David Warsh: RIP: Great Britain, 1688-2016
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
My English friend first noticed the tendency years ago when English football hooligans began wearing the red and white Cross of St. George to matches in preference to the Union Jack. The latter ensign dated from 1606, when James I ordered the blue and white St. Andrew’s cross of the flag of Scotland to be sewn onto the English banner to represent his dual monarchy. For the next hundred years the striking new design was seen mainly on the masts of his British majesty’s ships at sea.
Not until 1688 did the English parliament get into the act, when its members invited the Dutchman William of Orange and his English wife to become King William III and Queen Mary II, fending off the restoration of hierarchical Catholic governance under James II. Crowned in 1685, James was chased off the throne and out of the country in 1688.
This was the “Glorious Revolution,” long cherished by the English as supposedly peaceful, aristocratic and consensual. It has been persuasively reinterpreted recently as “violent, popular and divisive” by Yale historian Steve Pincus and extensively illuminated by Deidre McCloskey in her Bourgeois Trilogy as the first truly modern revolution, precursor to the American and French experiences.
This was modernization based on a Dutch model, not a French one, writes Pincus. It included a broad array of inventions associated with becoming a nation-state: republican governance; elected representatives of the citizenry; the rule of law; bourgeois values of various sorts, especially the fundamental and widespread curiosity we now describe as “scientific”; and, not incidentally, the strong army and first-rate navy required by a nation bent on global domination. The Union Jack became Britain’s official flag only after both parliaments passed Acts of Union in 1707.
Elizabeth, England’s first Protestant queen, had begun her rule in 1558. For the next 250 years, Britain battled Spain, the Netherlands and France for control of Europe, North America, and the sea, finally emerging mostly victorious in 1815. Long before, writers including Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith had begun comparing its hegemony to that of the Roman Empire.
The Victorian era, broadly construed, lasted for a century, but as early as 1890 it was becoming clear that the empire had become overextended. In The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895-1905 (Princeton, 1977), Princeton historian Aaron Friedberg argued that the Boer War, in South Africa, exhausted Britain’s willingness to tax itself to pay to maintain its status as the world’s dominant power.
Two long and bitter wars with Germany in the 20th Century further sapped Britain’s human, military and financial capacity. An attempted military intervention, with the aid of France and Israel, against Egypt in Suez in 1956 succeeded militarily but failed utterly politically and diplomatically. Gradually its naval forces were pulled back from Singapore. Hong Kong remained a commercial enclave long after it ceased to be a naval strong point; its sovereignty and governance were handed over to China in 1997.
What remained, until last week, was Britain’s capacity for moral leadership. Britain had declined to join European Coal and Steel Community in the years after World War II. French President Charles de Gaulle then fended off its attempt to join the European Economic Community (“the Common Market”) that emerged in the late 1950s. Britain finally entered the EEC in 1973, but opted out of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which abolished most border controls among member states. The landmark Maastricht Treaty of 1992 created the European Union and the concept of European citizenship, E.U. passports and the free movement of labor among the member nations. Subsequent treaties have extended the principle of central European government from its seat in Brussels, and expanded membership to 28 member states.
What happened last week was not just Britain’s retreat from Europe; it was the abandonment of the project that began in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a dream of empire that turned out be a spectacular success. Britain now will return to being the island nation celebrated by Shakespeare as “this fortress built by Nature for herself/ against infection and the hand of war.” None of us who were raised on this story can be less than sad at the news; those who have labored in its service are heartbroken.
What happens now in Britain? Martin Wolf, economics columnist of the Financial Times, put it succinctly: Britain has prospered inside the E.U. but it will not do as well outside. It seems doubtful that London can remain the same immensely powerful global financial hub it has become – central banks such as the Bank of England have power only by dint of governments’ authority to tax.
Elites are fuming; they can hardly believe their comfortable way of life has been put at risk; so are the young, who voted overwhelmingly (75 percent of 18-24-year olds, 56 percent of 25-50 year olds) to remain.
Can the vote be reversed? British law may offer some exits.
My English friend first noticed the tendency years ago when English football hooligans began wearing the red and white Cross of St. George to matches in preference to the Union Jack. The latter ensign dated from 1606, when James I ordered the blue and white St. Andrew’s cross of the flag of Scotland to be sewn onto the English banner to represent his dual monarchy. For the next hundred years the striking new design was seen mainly on the masts of his British majesty’s ships at sea.
Not until 1688 did the English parliament get into the act, when its members invited the Dutchman William of Orange and his English wife to become King William III and Queen Mary II, fending off the restoration of hierarchical Catholic governance under James II. Crowned in 1685, James was chased off the throne and out of the country in 1688.
This was the “Glorious Revolution,” long cherished by the English as supposedly peaceful, aristocratic and consensual. It has been persuasively reinterpreted recently as “violent, popular and divisive” by Yale historian Steve Pincus and extensively illuminated by Deidre McCloskey in her Bourgeois Trilogy as the first truly modern revolution, precursor to the American and French experiences.
This was modernization based on a Dutch model, not a French one, writes Pincus. It included a broad array of inventions associated with becoming a nation-state: republican governance; elected representatives of the citizenry; the rule of law; bourgeois values of various sorts, especially the fundamental and widespread curiosity we now describe as “scientific”; and, not incidentally, the strong army and first-rate navy required by a nation bent on global domination. The Union Jack became Britain’s official flag only after both parliaments passed Acts of Union in 1707.
Elizabeth, England’s first Protestant queen, had begun her rule in 1558. For the next 250 years, Britain battled Spain, the Netherlands and France for control of Europe, North America, and the sea, finally emerging mostly victorious in 1815. Long before, writers including Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith had begun comparing its hegemony to that of the Roman Empire.
The Victorian era, broadly construed, lasted for a century, but as early as 1890 it was becoming clear that the empire had become overextended. In The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895-1905 (Princeton, 1977), Princeton historian Aaron Friedberg argued that the Boer War, in South Africa, exhausted Britain’s willingness to tax itself to pay to maintain its status as the world’s dominant power.
Two long and bitter wars with Germany in the 20th Century further sapped Britain’s human, military and financial capacity. An attempted military intervention, with the aid of France and Israel, against Egypt in Suez in 1956 succeeded militarily but failed utterly politically and diplomatically. Gradually its naval forces were pulled back from Singapore. Hong Kong remained a commercial enclave long after it ceased to be a naval strong point; its sovereignty and governance were handed over to China in 1997.
What remained, until last week, was Britain’s capacity for moral leadership. Britain had declined to join European Coal and Steel Community in the years after World War II. French President Charles de Gaulle then fended off its attempt to join the European Economic Community (“the Common Market”) that emerged in the late 1950s. Britain finally entered the EEC in 1973, but opted out of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which abolished most border controls among member states. The landmark Maastricht Treaty of 1992 created the European Union and the concept of European citizenship, E.U. passports and the free movement of labor among the member nations. Subsequent treaties have extended the principle of central European government from its seat in Brussels, and expanded membership to 28 member states.
What happened last week was not just Britain’s retreat from Europe; it was the abandonment of the project that began in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a dream of empire that turned out be a spectacular success. Britain now will return to being the island nation celebrated by Shakespeare as “this fortress built by Nature for herself/ against infection and the hand of war.” None of us who were raised on this story can be less than sad at the news; those who have labored in its service are heartbroken.
What happens now in Britain? Martin Wolf, economics columnist of the Financial Times, put it succinctly: Britain has prospered inside the E.U. but it will not do as well outside. It seems doubtful that London can remain the same immensely powerful global financial hub it has become – central banks such as the Bank of England have power only by dint of governments’ authority to tax.
Elites are fuming; they can hardly believe their comfortable way of life has been put at risk; so are the young, who voted overwhelmingly (75 percent of 18-24-year olds, 56 percent of 25-50 year olds) to remain.
Can the vote be reversed? Apparently just possibly. Hit this link.
There is a distinct possibility that Scotland will choose to remain in the European Union. In that case the Union Jack may actually come apart. Those ancient flags will reappear: the azure Saltire, worn by Scottish soldiers fighting in France in the 14th Century; the red-on-white St. George’s cross, brought back in the 12th from Malta after the Second Crusade.
Meanwhile, what about the rest of the world? That is a much more complicated story. You can expect to hear plenty more about it in the coming months, beginning with the other huge multi-national organization based in Brussels — the sprawling military-industrial complex known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
David Warsh, a longtime economic historian and financial columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.
There is a distinct possibility that Scotland will choose to remain in the European Union. In that case the Union Jack may actually come apart. Those ancient flags will reappear: the azure Saltire, worn by Scottish soldiers fighting in France in the 14th Century; the red-on-white St. George’s cross, brought back in the 12th from Malta after the Second Crusade.
Meanwhile, what about the rest of the world? That is a much more complicated story. You can expect to hear plenty more about it in the coming months, beginning with the other huge multi-national organization based in Brussels — the sprawling military-industrial complex known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
David Warsh, a longtime economic historian and financial columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.
Especially after this day
"Let Evening Come'' (beeswax and pigment on birch board), by Georgia Nassikas, in the current group show "Outside/In'', at the Providence Art Club.
Oh them again
"Artists'' (gouache on paper mounted on panel), by Leslie Roberts, in the show "From Atmosphere to Edge,'' at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through July 31.
George McCully: Don't try to turn colleges into technical schools to feed business
The annual Leadership Summit of the New England Board of Higher Education set for Oct. 17 scheduled for this coming October poses the question, “How Employable Are New England's College Graduates, and What Can Higher Education Do About It?”
The Summit will address numerous well-chosen, commonly current questions in and around this topic, predicated on the assertion that “New England employers consistently claim that they can't find sufficient numbers of skilled workers—especially in key tech-intensive and growth-oriented industries like information technology, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.” The strategic questions are, “Is higher education to blame? Are our colleges and universities still operating in "old economy" modes, in terms of services, practices and strategies for preparing students for career transitions and employability?” And, “Can New England's colleges and universities be the talent engine that they need and ought to be?”
The following addresses the factual premises, their historical context, and strategic issues, in a constructive attempt to clarify and enrich the discussion at the Summit.
First, as to the facts on employability: It is commonly believed, but incorrectly, that today’s college graduates have high unemployment; a recent study found that compared to other age and education cohorts, they actually have the lowest rate of unemployment—about 2 percent. Moreover, today’s job market operates on a new model of employment—the so-called “on-demand” or “gig” economy of short-term jobs perhaps interspersed with underemployment. The Summit needs to begin, therefore, with everyone on the same page with current data on unemployment, employment and underemployment.
As to history, this whole discussion arises from the confluence of two massive trends: the information technology (IT) revolution and the soaring, excessive costs of college matriculation.
The IT revolution, as we all know, is transforming all areas of life and enterprise, at an accelerating pace. It is now in what Steve Case, founder of AOL, calls its “Third Wave,” progressing rapidly from the “Internet of things” to the “Internet of everything.” As this revolution has gained speed and momentum, technological turnover has accelerated and pervaded job markets, so that everyone has now to run and jump to keep up with it. A large part of employers’ difficulty in filling jobs with suitably skilled employees is a side-effect that has become the new normal in high-tech businesses. That will not change, and cannot be blamed on colleges and universities; whether they can realistically be expected to do anything meaningful about keeping up with and advancing it is an open question.
The concurrent soaring college and university costs—and huge loans to help cover them—has made parents and students increasingly concerned about affordability, student indebtedness and practicality. This has had commercializing effects on college and university cultures, in which students and their parents consider themselves increasingly as consumers purchasing credentials for continued financial support and jobs.
Simultaneous grade-inflation, reduction of onerous study workloads, anxiety over what professors want rather than what students should want for themselves, excessive grade-consciousness, and questioning whether the investment is worthwhile, often boils down to a vicious circle: whether the investment will lead to a steady job that will enable paying off the loans.
The combination of these two trends is the dangerous situation we have today. If the job market is in constant, rapid and accelerating turnover so that jobs and even careers become short-term investments in ephemeral results by both employers and employees—and if the culture of colleges and universities is commercialized, operating as an investment in job security—how can colleges and universities, as relatively sluggish institutions already behind the curve, possibly now be expected to provide rapid-turnover kinds of training for rapid-turnover jobs?
Even if they succeed in training students for today’s job market, that same training will become obsolete tomorrow, and then what will the investment have been worth? How can New England’s colleges and universities, caught in this crunch, be presumed to have any real or viable “need” or obligation to be “the talent engine” for current or future job markets?
Here it is strategically useful to distinguish clearly between “education” and “training.” “Training” is “knowledge and skills development” and is the focus of this discussion; “education” is “self-development”, which is what our colleges and universities were created to do, as in the Classical tradition of liberal education. Education certainly includes training, but is both broader and deeper, intensely personal and social—focusing on the cultivation of values. Education is more about who ,training is more about what, students are and will become in their subsequent lives and careers.
It has long been conventionally accepted that the mission of “higher” education in colleges and universities, as distinct from that in schools, is to bring training in disciplined scholarship to bear on the cultivation of personal values, as in liberal education. This is not something that goes in and out of fashion with changes in economies or technologies. While the training function needs to be currently in tune with useful knowledge and skills in fast-changing technology and job markets, the challenge of keeping au courant is real, but always subordinated to the permanent and characteristic mission of higher education.
Here, modern technology itself can help. Training these days is done most productively and efficiently by computers and the Internet, as has been conclusively demonstrated by MOOCs. Obviously the employers who are complaining about the technical preparedness of prospective hires, know best what training (knowledge and skills) they want those new hires to have. They happen also, however, to be in the best position to provide it themselves.
Case (incidentally, a graduate of Williams College), in his book The Third Wave, put it succinctly: Let higher education develop character—which, he advises, is what the innovating entrepreneurs should be looking for in hiring—and let the businesses then train for the special skills they currently and prospectively need. MOOC-style courses could be the instrument of choice for such training; highly flexible, cost-effective, and productive, they can be quickly developed by anyone for any subject and trainee population, at minimal costs, and readily superseded as needs change.
Can colleges and universities help address this employment problem generated by the technological revolution? Yes—they might at tolerable cost to themselves (perhaps supported by businesses who, after all, need the workforce), incentivize this training with (limited) credits toward degrees for online MOOC training; they might provide various certifications apart from degree credits for MOOC students. They might open room and board facilities to MOOC enrollees, especially in summer or other off-season months, at least partially supported by the businesses needing them. They might provide to MOOC trainees a range of supplementary educational support services by adjunct faculty. Adjuncts might assist with running MOOCs, and businesses might have their MOOC instructors appointed as adjunct members of the faculty, if the cost-sharing could be worked out.
There is a wide variety of facilitating and affiliating options for training, short of undertaking full responsibility. But in this whole context, the suggestion that New England’s colleges and universities should assume, or be expected to assume, responsibility for supplying technically prepared employees to businesses, is an idea that is close to absurd and dead on arrival.
George McCully is a former historian, professor and faculty dean at higher education institutions in the Northeast, then professional philanthropist and founder and CEO of the Catalogue for Philanthropy. This piece first ran in the news Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
Lia Spiliotes: To narrow N.E. rural healthcare gaps, boost nurse practitioners
Rural America lives with layers of demographic and geographic obstacles to health care, and not surprisingly, rural Americans face bigger health challenges than their urban and suburban neighbors. Berkshire County, the second most rural county in Massachusetts, is no different.
More than residents elsewhere in the state, our neighbors and communities struggle with high rates of obesity, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental illness and addiction to smoking and other drugs. The suicide rate in Berkshire County was the highest in the state in 2013, and admissions to mental-health facilities are above the norm.
Berkshire County mirrors other remote rural geographic regions in the nation, where recruiting primary-care providers is an ongoing challenge of economics, retirement, the allure of specialty medicine and big-city compensation. In these areas, the supply of primary-care physicians falls below federal standards. (Kaiser Foundation 2015).
The good news is that the education, experience and quality of physicians and nurse practitioners at Community Health Programs in Berkshire County, where I have been interim CEO since January, is on par with any of the best healthcare organizations in which I have worked in Massachusetts. Equally important is the work we are doing to educate patients about the front-line role that nurse practitioners play in the delivery of high quality primary care. Increasingly, patients understand that nurse practitioners are excellent partners in providing primary care.
National studies have shown that patients assigned to either nurse practitioners or primary-care physicians have comparable health outcomes. More than a dozen states — including Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — have long-since passed measures freeing nurse practitioners from physician oversight in treating, diagnosing and prescribing medication to patients.
States that have already done so show fewer emergency-room admissions, improved health status, and better overall healthcare experiences. Yet in Massachusetts, physician organizations have resisted giving nurse practitioners sufficient autonomy to practice to the full extent of their training. We need to maximize the use of nurse practitioners as a vital healthcare resource.
This lack of full practice authority for nurse practitioners has broad implications for healthcare access in Massachusetts, particularly in underserved communities. Competition for primary-care providers is intensifying. Physician salaries at community health centers, which serve mostly lower-income residents, remain 25 to 30 percent below entry-level salaries at many hospitals and private physician practices.
Outdated practices
At rural health centers, which continually struggle to attract providers away from urban areas, the impact is even more profound if nurse practitioners cannot provide the full range of patient care. The health of rural communities is compromised by policies that protect outdated ways of delivering primary care.
The role of nurse practitioners should grow as our health system moves toward the team-oriented, patient-centered care approaches — the foundation of post-Affordable Care Act healthcare delivery. Often referred to as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), this coordinated model emphasizes a critical shift to staying well, not just getting better.
In addition, care for higher-risk patients with chronic needs, who account for so much of our overall healthcare spending, is better managed. In states that have lifted restrictions on nurse practitioners, early data show a reduction in ER admission rates, improvements in residents’ health status and increased patient satisfaction.
The time has come for the Massachusetts legislature to pass House Bill 1996/Senate Bill 1207. The bills, which draw upon guidelines developed by the Institute of Medicine, would remove barriers preventing nurse practitioners and certified registered nurse anesthetists from practicing to the full extent of their training. The bill also ensures that Massachusetts can meet workforce demands, address gaps in access to care and adopt new care models tied to healthcare delivery and payment reforms.
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, of the 2,050 rural U.S. counties, 77 percent are designated as health- professional-shortage areas. Around 4,000 additional primary- care practitioners are needed to meet current rural healthcare needs. There is no single fix to meeting the health needs of rural Americans, but by elevating the role of nurse practitioners, we believe we can begin to close the gap.
Lia Spiliotes, a Cambridge Management Group (cmg625.com) partner and senior adviser, is interim chief executive officer of Community Health Programs, the Federally Qualified Health Network in Berkshire County, and serves on the board of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. This piece first ran in The Berkshire Eagle.
James P. Freeman: Why Mass. AG Healey should be ousted
In his dutiful and forceful concession remarks in November 2014, John Miller, the Republican candidate that year for Massachusetts attorney general, gave fair warning: “The fight for impartial, fact-based justice from a non-partisan attorney general goes on.” Miller, even in defeat, believed – and presumably feared — that the Bay State was still in “desperate need” of an attorney general who would take a “professional, not a political approach” to the office.
His fears are confirmed.
In June of 2016, it is now evident that the winner that November night, Maura Healey, is using her office to punish those whose views of public policy differ from her own. As a consequence, Healey is no longer fit to hold the office of attorney general.
As reported last week, Healey is now using the power of her office to investigate conservative groups with supposed ties to ExxonMobil. Her subpoena charges that the oil giant lied to shareholders and consumers about the risks of global warming in its communications and shareholder filings.
Healey is seeking 40 years-worth of ExxonMobil documents and communications with right-leaning “think tanks.” Locally, these include the Beacon Hill Institute and Acton Institute. According to The Boston Herald, the basis of the investigation is “deceptive business practices.” The energy company countered by filing a federal lawsuit claiming, rightly, that Healey’s action is no more than a “fishing expedition,” part of a “political agenda,” and the attorney general is “abusing the power of government.” It is a disgracefully overt political maneuver.
Remarkably, both the Left and Right have been critical of state attorneys-general engaged in this scrutiny of ExxonMobil. Harvey Silverglate, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, called the investigation “pure harassment.” Added Silverglate, “It’s not the way scientific or factual or even political battles are settled in this country, which last I checked is still a free country.” The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote that the attack on ExxonMobil is really a “front,” and that the real target is “a broad array of conservative activist groups.”
So this is what we have come to in Massachusetts: a hyper-partisan attorney general, motivated by political expediency, who believes that ExxonMobil defrauded the public and its shareholders by systematically advancing the idea of “climate denial.” Seriously.
Where is the outrage on Beacon Hill? Where is the outrage from the prestige media in greater Boston?
Perhaps more so than any other Massachusetts elected official – including Sen. Elizabeth Warren — Healey is the penultimate programmed progressive. Her core belief-system centers around identity politics and so-called diversity… of everything; except political thought.
On her Web site, maurahealey.com, Healy calls herself the “People’s Lawyer” (she is, apparently, the lawyer of all of the people, except, that is, conservative people). In a January posting she brags that she is “looking ahead to the challenges around the bend and we’re already pushing hard on our top priorities.” ExxonMobil’s thoughts on so-called climate disruption are a priority for the people of Massachusetts?
Healey’s behavior is reminiscent of the Lois Lerner and IRS scandal from a few years ago. Then, as now, conservative groups were targeted under a legal pretense. If Healey’s actions were based in fact and based on the law, warranting the full force and authority of her office, why hasn’t she called for the complete divestiture of ExxonMobil investments by the state’s pension system (which in 2015 was valued at $151 million in the Domestic Equity portfolio)?
Among the first official undertakings by Healey in 2015 was a social-media “campaign.” It involved the collection of testimonials from same-sex couples for an amicus brief that was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting national recognition of gay marriage. However laudable, such time and expense amounted to a political lagniappe but not a legal imperative.
In Massachusetts, it seems identity politics is a greater priority than identity theft, which should be a priority.
Identity theft – the unauthorized use of personal information to defraud or commit crimes – is the fastest-growing crime in America. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security notes that victims spend “between 30-60 hours of their time” and “approximately $1,000 of their own money clearing up the problem.”
The Boston Globe noted two years ago that 1.2 million people in the Commonwealth had personal information and financial data compromised in 2013. In February 2015, a “data breach” occurred at insurer Anthem, compromising personal information of 78.8 million Americans. One million of those reside in Massachusetts.
But don’t tell that to Healey.
On mass.gov/ago, victims are cautioned: “You should be aware that not all identity-theft complaints can or will be investigated.” These people, unlike ExxonMobil, will likely not be accorded a vigorous campaign. What is unsettling is that Healey and fellow progressives believe they can effectively combat climate disruption to their satisfaction but not identity theft.
Healey will probably not resign from office. She also probably not be impeached under the articles of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As a last resort, however, she should be recalled. Interestingly, the voter initiative and referendum provisions in the constitution specifically exclude the recall/removal of judges. But the Constitution is silent regarding recall/removal of executive branch officers.
Let the petition begin.
James P. Freeman is a columnist for The New Boston Post.
Jarrod Hazelton: Brexit a triumph of ignorance
Brexit is perhaps most appropriately summed up in the words of Mr. Donald Trump:
“Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!”
A Tweet heard (naturally) ‘round the world, whose expression of ignorance wa signored by his supporters even as it was rightfully lampooned by everybody else. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted strongly for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union; England and Wales voted to leave.
Support for Brexit worldwide is a veritable Who’s Who of international Nuevo-fascism: Trump, Zhirinovsky, Putin, Marine le Pen. It is also the direct result of unabashed ignorance. Take, for example, the recent remarks by U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage.
One of the central tenets of the Leave campaign was that £350 million per week in payments to the European Union would be diverted to the British National Health Service after Brexit. This incredible incentive is certainly something to consider, but for the fact that it was a total fabrication. Rather than admit this, Farage has instead made the preposterous assertion that he never said such a thing, regardless of the Leave campaign tour bus being emblazoned with the £350 million figure as it traversed the English countryside. Perhaps one of his handlers forgot to mention the design change. Additionally, a Tory member of the European Parliament, David Hannan, back-pedaled on immigration, claiming less than 24 hours after the Brexit vote that immigration levels from the E.U. into Britain might remain unchanged after Brexit goes into full effect. Who knew that the UK had just voted in favor of a group of BRINOs (Brexitors In Name Only)?
Lying in politics is certainly not new but the size of such preposterous claims in recent history is impressive. Trump is a virtual cacophony of spewing, festering untruths, and yet his followers go along with his claims regardless of veracity. Instead, he maintains a stronghold on their collective frustration at being excluded from a system that has long since left them behind.
What Brexitors and Trump supporters have in common may be less xenophobia, bigotry, racism and a longing to take back “again” whatever it is they feel is no longer theirs than ignorance. In America, Trumpists, are nostalgic for a country that once afforded them labor protections, defined-benefit pensions, generous employer-subsidized healthcare, affordable education and other things that have been stripped from them, albeit with scraps still trickling down to them from the rich interests so powerful in Washington, D.C.
Ironically, market forces that have assaulted Brexitors and Trump and Sanders supporters who will refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton may ultimately solve their problems for them. Sovereign wealth funds lost over 30 percent of their interests in the U.K. overnight as the pound crashed with the Brexit news, and won’t stand for this to go on. Businesses in Britain will realize the vast expense of hiring and retraining based on citizenry regulations to be too egregious. And Brexit Remorse may lead to a second referendum, and/or negotiations to leave the E.U may result in a realm of clauses and capitulations that would truly make a Brexit In Name Only.
The prevailing ignorance, xenophobia, bigotry and socio-economic factors behind market forces may solve themselves for a time, but in so doing no lessons will be learned.
Jarrod Hazelton, who holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago, is a financial analyst.
Killer glow
"All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power."
-- Dante
We need the rain
"Chance of Showers'' (oil on linen), by Donato Beauchaine, in the current group show "Outside/In,'' at the Providence Art Club.
Chris Powell: Leaving E.U. essential to protecting British sovereignty, democracy, culture
Recognizing that the objective of the European project, ever-closer political and economic union, meant the destruction of democracy, sovereignty and the country’s very culture, Britain has voted in a great referendum to withdraw from the European Union.
The majority arose from a remarkable combination of the free-market, limited-government political right, the core of the Conservative Party, with the working-class political left, the core of the Labor Party, both party cores repudiating their leaderships as well as the national elites.
The result has enormous implications for the United Kingdom, starting with whether it can remain united, since Scotland -- formerly the most industrious and inventive province in the world, now perhaps the most welfare-addled -- probably will make a second attempt to secede, figuring that free stuff is more likely to flow through continued association with the E.U. than with England, which is growing resentful of the freeloaders up north.
But there are enormous implications for the world as well. The E.U. project has never won forthright ratification by the people of its member states and indeed has sometimes refused to accept rejection by them. Indeed, the whole E.U. government is largely unaccountable. So the British vote quickly prompted demands for similar referendums in France and the Netherlands, where conservative populist movements have been gaining strength.
The politically correct elites are portraying the British vote as a "xenophobic" response to free movement of labor across the E.U. and particularly as opposition to the vast recent immigration into Europe from the Middle East and Africa. This immigration is widely misunderstood as being mainly a matter of refugees from civil war. In fact this immigration has been mainly economic and it has driven wages down in less-skilled jobs while increasing welfare costs throughout Europe, which explains the British Laborite support for leaving the E.U.
But it is not "xenophobic" to oppose the uncontrolled and indeed anarchic immigration that the European Union has countenanced. For any nation that cannot control immigration isn’t a nation at all or won’t be one for long. Since most immigration into Europe lately has come from a medieval and essentially fascist culture and involves people who have little interest in assimilating into a democratic and secular society, this immigration has threatened to destroy Europe as it has understood itself. Britain has been lucky to be at the far end of this immigration, but voters there saw the mess that it has been making on the other side of the Channel. They wisely opted to reassert control of their borders.
Their example should be appreciated in the United States, which for decades has failed to enforce its own immigration law and as a result hosts more than 10 million people living in the country illegally and unscreened. Fortunately few of this country’s illegal immigrants come from a culture that believes in murdering homosexuals, oppressing women and monopolizing religion. But the negative economic and social effects here are similar to those in Europe and properly have become political issues.
The main lesson of Britain’s decision may be an old one -- that nations have to develop organically, arising from the consent of the governed and a common culture, and that they can’t be manufactured by elites. Having defended its sovereignty and indeed liberty itself against Napoleon and Hitler, Britain now has set out to defend them again. So rule, Britannia -- Britannia, rule thyself.
From “Rule Britannia’’:
The nations not so blest as thee
Must in their turn to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
Chris Powell is a political writer and also the managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
An observant rest
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
-- John Lubbock
Robert Whitcomb: Ports, panhandlers, dictators in the Internet, Italo-American adventures
This first ran in my “Digital Diary’’ column in GoLocal, which appears every Thursday. I will usually make minor revisions/updates before the column runs here.
You may have read about the Panama Canal expansion, which will boost business for U.S. East Coast ports, including Quonset/Davisville and Providence. More volume in our local -- and for decades underused -- ports will mean more jobs, more business formation and lower consumer costs (for some products) hereabouts.
So a $20 million bond issue, to be on the state ballot in November, to expand the Port of Providence looks quite charming, as does a $50 million bond issue for expanding Quonset/Davisville.
But there’s a slight problem: GoLocal found out that ProvPort, the nonprofit operator of the Port of Providence, paid management fees to its sister for-profit company of more than $11 million over the three most recently reported years – half of ProvPort’s total revenue-- and it’s not clear for what.
Bill Brody and Ray Meador (who lives in California), two players in creating the Wyatt Detention Center, in Central Falls, and linked to its fiscal disaster, would benefit again from public financing if voters approve the bonds. Mr. Brody is a lawyer who is ProvPort's sole employee, at $225,000 year, and Mr. Meador is a co-owner and the manager of non-profit ProvPort's sister for-profit company, Waterson Terminal.
Presumably we’ll hear more about what those management fees cover and who and how certain individuals would benefit from the port’s expansion, in addition, of course, to the public.
The trouble with opaque operations like ProvPort is that the reality or perception of insider deals can kill such fine ideas as port expansion by pumping up the paralyzing cynicism that makes it so difficult to get big public projectsdone in the United States.
I’d feel better if the state took over the Port of Providence and coordinated it with the very well run Quonset/Davisville.
I should add, as my friend Chris Hunter reminds me, that there are several private terminals in the Port of Providence (Sprague Energy, Sims Metal Management, Motiva, Capitol Terminal and Exxon Mobile) that are very successful and don't need a port authority telling them what to do with their business.
XXX
Quite a panhandler proliferation in Providence! A favored site is in front of the Marriott Hotel on Orms Street at the intersection with Charles, where traffic lights trap drivers. At least one beggar, sometimes lying on his/her back to enjoy the sunshine, often occupies the thin median strip from morning to dusk.
The beggars seem to be well organized (sometimes with what seems to be an iPhone-armed manager) and able to extract money from many drivers. (I suspect that their take is not reported to the tax authorities but is adequate to pay for cigarettes.) Are many drivers sympathetic because they know that the panhandlers will never find jobs as lucrative as begging in these days of downward mobility, or just embarrassed? The beggars often greet me with a hearty “hihowareya!?”
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Congress should block an Obama administration plan that would make it harder to try to protect freedom of expression on the Internet. The White House wants to let the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) free itself from the U.S. oversight of the Internet it has had since the 1990s.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, the new arrangement would give dictatorships much more influence over the ICANN board by letting them them vote on bylaw changes and the ICANN budget and remove free-speech advocates from the board.
Commerce Department official Larry Stricklin, struggling to defend the plan, told The Washington Post, “At the end of the day, this whole system is built on trust.” Who will trust Vladimir Putin’s Russia and/or Xi Jinping’s China not to use their new powers to further quash online dissent?
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Edward A. Carosi, founder of the Uncle Tony’s Pizza chain, has self-published a wild novel with the stately name of The Arrival/The Struggle/The Ascendency about three generations of Italo-Americans. Mr. Carosi starts the story in a poor hill town in Italy and goes through Rhode Island, Vietnam and Calcutta (Mother Teresa presiding!), weaving among romances and wars and corpses and entrepreneurs, including the mobster variety.
Some of the characters enter clichedom – the women tend to be gorgeous and curvaceous (the mammary lingers on), the men handsome except for some Raymond Patriarca types. Some characters start out bad and get predictably worse, but end up redeeming themselves. Others remain stock villains throughout while some stay implausibly good.
Mr. Carosi is not a professional writer, but he has narrative drive: You keep turning the pages. And he has a strong sense of place and 20th Century history that New Englanders in particular will savor. Somebody could turn this into saleable 120-page screenplay.
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Donald Trump doesn’t seem to know that being president of the United States means being head of state and not just another politician. That suggests that at least some dignity and restraint is called for. Mr. Trump’s narcissism seems to preclude those qualities. Still, he could defeat the very able but, as is her husband, very greedy Hillary Clinton. The Brexit vote in Britain may suggest how close the presidential vote could be.
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An evening last week was so cool that it reminded us of how soon September will come.
Robert Whitcomb is the overseer of New England Diary.
Happy hydraulics
"Mad Tom Brook'' (oil on canvas), by Mary Dorsey Brewster, in the current group show "Outside/In'' with Donato Beauchaine and Georgia Nassikas at the Providence Art Club.
Beautiful beast
--- Photo by Thomas Hook
This creature, resting on a milkweed leaf in Southbury, Conn., is a Candy-striped Leafhopper. Mr. Hook used a macro-lens to get this shot of this less-than-half-an-inch-long animal. Good things come in very small packages!
Note: We erroneously rendered it "Candy-stripped,'' in an earlier version. Apologies to Mr. Hook!
Llewellyn King: Blame stupid English nativism for E.U. vote debacle
The English appear to have laid down the burden of sanity. They have voted to leave the European Union.
It was never about Great Britain; it was always at its kernel about England. There was always a primal, nativist, historically seated English antipathy to Europe and by extension to the European project.
I should know. You could say I was there in the beginning.
Way back in the early 1960s, as a young journalist, I worked for Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian-born newspaper publisher who led the early fight against the European Economic Community, also called the Common Market. There were then, in 1962 and 1963, just six members and the rival outfit, the European Free Trade Area had seven.
I believed that when Britain finally joined what is now the European Union in 1973 that a decade earlier we had been wrong. And I believe that leaving the European Union today is terribly wrong, a ghastly self-inflicted wound that will hasten the end of the United Kingdom, encourage a surge in right-wing bigotry in Europe, and leave no one -- not one individual in any country of Europe -- better off, particularly the residents of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In the wreckage that now has to be sorted out across the Atlantic, two lessons stand out: first, referendums have no place in a representative democracy and second, today's political parties, across the world, no longer represent the feelings of their electorates. In Britain, as in America, and most recently in Italy, it is now apparent that the old left-right divide does not address a smoldering anger that affects the democracies of the world.
Give angry people something to smash and they will smash it. The angry English have just smashed up the place where they live. It is ineffably sad for those who have followed Europe’s attempt to come together, to boost trade, and to end war in on the continent.
During the long and campaign leading to Thursday’s vote, every shibboleth about sovereignty, faceless bureaucrats, money transfers and European skullduggery was trotted out.
When the facts do not fit, harken back to another time: That is easy enough to do in England with its storied history. They never said it, but the triumphant Leave campaign implied every day in every way: We’ll make England great again. Donald Trump could have ghosted the Leave campaign.
When Britain joined the Common Market in 1973, the country was often referred to as the sick man of Europe. Today, Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy and it has been the strongest advocate for free markets and free trade in Europe. Not only will Britain be setting a new course, but so will the European Union.
Europe, including Britain, has a massive migration problem that fed the anxieties of the English, particularly in the depressed north of the country. But Europe has yet another problem that will not go away: The euro has failed. Britain wisely never adopted it, but the 19 countries of the Eurozone are paying a high price. Weak economies on the southern flank of Europe, most notably Greece, cannot devalue to make their goods and services more salable and the strong economies, most importantly Germany, are the beneficiaries of a weak euro in their exports.
The British vote will spur reforms in Europe and if they are not fast enough and far enough-reaching, the European Union itself will break apart. Italy is an early candidate to bolt, but so are its southern neighbors.
It is not Europe as a free-trade area they should be trying to escape, but rather its benighted currency. Consider: If the euro was fazed out and the old currencies were to reappear, Germany would have an increasingly hard currency, the mark, and Italy and Greece, with the lira and the drachma, would produce goods and services that were very affordable to their customers.
But that is not Britain’s problem. It has to find new markets and a way of living with the strictures of European trade without a voice in the writing of those strictures.
Political folly has led Britain to be lesser. “Little England” and Little Englanders always have been pejoratives in British political invective. Today the Little Englanders are triumphant, having chosen insignificance and poverty over importance and wealth. Shame.
The British (read English) electorate has signed on to a dream. The nightmare begins now.
Llewellyn King, host and executive producer of White House Chronicle on PBS, is a longtime publisher, columnist and international business consultant. This piece first ran on Inside Sources.
Seasonal sadism
Photo by Lydia Davison Whitcomb
It’s a cruel season that makes you get ready for bed while it’s light out.
--- Bill Watterson
Only if you are
"Blue Trees'' (oil on canvas), by Milton Avery (1885-1965), in the show "Milton Avery's Vermont,'' July 2-Nov. 7 at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum. Property of the Neuberger Museum of Art.
This was one of the paintings of the famous modernist Mr. Avery based on his summers in southern Vermont in 1935-1943 and showing his response to the gorgeous Vermont landscape.
Cyberterrorism: Will Russia, China and/or ISIS turn off our electrical power?
We just got this press release about an important conference on Newport.
Two of the best-known publishers of energy newsletters, Sam Spencer, who publishes Smart Grid Today and Power Markets Today and Llewellyn King, who founded The Energy Daily and produces and hosts White House Chronicle, on PBS, are teaming up with the Pell Center at Salve Regina University on a comprehensive conference on cybersecurity in the utility industry.
“Grid cybersecurity is one of the critical frontiers in the security of the U.S. infrastructure system,” King said.
The conference will be held Sept. 26-29, 2016 at Salve Regina University in Newport. “In this scholarly setting the industry can learn best practices; cybersecurity vendors and others can get down to granular issues that aren’t easily discussed in the office setting,” Spencer said.
The “Newport Conference” will bring together utility IT officers, managers, first responder teams as well as vendors of firewalls, alarms and other security systems for utilities.
“The utility industry is undergoing great changes in its structure. It is being reshaped by disruptive technologies, environmental pressures and social expectations.
“More and more, the old grid is giving way to the new grid in a sophisticated, computer-dominated world where the enemy could be in any line of code, any weak link in the industry,” Spencer said.
King added: “The first goal of modern warfare is to take out the electrical supply, and the rest follows from there. As a result, those who wish to do harm to a country — and to the United States, in particular — are aware that without electricity, a great nation is paralyzed.”
He said that he saw the precursor to this kind of havoc back in 1965, when most of the Northeast went dark. That was incredible but today, with more reliance on electricity throughout the life of the nation, things would be even worse.
King and Spencer said enemies, both state and non-state (like ISIS), are hard at work probing our cyber-defenses, seeking weakness and waiting to strike.
“We want to advance the understanding of the threat as well as to ensure that the best practices in cybersecurity are being followed as the grid itself changes into something new and even more electronically interconnected than in the past,” they said.
For sponsorship and registration information, please contact Llewellyn King at 1-202-662-9731 or 1-202-441-2702, or e-mail him at llewellynking1@gmail.com.