked by pandemic and ongoing conflict." The gallery encourages the public to come ready to buy art off the walls to support the Boston Medical Center's Immigrant and Refugee Health Center.
John Harney: Many thanks, New England
John O. Harney
From, The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
BOSTON
In October, I wrote to NEBHE colleagues to let them know I would be retiring from the organization and the editorship of its New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE) in early January 2023.
While NEBHE has been my job, NEJHE has been my passion. I joined NEBHE in 1988 and, in 1990, became editor of NEJHE (then called Connection: New England’s Journal of Higher Education and Economic Development).
Thirty-four years for one outlet. Sometimes I forget I’m even that old.
I looked at the journal editions, printed on paper until 2010, as pieces of art (albeit imperfect ones) as much as a news service. The best issues I thought were like our own “Sgt. Pepper’’ album. Today, reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.’’
I’ll miss working with our distinguished authors, sometimes goading them into writing their bylined commentaries—usually for no fee. Those writers also happened to be our readers … a community of policymakers, practitioners and regionalists we described variously as “opinion leaders” in the old days, “thought leaders” more recently. All bound together by an interest in higher education and New England (which I recall was a tough audience to quantify for analytically retentive advertisers).
I’ll also miss the editorial “departments” we developed, such as Data Connection, a sort of spinoff of the Harper’s Magazine Index, but with a New England and higher education flavor. Reflective of a certain “NEJHE Beat,” these items—like a lot of NEJHE content—track along a unique constellation of issues anchored in higher education but also moored to social justice, economic and workforce development, regional cooperation, quality of life, academic research, workplaces and other topics that, together, say New Englandness.
In our print days, I was especially invested in my Editor’s Memo columns that opened every edition from 1990 to 2010.
A few of these Editor’s Memos noted the transition from Connection to NEJHE, an illness that forced me to take leave in 2007 and the journal’s shift from print to all-Web in 2010.
Many pieces looked at the future of New England. One touched on our mock Race for Governor of the State of New England. That exercise helped midwife New England Online, an attempt by NEBHE and partners to take advantage of then-new networking technologies to provide something of a clearinghouse of all things New England—a bit unfocused perhaps, but poignant in a region where, the “winner” of that fantastic New England governor’s race, then state Rep. Arnie Arnesen of New Hampshire, quipped that the capital of New England should not be, say, Boston or Hartford, but instead something along the lines of “www.ne.gov.” (See our house ad.)
The House that Jack Built focused on the first NEBHE president I worked with, Jack Hoy, who passed away in 2013. Jack was a mentor who pioneered understanding of the profound nexus between higher education and economic development that is now taken for granted and that served as the basis for the journal’s name, Connection.
Among other of these commentaries and columns, several focused on the magical relationship between higher-education institutions and their host communities. Even in the emerging age of a placeless university, there is no diminishing the correlation between campuses and good restaurants, bookstores, theaters and other amenities, driven by faculty, students and otherwise smart locals.
In this vein, I was personally sustained for more than three decades by NEBHE’s home in Boston. Despite its difficult racial past (which NEBHE and NEJHE have attempted to address), the Hub, and next-door Cambridge, comprise Exhibit A in such college-influenced communities. Indeed, our street in Downtown Crossing has offered a lesson in the region’s changing economy, being transformed from a strip of small nonprofits that wanted to be close to Beacon Hill, to dollar stores, to, most recently, chic restaurants and bars. The foot traffic, meanwhile, has become much more collegiate as Emerson College and Suffolk University have expanded downtown.
I noted in my letter to colleagues that I strongly believe that the regional journal is a key strength of NEBHE that should continue to be appreciated and bolstered.
For years, we characterized Connection and NEJHE as America’s only regional journal on higher education and its impact on the economy and quality of life. In addition, the topics we’ve covered are just too important to cast our gaze elsewhere. New England’s challenging demography—where some states now see more deaths than births—means there are fewer of us to nourish a workforce and exercise clout in Congress. This all makes our historic strength in attracting foreign students and immigrants to build our communities and industries all the more important. Growing chasms in income and wealth between chief executives and employees, meanwhile, agitate antidemocratic and racist forces. While too many critics diss snowflakes, dangerous trauma grows among students and staff. And a pandemic (that is not over) exposed our fault lines, but also showed the promise of joining together behind scientific breakthroughs … and behind one another.
NEBHE President Michael Thomas and I agreed that the weeks leading up to my retirement will provide opportunities to celebrate the journal’s four decades of contributions to the region—as well as to think about its future and the ways NEBHE can best inform and engage stakeholders going forward.
But these are tough times for independent-minded journalism—especially in the quasi-free press world of association journalism, where the goal is to be objective, but for a cause (and ours is generally a good one). NEBHE has launched a job search for a director of communications and marketing. To be sure, my functions at NEBHE also included PR and media relations and style maven (editorial style that is), and those too are key tasks that NEBHE must continue to fulfill. (Full disclosure, I always urged NEJHE authors to make their pieces “issue-oriented” and “avoid marketing.” The goal for the journal was to be thoughtful and candid.)
Just keep it real.
Here’s to the future of NEBHE and NEJHE.
John O. Harney is the executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.
Editor’s note: New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is a former member of the Advisory Board of The New England Journal of Higher Education.
Useful fanaticism
“Good habits are worth being fanatical about.’’
— John Irving (born 1942), American-Canadian novelist raised in Exeter, N.H. Much of his work is based in New England, including the book and movie above, which is based in Maine.
Expansion of the surveillance society
“Nadar Elevating Photography to the Level of Art” (1862 lithograph), by Honore Daumier (French, 1808-1879), in the show “On the Horizon: Art and Atmosphere in the Nineteenth Century,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., through Feb. 12.
— Photo by Clark Art Institute
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (1820-1910) known by the pseudonym Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist. In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs.
The show analyzes how some artists incorporated new scientific and technological discoveries about the atmosphere into their work. For more information, please visit here.
Stripped down by the freeze
Late fall austerity in Dublin, N.H., with Mt. Monadnock in the distance.
— Photo by William Morgan
Start of the legend
“The First Thanksgiving {in 1621} at Plymouth,’’ by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, at Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Mass. It’s a romanticized and simplified picture of a more complicated event.
Before eating the apple
“Eden’s Color-Full Inhabitants” (watercolor) by West Newton, Mass.-based Nancy DuVergne Smith, in her show “Skins and Petals: Living Color,’’ at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Dec. 2-Jan. 8.
She says:
“My paintings involve vibrant things—water, plants, and people—in the magic of watercolor. This medium meshes rich colors and the flow of water to create a living entity that mingles and changes as it dries. Each painting is a conversation with time and intention. Art like this invites us to return, reconsider, and refresh.’’
Windermere Road, in affluent West Newton, a suburban Eden.
— Photo by John Phelan
N.E. Council pushes for region to host new health-research agency
Cell culture vials
BOSTON
The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com), the leading regional lobbying organization, has been touting Massachusetts to be the home of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). And now council President James Brett is also imploring federal officials them to take a wider view and “consider the unparalleled resources” of the entire New England region.
“New England is known as one of the world’s premier life sciences hubs, and is home to many of the world’s top medical, education, and research facilities. In fact, New England centers of higher education and research institutes received over $4.5 billion in [National Institutes of Health] funding in 2021. Additionally, the region supports over 56,000 jobs directly tied to NIH funding, and supports just over $10 billion in economic activity.’’
Mr. Brett added, “In addition, the New England region boasts a dynamic workforce and innovation ecosystem. New England is home to a highly skilled talent pool to supply the quality and quantity of employees that ARPA-H will need.”
This came in a letter Mr. Brett wrote to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, ARPA-H Director Dr. Renee Wegrzyn and a top White House science adviser.
Sam Pizzigati: Maybe taxpayer-subsidized Musk isn’t quite as brilliant as you think
Elon Musk
— Photo by Debbie Rowe
BOSTON
From OtherWords.org
A good day’s work for a good day’s pay. Should this age-old wisdom apply to overpaid CEOs as well as their workers? A Delaware court will soon decide, a turn of events that must have the richest man in the known universe, Elon Musk, feeling more than a little bit uneasy.
Delaware’s little-known Court of Chancery normally provides business moguls a battleground where they can slug out their big-ticket differences. But the court also gives stockholders a chance to push back against the moguls — and one modest shareholder in the Musk empire has done just that.
Shareholder Richard Tornetta, a former heavy-metal drummer, filed suit in 2018 against the company’s board for lavishing unnecessary billions upon Musk.
Tornetta’s challenge has ended up before the Chancery Court’s Kathleen McCormick, a judge who’s already demonstrated a distinct lack of patience with Muskian antics. Just this past October, McCormick ruled against Musk in another case. She might well again.
Musk’s current Tesla CEO pay plan, notes CNN Business, gives Musk “the largest compensation package for anyone on Earth from a publicly traded company.” Under the plan, the higher Tesla’s share price goes, the more new Tesla shares Musk gets.
Thanks to that connection, Musk’s personal net worth now sits at $189 billion, the world’s largest personal fortune. In 2018, the year Musk’s Tesla pay deal went into effect, some 40 billionaires worldwide topped Musk on the Bloomberg billionaire charts.
Back in 2018, major shareholder advisory firms recommended that Tesla shareholders reject the pay deal that Tesla’s corporate board — a panel that included Musk’s brother and assorted close pals — wanted to give Musk.
Musk himself, one advisory firm noted, already had plenty of incentive to work hard for Tesla’s success. He owned 22 percent of Tesla’s shares even before his new CEO pay deal.
The week-long trial on Richard Tornetta’s Delaware lawsuit against Musk and Tesla ended in mid-November. Judge McCormick’s decision in the case will likely come down sometime over the next three months.
McCormick’s previous ruling against Musk came when the billionaire tried to back out of the deal he cut last spring to buy Twitter. After that ruling, Musk had to go ahead with the purchase. Now he’s flailing about, trying to make others pay the price for his impulsive takeover bid. He’s already laid off half the Twitter workforce.
If McCormick rules against Musk once again, Musk will still walk away fantastically rich. But he won’t walk away happy. His ongoing Twitter debacle — and now the Tesla litigation — have dealt his reputation for unparalleled business “genius” a potentially fatal blow.
Under cross-examination in the Tesla case, for instance, Musk had to concede that he didn’t come up with the original vision for Tesla himself, the claim he’s been making for years.
Musk turns out to be as flawed as the rest of us. The key difference: Musk has the power and wealth to make others pay for his mistakes.
Musk has also benefited, unlike the rest of us, from billions in taxpayer subsidies. Handouts to his electric car, solar panel and spaceflight businesses — all “long-shot start-ups,” the Los Angeles Times has detailed — gave his companies their secret sauce. Those subsidies launched Musk’s unparalleled personal fortune.
So what can the rest of us do to prevent another “brilliant” entrepreneur from building a fortune off the insights, labor and tax dollars of others? We can deny subsidies to companies that pay their top execs hundreds of times more than what they pay their workers. We can tax the rich at much higher rates.
And we can put Elon Musk atop a rocket and send him off to where he has repeatedly announced he dearly wants to go — to Mars.
Sam Pizzigati, based in Boston, co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. His books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win.
Information please
Two fine writers, both physicians, seek publishing help.
The first one, who has also served as a hospital-system senior executive, is seeking to recruit an editor and an agent for an autobiographical book, now in its first draft. He lives in the Boston area.
In his words:
“The book is the emotionally honest story of a family of six wherein both the father and one son asynchronously developed and battled dissimilar early - onset advanced stage cancers. Although the life circumstances and treatment regimens and surgeries weren't the same, the experience of having cancer and the subsequent tidal changes in the levels of physical, emotional and spiritual distress, hope, worry, fear, family dynamics, perseverance, gratitude for support from family, friends and the medical community and others were shared. The son's story is a very relevant one given the currently alarming rise in cases of colorectal cancer in people under the age of 50.
“Amazing events (some miraculous) that occurred over the years are part of the story. The father is in remission. The son did not survive, so it's also a story of what it's like to lose a child as well.
“It's a story about hope and grief worth telling and meant to provide insight and inspiration for others unfortunately realizing similar circumstances.’’
His biography:
Adopted. Raised in a very blue-collar family. Identical twin brother died from AIDS at age 31. He went to medical school at age 28. Internal medicine private practice in the Boston area for 20 years, a physician executive since.
Married for 40 years. 4 children, 3 grandchildren with another 2 on the way.
xxx
The other physician writer, formerly of the U.S. but now living in New Zealand, seeks a literary agent.
A psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he’s a published poet, playwright, novelist and story-teller.
Please respond via rwhitcomb4@cox.net
Dipped vintage pages
Installation of 24 vintage book pages mounted on wood panels and dipped in Furnace black watercolor and gold acrylic pigments, by Tim Rollins (1955-2017), at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
— Photograph by Stephen Petegorsky.
Frank Carini: Turtles threatened by local poachers with global ties
A Spotted Turtle.
An Eastern Box Turtle.
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Rhode Island’s reptiles and amphibians face pressure from numerous threats, and for many species, removal of even a single adult from the wild can lead to local extinction, according to the state’s herpetologist.
Since the local and/or regional future for many of these species — eastern spadefoot toad, northern leopard frog, northern diamondback terrapin, to name just a few — is in doubt, removing them from nature to keep as a pet or to sell is against the law. It’s illegal to sell, purchase, or own/possess native species in any context, even if acquired through a pet store or online, according to Rhode Island law.
Turtles are especially vulnerable, according to Scott Buchanan, who became the state’s first full-time herpetologist in 2018, because some species must reproduce for their entire lives to ensure just one hatchling survives to adulthood. The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) staffer said it takes years, sometimes a decade or more, for turtles to reach reproductive age, if they make it at all.
Buchanan recently told ecoRI News that “broadly, across taxa” the illegal taking, or poaching, of wildlife is a “huge issue.”
“Globally, it’s considered one of the driving forces of population declines and even extinctions,” he said.
Wildlife trade experts and conservation biologists such as Buchanan point to poaching — driven by demand in Asia, Europe, and the Unified States — as a contributing factor in the global decline of some freshwater turtles and tortoises.
Tortoises and turtles grow slowly, mature late, and can, if given the chance, live for decades. This slow and steady lifestyle served them well for millions of years, but now, in the face of growing human pressures, it has become a liability.
Of the 360 known turtle and tortoise species, 52 percent are threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
A group of global turtle and tortoise experts published a 2020 paper that noted “more than half of the 360 living species [187] and 482 total taxa (species and subspecies combined) are threatened with extinction. This places chelonians [turtles, terrapins, and tortoises] among the groups with the highest extinction risk of any sizaeble vertebrate group.”
Turtle populations are “declining rapidly” because of habitat loss, consumption by humans for food and traditional medicines, and collection for the international pet trade, according to the paper’s authors. Many could go extinct this century.
Buchanan’s involvement in dealing with the impact of poachers is primarily around North American turtles. He noted turtle diversity is high globally and in the eastern United States — in the Southeast more than the Northeast, however.
But state and federal law enforcement officials and wildlife biologists consider the illegal collection of turtles to be a conservation crisis occurring at an international scale, according to Buchanan, who is the co-chair of the Collaborative to Combat the Illegal Trade in Turtles (CCITT), formed in 2018 within Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation.
In the past four years, CCITT, an organization of mostly state, federal and tribal biologists, has documented some 30 major smuggling cases in 15 states. Some involved a few dozen turtles, and others several thousand.
In Rhode Island, Buchanan said there are four turtle species of concern: the eastern box turtle; the spotted turtle; the wood turtle; and the northern diamondback terrapin.
Eastern Box (species of greatest conservation need): This turtle spends most of its time on land rather than in the water. They favor open woodlands, but can be found in floodplains, near vernal pools, ponds, streams, marshy meadows, and pastures. They reach sexual maturity by about 10 years of age. Females nest in June and lay an average of five eggs in open areas with sandy or loamy soil. Eggs hatch in late summer.
Spotted (species of greatest conservation need): These turtles are sensitive to disturbance. They are usually found in shallow, well-vegetated wetland habitats, such as vernal pools, marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens. They reach sexual maturity at 7-10 years of age. Females lay an average of four eggs in moist Sphagnum moss, grass tussocks, hummocks, or loamy soil. Females probably do not lay eggs more than once a season, and females do not lay eggs every year.
Wood (species of greatest conservation need): For part of the year they live in streams, slow rivers, shoreline habitats, and vernal pools, but in the summer they roam widely across terrestrial landscapes. They reach sexual maturity around 10. During late spring, one clutch of 4-12 eggs is typically laid in nesting sites consisting of sandy soil or gravel. Eggs hatch in late summer and the young move to water.
Northern Diamondback (state endangered): Their population has suffered greatly due to poaching and habitat loss. They are found in estuaries, coves, barrier beaches, tidal flats, and coastal marshes. They spend the day feeding and basking in the sun and bury themselves in the mud at night. They reach sexual maturity at about six years old. Females lay a clutch consisting of 4-18 eggs. Some females will lay more than one clutch in a season and hatching usually occurs in late August. The young spend the earlier years of life under tidal wrack (seaweed) and are rarely observed.
All four are high-demand species in the pet trade, according to Buchanan.
“There’s a lot of illegal collection that takes place all throughout the eastern United States, including in New England and Rhode Island,” he said. “There’s a lot of recent cases that involve hundreds and thousands of turtles from those species illegally collected from individual populations, which is just totally unsustainable and has an immediate and lasting impact on those populations.”
Other turtle species that can be found in Rhode Island include eastern painted, common snapping turtle, and eastern musk.
“We have a lot of turtles for a small state,” Buchanan said. “They’re a conservation priority because of their life history. They’re just inherently vulnerable to population declines.”
Most turtles fall victim to predators before they mature. Rhode Island’s turtles are also threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation and by car strikes when crossing roads to breeding grounds.
Poaching is just another human-caused threat to their existence.
The 16 eastern musk turtle hatchlings confiscated by Rhode Island environmental police from a West Warwick resident in September. (DEM)
In late September environmental police officers from DEM’s Division of Law Enforcement found 16 Eastern Musk Turtle hatchlings, a species native to Rhode Island and the eastern United States, in the home of a West Warwick man suspected of illegally advertising them for sale on Craigslist and Facebook.
The case resulted from a week-long investigation, during which the suspect offered two hatchlings to undercover environmental police officers for purchase, according to DEM.
The suspect was charged with 16 counts of possession of a protected reptile or amphibian without a permit. The turtles were taken to the Roger Williams Park Zoo, which has a room and equipment dedicated to the care of turtles seized from the illegal turtle trade. The turtles will be released back into the wild after clearing health screenings and disease testing, according to DEM.
The 16 turtles are still at the zoo and “doing well,” according to Buchanan. He said only a minority of turtles rescued from poachers are returned to the wild, because of concerns about disease and, more importantly, not being able to determine the area from which they were taken.
The man has claimed the hatchlings were raised in captivity, but state officials believe the parents were likely taken from the wild and that the case also involves actions taken in another state. The case remains under investigation.
Last November, at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, about 100 eastern box turtles were found confined in socks inside an illegal shipment to Asia. A deadly ranavirus outbreak among the turtles confiscated by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service highlighted the risks and cruelty of the illegal wildlife trade, according to the New England Aquarium.
Smuggled turtles are often wrapped tightly in socks to keep them from moving. (USFWS)
Federal wildlife officials discovered the wildlife smugglers put multiple turtles, taken illegally from the wild, together into one box without food or water. Found hidden inside falsely labeled boxes, each turtle had been stuffed inside a tight sock to prevent it from moving.
The New England Aquarium took in many of the turtles and enlisted Zoo New England and Roger Williams Park Zoo to assist with treating the animals that were in poor health, suffering from dehydration and eye infections.
Buchanan said the global demand for box turtles has surged during the past few years.
A Chinese national was sentenced last year to 38 months in prison and fined $10,000 for money laundering after previously pleading guilty to financing a nationwide smuggling ring that sent 1,500 turtles worth nearly $2.3 million from the United States to China. The man used PayPal, credit cards, and bank transfers to buy the turtles from U.S. buyers advertising them on social media and reptile websites and sold them to Hong Kong reptile markets.
He trafficked in five turtle species, including the Eastern Box Turtle, protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora treaty.
Turtles, especially freshwater species, are among the world’s most trafficked animals, because, as Buchanan noted, reptiles can be kept in “explicitly inhumane conditions” — say, a sock inside a cardboard box — for a significant period of time.
“Enough of them survive to make it economical [for the criminal enterprise],” said Buchanan, noting most amphibians are too fragile to keep alive for that long.
Criminal networks connect with buyers who then sell the turtles as pets, to collectors, and to commercial breeders. Some species are coveted for their colorful shells or unusual appearance. In many countries, this illegal trade is either poorly regulated or unregulated.
To help protect Rhode Island’s native species, you can submit observations of amphibians and reptiles to DEM scientists online.
“Remember never to share turtle locations online,” according to DEM. “It can be exciting to see turtles in the wild, and to share your discovery. But before you take a photo of a turtle in the wild, turn off the geolocation on your phone. If you post a turtle photo on social media, don’t include information about where you found it. Poachers use location information to target sites.”
There are a few reptiles and amphibians that can hunted legally in Rhode Island: snapping turtles, bullfrogs, and green frogs. A current fishing, hunting, or trapping license is required and hunting/trapping must be conducted in compliance with season and size regulations. All animals harvested must be killed immediately following capture, as possession of live turtles or frogs is illegal.
Turtle traps must be marked with the trapper’s name and address, checked every 24 hours, and set in a manner that will allow turtles access to air, according to DEM. All bycatch must be released immediately at the location where the trap was set.
“This illegal collection of turtles … I think most people have a perception that it’s disparate or kind of small-time … it’s just some yahoos out there collecting a few turtles, when in fact it’s perfectly accurate to say the norm is international criminal syndicates that are driving the trade in turtles that leads to the illegal collection here in the U.S.,” Buchanan said. “There’s often times a local collector who’s in contact with a middleman who’s in contact with a criminal network that’s also involved in things like drug trafficking and human trafficking.”
Note: The sexual maturity and nesting habits of the four turtle species of concern in Rhode Island are based on their life and conditions here. For more information about the turtles of Rhode Island, click here. To watch a short U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service video about the importance of turtles and the threat from poaching, click here.
Frank Carini is co-founder and senior reporter for ecoRI News.
‘On four or five hooks’
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe at their wedding, in 1956
Roxbury, Conn., in 1905.
“How few the days are that hold the mind in place, like a tapestry hung on four or five hooks. Especially the day you stop becoming; the day you merely are.’’
— Playwright Arthur Miller, in After the Fall, inspired by his failed marriage to Marilyn Monroe. He lived much of his adult life in Roxbury, Conn., amidst the many other literary and visual artists who called the town, in the Litchfield Hills, their home.
Thanksgiving crisis
— From Veganbaking.net
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Like many of us, I closely associate past Thanksgivings with the places they took place.
When I was a young kid, it was mostly in our gray-shingled house on a hill near the ocean. The weather always seemed to be either drizzling and clammy or dry and brisk, with the sun slanting low on the horizon. These early-afternoon feasts, often preceded by watching the Macy’s parade in Manhattan on TV, were sometimes followed by walks, often to a rocky point, and dull headaches.
One memory from there is the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959. Arthur Flemming, President Eisenhower’s secretary of health, education and welfare, told the public on Nov. 9 that year that a little bit of the cranberry crop in the Pacific Northwest had tested positive for a herbicide called aminotriazole, which had caused abnormal growths, perhaps carcinogenic, in lab rats.
Although the major cranberry growers’ cooperative, Plymouth County, Mass.- based Ocean Spray, said accurately that you’d have to eat massive quantities of cranberry sauce (which was/is heavily sugared) to get sick from them, Flemming still advised people to avoid the fruit just as that treat’s biggest day, Thanksgiving, approached. Sales plunged, which hit the many growers in southeastern Massachusetts’s bogs hard.
In any event, the industry and the Feds worked out a deal to ensure that future lots of cranberries were clear of aminotriazole, and growers fairly quickly recovered from the economic blow of the Flemming announcement. It was the first big consumer-product crisis I remember.
My recollection is that at our Thanksgiving table we ignored the warning and helped ourselves to hearty helpings of cranberry sauce. That reminds me of the time soon after I graduated from college when my father, a smoker, cheerily offered a cigarette to a friend of mine with the words “Have some cancer!’’ He was a fatalist.
In later years, we’d be taken out by my paternal grandfather, by that point a widower, to the Daniel Webster Inn, in the Cape Cod town of Sandwich, which, happily, provided a meal lighter and brisker than what we’d get at home. He was a laconic Yankee, but he made an effort to show interest in what everybody had been up to recently.
And those of us of certain age of course won’t forget the sad Thanksgiving less than a week the assassination of President Kennedy, on Nov. 22, 1963. Whether you politically supported him or not, it cast a deep pall.
On Thanksgiving 1975, my wife and I dined virtually alone in a Philly hotel dining room near our shotgun apartment. It was quite pleasant.
In a couple of years, because of an unforgiving work schedule, I ate alone at home. King Oscar sardines are delicious out of the can!
Much later, for some years, we took an elderly, smart and rather cranky aunt and one or both of our daughters and another relative or two to the Coonamessett Inn, in Falmouth. That joint knew how to move things along! Since none of us were particularly enamored of Thanksgiving, or at least of big mid-day meals, that was fine. We’d be out of there in an hour and a half.
When we were living in Paris, we were invited to a big Thanksgiving dinner at my boss’s apartment. We invited along an American friend, a historian with a stentorian voice, who proceeded to sit at the head of the table and take over the room. Our hosts controlled their irritation.
There was the Thanksgiving at some friends’ house in Providence, where the pleasant post-prandial conversation and clean-up was brought to a sudden close by a phone call that announced the death of one of our hosts’ mother.
Thanksgiving is reported to be the second most popular holiday, after Christmas. Is that for real or do many people just say that because they want to sound people-friendly and anti-materialist? Meanwhile, one often wonders about the increasing percentage of people who live alone and how they spend highly familial holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Of course, we speak more and more of creating non-family “families,” but when push comes to shove we usually have to fall back on relatives rather than friends. Maybe that will change.
As Robert Frost grimly put it in “The Death of the Hired Hand’’:
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’’
I wonder how many people are moving to vegetarian or vegan Thanksgivings, both because of health and as a small way to address the suffering we inflict on the animals we eat. (I’ve seen stockyards and poultry-killing places.) We had some fake turkey last week; it was pretty good.