Against a concrete coast….’’ “To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.” “Happiness is not something you can catch and lock up in a vault like wealth. Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.’’ “My kingdom is not of this world.’’ The ceremonies and rituals, many of them ancient, following the death of Pope Francis evoke the sensory allure of the Roman Catholic Church. The sounds, the colors, the vestments, the smell of the incense, all speaking to “the mystery of faith.’’ They can take believers, and people who want to be believers, out of themselves. I’m an agnostic whose religious upbringing, such as it was, was Mainline Protestantism, which of course lacks the rich theater found in Roman Catholicism. Still, many of those Protestant hymns are quite stirring and much of the King James Bible is great literature, whatever The Good Book’s innumerable contradictions and outrages. Anyway, while I lack the ability to have faith in the supernatural, I often envy those who do. I rather miss when, before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Mass was always celebrated in Latin around the world, which reinforced the church’s magnetic otherworldliness. After four years studying this “dead language,’’ I could even understand a little of it as a spectator at Masses, depending on the priest’s accent. Rather eerie to hear. My favorite Catholic priests have tended to be Jesuits (Pope Francis was one) because they were very well read, often funny and sometimes expressed a surprising skepticism, even about a few elements of The Church’s theology. And they don’t fear science; indeed, many Jesuits have been scientists. So Providence property taxes are going up this year. No surprise. And, especially with federal cutbacks, they might have to go up more in the next few years. The city last raised property taxes in fiscal 2023. Since then, of course, prices have continued to rise. But Mayor Brett Smiley’s administration wants to mitigate the property-tax hike a bit by raising revenue on such things as parking and towing fines, animal mistreatment, liquor-license transfers, and valet licenses. I suspect that one attraction of boosting parking fines is that the majority of the violators would be out-of-towners, not Providence voters. Of course, locals and others will complain. But it seems to me that many user taxes are quite fair because they reflect personal decisions (and sometimes personal negligence). Still, I’m ambivalent about fees attached to doing business, such as liquor-license transfers and valet licenses. It can be mighty expensive to have a business in Providence. Something that tends to be forgotten in the understandable complaints about sky-high housing prices in Providence. Whatever the city’s many flaws, lots of people like living here and many would like to move here, especially affluent folks eying the leafy East Side. That’s a reason that housing prices are so high, along with far too little housing construction. Much of Providence’s tax revenue goes to its public schools – 37 percent for fiscal 2025. This leads to the thought, which I’ve expressed before, that its schools might be far better run if all of tiny Rhode Island’s 36 (!!) local school districts were abolished and replaced by regional districts or even just one statewide district to be managed by the best public-education executives the state could find. This could both improve the quality of schooling in communities, such as Providence, with many disadvantaged students, and save taxpayers a lot of money through economies of scale and elimination of duplicated services. Of course, this would mean a huge change in the Ocean State’s tax structure, wherein the state’s income and sales taxes would pay for most of public education. As it is, property taxes pay for over half of public-school costs. After being stricken with cancer, Mr. Ruggerio hung on too long, which threw sand in the legislative gears. Elderly politicians all too often resist losing the ego gratification of being a notable in the public square. Of course, the scariest recent example is Joe Biden’s narcissistic resistance to dropping his re-election candidacy when it became clear a couple of years into his term that he no longer had the mental capacity to serve as president. Luckily, he did have a competent Cabinet and staff, especially compared to the current clown show. That he didn’t bail out until last July may have ensured that the most corrupt person to be elected president would now be seeking to establish a larcenous dictatorship. The relentless national interest in Karen Read’s murder trial mystifies me. Virtually no management experience. Emotionally very volatile. (Watch him on TV.) Terrifyingly sloppy about security, which makes Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and the North Koreans very happy. A fanatic, unquestioning suck-up to Trump. How much more damage will Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth do to the country? Most in the military are fearfully praying for his exit. His boss says he’ll keep him on, but Trump will throw him under the bus when he reaches critical mass as a political albatross. Trump will keep changing his positions, often minute by minute, on virtually every policy, depending on his momentary political calculations, pulsations of his id, and his desire to further enrich himself and his family through market manipulation, promoting the sale of Trump-branded products, crypto scams and so on. He declares a trade war and then backs off; he says he’ll fire Fed Chairman Jay Powell and then says he won’t – both of course in response to plunging markets and fears for the future of the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency. The stock and bond markets will go up and down with MAGA Monster’s gyrations. The thing to remember most is that business hates the sort of extreme policy uncertainty we’ll continue to see. Uncertainty leads to retrenchment. And even as he backs off (from time to time) from his more extreme pronouncements, his threats and chaos will continue to force nations allied with America for many years to look for ways to sharply reduce ties with us. Among other things, they’re looking to slash their purchases of American military equipment. That will be a big hit to the U.S. economy. China may well be the winner of the trade war. That’s because Chinese officials, operating in an orderly and long-established dictatorship, are generally far more patient and disciplined than American politicians. The extent of the damage done by the regime’s corruption and incompetence will be revealed to the public gradually. Consider such things as many citizens’ inability, because of agency layoffs, to contact Social Security and the IRS, and cutbacks in public health even as the measles epidemic spreads. And important medical and other scientific research has already been halted, and perhaps killed, by the regime’s war against some universities, with the main weapon being already appropriated federal funding. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hasn’t yet set the groundfishing rules for the season starting May 1, in part because of DOGE cutbacks to the agency, thus imperiling the finances of many New England fishermen. Then there are the many communities that will be slammed by the disappearance of the money spent by what had been, at least until recently, more than a million foreign students at U.S. institutions of higher education. The regime seems intent on scaring many of them out of America ASAP.
But the Bureau of Economic Analysis says higher education is America’s 10th largest export – referring to the money that foreign students bring into the U.S. economy. We’ll start seeing some towns and cities that host colleges and universities getting hit hard economically by the start of the new academic year, late this summer. Isolationism and xenophobia can be very expensive. MAGA propaganda leads some citizens to conflate illegal immigration, especially that at the southern border, with foreigners who are here legally and indeed benefiting America. Anyone who thinks that if Ukraine were to give up the land murderously seized by Russia, that would be the end of Putin’s drive to subjugate Ukraine is living in Fantasyland. Some state governors are pressing for the right to ban the purchase of candy and soda by Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka SNAP or Food Stamps) recipients. While some people might complain that this would be undue interference in personal decisions, the fact is that candy and soda are basically unhealthy (if very pleasant to consume), and the taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing their consumption, which can lead to such health problems as diabetes and heart disease, to be addressed by the taxpayers via Medicaid. Of course, SNAP recipients can always buy candy and soda with their own money. None of this speaks to the problem of “food deserts” – places with heavy populations of poorer people with too few markets in which to buy fresh produce and other healthy food at moderate prices. Only state and local government policymakers can do much about that, via zoning, tax incentives and so on. I had to drive to Norwalk, Conn., last Saturday. On the trip, I first witnessed a sign of American dysfunction and then one of healthy civic functioning. The first was the astonishing number of billboards on Route 95 in Connecticut advertising the services of personal-injury lawyers. (They used to be called “ambulance chasers.”) Are things that grim in the state once called “The Land of Steady Habits”? But then I saw a big and very orderly demonstration in a Norwalk park protesting Trump’s efforts to create a kleptocratic dictatorship. The major population groups seem to be represented – poor, middle class, rich, young, old, assorted ethnicities, etc. About half the people on that lovely, warm day had signs, some sardonic, some purely idealistic. It was an example of healthy civic engagement in an anxious time. Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal, and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind .
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But the Bureau of Economic Analysis says higher education is America’s 10th largest export – referring to the money that foreign students bring into the U.S. economy. We’ll start seeing some towns and cities that host colleges and universities getting hit hard economically by the start of the new academic year, late this summer. Isolationism and xenophobia can be very expensive. MAGA propaganda leads some citizens to conflate illegal immigration, especially that at the southern border, with foreigners who are here legally and indeed benefiting America. Anyone who thinks that if Ukraine were to give up the land murderously seized by Russia, that would be the end of Putin’s drive to subjugate Ukraine is living in Fantasyland. Some state governors are pressing for the right to ban the purchase of candy and soda by Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka SNAP or Food Stamps) recipients. While some people might complain that this would be undue interference in personal decisions, the fact is that candy and soda are basically unhealthy (if very pleasant to consume), and the taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing their consumption, which can lead to such health problems as diabetes and heart disease, to be addressed by the taxpayers via Medicaid. Of course, SNAP recipients can always buy candy and soda with their own money. None of this speaks to the problem of “food deserts” – places with heavy populations of poorer people with too few markets in which to buy fresh produce and other healthy food at moderate prices. Only state and local government policymakers can do much about that, via zoning, tax incentives and so on. I had to drive to Norwalk, Conn., last Saturday. On the trip, I first witnessed a sign of American dysfunction and then one of healthy civic functioning. The first was the astonishing number of billboards on Route 95 in Connecticut advertising the services of personal-injury lawyers. (They used to be called “ambulance chasers.”) Are things that grim in the state once called “The Land of Steady Habits”? But then I saw a big and very orderly demonstration in a Norwalk park protesting Trump’s efforts to create a kleptocratic dictatorship. The major population groups seem to be represented – poor, middle class, rich, young, old, assorted ethnicities, etc. About half the people on that lovely, warm day had signs, some sardonic, some purely idealistic. It was an example of healthy civic engagement in an anxious time. Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal, and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind .
