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Sunday, June 25, 2017

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

Robert Whitcomb

June may be had by the poorest comer."

-- James Russell Lowell

The new ordinance banning smoking outdoors in part of downtown Providence reflects the confusions and hypocrisies of American policies regarding tobacco and some other drugs (such as alcohol). On the one hand we say that smoking is very unhealthy and leads to many thousands of deaths a year and vast health expenses, on the other hand, tobacco products are legal and pull in billions of dollars a year in tax money. (Some argue that smoking, by causing early and often fast deaths, actually saves on overall national health costs: Fewer of those too-expensive old folks who take so long to expire.)

I think that the new ordinance isnt a bad idea. It may extend a few lives, including of those people who must breathe in second-hand smoke in situations such as waiting for buses at Kennedy Plaza. And there will be fewer cigarette butts and other smoking-related litter on the streets and sidewalks.

Smoking banned downtown

Now back to the scarier substance-abuse problem opiate addiction and lethal overdoses.

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I was not at all surprised that young Jon Ossoff narrowly lost the 6th District Georgia congressional race to Republican Karen Handel last Tuesday. The traditionally very Red district, another triumphant example of ruthless Republican gerrymandering, was still the GOPs to lose, whatever the many millions of dollars the Democrats pumped in.

It will take a while to deconstruct the vote, but I suspect that the Democrats did not get quite the turnout that theyd hoped for. This would be another example of why, although in many national polls a majority of the public backs what are basically Democratic positions on health care and other big issues, the GOP, aided by the state legislatures doing the gerrymandering of congressional districts, does so well in campaigns.

Consider the failure of the young, who lean heavily Democratic, to vote while people in their 50s and older vote heavily -- most often for Republicans. That may continue as long as the GOP doesn't threaten their Medicare and Social Security.

Democrats leadership troubles

The older (or just old) Tea Party types (mostly men) who comprise, for example, the little group who denounce me every week in the Facebook comments at the bottom of this column, do vote. And some or most are retired and have plenty of time to denounce socialists and elitists in social-media posts while they take a break from the Fox News echo chambers. God bless em! At least theyre not passive.

Meanwhile, Democratic strategists must be wondering if they should have poured a lot more money into a special South Carolina congressional race, in another intensely gerrymandered and traditionally very Republican district. Democrat Archie Parnell came very close last Tuesday to winning that contest. He may have been a better candidate than the somewhat callow and too-mild Mr. Ossoff, who perhaps should have taken on the Trump regime with much more energy.

The underlying demographic changes favor the Democrats but maybe they dont deserve to win because so many of the folks calling themselves Democrats are too lazy to take 20 minutes to show up at the polls every couple of years.

Oh yes, and the Democrats urgently need new leaders in the U.S. House. Number 1: Nancy Pelosi, 77, should retire as their leader now! The party needs new faces to present to the public.

They desperately require leaders with inspirational talents, organizational ability and pragmatism. They need to eloquently promote the interests of lower-and-middle-income people and push back hard against the plutocracy now in charge in the White House and in the Capitol.

Meanwhile, some Democrats may be secretly hoping for a recession. Given the realities of business cycles (the current business expansion is very old) and other factors among them Chinas economic woes, Brexit and inflated technology stock prices -- they may well get it next year. Ten percent unemployment would give the Democrats control of Congress in 2018, probably by a landslide.

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The Trump administration, in a sleeping bag with the oil and natural-gas sector, wants to hand out permits for large-scale seismic blasting up and down the Atlantic coast, from Delaware to Florida, to detect the presence of fossil fuel. Such blasting can injure or even kill such intelligent mammals as whales and dolphins and other marine animals.

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A plan to help maintain the 17-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, in downtown Boston, may be an example for upkeep of other public parks. Since property owners near the Greenway obviously benefit more than most people from this amenity, theyve agreed to pay $1 million a year in a voluntary tax on the big buildings along the Greenway via a Business Improvement District that would defray the bulk of yearly maintenance. The idea is to let the state reduce its spending on the park to $750,000 a year by 2020 from the current $2 million.

User taxes, including highway tolls, are very fair. You benefit; you pay.

India Point Park, in Providence, is an example of where similar arrangements could be made to better maintain public spaces and save on local and state government spending. Certainly the Downtown Providence Improvement District has done fine work in making Downcity a lot more presentable than it was a couple of decades ago.

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President Donald Trump

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If you want to know who the prime historical villains are in our exorbitantly expensive and convoluted health-care system, look no further than the American Medical Associations support, starting in the 40s, for a fee-for-service, private- insurance company model that would maximize physicians incomes. In tandem were the AMAs successful efforts to prevent the creation of the sort of universal, government-backed health system that virtually all other developed nations have and better health.

This system has ensured that American physicians are the worlds highest paid although medical outcomes lag behind most other developed nations. Of course, in the 60s Medicare and Medicaid came along. But Medicare, trapped in the traditional fee-for-service model, was for decades a bonanza for doctors, until federal cost containment efforts in recent years.

Yes, it was all about the money.

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Anti-Republican lunatic James Hodgkinson, who shot at a group of GOP politicians at a park in Alexandria, Va., gravely injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, had 200 rounds of ammunition in a storage unit. Thats the sort of thing youd expect in a nation whose gun laws are written by the National Rifle Association and their paymasters in the weapons biz, in collaboration with the Republican Party. I (and numerous family members) have owned guns all my life but the need to stock up on war-zone levels of ammo has eluded me. But then, I somehow forgot the potential joys of mass murder.

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As the United States withdraws from speaking out for human rights and democracy, the Chinese dictatorship moves in with piles of money. That money is already having sad effects.

Consider that Greece has vetoed a European Union statement denouncing Chinese human-rights abuses in the wake of Greece recently getting billions of dollars in infrastructure investments from Beijing. Croatia and Hungary (the latter run by a semi-fascist president), also the beneficiary of massive Chinese spending, have also blocked E.U. statements on Chinese actions, including Chinas attempt to take over the entire South China Sea. Each E.U. nation has veto power over statements meant to be the official E.U. position.

Here at home we have the Confucius Institute problem. The Instituteis affiliated with ChinasEducation Ministry and has the official aim to promote Chinese language andculture. But it is really a propaganda and intelligence office, a handy base for industrial and other espionage and a sturdy platform for the increasingly aggressive and expansionist dictatorship to keep in line Chinese students studying abroad. Their very presence tends to constrain intellectual freedom regarding things Chinese.

Some U.S. colleges and universities, such as Rhode Islands Bryant University, have partnered with the Institute satellites for the money and business connections they provide after they set up shop on American campuses. These Confucius Institute operations provide free (to the colleges) teachers and textbooks and cover operating costs. Some administrators and faculty members like them because they help bring in full-tuition-paying Chinese students and provide free and luxurious junkets to China to some administrators and faculty members. Such operations are inappropriate on American college campuses.

Rachelle Peterson, director of research at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group, has accurately complained: Confucius Institutes export the fear of speaking freely around the world. They permit a foreign government to have intimate influence over college classrooms. Its time to kick them off campus. Ms. Peterson quoted former Chinese Communist Party propaganda chief Li Changchun as calling the on-campus Confucius Institute satellites an important part of Chinas overseas propaganda efforts.

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Amazons plan to buy Whole Foods has elicited a lot of heavy breathing and assertions that Amazon will wipe out a lot of grocery stores. I think that these forecasts are exaggerated. Groceries stuff that can rot are not the same things as books and clothes. The distribution challenges are very different.

Most people will continue to drive or walk to a regular (not high-end, expensive organic) supermarket or small grocery store for the foreseeable future. Inflation-adjusted wages have been falling for most people. The market for expensive (and some would say pretentious) food is unlikely to vastly expand. For all its alleged glamour, most people dont shop at the expensive likes of Whole Foods and never will.

An Amazon-Whole Foods mating might work very well in densely populated affluent areas with a close enough proximity to warehouses to ensure that the stuff can be delivered unspoiled to Amazon-Whole Foods supermarkets or to your home. But it wouldnt work well in thinly populated areas.

Finally, even in this plutocratic age, its possible that the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department will awake from their all-too-frequent torpor and press monopoly charges against the company if it tries to take over a big hunk of the grocery business.

Anyway, Im more worried about the effects on employment and wages of the automation of cashier and other jobs now underway in many kinds of stores than about Amazon specifically (I always use cashiers, not those machines, in a tiny effort to help preserve jobs.) And I worry about the effects on local tax revenue and jobs from so many stores of all kinds closing because of the online revolution.

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Scott Avedisian

Read more:

Robert Whitcomb: No Smoking Downtown; Dems at Sea; Blasting Offshore - GoLocalProv