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Home » Lose Weight Safely » Whitcomb: And With No Vaccine? Moving Money Around in a Crisis; Another Pension Deal – GoLocalProv

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

somehow heightens it, Route 1s course from Maine

to Florida Interstate-strangled, this narrow

stretch in Virginia wasted as a riverbed

drought-hushed. Remains of gas stations, diners,

and motels litter it, and here, July, long

month that had meant their greatest thriving,

offers itself again to the decades abandonment

-- From Elegy in July for the Motel Astra, by Claudia Emerson (1957-2014)

Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.

-- Democritus, circa 420 B.C.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

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President Trump Coronavirus Task Force

We ought to be thinking about how wed live with the virus for years. After all, it usually takes years to develop a virus vaccine.

We cant try to impose six-foot social distancing or face masks forever; humans are social animals. As it is, now that were in the midst of the pandemic, a substantial minority of Americans, in the sort of denial and wishful thinking encouraged by the Trump regime, refuse to follow any guidelines. This minority makes it nearly impossible to stop the pandemic in the United States.

Of course, everybody will have to decide for themselves the costs and benefits of following the standard public-health guidelines for a pandemic without a vaccine.

Barring a vaccine, well have to accept that well just have to wait for herd immunity, achieved by most people being infected, to stop the pandemic. And for now, if were responsible, calmly waiting in lines at stores and other public places six feet apart. Thats the sort of thing that most living Americans, famous for their impatience, have never had to tolerate until now. Indeed, were all getting new lessons in the usefulness of patience and fatalism.

The White House, for all its corruption, incompetence and lies, is quite right that America will have to live with the virus for the foreseeable future.

COVID-19 will seriously sicken, and kill, only a small percentage of the U.S. population, but that may still mean millions of people over the next few years. And we have to accept the tradeoff costs of reopening in sectors, especially schools, where the social, intellectual, economic and, yes, physical and mental health costs of not mostly physically opening exceed those of staying mostly physically closed. Remote learning, for example, is a disaster, especially for younger students.

As we wait, there are other things we can consider doing, besides social distancing and face masks, that can help save people from getting very sick from COVID-19: For example, lose weight! Obese people are particularly vulnerable to this virus. And America is the Empire of obesity.

I wonder how much the U.S. birth rate will fall because of the pandemic. Social distancing indeed!

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Governor Gina Raimondo

Who would want to be a governor now!? Consider Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who has come under pressure from small business and Lt. Gov. Dan McKee (who seems to be running for governor) to step up state help for small businesses slammed by the pandemic. Large, very profitable, and sometimes politically connected and lobbyist-rich enterprises seem so far to have received disproportionate shares of federal COVID-19 money meant for small business across America.

Saying that small business is the backbone of America is an old favorite of politicians but of course, in practice, its the big ones that are favored, especially since the federal government in recent years has pretty much stopped trying to limit monopolies and oligopolies.

The Governor is holding back some federal relief money for small enterprises because the state faces a huge budget deficit caused by the pandemic. But under federal relief rules, states arent supposed to use the money that theyve gotten from the Feds to plug budget holes! The governor is hoping that the Feds will soon come up with money to help states and localities address these COVID-caused budget nightmares. With an election looming, the Feds probably will come through.

"Were putting the final touches on our proposal," she said of her new plans for small businesses.

"It's most likely going to look like small grants to various small businesses who qualify, something for say restaurants to buy supplies...dollars in the hands of businesses," the governor said. In any event, many, many small enterprises are dying across America because of the pandemic.

The Governor is trying to reduce the big cuts in public services, and increases in taxes, that seem inevitable in this mess. She and other governors will make plenty of enemies as they move money around in the crisis.

Meanwhile, I admire how the state and localities are creating such detailed plans on how to reopen schools, but of course, much depends on the course of the pandemic. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said:

Planning is everything, the plan is nothing, meaning you need to layout possibilities, options and the general direction you want to go but reality tends to pot-hole and twist the straight route you had hoped to take and you must improvise.

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Speaker of the House Nick Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio

Even as Rhode Islands state government faces a disastrous financial situation, the Democratic leadership of the General Assembly seems determined to hand a new plum to part of one of its most important constituencies public-employee unions. This is the sort of thing that happens when the public is distracted by other things.

The legislature plans to hand big disability pension payments to retired (and they tend to retire mighty early) firefighters who get any cancer, with the presumption that the disease is caused by their occupation. A disability pension for firefighters in Rhode Island is about two-thirds of pay, tax free, for life.

Many, many people, in all occupations, get cancer, and with a wide range of causes, genetic, environmental or otherwise. You can get cancer from smoking cigarettes, being out in the sun too much, drinking excessively (which can cause liver cancer) and just bad genes.

This provision, which seems to be a done deal that the governor will accept, will cost taxpayers dearly over the years.

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Metacomet CC PHOTO: Club video

Not surprisingly, many neighbors of East Providences 18-hole Metacomet Country Club arent happy. The club has been bought by a developer, Marshall Properties, that puts up, among other things, strip malls. Most of the neighbors have liked having all that lovely green space next to them and want to keep it that way. But the developers have suggested that they might put a hotel, stores, apartments and townhouses, offices and assisted-living housing there. Many East Providence residents who dont live near Metacomet might be happy if the tract were thus developed, bringing in lots of new property-tax revenue.

Maybe the neighbors who most strenuously oppose redeveloping the park-like tract should pass the hat and buy all or part of it and turn it into some sort of a private nature reserve bigger than the 52 acres (35 percent of the tract) that the developers have offered to set aside for open space. After all, the neighbors have been the people most benefiting from Metacomet.

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Brooks Brothers filed for Bankruptcy

Brooks Brothers, that venerable clothier (founded in 1818) has filed for protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Act. The proximate cause was the loss of business caused by COVID-19, but it has also suffered from a long decline in sales of more formal business/office wear, both because offices are more informal than they used to be and because even before COVID more and more people had been working from home, where its acceptable to be something of a slob. And, more generally, weve lost the sense of occasion represented by being well dressed.

Brooks stuff has generally been too pricey for me but I have fond memories from many years ago of buying their tough blue Oxford button-down shirts on sale. They lasted for years.

Tropical Storms Move North

Tropical storms off the East Coast are forming and strengthening farther north than they used to. Thats because the ocean water south of New England is warming as part of man-driven global warming. Tropical storms main source of energy is the warm moist air over warm ocean water.

Watch out southern New England!

Inspiring Words and Bad Behavior

Its important to differentiate between the inspirational value of the ideas and words of American luminaries represented in statues and other public displays, and their actions. Dont minimize the words just because of the flaws of the speaker and writer. And hypocrisy makes the world go round anyway.

Thus, while Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, his words in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence have helped lead people to new conceptions of human rights. While in writing that all men are created equal he really meant all white men who owned property, over the years his words took on a universal applicability and resonance.

We should accept the complexities of history.

On other statues (not the American Founders): Move to museums (if the statues are truly fine art and not just political kitsch), but dont destroy, statues of the traitors who were Confederate generals, etc. most of which were erected long after the Civil War in the Jim Crow era and the fraud known as The Lost Cause in the old Slave States. Change the names of the military bases named after the Confederate traitors. As for statues of the likes of ambiguous figures such as Columbus, etc., if its good art, keep em where they were. But, as Ive suggested before, hire sculptors to make statues of neglected heroes to put in the mix, thus enriching the publics understanding of history.

By the way, there are no public statues of Hitler in Germany

Another study indicates that Blue States are generally much better places to live than Sunbelt Red States (unless you really hate winter). Consider WalletHubs most recent ranking of the 10 safest and 10 least safe states in America as measured by 53 indicators. The 10 safest, in order of safety, are: Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, Utah (Red State but with all those civic-minded, charitable and clean-living Mormons), Wyoming (Red State with very low population density), Iowa (Purple State), Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

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Whitcomb: And With No Vaccine? Moving Money Around in a Crisis; Another Pension Deal - GoLocalProv

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Home » Lose Weight Safely » Whitcomb: And With No Vaccine? Moving Money Around in a Crisis; Another Pension Deal – GoLocalProv