Whitcomb: Prettying up the Parks; Gradual ‘Medicare for All’; Larry Ellison High School

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Monday, February 25, 2019

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

Bob Whitcomb

“It’s a motley lot. A few still stand

at attention like sentries at the ends

of their driveways, but more lean

askance as if they’d just received a blow

to the head, and in fact they’ve received

many, all winter, from jets of wet snow

shooting off the curved, tapered blade

of the plow….’’

-- From “Mailboxes in Late Winter,’’ by Massachusetts poet Jeffrey Harrison

“{Bernie} Sanders filled the anti-Hillary vacuum in 2016. And like the vacuum {Eugene} McCarthy filled in early 1968, this was a fleeting opportunity, seized and then gone… And much as McCarthy’s moment ended with Nixon, the Sanders moment faded with the weird, flawed figure of Trump in the White House.

“However the 2020 campaign might unfold for the Democrats, there is no wounded giant to define the party fray. Minus the vacuum, Sanders will find, like gruff Gene, that his moment is gone, his agenda absorbed by more plausible candidates, his future behind him. Only the residue of unslaked ambition remains.’’

-- From a David von Drehle column in The Washington Post. To read the whole thing, please hit this link:

Governor Gina Raimondo

Prettying up the Parks

Rhode Island has some spectacular physical attractions. The biggest include its location around a beautiful bay between New York and Boston, its glorious coastal and inland countryside, some of which almost recalls Vermont, and memorable old buildings.

So Gov. Gina Raimondo is quite right to announce a program to spiff up the state’s parks, including its famous state beaches. This comes after years of budget and staffing cuts. This state land comprises about 8,200 acres, a modest percentage of the state’s total acreage of 775,900 but those 8, 200 acres include some scenic and recreational treasures. My own favorite is Colt State Park, in Bristol.

A new report commissioned by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management says that while the parks (including beaches) it runs have high usage, ranking first in the nation in visits per park acre, it is only 47th in state spending per visit!

The governor’s initial plan is to add a modest $1.5 million in funding for the DEM’s Division of Parks and Recreation. This would include hiring eight more people to work in the parks. That’s not much until you consider that the report calculates that that state parks add about $315 million to Rhode Island’s economy a year.

The governor has asked for an increase in beach fees, forced to do so in part because of an irresponsible if popular slashing of beach fees in 2016, which presumably reduced the money available for maintenance, let alone improvements.

The DEM report’s writers also suggest a new regime of fees to boost state revenue from rentals and special events at state parks to help defray the cost of maintaining them.

(See some Massachusetts and Connecticut fees below.)

For Rhode Islanders, the DEM is proposing a $2-a-day increase in beach-parking fees, bringing the cost to $8 a day during the week and $9 a day on weekends. For non-residents, the DEM wants a $4 increase for parking, bringing the total to $16 a day during the week and $18 a day on weekends. For season passes, the DEM proposes a $10 increase for residents, bringing the cost of a pass to $40, and a $20 increase for non-residents, bringing the cost of a season pass to $80.

DEM also wants to increase camping fees. Depending on the offering (three different tiers), camping fees could increase by as much as $16 a day for out-of-staters, or by as little as $4 for residents.

Especially considering what most people pay every month for such things as cable TV, these fees still seem a bargain. Yes, the fees could be seen as regressive since poorer people are more likely to use the parks and beaches than richer ones, with their private places to go. But, still, the new fees are modest. And would folks prefer tax increases instead? Aren’t user fees the fairest way to go?

Here are some partial comparisons with adjacent states:

The parking fees for Massachusetts state beaches for Bay State residents: ocean beaches, up to $12 day; inland beaches, up to $8 a day. For nonresidents: up to $20 day for ocean beaches and $15 a day for inland beaches.

For Connecticut state beaches: on weekdays, $9 a day for Connecticut residents and $15 for out-of-state vehicles; on weekends and holidays, $13 a day for Connecticut people and $22 for out-of-state folks.

But a big but! Especially in an economic downturn, with lower tax revenues, will the money from the fees all go to the parks and beaches or will Governor Raimondo and/or her successor and/or the legislature scoop the money and treat it as general revenue to help avoid raising broad-based taxes? I don’t see any assurances that this won’t occur. We need such assurances now, in writing.

Meanwhile, it’s good to remember that because Rhode Island is in the densely populated Northeast it’s always in a sweet position to get more out-of-state fee revenue from its parks and beaches, given adequate marketing.

As we push toward the warm weather and heavy use of Rhode Island’s underfunded and understaffed parks, the governor should be commended for trying to improve the visitor experience, and in doing so, draw more visitors – and their cash – to the Ocean State.

To read the DEM report, please hit this link:

GoLocal's News Editor Kate Nagle and Bob Whitcomb on LIVE

Relatively Minnesota Moderate

Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, probably has the right way to expand health-care coverage as the volume rises among other Democratic presidential candidates for “Medicare for All”. In this and some other issues, she’s taking a more careful and moderate approach (e.g., she opposes “free four-year college’’ promises) than most of her Democratic rivals.

She’d gradually expand Medicare and Medicaid by letting people buy into them. It’s the so-called “public option’’ discussed and then dropped because of ferocious insurance company lobbying when the Affordable Care Act was being debated. People who have and like their private insurance can keep it if they want. If they want the “public option’’ they can also get supplemental private insurance, as in “socialist’’ Europe.

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Since so many millions now depend on private insurance, mostly employer-based (an unforeseen result of World War II wage-price controls; the war was a very “socialistic’’ time in America…) you can’t just jettison it. The country will have to evolve some distance away from it over perhaps a decade.

And no, Medicare and Medicaid can’t pay for all health care, whatever the wishful thinking of some Democrats. There will always have to be rationing, as there is now – by personal income among other things.

Encouraging more people to use the public option, by expanding the risk pool with younger and healthier people, would tend to moderate its costs. Of course, the administrative overheads of Medicare and Medicaid are much lower than those of insurance companies, with their marketing expenses and sky-high executive salaries, etc.

As for the yelps about “socialism,’’ you could call Medicare, beloved by even Tea Party types, socialism. (The Tea Party types tend to love Medicare and hate Medicaid because Tea Partiers tend to be older and whiter than Medicaid recipients.) The new health-care debate reminds me of the angry lady who yelled at U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse at a Tea Party-infected meeting: “Get the government out of my Medicare.’’ He responded: “Madam: Medicare is a government program.’’

And then, as I wrote before, Trump, et al., drag in Venezuela as an example of the evils of socialism while that country is best seen as a kind of fascist dictatorship. Trump, etc., have good reason to hope that most Americans won’t look into the health-care “socialism’’ of the very prosperous democracies of western and northern Europe, with health statistics much better than America’s.

The very smart (but apparently a nasty boss) Klobuchar may be more attuned to European social democracies because of Minnesota’s large number of residents with Scandinavian and German backgrounds and the Land of 10,000 Lakes’ strong civic culture. (My late mother was a Minnesotan, albeit not always a model citizen.)

Do We Cancel?

Ah, the perils of event management in wintertime New England! Do we cancel tonight’s dinner and speech or carry on with the hope that the predicted rain won’t turn to freezing rain and snow until after everyone’s safely home? Of course, far more complicated is the school superintendent’s having to decide at 5:30 a.m. whether to close multiple schools that day in an iffy forecast, frequent around here. That wandering rain-ice-snow line.

One of Newport's billionaire - Larry Ellison

Billionaire Expansionism

Jim Gillis of the Newport Daily News created a bit of a flap in his Feb. 14 column, headlined “Spare Change: Here’s an idea for moneybags Larry Ellison’’. Mr. Gillis was responding to news that the Oracle mogul Ellison, ranked the fifth-richest person in America, with a fortune of over $62 billion, has bought a fourth estate in the City by the Sea, this one called Seacliff. His most important Newport property is the old Astor estate called Beechwood, on which he’s spent $100 million to turn it into an art museum.

Mr. Gillis suggests -- partly in jest? -- that a better use of Mr. Ellison’s money would be for him to spend $120 million to build a new high school to replace Newport’s aging Rogers High School. He writes:

“Heck, lots of multi-billionaires own mansions. How many build their own schools? Sure, the city would operate the place. All you need do is bankroll construction. Hey, maybe other local celebrity rich folk like Jay Leno and Judge Judy might chip in a few shekels.

“The high school has been named for William S. Rogers since before any of us were alive, predating the current location.

“We love tradition here. But for $120 million, I suppose Larry Ellison High School sounds pretty good.’’

To read Mr. Gillis’s column, please hit this link:

Well, Larry Ellison and other new and long-entrenched Newport celebrities do pay lots of property taxes. And, God bless ‘em, the three folks whom Mr. Gillis mentioned at least made their own money rather than being the beneficiaries of inheritance (what the late, crude Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci called “the lucky sperm club’’). And they can spend their money any damn way they want.

But wouldn’t it be nice if more very rich people contributed to public services rather than seeming to want to wrap themselves more tightly in glamour and prestige by giving money to, say, already rich museums and private colleges?

For example, MarketWatch reported that “20 colleges {most of them elite private institutions} that received the most money in donations during the last fiscal year accounted for about 28% of the total $46.73 billion donated to universities during that period. They serve just 1.6% of the nation’s 19.9 million undergraduate students. That’s based on an analysis of the annual Voluntary Support for Education survey, published by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a membership association for professionals working in development, alumni relations and related fields for educational institutions.’’

To read the whole article, please hit this link:

Alligators and pets in Florida

Alligators and Pets

(I just got back from the Palm Beach, Fla., area, where I read about the spectacular expansion of one of the socialites’ favorite charities – the Norton Museum of Art. I love walking up Worth Avenue, the most famous shopping street in Palm Beach, looking at the rail-thin women who have had so many facelifts that they can barely smile. It’s the sort of place where the society editor of the Palm Beach Daily News, the wonderfully informed, incisive, funny and down-to-earth Shannon Donnelly (a Newport native), is one of that region’s more important figures. But the best entertainment in Florida is watching alligators almost leap out of the waters of the man-made lakes in gated communities in pursuit of prey, including pets.

(They thus reduce the cat population and keep kids from fishing along the shore. And then there’s the exciting migration of Burmese pythons north from the Everglades. They’ll eat just about anything. Unfortunately, while python meat is said to be delicious, it has too much mercury to be fit for human consumption.)

It would be nice if more very rich people took the approach of Andrew Carnegie, the steel mogul who helped finance 1,689 public libraries in America – institutions that have helped innumerable people improve themselves, culturally, economically and emotionally.

But it’s also reassuring to know that storied Newport continues to attract the celebs, who help pay for municipal services and who add more spice and occasional drama to an already dynamic and complicated city.

Newport Innovation Center

Meanwhile, work proceeds at the old Sheffield School building in Newport, which is being turned into a hub for startups and other small companies, with a focus on technology. What I find particularly happy is the idea that Newport, which is already a modest tech center, mostly because of federal facilities, could become the center of a research and development and highly entrepreneurial “Silicon Coast’’ focused on marine-related technology, including of course offshore wind power. The “Silicon Coast’’ would stretch from Groton, Conn., with Electric Boat, to the Mystic Aquarium (which does a lot of research), to the URI School of Oceanography, to Newport’s mix of government facilities and tech companies, to the Port of New Bedford, to the world capital of oceanography, the Woods Hole section of Falmouth. LEARN MORE HERE

France vs. Italy

Tensions have risen between France and Italy as the latter’s current “populist’ (with a tang of fascism) government has been making mischief. The latest example: Italian deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio (whose father is a well-known neo-fascist) meeting with a spokesman of the bizarre mix of extreme right-and-left-wing foes of moderate French President Emmanuel Macron called the gilets jaunes (yellow vests), who demand a contradictory collection of economic-policy changes. They’ve done considerable urban rioting.

Mr. DiMaio’s meeting certainly looks like gross interference in France’s internal affairs.

So the French government has recalled its ambassador from Rome.

Meanwhile, the Russians are doing everything they can to weaken the West, by dividing European Union allies and fomenting disorder within them. For example, consider that the Alliance for Securing Democracy reports that about 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Kremlin views have been lately focusing on France and revving up the yellow vest crowd.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin particularly dislikes President Macron because of the French leader’s strong support for greater European unity and a stronger European Union defense against Russian aggression. With a deeply corrupt and would-be autocratic American leader compromised by years of business and other deals with Russian, and a weakening German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May, the mantle of leader of the West has fallen on young Mr. Macron.

By the way, extreme southeast France has always had a strong Italian influence, including the most delicious pizza I’ve ever had. Indeed, the word Riviera, as in the French Riviera, is the Italian word for coastline.

Car-Loan Overhang

There’s increasing economic danger from swelling corporate debt, some of it taken on to finance stock buybacks, which boost the price of company stock and thus particularly benefit senior executives, much of whose compensation is in shares.

But also unsettling is a surge in delinquencies on car and truck loans. At least 7 million Americans are three months or more behind on their car and truck loans, says CityLab.com, referencing Federal Reserve Bank of New York figures. That’s a million more people than in 2009, during the Great Recession. (Yes, the nation’s population was lower then.) By last summer, $1.26 trillion was owed on Americans’ cars and trucks – up 75 percent from 2009.

A major reason for this increase, besides slow wage growth for lower-and-middle-income people, is that standards for granting car loans have been loosened, encouraging predatory lending via high-interest subprime loans aimed at poorer people, recalling the sort of crazy mortgages that helped cause the Crash of 2008 and Great Recession.

Other related factors include the relative paucity, compared to most Western nations, of public transit as well as sprawl suburban and exurban development, which leads to long commutes and the associated costs. It’s long been my hunch that the surge in gasoline prices in the spring of 2008 explains some of the timing of the crash that started with the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, in September 2008: Too many people with huge home and car loans commuting long distances as gasoline prices exceeded $4 a gallon in some places. The straw that…

The increase in car-loan delinquencies may be an unsettling leading economic indicator – most Americans need cars to get to work. So if they’re falling behind on those payments, things must be pretty bad for them.

Still, witness the many low-and-middle-income people who take out big loans to buy very fancy and/or big cars (gas guzzlers). I guess it’s more of the great American status race. Not smart. (Walmart founder Sam Walton drove around in an old pickup truck….)

To read the CityLab.com piece, please hit this link:

Worcester City Hall on Main Street in Downtown Worcester

Trying to Draw College Kids Downtown

The Worcester Telegram ran a story Feb. 16 headlined “Area college students shy away from downtown, other city attractions’’.

A big problem for Worcester is that its colleges are not virtually downtown, unlike in Providence, most notably with Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. And Johnson and Wales University is actually downtown, as are some URI and Roger Williams University units. This long-term presence has helped prop up Providence’s core even as some big old companies left town. The city’s very scenic location at the head of Narragansett Bay helps, too. And Worcester’s altitude and inland location make winter walking and driving there more problematical than in Rhode Island’s capital.

Worcester’s colleges are more on the periphery, making excursions to the old industrial city’s (sort of the Pittsburgh of New England) downtown more daunting. It will take a lot more marketing to get a lot more college kids in downtown Worcester, even as Providence’s downtown remains crowded with them.

It's too bad that “Downcity’’ Providence is no longer the company-headquarters place it was decades ago, but at least its college students are there in droves, spending money making the downtown safer. Crowded cities are usually safer cities.

I doubt that the arrival of the soon-to-be named something-else Pawtucket Red Sox will draw many college students, though maybe more than the terrific Worcester Art Museum.

To read The Telegram’s story, please hit this link:

Careful Incentives

Amazon already has thousands of employees in tech center Greater Boston and will probably add several thousands more, perhaps mostly along the South Boston waterfront, in the wake of the demise of an Amazon “second headquarters’’ in New York City. But this won’t be due to the sort of massive incentives the “populist’’ reaction to which blew up the Amazon-New York deal.

As seen in the deal crafted by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (a highly successful former businessman and top-notch numbers cruncher) and the generally economically reality-based Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to lure General Electric headquarters, Massachusetts has been quite conservative in crafting incentive packages. Shirley Leung had an interesting column on the GE deal. To read it, please hit this link:

Rhode Island might also get some Amazon jobs because of the New York news.

Lee W. Huebner’s iThe Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: Reflections on Globalization, Democracy, and the Media

Fake News Then and Now

Please read professor and former media executive Lee W. Huebner’s important new book: The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: Reflections on Globalization, Democracy, and the Media. (Disclosure: I have known Mr. Huebner for many years.)

Mr. Huebner expertly applies history to our current situation in his panoramic study. It’s a delicious mix of scholarship and commentary on economics, philosophy, religion, mass psychology, politics, technology, etc. And there’s a superb selection of quotations from over the centuries. The writing is very accessible and, indeed, often highly entertaining. Mr. Huebner has a delightfully droll sense of humor.

As the old saw has it: “You can’t really know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.’’ This book is a reliable guide leading up to the present era of “fake news,’’ especially meaning news that our maximum leader and his followers don’t like.

A Genius of Hollywood

Ben Hecht (1893-1964) was one of the greatest Hollywood screenwriters, working on such classic films as Scarface, Notorious and Twentieth Century. He didn’t get public credit (but did get paid) for many movies he worked on, including Gone With the Wind and the hilarious and dark His Girl Friday (the last based on the play The Front Page, which he wrote with Charles MacArthur). He’s credited with helping to invent the “screwball comedy’’ and the gangster movie.

Now Adina Hoffman has come along with a fine biography called Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures. A great read! But an even better read is his 1954 autobiography, A Child of the Century. He was an amazing man.