'Hot rank smells'
Daylilies on Block Island, R.I.
"No wind, no bird. The river flames like brass.
On either side, smitten as with a spell
Of silence, brood the fields. In the deep grass,
Edging the dusty roads, lie as they fell
Handfuls of shriveled leaves from tree and bush.
But ’long the orchard fence and at the gate,
Thrusting their saffron torches through the hush,
Wild lilies blaze, and bees hum soon and late.
Rust-colored the tall straggling briar, not one
Rose left. The spider sets its loom up there
Close to the roots, and spins out in the sun
A silken web from twig to twig. The air
Is full of hot rank scents. Upon the hill
Drifts the noon’s single cloud, white, glaring, still.''
-- "August,'' by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Black power
Painting by Jason Chase using what he says is the blackest black paint yet developed. His artwork with this paint will be on view at Laconia Gallery, South Boston, on Aug. 24, 7-10 p.m., and again on Sept. 6, 7-10 p,m., in the Artisan's Asylum, Somerville, Mass.
3-year floodplain-restoration project to start soon along the Connecticut River in Mass.
"View of Springfield {just south of Springfield}, on the Connecticut River,'' by Alvan Fisher.
Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)
LONGMEADOW, Mass.
Large-scale restoration of natural floodplain features and native plants will begin soon on land along the Connecticut River, including 223 acres recently transferred to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) by the trustees of the former Fannie Stebbins Memorial Wildlife Refuge.
Easily visible from Interstate 91 in the suburbs of Springfield, the land is part of one of the most sizeable natural and largely protected floodplain areas in the Connecticut River watershed. In addition to the land-based restoration efforts, work also will take place on part of the adjoining Silvio O. Conte National Fish & Wildlife Refuge and town of Longmeadow lands.
Floodplains are natural water‐storage areas for snowmelt, spring rains and, increasingly, severe storms that cause the Connecticut River and its tributaries to overflow. These areas also act as natural filters, trapping sediment, nutrients and pollutants before they reach rivers and coastal seas, thereby improving water quality.
“Floodplains once covered wide stretches along the Connecticut River and its tributaries, but today, they’re only a fraction of this important ecosystem,” said Kim Lutz, director of TNC’s Connecticut River Program. “The Fannie Stebbins land presents a remarkable opportunity to protect and restore a portion of that habitat.”
TNC and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service are leading the three-year restoration project, which will include reduction of forest fragmentation by returning seven old fields to floodplain forest; control of invasive plants; and restoration of natural hydrological features.
Work on the 223-acre TNC section is being completed with funding from the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
This spring, the NRCS purchased a permanent wetlands reserve easement on this section — the first such easement in Massachusetts on the mainstem of the Connecticut River.
“The benefits of restoring, enhancing and protecting critical wetlands cannot be overstated,” said Christine Clarke, Massachusetts State Conservationist for NRCS.
After the easement purchase, fee ownership of the land, plus another 21 acres, was donated to TNC.
This land was previously part of the Fannie Stebbins Memorial Wildlife Refuge owned and managed by a board of trustees elected by the Allen Bird Club, whose members had the foresight to acquire the land in multiple, separate parcels beginning more than 60 years ago.
The refuge was named for Fannie Stebbins, a nationally recognized biologist and educator who was head of Science and Nature Studies in the Springfield School System in the 1930s and ’40s. In 1972, the National Park Service designated the Stebbins Refuge a National Environmental Education Landmark. Massachusetts Audubon has recognized it as an “Important Bird Area,” as hospitable lodging for migrating birds.
In keeping with the Stebbins trustees’ wishes, the land is planned to eventually become part of the Conte Refuge, after the three-year restoration project.
During the three-year restoration project, activities will include mowing, herbiciding and plowing the fields to prepare for tree planting; targeted use of herbicide in forested areas to control invasive plants; and the use of heavy equipment to remove a berm. Temporary closures over portions of the area will occur for public safety when work is underway.
Jim Hightower: In secret, plutocrats keep trying to subvert U.S. democracy
The Broadmoor Hotel and Resort, in Colorado Springs, a favorite meeting place for the very rich.
Via OtherWords.org
Charles and David Koch — the billionaire oil men (who inherited their huge diversified company from their father) who’ve financed a vast network of right-wing advocacy groups — have stayed out of the national limelight recently. But they’re still trying to supplant American democracy with their laissez-fairyland plutocracy.
In fact, in late June, they held a meeting of the Koch Boys Billionaires Club, gathering about 400 other uber-wealthy rascals to plot some political high jinks for next year’s elections.
The club meets every year at some luxury hideaway, and its attendees have to pay $100,000 each just to get in. But participants are also expected to give generously to the brothers’ goal of spending $400 million to buy a slew of congress critters, governors, and others in 2018.
This year, the group gathered in Colorado Springs at the ultra-lux Broadmoor Hotel and Resort, owned by the brothers’ billionaire pal and right-wing co-conspirator, Phillip Anschutz.
Among the recent political triumphs that these elites celebrated in the Broadmoor’s posh ballroom was the defeat this year of a Colorado tax hike to fix the state’s crumbling roads.
After all, who needs adequate roads, when you can arrive in private jets?
This attitude of the Kochs’ privileged cohorts explains why the public is shut out of these candid sessions. A staffer for the Koch confab hailed such no-tax, no-roads policies as a “renaissance of freedom.” For the privileged, that is — the freedom to prosper at the expense of everyone else.
Indeed, their agenda includes killing such working class needs as the minimum wage and Social Security, and privatizing everything from health care to public education. This self-absorbed cabal of spoiled plutocratic brats intends to abandon our nation’s core democratic principle of “We’re all in this together.”
If they kill that uniting concept, they kill America itself.
Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also the editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.
David Warsh; McCain and looking for the road back to 'regular order'
I wasn’t surprised in the least when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) flew back to Washington last week to put a stake through the heart of the Republican Party’s effort to kill the Affordable Care Act. That’s because I remember the last time that McCain interrupted himself to fly back to town.
He was running for president then, against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, in 2008. The financial crisis had come to a head after a year of growing apprehension. Lehman Brothers had failed on Monday, Sept. 15. Panic was taking hold in global credit markets for the first time since 1933.
Acute problems had spread beyond the banks. By Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008, insurance giant American International Group was on the verge of failure, thanks to the effect of plummeting share prices on its derivative and stock-lending businesses. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr., had begun calling both candidates daily to brief them, hoping to keep them from saying something that might upset the markets.
On the stump Sept. 16, McCain said, “We cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else.” Paulson phoned immediately to talk him back from that position. The next day McCain reversed himself, foreshadowing the days ahead.
Two days later, Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke persuaded President George W. Bush and leaders of both parties, meeting in the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to accept the hastily drafted Troubled Assets Relief Program (TSRP) bill. And on Friday, Sept. 19, Friday, Bush stood in the White House Rose Garden, along with Bernanke, Paulson and SEC chairman Christopher Cox, to ask Congress to approve a hazy $700 billion bailout plan. By the following Tuesday, it was clear that the measure lacked the necessary Republican votes to pass in the House.
With the first presidential debate scheduled for the following Friday, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign in order to fly back to Washington. He asked for a meeting with President Bush and Obama. Paulson later wrote that he was “dumbfounded” that the president had agreed to such a conclave. (I am relying here on Paulson’s memoir, On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System.) Bush explained that he felt he had little choice.
The meeting was held; Obama and his chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers danced rings around the Republicans: McCain spoke only when called upon at the end, and the meeting dissolved in chaos at its end. In their televised debate that Friday, Obama and McCain condemned Wall Street, but neither mentioned the bailout. Mostly they argued about Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama decisively won the debate.
The following Monday the TARP bill was defeated in the House. When it finally passed three days later, as the banking system continued to threaten to collapse, McCain got little credit for his dramatic gesture. Paulson wrote:
"His return to Washington was impulsive and risky, and I don’t think he had a plan in mind. If anything, his gambit only came back to hurt him, as he was pilloried in the press afterward, and in the end I don’t believe his maneuver significantly influenced the TARP legislative process.
"A number of people I respect on the Hill have a different view. They believe McCain ended up being helpful by focusing public attention on TARP and galvanizing Congress to action. And John did later try to find ways for House Republicans to support legislation. But Democrats absolutely did not want him to get any credit. They wanted the economic issue as their own.''
Looking back, McCain was a central player in one of the great dramas of the 21st Century. The leaders of both parties in Congress, a reluctant administration, central bankers around the world, and both U.S. presidential candidates in an election year – they all agreed on measures that, after many adjustments behind the scenes, prevented a second Great Depression.
Granted, it had been ugly. Every actor displayed a wart or two. “There was no hiding McCain’s rudderlessness over the [first few] days, as he lurched from blunder to blunder,” was how John Heilemann and Mark Halperin described his introduction to the crisis in Game Change. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.-S.C.) repeatedly helped his good friend McCain maintain his bearings. But strip away all the self-interested accounts of the matter by technocrats, and what’s left is a distinct harbinger of McCain’s dramatic action last week.
In a speech two days before his fateful vote last week, McCain took stock of the battles of the last eight years.
"Our deliberations today are more partisan, more tribal more of the time than any other time I remember…. Both sides have let this happen. Let’s leave the history of who shot first to the historians. I suspect they’ll find we all conspired in our decline – either by deliberate actions or neglect…
"The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare. And we shouldn’t do the same with ours.''
Since I clearly remembered the White House event, in March 2009, with which Obama opened his campaign to reorganize healthcare-insurance markets, I couldn’t resist a taking a little peek back at the history of what happened next. Obama’s proposal’s was patterned on Massachusetts’'s 2006 adoption of “Romney Care,” itself based on a Republican proposal for an individual mandate advanced ten years before, in opposition to Hillary Clinton’s more ambitious plans. Obama invited 150 participants to a conference, drawn from all corners of the debate, including Congressional Republican leaders.
In “The Party of No,” a chapter in The New New Deal:The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era, author Michael Grunwald describes the evolution of the Republican leadership’s thinking the wake of Democratic victories – not just the White House, but control of both houses of Congress. Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) was the minority whip then, transparently coveting minority leader John Boehner’s job. Cantor’s deputy, Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.), and Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) were said to be the GOP’s “young guns.” Rep. Mike Pence (R.-Ind. chaired an initial conference of the party’s leadership in Annapolis. Grunwald wrote:
"The new leaders who gathered in Annapolis had a new mantra. Our mistake was abandoning our principles, not following our principles. They saw John McCain as a typical Republican In Name Only (RINO) who had sought electoral salvation in ideological equivocation – and look what happened to him. They even revised their opinions of George W. Bush, who in retrospect seemed less a conservative hero, more a big-spending apostate.''
“Most important, Republicans need to stick together as a team,” exhorted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And so they did. The Tea Party election came next, in 2010. Republicans took back the House. Obama was re-elected in 2012. In 2014, Republicans took back the Senate. And by 2016, the strategy of full-throated opposition seemed to have worked. Republicans won the White House.
At least in the matter of healthcare legislation, the Republicans clearly fired the first shot, opposing a program of their own invention just because the opposition party had embraced it. Let McCain’s exaggeration on this count pass. In the offer of olive branches, no more than in lapidary inscriptions, is a man upon his oath. The path back to the state of mind Senate rules describe as “normal order” is much as McCain described it:
Incremental progress, compromises that each side criticize but also accept, just plain muddling through to chip away at problems and keep our enemies from doing their worst isn’t glamorous or exciting. It doesn’t feel like a political triumph. But it’s usually the most we can expect from our system of government, operating in a country as diverse and quarrelsome and free as ours.
In “The Sanctimony and Sin of G.O.P, ‘Moderates','' New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, writing last week before McCain’s vote last Thursday against his party, invited readers “to consider the awfulness of Senator John McCain.” Indeed, Krugman condemned all politicians “who pretend to be open-minded, decry partisanship, tut-tut about incivility and act as enablers for the extremists again and again.” Krugman wrote:
"I started with McCain because so many journalists still fall for his pose as an independent-minded maverick, ignoring the reality that he’s a reliable yes-man whenever it matters.''
Krugman has got it exactly backwards. On the two occasions of the last 10 years when it has mattered most, McCain stood in the center, with the majority consensus, against his party’s leaders (and, often enough, in matters of lesser issues as well, especially immigration and campaign finance). Krugman, himself an unbridled partisan, should stop insisting that there are no Republican moderates. The road back to “regular order” begins with giving credit where credit is due.
David Warsh, a longtime business and political columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.
Stuff we make here
S CH-54 Tarhe helicopter, made by Connecticut-based Sirkorsky.
The other week, President Trump met with people from a curious mix of companies in part of his Made in America campaign (which doesn’t apply to Trump Organization branded products). The New England companies included, according to Fox News:
Connecticut: Sikorsky
“Aircraft manufacturer Sikorsky, a division of Lockheed Martin, is known for its production of the Black Hawk helicopter. Sikorsky claims to have built ‘the world’s first practical flight helicopter,’ in 1939.’’
Maine: Hinckley Yachts
“What began as a company that built boats for local fisherman in Maine, Hinckley is now a world-renowned builder of premium jetboats between 29 to 79 feet long.’’
Massachusetts: St. Pierre Manufacturing
“St. Pierre Manufacturing makes horseshoes and tire chains. It was founded in 1920, inspired by Henry St. Pierre whose car got stuck in the mud when he was driving to a nearby village.’’
New Hampshire: Cider Belly Doughnuts
“Located on Moulton Farm, …this company is praised for its fresh, homemade cider doughnuts.’’.
Rhode Island: Narragansett Brewing Company
“The Narragansett Brewing Company is the fifth largest lager beer brewery in New England. The company was founded in 1888 by six local businessmen and produced it first beer in 1890.’’
Vermont: Dubie Family Maple
“Located in the heart of Vermont’s Maple Country, this family-owned-and-operated company has been producing Pure Vermont Maple Syrup for 14 years.’’
More nuanced look at the Nutmeg State
"In short, the steady habits of a great portion of the inhabitants of {Connecticut}...seem to be laziness, low bickerings, and whoring''
-- Alexander Wilson, in 1808
Connecticut for many years called itself "The Land of Steady Habits''
August's 'fading green glory'
"Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush - bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn."
-- Michelle L. Thieme, "August's Crown''
2 heads better than one?
"Morpheous' (bronze), by Lionel Smith, in the group show "Exposed,'' at the Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, Vt., through Oct. 21.
The gallery says: "Lionel Smit is known for large-scale portraiture both on canvas and as sculpture; he is one of South Africa's preeminent contemporary artists. His process as an artist today remains adaptive, inventive and physically engaging. Mr. Smit's sculpture 'Morpheus' conveys a strong sense of duality with the two bronze heads connected in perfect symmetry. ''
James P. Freeman: Department stores in fast descent as Amazon takes their business and destroys jobs
Macy's flagship store in Manhattan.
“Macy’s of today is like in soul and spirit to
Macy’s of yesterday; Macy’s of tomorrow…”
— Edward Hungerford, The Romance of a Great Store (1922)
If today is yesterday’s tomorrow, the Macy’s of 2017 would be unrecognizable to its founder, Rowland Hussey Macy. Except, perhaps, for the ubiquitous red star, the company’s logo, which was inked onto his forearm as a young sailor, while working on the whaling ship Emily Morgan, based out of New Bedford, Mass.. The star was inspired by the North Star, which, according to legend, guided him to port and an optimistic future. Today, the company — and, by extension, the traditional retailing industry — rocked by an exceptional gale, looks to the heavens for safe harbor and secure future. The turbulence, however, is a healthy sign of the creative destruction of capitalism. Accordingly, let traditional retail perish.
Last April, a New York Times expose, “Is American Retail at a Historic Tipping Point?,” revealed that 89,000 Americans have been laid off in general-merchandise stores since October 2016. “That is more than all of the people employed in the United States coal industry, which President Trump championed during the campaign as a prime example of the workers who have been left behind in the economic recovery.”
About one out of every 10 Americans works in retail. That’s nearly 16 million people (both online and in stores), confirms the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unsurprisingly, only 5 percent are represented by unions.
More than 300 retailers have filed for bankruptcy just in 2017. Among them: Gymboree (operating 1,300 stores), rue21 (1,200 stores), Payless ShoeSource (4,400 stores), The Limited (250 stores), and a century-old regional department store company, Gordmans Stores (106 stores, in 22 states). In the past year, Macy’s has announced it would close 100 stores (identifying 68 locations, eliminating 10,000 jobs). J.C. Penney will close 138 stores. Sears (which also owns Kmart) is shuttering 150 stores and said last March that the company has “substantial doubt” about its survival after 13 decades in business. Since 2010, Sears has lost $10.4 billion and has closed several hundred stores.
A report released this spring by Credit Suisse, the financial-services firm, estimates that 8,640 retail stores will close by year’s end and, more staggering, approximately one quarter of the nation’s 1,100 malls will close in the next five years.
“Modern-day retail is becoming unrecognizable from the glory era of the department store in the years after World War II,” notes the Times. “In that period, newly built highways shuttling people to and from the suburbs eventually gave rise to shopping malls — big, convenient, climate-controlled monuments to consumerism with lots of parking.” The glitz and glamour of shopping reminiscent of the Mad Men period is over. Instead, a wrenching, permanent restructuring is likely under way. As it should be.
What happened?
Shifting consumer shopping habits driven by, and probably, a result of, e-commerce. Stated simply: “market forces.” A concept understood by ordinary people. Alarmingly, though, highly compensated retail executives were slow in identifying these new dynamics. For which many big retailers are now desperately, but not adequately, adapting to these changes. They are failing.
Devoid of any romance, today’s retail is a hard scrabble of Sisyphean drudgery. Product comes in. Product goes out. Product comes back in … Repeat. Generic and dingy department stores are full of tired-looking mannequins and haggard-looking, underpaid sales associates pushing promotions and credit cards. But many stores are empty of customers.
America is called “overstored” — having too much retail space, which now totals about 7.3 square feet per capita. On a comparative basis, that is well above the 1.7 square feet per-capita in Japan and France, and the 1.3 square feet in the United Kingdom. Jonathan Berr of Moneywatch says: “Overstoring can be traced back to the 1990s when the likes of Walmart, Kohls, Gap, and Target were expanding rapidly and opening new divisions.” And then the Internet happened.
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the evolution of a new business model. Those who embraced a so-called “brick and click” model (combining brick-and-mortar operations with online presence) were certain to survive, and those who executed it well would likely thrive for the foreseeable future. Many retailers were late to the party. When they did arrive, they never harmonized their physical space and cyberspace. Consequently, traditional retailers never kept pace with the value created by the likes of Amazon. The new disruptors perfected the model and, more importantly, created a better customer experience.
Between 2010 and 2014, e-commerce grew by an average of $30 billion annually. Now, e-commerce represents 8.5 percent of all retail sales, (trending straight upward since 2000) disproportionately affecting the big-box retailers that are anchor tenants in malls that, in turn, draw foot traffic from which other mall retailers ultimately benefit. ShopperTrak estimates that retail store foot traffic has plunged 57 percent between 2010 and 2015. And more stunning, Amazon is expected to surpass Macy’s this year to become the biggest apparel seller in the United States.
Macy’s, self-described as “America’s Department Store” — a brand celebrating ubiquity over uniqueness — is symbolic and symptomatic of retail’s quandary.
With its corporate sibling, Bloomingdale’s, the company is a constellation of complexities. Far from its meager beginnings as a single dry goods store in Haverhill, Mass. when it opened in 1851, it is now a cobbled-together conglomerate operating 700 stores in 45 states, employing 140,000 (of which 10 percent are unionized). Because of so many mergers and acquisitions, there is no unifying culture. It has 50 million proprietary charge accounts on record (nearly one in six Americans).
Macy's flagship store in Herald Square in Manhattan attracts 23 million visitors annually. Known as an “omnichannel retailer” (myriad ways of consumer engagement; i.e., store, Internet, mobile device), with sales over $25.7 billion, Macy’s is still profitable (earning $619 million last year). But it is in trouble.
In July 2015, Macy’s market capitalization (total value of its publicly traded shares) was more than $22 billion. It has plummeted to about $7 billion today. Constantly tweaking marketing and merchandising, the company nevertheless reported that net sales declined for the ninth straight quarter, in May. Saddled with $6.725 billion in debt and with fewer customers, over half its earnings are derived from its credit-card business. (Just three years ago, credit cards accounted for a quarter of its earnings.) Lead times for its lifeblood, the supply chain, are long and slow. Real estate holdings (estimated to be worth between $15 billion and $20 billion) are substantially more valuable than its business operations. Double-digit growth in online business is cannibalizing negative growth in store business.
Macy’s is ever-reliant upon the next generation of shoppers, but Millennials may not be that reliable; they defy consumption patterns that previous generations followed for years (less materialistic and more loyal to experiences than to physical brands). And Amazon’s new Prime Wardrobe might prove to be a death star, obliterating many red ones. Gloomy and overwhelmed, Macy’s reflects the industry at large.
This past January, Amazon announced it would create 100,000 jobs over the course of 18 months. Yet it is foolish to think that Amazon — which is much more efficient than traditional retailers — will absorb all the displaced workers.
As Rex Nutting, writing for MarketWatch, warns, what Amazon “won’t tell us is that every job created at Amazon destroys one or two or three others.” And what Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos “doesn’t want you to know is that Amazon is going to destroy more American jobs than China ever did.”
Even if the American consumer is the beneficiary of these disruptive but necessary market forces, sooner or later this economic issue will become a political issue.
Conservative commentator George Will raises a good question: “Why should manufacturing jobs lost to foreign competition be privileged by protectionist policies in ways that jobs lost to domestic competition are not?”
President Trump should, but probably won’t, answer a question that would help clarify the puzzling public policy he is now crafting (see his “major border tax” proposals). As the president will surely learn, economics — like health care — is complicated fare. And like most things involving Trump, it is personal.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump said Amazon has “a huge antitrust problem.” (An analysis found that 43 percent of all online retail sales in the United States went through Amazon in 2016.) Notably, Bezos owns The Washington Post, largely critical of the president. In late 2015, Trump called for a boycott of Macy’s after the company stopped selling Trump merchandise and severed ties with the presidential candidate because of comments he made about Mexicans earlier that year.
Then there is his daughter, Ivanka Trump. Despite her father’s call last January that “We will follow two simple rules — buy American and hire American,” she still owns an apparel company with much of its product line foreign-made. And with gilded irony, some is still sold at Macy’s.
With or without first family entanglements, markets will dictate those retailers it deems omnipresent and obsolescent.
James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. He formerly worked in financial services.
New England Council's tax-reform principles
This from The New England Council:
"As our leaders in Congress consider reforms to our nation’s outdated and complicated tax code, The New England Council today released its “Principles for Effective Tax Reform,” a set of broad recommendations for how best to update and improve the federal tax code. The principles were developed based on input and feedback from a variety of NEC members representing a broad range of industries throughout the region.''
Hit this link to read the NEC's principles for effective tax reform.
“We believe that these principles represent the common concerns and recommendations of the region’s business community, and hope that they are helpful to leaders in Washington as tax reform proposals continue to take shape in the coming weeks and months,” NEC President & CEO Jim Brett said in releasing the principles.
''In the principles, the Council encourages a comprehensive approach to tax reform that addresses both business and individual tax provisions at the same time. The Council also recommends that the tax code be simplified to minimize the burden on businesses, and that all provisions be permanent to provide certainty to businesses. Finally, the Council urges Congress to preserve and enhance incentives for Americans to save and invest in their futures, and to enact tax reform that will continue to encourage the innovation and investment that is so key to continued growth in New England. The New England Council has shared these principles with members of the New England Congressional delegation, other key Congressional leaders, and with the Trump Administration.''
"If you have any questions, please contact Chris Averill at caverill@newenglandcouncil.com or (202) 547-0048.''
Don Pesci: Of a great Connecticut Republican, Plymouth and John Brown
Doug Hageman died on July 28, within spitting distance of his birthday, and those who knew him needn’t wonder how he managed that. He was an honest and good man and, as a thoughtful and active Republican in the land of Democrats, something of a wonder.
Encountering Doug for the first time – as I did many years ago, at a networking meeting held in the rooms of Associated Builders of Connecticut (ABC) in Rocky Hill – was a bit like catching a glimpse of a unicorn in a dark glade. First you saw the white flashing flanks, then the flowing mane, and then, shockingly, the improbable white horn. And you thought to yourself – it CAN'T be. But it is.
Doug’s family history reaches back to the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony. If you had given him a few minutes, he would happily explain to you why the separatists of the Plymouth Colony were larval conservative Republicans. At the very least, he would insist, the Plymouth Colony had decisively rejected socialism in favor of a sort of Reaganite conservativism.
Plymouth Plantation, you see, was first founded as a commune in which all property rights were held in common. Food and supplies were distributed based on need according to Marxian prescriptions: from each according to his means, to each according to his needs. All this changed after the 1620-21 famine. Starvation staring them in the face, leaders in the colony decided to abandon socialism in favor of capitalism: every family in Plymouth was assigned a private piece of property the fruits of which they could keep for themselves. Starvation was sent packing with its pants on fire, and a rough kind of prosperity reigned in Plymouth.
Doug lavished praise on a piece I wrote in Connecticut Commentary on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the raid on Harper’s Ferry by the abolitionist John Brown in which I had mentioned Thoreau: “Henry David Thoreau, who said of Brown that he would leave a Greek accent falling the wrong way but would right a fallen man – knew Brown was not mad, as did all the notables who assembled in Massachusetts businessman George Stern’s home in Medford to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”
Doug thought that John Brown, born in Torrington, Conn., had played a significant and unappreciated role in the abolition of slavery, as indeed he had. I was surprised to find that Doug had read both “A Plea For Captain John Brown” and “Slavery in Massachusetts” by Thoreau.
In his plea for Brown, Thoreau unfurls the following line: “There is hardly a house but is divided against itself, for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is the effect of our vice; and hence are begotten fear, superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds.”
Doug, who never lacked vitality or virtue, rather suspected that Lincoln, the author of “A House Divided” speech, had reproduced Thoreau in the often quoted line: “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
Doug knew his history and, thankfully, did not keep it to himself but shared it liberally with all he encountered. He was forever bringing new, young blood into Republican ranks. Everyone he touched, not least of all myself, will miss his wise counsel, but most of all his hunger for justice and liberty.
Thoreau perhaps best captured the character of people like Doug: “The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.”
Doug’s friends and family are all inconsolable; he was taken from us too soon. Let them remember the enduring words of Pascal: “In the end, they throw a little dirt on you, and everyone walks away. But there is one who does not walk away.” That One is the God of justice and mercy.
Don Pesci, a frequent contributor to New England Diary, is a Vernon, Conn.-based essayist.
An August orchestra
''The Toscaninis of the August night are never podium-bound. They leap from thicket to thicket to thicket, from the brocaded shadow of the elm to the bright spotlight of the young maple standing clear in the moon. There is so much melody for them to lead, they grow careless of their time; let them drop a beat or two and it goes on without them, the most irrepressible and buoyant and joyous of all symphonies.''
-- From In Praise of Seasons, by Alan H. Olmstead
Call child welfare!
"Bonding" (oil and cold wax), by Nella Bush, at her show at Mother Brook Arts and Community Center, Dedham, Mass., through Aug. 19.
Boston cabbies drive you into mysteries
"Criticizing Boston's taxicabs is about as controversial as taking a stand against earthquakes, ax murderers, or the Third Reich....The drivers themselves are generally friendly but often topographically confused...No two rides are the same. No two taxis take you from Point A to Point B via Route C. And even if they do, the fares are somehow different. To enter a taxi in the Hub is to embark on a magical mystery tour of assorted mechanical surprises and geographic wonders.''
-- Nathan Cobb
'Summer, do your worst!'
"When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by. ''
-- "August,'' by Dorothy Parker
The perils of celebrity
"Brad Pitt as Johnny Suede,'' by James Cole, in group called ''The New England Collective VIII,'' at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Aug 2-27.
Chuck Collins: Rich folks in overalls seek to kill estate tax
Via OtherWords.org
After this summer, President Trump and the Republican Congress have one big item on their agenda: taxes. Specifically, cutting them for the rich.
One tax they’ve got in their crosshairs is the estate tax — which they malign as “the death tax.” But it’s nothing of the sort.
Passed a century ago at the urging of President Theodore Roosevelt, the estate tax is a levy on millionaire inheritances. It puts a brake on the concentration of wealth and political power, and raises substantial revenue — over a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade, if it’s kept — from the richest one tenth of 1 percent.
Yet lobbyists are trying to put a populist spin on their effort to abolish this tax, which is paid exclusively by millionaires and billionaires. Puzzlingly, they’re deploying farmers as props and claiming that the tax means the “death of the family farm.”
The accusation is pure manure.
Only households with wealth starting at $11 million (and individuals with wealth over $5.5 million) are subject to the tax. “This hurts a lot of farmers,” claimed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Many people have to sell their family farm.”
But a new report by President Trump’s own U.S. Department of Agriculture shows this claim is bull. Only 4 out of every 1,000 farms will owe any estate tax at all — and the effective tax rate on these small farms is a modest 11 percent.
Of those few farms, most have substantial non-farm income, according to the report — think billionaire Ted Turner’s ranch in Montana. And estate tax opponents haven’t been able to identify a single example of a farm being lost because of the estate tax.
Still, the rodeo continues.
When the House Ways and Means Committee staged a July hearing against the estate tax, they summoned South Dakota farmer Scott Vanderwal to talk about the woes of the estate tax. The problem was, as Vanderwal himself revealed, his farm wouldn’t even be subject to the tax.
In 2014, right-wing election groups ran $1.8 million worth of ads featuring farmer John Mahan of Paris, Ky. “For our family farms to survive, we’ve got to get in this fight” to end the death tax,' he said.
What the ad fails to disclose is that Mahan is the 15th biggest recipient of farm subsidies in Bourbon County, taking $158,213 of taxpayer money between 1995 and 2014. While some farm subsidies promote price stability and conservation practices, the bulk of funds go to the richest 1 percent of farmers and corporate agricultural operations.
Farm organizations such as the National Farmers Union and the American Family Farm Coalition support retaining the estate tax. They believe the concentration of farmland and farm subsidies has created unfair corporate farm monopolies across rural America.
“The National Farmers Union, through its grassroots policy, respects what the estate tax represents,” said union president Roger Johnson in testimony to the Treasury Department. “We are not opposed to the estate tax.”
When defenders of the estate tax have proposed a “carve out” to exempt any remaining farms, the anti-tax crusaders oppose it. They don’t want to lose their fig leaf.
All this farm talk mystifies who actually pays the tax. Most estate taxpayers live in big cities and wealthy states such New York, Florida, and California. Few have probably ever driven a tractor.
Instead of farmers in overalls, picture Tiffany Trump. If Congress abolishes the estate tax, the president’s children stand to inherit billions more.
In the coming tax debate, watch out for the advertisements and sound bites about farmers and the estate tax. The tax lobbyists for billionaires will be pulling the strings.
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org. He’s the author of the recent book Born on Third Base.
'Worn our bare feet bare'
By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color—no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
--- From "I Remember,'' by Anne Sexton