Oh, what a beautiful morning

A beautiful morning at the Chatham (Mass.) Bars Inn.
Photo by James P. Freeman

James P. Freeman: Will we actually see a predicted generational wealth transfer of $70 trilllion?

"The Young Heir Takes Possession Of The Miser's Effects,’’ from William Hogarth's “A Rake's Progress’’.

One Financial Center and nearby buildings in Boston’s financial district. The city is a national center for investing for retirement.

I was invited recently to an online seminar with this title: “Preparing for the Great Generational Wealth Transfer.”

As a financial professional -- with experience as a private wealth advisor -- I found the subject matter to be particularly intriguing. After all, as a marketer and thought leader today, I look at emerging trends -- behavioral, demographic, and technological, among others -- as a means by which to foster and sustain long-term relationships with clients and prospective clients, alike. All of the looming changes articulated during the webinar (and others I have seen on the horizon) will certainly provide challenges and opportunities in the financial advice business for both the consumer and advisor. But the changes herewith will be seismic.

The webinar presentation was inspired by research conducted by Boston-based Cerulli & Associates, a firm which delivers financial market intelligence to the industry. Cerulli projects that, in the greatest intergenerational reallocation of wealth ever, $70 trillion will be transferred between generations (Silent Gen and Baby Boomers to Gen X and Millennials) by the year 2042. That prediction alone is worthy of our collective attention.

But will that happen? I have my doubts.

Surely, retirement for today’s younger generations will be vastly different from retirement experienced by today’s older generations. But the dollar volume estimated to be passed down seems to me to be fantastically overcooked. Expect the expected. Let me give you my unified field theory.

First, it is important to look at the emerging demographic patterns for a sense of perspective.

Strength in numbers

While the Silent Gen (1928-1945) still plays a role in this “great transfer,” the focus here remains on Baby Boomers. Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 -- at one point seventy-six million strong. The first Boomer reached the age of 65 -- commonly called “retirement age” -- in early 2011. Today, 10,000 Boomers are turning 65 every single day. Beginning in 2024, however, that figure accelerates to 12,000 per day, in what is being called “Peak 65.” The pace will decline markedly as the last Boomer turns 65 in December 2029. Even more incredibly, sometime during the next decade, one in five Americans will be over the age of 65. That has never happened before.

Gen X members (sometimes referred to as the “MTV Generation”) were born between 1965 and 1980. Today they are between the ages of 41 and 56 and are in the peak earnings years of their careers; the oldest are just starting to contemplate retirement. According to 2019 U.S. census data, they are 65.2 million strong. The oldest Gen Xer has more in common with the youngest Boomer while the youngest Gen Xer has more in common with the oldest Millennial. Arguably, Gen X is a shadow generation given that it is smaller than the Boomer generation preceding it and the Millennial generation following it. And notably, Millennials have eclipsed all other generations for sheer size. So, the attention paid to them is warranted.

Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996. In 2016, Millennials became the largest generation in the U.S. labor force. With 87 million members, Millennials also now represent the largest demographic group in America, surpassing the Boomer generation. In fact, Millennials are the largest adult cohort in the world. Right before their eyes, Boomers are ceasing to be the most influential generation. More than half of Americans are now Millennials or younger, reports brookings.edu

Nonetheless, as the greying of America continues, the median age is now just over 38. Fifty years ago, it was closer to 28 and has been rising ever since.

Adrian Johnstone, president, and co-founder of Practifi, a business management platform for financial advice, was the featured webinar speaker. He delivered examples of the stark contrasts between the generations in how they view the future and view retirement. As you can imagine, there are big cultural differences between these generations. It literally is a generation gap

Understandably, then, Boomers and Millennials have different objectives. At least as understood right now.

Demographics is destiny

Boomers more or less created the financial retirement business. As I like to say it was “of Boomers, by Boomers, and for Boomers.” Not too long ago, a Boomer was likely to measure success in a retirement portfolio by “benchmarking.” For example, this meant comparing the performance of an individual investment portfolio to something like the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, a broad market index that measures performance. It was an accomplishment if you beat a given index in a given year. But defining success has evolved over time. 

Smart people began saying this about benchmarking: “So what?”

Retirement planning was more than just investment performance. Industry leaders started looking at planning in a much more holistic way. Soon, business models would build around a “process” to drive success based on “goal setting.” The thinking was that you had a greater probability of achieving your goals if you followed a process. That concept changed the mindset from the short-term to long-term. Indeed, retirement planning was a long-term journey. The rationale was that retirees should consider whether or not they were achieving their goals as the best way to effectively measure progress in retirement. “Goals” was a much broader concept than “benchmarks,” yet it was much more focused, too -- buying a second home, taking annual vacations, investing in long-term care, setting up gifting, losing weight, etc. Markets go up and go down. But if you could achieve your overall goals despite inevitable market turbulence that was the new paradigm for defining success in retirement.

My sense, however, is that this current model is beginning to change as well. While goals will always be part of retirement planning, I question if setting lofty, long-term goals (even if practical) may prove to be elusive for many retirees going forward. My reasoning is straightforward.

The youngest Boomer and oldest Gen X have had to weather three once-in-a-lifetime events that affected retirement planning and saving in just the last twenty years. (Dotcom in 2000, Great Recession in 2009, COVID-19 in 2020). Combine these events with future funding issues for Social Security, Medicare, and Long-Term Care needs, it paints a less certain financial picture. Throw in the fact that this demographic carve-out is more in debt than older retirees and the relative financial future seems even less assured for them. Goals, then, seem illusory.

Given these realities, I believe that financial planning will once again morph into a new realm. Discussions will center more on “lifestyle” (or standard of living) and less on goal setting. Maintaining -- if not improving -- one’s lifestyles is a more focused conversation than goals; it’s much more tangible than goals, too. Telling clients they will not be able to maintain a given lifestyle is much more powerful than telling them they can not reach a goal.

So, in the span of fewer than forty years, you can see the progression of retirement planning models in how performance is often measured. It began with comparing benchmarks to setting goals and will likely shift even more to living desired lifestyles. Enter Millennials…

Now please fasten your seatbelts before departure

The Practifi webinar suggested even more pronounced changes when Millennials begin serious retirement consideration. According to Johnstone, this generation will be mostly concerned about values -- such as social responsibility and the impact of their decisions on the larger society. In other words, for them, retirement planning must center around their values, with everything else, including, presumably, performance, of less or equal import.

That is a radical shift in priorities.

Additionally, financial advisors should anticipate other changes in how future generations approach retirement. They are just as compelling.

The retirement landscape will probably look unrecognizable after the last Boomer retires in 2029, presenting new complexities for all interested parties.

Surely, there will be a transfer of wealth (more about which anon) and advisors will need to be aligned with the interests of the next generation (values more than goals). Likewise, “NextGen” retirees will have crypto currencies and ESG investments (environment, social, and governance) as staples in their portfolios. They will also be more inclined to make micro loans, a newfangled investment alternative. Fee structures will undoubtedly be altered. Marketing will be impacted by implementing AR (augmented reality) into social media and other platforms. The regulatory apparatus will also look hugely different. And AI (artificial intelligence) software tools will complement human advisors. Finally, future retirees will be more financially literate, more skeptical, and more engaged (via technology) about, well, everything.

Advisors in the future doubtless must change from a Boomer-centric retirement model to a Millennial-centric retirement model not only to accommodate the next retirement class but to prepare for the predicted wealth transfer. For Johnstone, he sees a sea-change from the client point of view, too. He believes that Boomers are “delegators” of their retirement (to advisors). Whereas Millennials will be “validators” of their retirement (from advisors).

Show me the money!

Notwithstanding the extraordinary metamorphosis about to play out in a couple of years in terms of demographics and service delivery models, the real question is about assets. This past June, The Wall Street Journal reported that the great transfer has already begun. It cited Federal Reserve data indicating that Americans over the age of 70 had already accumulated “a net worth of nearly $35 trillion.” That amounts to 27 percent of all U.S. wealth, up from 20 percent three decades ago.

Still, I am not entirely convinced that $70 trillion in assets will ultimately be transferred to heirs and charities, as predicted. That stockpile of money seems high. To better understand that dollar amount, it would mean the transference of roughly $3.3 trillion every year for the next twenty years. Put another way, the total would be the combination of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion Build Back Better Act and $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Acts, annually, up to 2042.

Labyrinthine financial trends might well offset the amount substantially.

The real question should be: Will known (and unknown) massive unfunded liabilities eventually absorb much of the $70 trillion because we have simply failed to live within our means today? We have shifted many of today’s financial burdens on younger generations and even generations not yet born. The arithmetic just doesn’t square.

Conceivably, much of these assets would be liquidated -- and hence evaporated -- prior to any transferring or gifting because of future costs. Consider the following four factors: poor savings, rising healthcare costs, Social Security funding concerns, and high personal (not to mention high institutional and governmental) debt loads. It is the liabilities side of the balance sheet that concerns me. Not the assets side.

Something has gotta give

POOR SAVINGS

Despite a staggering amount of cash flooding into the American economy as part of COVID-19 relief (read about the $5.2 trillion in pandemic fiscal stimulus), not to mention an absurdly accommodative monetary policy, America still has a savings problem. (Remember food lines queuing up just a couple of weeks after the first lockdowns in early 2020? We were told people did not have money saved for such “emergencies.”) I don’t subscribe to the idea -- as perpetuated by economists, usually the last group of people “in-the-know” -- that Americans have significantly improved their savings rates. Saving is a behavioral attribute. Have behaviors really changed for the long term? Any built up savings is likely a temporary phenomenon. I write that because much of the chatter we hear from financial commentators centers on all this “pent up demand” stemming from the pandemic. Such demand, we are told, is exacerbating the supply-chain problems. A probable outcome will be all the extra cash will be spent.

Earlier this year the Insured Retirement Institute released the results of a survey conducted on workers between the ages of 40 and 73. Its findings were unsurprising but consistent with many similar studies on worker preparedness for retirement. Two key takeaways were as follows: savings behavior needs to improve, and retirement income expectations are unrealistic. The survey found that 51 percent of respondents had less than $50,000 saved for retirement. Furthermore, the report concluded that “Among savers, savings rates are not nearly high enough for even the youngest respondents to grow their nest eggs to a level sufficient for meeting their income and budget expectations.” The survey was conducted after much of the stimulus was already distributed into personal and small business accounts.

And, perhaps most alarming, the institute wrote that, across several measures of retirement preparedness, “most [respondents] fear they will not have enough income, will not be prepared to transition into retirement, will not have enough money for medical expenses or long-term care should the need arise, and may not be able to live independently for the entirety of their retirement.” A large number of Americans are not putting enough aside to catch up.

Americans’ use of retirement plans has changed dramatically over the last several decades, too. In the past, good-ole-fashion “defined benefit plans” (think pensions) were the norm. They were a stable retirement income source for millions of retirees. But many pension plans -- especially in the public sector -- are grossly underfunded today. The 401(k) was born in 1978 and known as a “defined contribution plan.” Such contribution plans were devised to supplement benefit plans but over time they ended up supplanting those benefit plans. And at their root, 401(k) plans were really DIY plans -- or “do-it-yourself” plans. The result was that the American worker became the principal source of his or her retirement savings, not a corporation or municipality. And the data confirm that Americans are not contributing enough to these plans. Therefore, it is hard to see where additional savings are built into future retirement portfolios -- unless people rely mostly upon enormous equity gains in real estate holdings. Besides, government policy discourages saving (with artificially and historically low interest rates) and encourages speculating (with greater yields in riskier market investments). This is even more outrageous considering higher inflation has returned with gusto.

As 2021 ends, I would imagine that future studies examining the impacts of all this stimulus will confirm that the notion of any substantive increase in savings and savings rates is a grand chimera.

RISING HEALTHCARE COSTS

Nearly ten years ago, in a 2012 speech at the U.S. Naval War College, conservative columnist George Will, then 69, showed those in the audience his Medicare Card. He had also previously shown it to his doctor. To which his doctor said, “That’s wonderful, George, we’ll send your bills to your children.”

Both “Romneycare” (in Massachusetts) and “Obamacare” (at the national level) largely fulfilled their aims of insuring many more of its residents and citizens, respectively, for healthcare. However, neither program did anything to bend the cost curve. In Massachusetts, for instance, healthcare costs now represent 36 percent of total state spending. It was 31.5 percent just three years ago. For fiscal 2008, the figure was approximately 30 percent.

In case you missed it, healthcare costs have been rising and will continue rising, yet few want to pay for spiraling costs. According to healthsystemtracker.org, health spending in America totaled $74.1 billion in 1970. Three decades later, by 2000, health expenditures reached about $1.4 trillion. Put another way, “In 1970, 6.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the U.S. was spent toward total health spending (both through public and private funds). By 2019, the amount spent on healthcare has increased to 17.7 percent of the GDP.” It is expected that the number will reach 18 percent soon.

Healthcare costs in this country continue to accelerate because of the intersection of demographics (Boomers retiring in large numbers) and better medicine (diagnostic, therapeutic, pharmacologic). Today, we are consuming $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person, annually, on healthcare. This is nearly three times what was spent only twenty years ago. And with more Boomers consuming even more healthcare in the future, our healthcare system will strain with greater costs. Spending will sharply hasten.

Data in a 2021 extract provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reveal that American households paid, on average in 2018, 18.5 percent of their income towards healthcare costs. In addition, “According to Medicare beneficiaries’ data, in 2017, the average total health expenditures in their last year of life was $66,176.”

Medicare currently covers nearly 64 million Americans today. And funding for the program accounted for more than 4 percent of the U.S. GDP in 2020, reports medicareresources.org. Total Medicare spending stood at $917 billion last year, and it is expected to grow to $1.78 trillion in 2031, or two years after the last Boomer retires.

Medicare, established in 1965 as part of The Great Society, has critical funding challenges just like Social Security -- but they are more immediate. It is estimated that the Medicare Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2024 unless Congress acts to implement new reforms. Barring no changes, the Congressional Budget Office projects that following 2024 exhaustion, Medicare will only have sufficient tax receipts to be able to pay 83 cents for every dollar covered. There are three practical solutions to avoid insolvency, concluded forbes.com this past March: “Increase revenues flowing into the trust fund by at least $700 billion to extend solvency to 2036 (experts typically focus on 10-year time horizons); cut spending on Medicare beneficiaries or increase their monthly premiums; or figure out a combination of these two methods.”

All of these challenges were known as far back as twenty years ago. In 2002, Health Services Research issued a study named “The 2030 Problem: Caring for aging Baby Boomers.” Few have paid heed to the warnings that it issued back then. “To meet the long-term care needs of Baby Boomers,” its authors wrote, “social and public policy changes must begin soon.” In 2021, it is obvious that these changes never occurred.\

SOCIAL SECURITY FUNDING

In many respects, healthcare cost concerns are a bigger worry than Social Security because the latter is more manageable and knowable: We have decades of economic data and demographic data to ascertain future costs. We know healthcare costs will rise but it is such a wildcard that it is difficult to enumerate actuarial costs. With Social Security the math is right in front of us, and it is largely predictable. But reforms are needed.

According to the Social Security Administration, the ratio of covered workers to beneficiaries was 159 to 1 in 1940; that figure shrank to 2.8 to 1 in 2013. It is estimated to be 2.7 today. However, when the last Boomers reach age 75, the trustees of the program project that “the ratio will fall to 2.2 to 1 in 2039.”  

And unless, in this politically charged environment, changes are made to how Social Security is funded, it will not support paying out 100 percent of benefits beginning in 2034. Barring no change, payroll taxes will only then be able to distribute approximately 75 percent of promised payments. Like Medicare, it would seem that a combination of higher taxes and lower payouts would be the most likely outcome. But that is impossible to predict.

Estimates vary on how much retirees rely entirely on Social Security as a source of income in later years.

The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) in January 2020 reported that, “A plurality of older Americans, 40.2 percent, only receive income from Social Security in retirement.” That analysis was called into question by Andrew G. Biggs, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Biggs has written extensively on retirement matters. Using different data points collected by other governmental agencies, he found there is not a consensus on the NIRS thesis. Instead, there is evidence that between 12 percent and 20 percent of older Americans rely solely on Social Security for support. Even if those figures are closer to reality, it is a fact that millions of retirees depend on Social Security as a significant source of income. So, this question remains pertinent: What would a potential 25 percent reduction in Social Security benefits do to seniors?

Arguably, in order to finance the current level of Medicare and Social Security benefits for future retirees (will there ever be higher levels of spend?), higher payroll taxes would seemingly be the quickest fix. And it is not too farfetched to reason that inheritance taxes would also rise to address these systemic problems, too. These measures would certainly eat into the great transfer of $70 trillion.

IN DEBT WE TRUST

My favorite website may be debt.org.

The site is really an advocacy platform that wishes to help people who are in debt, but I find it as a reliable financial resource. Its “Demographics of Debt” page is a helpful amalgam of disparate data points that exposes a crisis like an asteroid approaching earth. Recent updates to the page have included debt tabulations made during the pandemic.

American household debt hit a record $14.6 trillion in the spring of 2021, according to the Federal Reserve. (Housing likely accounts for 71 percent of that total.) Furthermore, last year, rather disturbingly, “The total U.S. consumer debt balance grew $800 billion, according to Experian. That was an increase of 6 percent over 2019, the highest annual growth jump in over a decade.” Borrowers have been the beneficiaries of historically low interest rates for over a decade now. This has, in my opinion, been an inducement to borrow more without consequences. But with higher inflation now center stage for an economy that has experienced benign inflation for decades, it would seem that the Federal Reserve would be poised to raise interest rates sooner than later. Such action would make it more expensive to borrow and would obviously make servicing debt more expensive, especially for adjustable-rate debt instruments. (Interestingly, Adjustable Rate Mortgages make up just 3.4 percent of all mortgage applications today; as of 2020, approximately 44 percent of U.S. consumers have a mortgage; in Massachusetts the average individual mortgage balance is $261,345, as of 2020.)

I am keenly interested in the breakdown of debts among the demographic groups. The anticipated great transfer of wealth would imply that older generations (Silent Gen and Boomers) would be relatively unencumbered by debts to allow them to freely pass along assets to heirs (Gen X and Millennials) and charities. On the contrary, the data suggest that picture less clear.

Of these four demographic groups, the Silent Gen has the lowest amount of average debt per member ($41,281), while Millennials have the third lowest ($87,448). What is somewhat surprising is that Boomers place second, having an average of $97,290 of debt per member. Meanwhile, Gen X can claim the largest debt burdens for this comparison with an average of $140,643 per Xer. Academically, this all makes sense as Gen X is still paying off the bulk of its mortgage obligations and the same may be said for the youngest Boomer as well.

It seems to me, that despite the fact that Boomers are no longer the largest demographic cluster, they will largely determine whether or not the great transfer of assets actually happens.

I do not see how the bulk of $70 trillion ever gets delivered to younger generations. I believe that future costs (for healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security) will emphatically eat up much of those assets. Boomers will inevitably be more “takers” than “makers” of the great transfer. Finally, I believe that servicing existing individual debt loads will be as much of a factor in the future as it is today. We also should be mindful of the exorbitant levels of debt at the government and institutional levels that will also need adequate funding. Time was when we borrowed for the future. We now borrow from the future. There is no escape from The Great Debt.

Years ago, I did a short stint as a substitute teacher. I would argue that the elementary classroom is a more challenging environment than the Wall Street boardroom, and higher learning more perspicacious than higher returns. One fine day I was teaching first graders. There was some free time before dismissal, so I simply asked them to draw anything they wanted -- a token for the ride home after school. It was a fun exercise. As I was circulating around the children, watching future Picassos toil away, I came across a young girl named Sally. I couldn’t quite figure out what she was sketching. So, I asked, “Sally, what is that?” She paused, and with steely determination, she said, “I am drawing a picture of God.” I made the mistake of responding, “Well, Sally that’s quite something because no one knows what God looks like.” To which she retorted, with breezy confidence: “They will in a minute.”

With regard to the great wealth transfer and attendant ramifications, we will see in a New York minute.

James P. Freeman is the director of marketing at Kelly Financial Services, LLC, based in in Greater Boston. For much of his professional career in financial services he was an officer in the bond administration departments of a number of banks and trust companies. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in any investment vehicles managed by Kelly Financial Services, LLC, its subsidiaries, and affiliates. Kelly Financial Services, LLC does not accept any responsibility or liability arising from the use of this communication. No representation is being made that the information presented is accurate, current, or complete, and such information is at all times subject to change without notice. The opinions expressed in this content and or any attachments are those of the author and not necessarily those of Kelly Financial Services, LLC. Kelly Financial Services, LLC does not provide legal, accounting or tax advice and each person should seek independent legal, accounting and tax advice regarding the matters discussed in this article.

James P. Freeman: A harbor of happiness and hard work

The Lobster Claw, now closed, with a sadly empty parking lot a few weeks ago

Inside The Lobster Claw in the summer of 2019

“The Lobster Claw... still crowded while everyone tries to visit them before they also close. We always hope they will stay open until the first of November, and it is a melancholy day when the signs go up -- CLOSED.”

-- Gladys Taber,  in “Autumn ” in  My Own Cape Cod (1970)

During the 2019 summer season, The Lobster Claw restaurant, in Orleans, on Cape Cod, seemed to be heading for a celebration of half a century of serving patrons under the ownership of Don and Marylou Berig.

But a few weeks ago, on Aug. 24, the owners posted a message on social media with this surprising news: The “Last Suppah” would be served on Sunday, Sept. 13. The CLOSED sign was going up for good. There would be no more Novembers.

The Lobster Claw was more than a restaurant. And it was more than a “landmark” -- the worthy appraisal given by The Cape Codder, a local weekly newspaper. Through sheer endurance, it was a link between the Olde Cape and the Cape in 2020. Between Patti Page of 1950s and Great Whites.

That is important because history is under assault today. History needs preservation, not cancellation. Even benign history, like a restaurant.

In a world changing so much, The Lobster Claw defined constancy, as so very little changed about it over 50 years. (The same menu design -- a lobster claw cutout -- had been used since the early 1970s; the same radio commercial ran over the Cape airwaves for nearly 35 years.

What in anyone’s life is consistently stable, familiar and friendly? That may account for part of this establishment’s success and its charm. People today cling to the precious few things that don’t change that much, seeking a kind of psychological safe harbor. The Lobster Claw was one of those ports of call. A refuge from the storm -- figuratively and literally. (On Aug. 19, 1991, it was the only restaurant to open in the entire area -- the entire Cape lost power -- as an unwelcome guest, Hurricane Bob, slammed the peninsula; the owners had obtained gas generators before the storm, perhaps anticipating what became their busiest day ever, serving over 1,000 meals.)

The Lobster Claw was steeped in history.

The building that houses the business is over 100 years old. It originally was two separate structures; they were fused together in the 1960s. Their uses were very Cape-centric. For many years, the building on the south side was a wood mill while the other was an old cranberry barn. Train tracks terminated on the northern side of the building allowing the harvest to be hauled off Cape (rain from a northeast gale would sometimes seep through an old sliding door -- used during cranberry-processing seasons --  until it was replaced about 20 years ago). Later modifications allowed for more operating space and gave it a distinctive and unifying presence. A maroon-and-white trim also gave it a warm feel. The dual-gabled roof  rather resembled a house. Families would  feel at home there. It was hospitable. That was a good starting point.

Sitting down with Don Berig over several days before the final close was an exercise in revelation. I have known him for nearly 35 years; I worked for the him for three summers during the halcyon days of the late 1980s); our respective families have known each other for close to 40 years (most of my family has been in its employ at different stages spanning over 30 years. Berig was tough, fair and quite generous, qualities that have endured for decades. He is more wistful now; nostalgia, gratitude and relief crept over his weathered tanned face and into his Boston-accented speech as I chatted with him. He was running on adrenaline, not exhaustion; the latter would come later. Still, at 81, he showed more energy than most twenty-somethings.

When asked  why he decided to enter a business fraught with failure, he simply answered: “I guess I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.”

The Lobster Claw in about 1963, on a very off-season day

The Lobster Claw has been in existence since at least 1963, when it was owned by Iver Johnson. He sold it to Russ Fletcher in 1965. During this time Berig had been the restaurant’s accountant. His father’s accounting business, D. David Berig & Co., out of Boston, served small businesses on and off the Cape, including many restaurants. Fletcher himself was in his mid-60s and had no relatives. According to Berig, Fletcher approached him to buy the business in 1968. Finally, after some fits and starts, Berig became owner on Jan. 3, 1970. The new decade began with the country still mired in the Vietnam conflict and the Dow Jones Industrial Index closing just above 800. The new Lobster Claw opened that year just days before the Beatles broke up.

The exacting science of accounting gave Berig at least one competitive advantage. Like any business, restaurants are about numbers at their core. If the numbers don’t add up  the business can’t survive. It’s that simple. So, every single day every delivery was counted and every fish and every bushel was weighed. He would only pay for what was delivered. Data, not desires, drove decisions. That was a big part of the strategy.

There was another important experience.

From 1944 to 1964, Berig’s family had owned and operated a fish market in  the Allston section of Boston. He began cutting and weighing all sorts of local fish when he was 13 at the Harvard Seafood Shoppe (now a Korean restaurant). A man who knew math and fish was off to a good start with owning his own seafood restaurant.

Don figured that  he would assess things in 1980, when the mortgage would be paid off. That is, if things went well.

Despite having two important factors in Berig’s favor, two others would lend themselves to help the business, too. In fact, they were critical factors to ensuring its success: a Yankee work ethic (presumably inherited from his father, whose formative years were during The Great Depression; he retired at age 89) and a little luck.

The restaurant would open April 1 and usually close in late October, convenient in that it by-passed the bulk of accounting season. Still, for much of Berig’s career during summer months he would leave the Cape on Monday nights for Boston and return by 5 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons to cook. It was a grueling routine. Berig was a chef-owner before the phrase was coined. He knew that the Cape’s  summer season demanded that business operate at maximum efficiency. A grinding work ethic was an absolute necessity. As Berig calmly says, without a hint of hyperbole, “most successful entrepreneurs don’t have days off.” 

But Berig was also benefitted from something beyond his control, unforeseen by many in the early 1970s: the intersection of favorable logistics and demographics on Cape Cod.

Before the 1960s, the Cape was a quaint peninsula with a modest tourism trade. Two seeming unrelated events allowed tourism to flourish while keeping much of its natural beauty intact. The Interstate Highway System was authorized in 1956, and the Cape Cod National Seashore was created in 1961. It also helped that Patti Page’s 1957 hit song “Old Cape Cod’’ extoled the virtues of the Cape, and President John F. Kennedy’s summer home graced the shoreline in Hyannis Port.

For The Lobster Claw the effects of these developments weren’t fully realized until the 1970s and 1980s. It was now much easier to drive to the Cape from points west inside and outside of New England. By 1974, the last part of the I-195 extension from Providence to Route 25 in Wareham was completed; in 1987, the final connection diverted traffic out of congested downtown Wareham to the end of I-495. A booming economy in the 1980s and 1990s fueled more visitors and more economic growth. On top of all this, between 1976 and 2000, the average working American took off more than 20 days a year for vacation (today, that number is roughly 13). Finally, as if more luck were needed, the Cape’s year-round population was growing rapidly and could sustain much new business outside July and August.

Alas, Neptune and Mercury -- Roman gods of the sea and commerce, respectively -- could not have delivered better blessings.

Business exploded.

When Berig took over he endeavored to make improvements prudentially over time. He winces now, recalling that frozen fish was served with frozen potato salad on paper plates before he bought the place. So, making the experience better for customers was a priority but would happen gradually, all within a sensible budget while maintaining a reasonable profit margin. Competition would also push those efforts.

One early competitor was a worthy one and just up the street. Within eyesight of The Lobster Claw stood a Howard Johnson’s restaurant. Opened in 1935, that particular Ho-Jo’s was already famous because it was the first franchised operation in what would become a food and lodging empire. But the destructive creation of capitalism lead to one of two outcomes for businesses: growth or death. In 1979, Howard Johnson’s surrendered to the second outcome. The Orleans location was sold to its local general manager and later renamed Adam’s Rib.

Nonetheless, being neither national or local, the Berig family needed a value proposition that could be marketed with broad-based appeal -- to both townies and tourists alike. The Lobster Claw saw itself as “cheerful,” “immaculate” and “unpretentious.” Those three words captured a narrative. Its very own credo. A daily, if not zealous, execution of those three words gave the credo a kind of street cred.  

Enter clever promotion.

From the beginning, Berig deployed a novel marketing campaign on the local radio station, WVLC (1170-AM, 104.7-FM). Instantly memorable, his two daughters, Wendy, and Karen, then  5 and 6, respectively, were showcased in radio hits professing their love of fruits of the sea and promoting their parents’ new venture. They would also participate in the town’s annual Fourth of July parade. Later, in the mid-‘80s, a radio jingle was written that ran right up to shortly before the restaurant closed. Other ads featured longtime employees thanking them for their service. In subsequent years, ads appeared in print and on television, and, most recently, on the Internet. And, as you might expect, advertising was strictly budgeted. No more than 5 percent of revenue could be spent on marketing.

Early on, this business was a family affair. If you were a repeat customer -- many were for decades -- chances were good that you knew someone serving you. That helped affirm stability and durability. Many worked there for decades. Marylou’s brother, Skip Schade, joined in 1970 fresh out of the Army and stayed for over 20 years. Wendy Berig, who could not see above the kitchen counter when she began recording radio ads, pitched in during the entire last week of operations, tending bar, washing dishes, hosting customers. Lucille Eldredge was a holdover from 1963; legend has it that she was more precise than an electronic scale in measuring servings for lobster meat (3.5 ounces). And hostess emeritus Diane Wade -- who is like family -- was a gift from the late 1960s. She only retired last year, at 89.  

A hallmark of the Lobster Claw was modesty. It set out to be “unpretentious” and lived up to that ideal to the point where it was part of the culture. In 2020 vernacular that translates to “staying in your lane.” There was never an urge to be anything other than a family restaurant. Things were kept simple. Like the décor.

Murals done by Bob Guillemin

The interior was nautical-themed, done tastefully, not kitschy. Wooden lobster pots acted as tray holders and netting hung from the ceiling. These obvious accoutrements were offset by framed aerial photos of the Cape coastline. The murals were painted by the late  Bob Guillemin, otherwise known as “Sidewalk Sam,” one of Boston’s best-known artists. He was commissioned for the work in the 1970s. Now, they are being preserved.

And this cannot be overstated: The owners prepared food and drink that was to be enjoyed, not studied and dissected -- like so much of modern cuisine today. Fried haddock would not be a gastro artsy architectural project. They served clambakes, not concoctions. The kitchen made lobster rolls of the classic Cape Cod variety (think unembellished). The restaurant  included a kids’ menu (with Jell-O). It served full entrees and just appetizers, such as steamers and mussels. It welcomed rehearsal dinner parties and parties of one. Shirley Temples  co-existed with Lime Rickeys. Fittingly, guests were encouraged to “Talk Loud, Eat Well, Laugh Often.” And they did. 

Restaurants, mind you, are not exclusively about absolute numbers; they are also about relative change.

Of course, The Lobster Claw embraced some change. But not too much. Most of the changes involved expanding customer comfort, facilitating growth. 

One experiment in the 1970s was initially thought to be a disastrous failure. For two years no one came for the “Early Bird Special” from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (chowder, beverage and dessert). An advertising boost solved the problem and the initiative proved to be wildly successful.  

In the early 1980s, the unused second floor in the north building was converted to “Surfboat Lounge.” A 30-foot replica of a Coast Guard rescue craft was built as the centerpiece bar to accommodate a surge in business. Back then one-hour waits were commonplace. (Most nights were controlled chaos but other nights were utter chaos.) The Berigs were also pioneers in merchandising; they added an in-house gift shop around the same time. Air-conditioning  was finally installed in stages in the mid-1990s.

Other changes were more subtle but just as consequential. Sometime in the 1980s waitresses wore polyester fire-engine red polo shorts but Marylou detected something wrong. The shirts set the wrong tone, the ambience of the dining rooms started to seem hurried, aggressive, even; they were also uncomfortable to maneuver in, noticeably so, by diners. Those shirts were replaced with ones with softer colors and different fabrics and in that and other ways the balance was brought back, and  a more relaxed environment returned. Over the years she also effected menu changes, reflecting the dietary adjustments of Americans. Don Berig may have been the head of the business but Marylou Berig was always its heart and soul. If Don was about data Marylou was about direction. It was a good partnership.

Just one person was given special status in 50-plus years of Berig ownership. Table number nine facing what is now the Stop & Shop complex -- by that old sliding door -- was reserved for lunch each day. Martinis at the ready. That privilege was accorded to the late Gladys Taber. She was an author of 59 books and a columnist for Ladies’ Home Journal and Family Circle. She died in March 1980. She would recognize the Lobster Claw today but probably not the restaurant industry. Consider: touch screens in place of personal touch, and Facebook pages in place of the Yellow Pages.

COVID-19 did not close The Lobster Claw. Rather, acceptance of the passage of time did. “It’s time to go,” the perennial proprietor said. It was time to retire. Facemasks and social distancing aside, the business has been functioning about as normally as one could expect, vibrant but downsized. Labor Day weekend recalled lines and waits as if were the 1980s all over again. But it had been a challenge. Always adapting to the times, the Berigs converted the gift shop to dining space this year. It allowed for more dining space and helped ensure that safety protocols were adhered to.

Conservative estimates suggest that the global pandemic has resulted in the permanent closure of 20 percent of all restaurants in  Massachusetts so far. Devra First, Boston Globe food writer and restaurant critic, believes that the industry is on the precipice. Just as problematic are grandiose ambitions and expectations for new eateries. Restaurants today, like musical acts, aren’t allowed to grow and develop. Their impatient owners feel that must be stars from the start. Further complicating matters are the tricky financial structures used to launch them. Like too much debt financing.  

Cape restaurants have not been immune from these events either. But Cape restaurants in particular have -- and will continue to have -- unique challenges. A big problem is labor. Getting workers is a struggle. There is a confluence of reasons: greater affluence on the Cape, a  weakening of  the work ethic amongst some, family and sports commitments, internships and earlier start times for colleges -- before Labor Day weekend.

Thirty years ago most of the Berigs’ staff were local people and college kids. But in 2020, the backbone of his workers were Jamaican. Years ago most staff were from Eastern Europe and Ireland. The owners have high praise for their formers employees, many of whom have become like part of an extended family. Undoubtedly, the H-2B program has been helpful over the years on hiring help. The program allows temporary work visas for foreign workers with job offers for seasonal, nonagricultural work in the U.S. (between 2,500 and 3,500 workers participate annually on the Cape in normal times). But the administrative requirements are enormously time-consuming, expensive and complex.

The Aug. 24 post announcing the final close brought a massive response.    

Local, regional and national media picked up the story. Facebook users shared stories, expressed sadness, recalled fond memories. Upon hearing the news, some traveled hundreds of miles to have one more meal. Inquiring callers asked the best time to come. Regulars came and went as usual. Diners sought out the owners to express their appreciation. Former employees returned to give their best wishes. It was a proper sendoff.

Don and Marylou Berig are tired now. In the three weeks before the final order was placed, they remained goodwill ambassadors, greeting, listening  and thanking the legions of well-wishers. Smiles diverted tears.

The Berigs look back and marvel at the sacrifice, struggle and success. There’s been no playbook. However, if anyone could come close to drafting an owner’s manual on serving several generations of diners for over half a century, they would be among those to do it.

Zero hour arrived. The incomparable Berig brand of hospitality reached its conclusion.

The hydrangeas had turned purple-rust. The winds had shifted southward. The crickets chirped defiantly. The doors closed. For good.

Life comes full circle. Just days before the restaurant closed, Rolling Stone magazine’s September issue featured the Beatles on its cover (remember, they broke up days after it opened in 1970). The sub-headline reads, “The Heartbreak, The Brotherhood, and Why the Music Matters 50 Years Later.” Family and friends will be substituting memories of the Lobster Claw for music.   

James P. Freeman, a former financial-services executive, is a New England-based writer. He is a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and New Boston Post. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, The Cape Codder, Cape Cod Life, newenglanddiary.com, golocalprov.com, nationalreview.com and insidesources.com.

James P. Freeman: Negative interest rates? Be careful what you wish for

“You OK?” -- Clay Easton, from the film Less Than Zero (1987)

BRAINTREE, Mass.

Last fall, as markets were reaching Everest heights, President Trump began calling for below-zero interest rates in the United States, a phenomenon that has beset many European countries and Japan, to little positive effect. While appealing on the surface, supporters of such an interest-rate environment should temper their enthusiasm and take caution: Be careful what you ask for.

On Sept. 11, 2019, President Trump tweeted, “The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less, and we should then start to refinance our debt.” The president renewed such calls last November, during a speech at the Economic Club of New York. He claimed that comparatively higher interest rates in the United States “puts us at a competitive disadvantage to other countries.” And, more recently, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, he echoed similar sentiments. Other nations, Trump said, “get paid to borrow money, something I could get used to very quickly. Love that.”

Negative interest rates are not normal, and they have never occurred in America.

So, what exactly is going on here?

Typically, in any given lending arrangement, the borrower pays back principal and compensates the lender with interest for use of the money. A loan with a longer duration usually fetches higher rates; a loan with a shorter duration usually fetches lower ones.

But in some sectors of the global credit markets something strange has happened -- the underlying mechanics of that understandable and long-held lending model have changed. It is the borrower who is compensated, not the lender. In other words, a lender who lent $100 with a 3 percent interest rate received a $103 return. Now, that same lender may be receiving -- theoretically, in a market with negative rates -- only $97, not $103.  

For nearly 40 years interest rates in the United States and around the world have dropped dramatically (in 1980 the U.S. Prime Rate peaked at 21.50 percent; today it stands at 4.25 percent, according to “FRED,” the economic research arm of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Both consumers and corporations have been the beneficiaries of the low cost of borrowing money. It fueled what some see as the greatest period of prosperity in America history. Causally and conversely, however, it acted as the catalyst for massive levels of borrowing, as the government for decades has spent more than it received. In addition, government -- at all public-sector levels, federal, state and local -- likewise has been a beneficiary, financing massive levels of debt at low cost. But the federal government is different.

The federal government is granted the authority to control both monetary policy (interest rates and money supply) as well as fiscal policy (taxes and spending). Created in 1913, the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) is the country’s quasi-independent central bank, and responsible for supervising the nation’s banks, overseeing the stability of the financial system, conducting monetary policy and, perhaps most importantly, maintaining the dollar as a store of value. On the other hand, fiscal policy is determined mostly by Congress with input from the president. For decades, both the legislative and executive branches have agreed to increase the size and scope of government without paying for it (deficits and debts). And tax rates have trended downwards for decades too (most recently with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017).

Ostensibly economic tools, fiscal and monetary policies are nevertheless dictated by political actors, and prone to political motivations. Nevertheless, such polices, when effected sensibly and even harmoniously, can promote economic growth and stability. Of course, global disruptions and market imbalances coupled with bad decisions have, at times, wrought havoc. Such events are mostly garden-variety downturns while others are more severe, like The Great Depression, which started in 1929, and The Great Recession of 2008-2009.

Policymakers took extraordinary measures in 2008-2009 to stave off a total collapse of the financial system and a real depression. Of particular import was unprecedented monetary policy. The Fed brought short-term rates close to zero and greatly expanded the money supply by injecting trillions of dollars into the financial system. As a result, markets recovered, and the U.S. economy went on to the greatest bull run in history. Notably, though, the Fed largely kept these extraordinary polices intact, even as the stock market rose to record highs and unemployment fell to near-record lows.

Therein lie the problems.

Some market observers have opined that the market rally in 2019 and early 2020 was a perversion precisely because of constant Fed intervention. They argue that this was a Fed-induced asset bubble. These same observers cite the central bank’s maintenance of artificially low interest rates (three reductions in the Federal Funds Rate in 2019), flooding the market with trillions of dollars in cash or liquidity (by buying U.S. Treasury securities, known as Quantitative Easing, “QE”), and what is called “Repo” (supporting overnight lending among big banks, a form of money flow or plumbing for Wall Street) -- all during a roaring market and booming economy. It was reasonable to ask, observers wondered, why the Fed was doing all this during good times. Such actions were historically reserved only for extreme market disruptions that threatened the American economy.

The Fed was not alone in its actions.

Most European countries did not see economic expansion of the size of the American one in the 2010s. Their recovery was much more muted. As a result, in order to spur economic activity, European interest rates were set even below American rates. In June of 2014, a stunning event occurred. The European Central Bank (ECB) introduced negative rates by lowering its deposit rate to minus 0.1 percent to stimulate the economy. It proved to be overall futile. Eurozone countries (and Japan) never fully recovered and economic growth remained anemic at best.

By 2019, 14 countries had sovereign debt with negative yield as markets and governments drove down rates. Today, the global pool of such securities is about $12 trillion, and includes some corporate debt. Last September, the ECB cut its already negative deposit rate to minus 0.5 percent. In fact, 56 central banks cut rates 129 times last year, according to data from CBRates, a central bank tracking service. Some market participants have questioned the efficacy of such monetary policy, given little to no economic growth as a result. And policy makers are perhaps finally realizing that monetary policy alone has its limits.

There’s a growing negative perception of negative rates reflecting the negative impact.

Still, there are other reasons why yields have plunged. Think of the basic supply-demand equation. While governments have been issuing an enormous supply of low-yielding debt there has also been an enormous demand for government securities. Most government bonds are known to be a safe harbor for investors in times of turbulence, as they can be used to hedge against all sorts of risk (market, political, etc.). Of course, the safest of safe harbors has been and continues to be the United States.

In times of crisis, global investors have always sought protection by buying U.S. Treasury securities, as these securities offered a reasonable rate of return and penultimate safety. But even in times of relative tranquillity these securities have been attractive for domestic investors, particularly pension plans, senior citizens, and financial institutions. Over time and into early 2020, a convergence of market dynamics -- heavy demand, along with heavy Fed buying and issuing of large quantities of Treasuries (supply) -- have brought yields down substantially and have made government securities very expensive. Even before the novel Coronavirus called COVID-19.

The long-term average yield of the U.S. 10-Year Treasury Note, the American bellwether security, is 4.49 percent. A year ago, the 10-Year yielded 2.64 percent. It has fallen steadily since (ycharts.com and FRED). Now, with the global pandemic, the yield recently hit an intra-day record low of 0.31 percent.

The Coronavirus has, if anything, exposed the fragility of current markets. In classic crisis mode, investors have been fleeing global stock markets and stampeding the U.S. government bond market. Yields across the spectrum of treasury maturities (3-month to 30-year) have set record lows, driven by record demand and Fed intervention with barrels of liquidity.

Just over a week into a global stock sell off, on March 3, the Fed cut the Federal Funds Rate by half a percentage point (for a targeted range of 1.0 percent to 1.25 percent) in response to the threat posed to the economy by the Coronavirus. This emergency action was the first time that the Fed cut rates for a public-health challenge, not a financial one.

And in another emergency move on Sunday, March 15, following two weeks of market carnage, the central bank set this rate to effectively zero as markets continue to roil -- matching similar action taken during the financial crisis in 2009, along with more massive QE. It is now entirely possible that the Fed Funds Rate may be set in a negative range and U.S. Treasury yields could turn negative for the first time as well. Even despite the slow lurch to negative yield, on a conference call on the same day of the latest action, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed the likelihood of using such a tool.

“We do not see negative policy rates as likely to be an appropriate policy response here in the United States,” Powell told reporters.=

Well.

As the robot in Lost in Space warned: “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!”=

No one in America quite knows how to navigate the unchartered frontier of negative yields. There is no play book or history book. Or Book of Revelation.

Some of the consequences of rates marching to zero are already apparent. One is that the government via the Fed (monetary policy) has incentivized undue risk-taking. Lower government bond yields have forced otherwise conservative investors to chase higher returns in stocks and corporate bonds, creating unmanageable asset bubbles. (Will Treasuries in 2020 become the tulips of 1637?)

Congress and the president (fiscal policy) have been incentivized to borrow even more money (under the absurd assertion that the country can “grow” its way out of debt; during the bull run debt grew significantly). Remember, candidate Trump in 2016 promised to not only reduce the national debt, but actually eliminate it. At over $23 trillion today (CNBC reported last February), the debt has grown by $2 trillion under President Trump.

Arguably, disastrous monetary policy has financed even more dreadful fiscal policy.

America used to borrow for the future. We now borrow from the future. Record low yields have fueled record amounts of debt. One unintended consequence of this predicament is that it unwittingly gives legitimacy to the absolutely ludicrous idea of “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT). Properly understood, the theory allows that government can and should print as much money as it needs to spend because it can not become insolvent, unless there is a political reason to do so. MMT treats debt simply as money that the government has placed into the economy and did not tax back. Furthermore, and rather dangerously, MMT advocates believe that there are no consequences to staggering levels of debt. They simply ignore abundant evidence to the contrary (history is littered with examples of sovereign default).

There are more tangible and immediate consequences to consider as well. In a simpler time, the bond market was known as the “fixed-income” market. For a good reason. Most bonds paid a fixed amount of interest, usually every six months. A steady stream of interest provided investors with income. Negative yield penalizes savers who have relied upon Treasury securities for safety and some rate of return. Why would seniors want to pay borrowers for the use of their money?    

Negative yield also affects banks and other financial institutions, such as insurance companies. These entities rely upon yield to fund operations. Annuities, for instance, are financial contracts whose rates of return depend on market instruments, such as fixed-income securities. And pension plans assume a certain future return for actuarial purposes.

JPMorganChase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon has expressed concern. At the same Davos event that the president spoke at in January, the head of America’s biggest bank expressed “trepidation” about “negative interest rates.” He added that, “It’s kind of one of the great experiments of all time, and we still don’t know what the ultimate outcome is.” Last October he told a group attending the Institute of International Finance he would “not buy debt at below zero.” And with a sense of gravitas, Dimon concluded, “There is something irrational about it.”   

If the government started issuing negative-yielding debt, banks would need “to find other ways to replace the income they need to generate from their deposits at the Fed,” believes Michael Hennessy, chief executive of Harbor Crest Wealth Advisors. One way to do that would be to raise fees on consumers. Another option -- a nuclear option? -- would be for banks to offer negative deposit rates to the average saver and consumer. That outcome is nearly unimaginable.

Then there is the tax code. Writing for The Wall Street Journal last November, Paul H. Kupiec  said he believed  that the tax code can’t handle negative rates. “Should negative interest rates one day become reality,” he writes, “the tax code will need to be amended.” Kupiec also says that negative rates would effectively be a “new federal tax levied by the Fed on banks.” Negative interest rates are treated as a consumer expense, and right now current law doesn’t allow such an expense to be deducted when calculating taxable income.

Finally, there is the general perception that negative yield carries: People feel poorer. They would be drained of income. They would not be paid for the use of their money. On the contrary, they may be paying people for the use of their money. Marked deflation is just as bad as marked inflation. Besides, such a precipitous drop in Treasury yields and the corresponding inversion of the yield curve (when yields in longer maturities are lower than yields in shorter maturities) portend recession. Recessions are normal and natural. Yet, with twisted irony, the federal government -- with all its extravagant intervention -- has exacerbated not only the likelihood of a recession but perhaps its severity, too.  

Joseph Brusuelas, RSM chief economist and a member of The Wall Street Journal’s forecasting panel, strikes a cautionary tone. He reasons: “Because the U.S. economy is so highly ‘financialized’ [meaning it is reliant on big banks to provide liquidity], negative rates wouldn’t yield a good outcome in the long-term.”

James P. Freeman is the director of client relations at Kelly Financial Services LLC, based in Greater Boston. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in any investment vehicles managed by Kelly Financial Services, LLC, its subsidiaries and affiliates. Kelly Financial Services, LLC does not accept any responsibility or liability arising from the use of this communication. No representation is being made that the information presented is accurate, current or complete, and such information is at all times subject to change without notice. The opinions expressed in this content and or any attachments are those of the author and not necessarily those of Kelly Financial Services, LLC. Kelly Financial Services, LLC does not provide legal, accounting or tax advice and each person should seek independent legal, accounting and tax advice regarding the matters discussed in this article.

James P. Freeman: Cape Cod winter storms -- curiosity and ferocity

“Winter is begun here, now, I suppose. It blew part of the hair off the dog yesterday & got the rest this morning.”

                                                                                                -- Mark Twain (1892)

The old logs tell it all.

“Blizzard ’05 worst on Cape in my life…” reads the entry on Jan.  23, 2005 in the Weather Wizard’s Weather Diary. So hand-wrote meteorologist Tim Kelley. Indeed, it was epic.

That personal proclamation reflects a larger generational curiosity about the wicked winter weather on Cape Cod. For centuries, the unpredictable oscillations of nature’s fury have provoked vigorous debate about the worst storm to ravage the very exposed peninsula.

Hurricanes come and go. Blizzards stall and meander. Winter’s ferocity is more spellbinding than summer’s clemency. And so the lore and allure of the Cape’s cold-weather excitement – especially nor’easters, sometimes with whiteouts -- is a rich narrative of meteorology, history and geology. And some mythology. Let the debates begin…

“A storm in the fall or winter is the time to visit it…”

                                                                        --Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod (published in 1865)

A Cape native, Kelley radiates enthusiasm about the weather like loose electricity. His  stacks of spiral, cardboard-bound, black-inked journals date back to March 3, 1992, when he first began broadcasting with then-start up New England Cable News (now sharing production facilities with NBC10  in Boston). With more than 10,000 daily reports, Kelley calls them “probably the most gratifying part of my career.” Reviewing them is an exercise in excavation: They are a captivating analog history, a sober juxtaposition against the blitzkrieg of digital noise emanating from today’s televisions, laptops and mobile phones. His entries about the Cape are particularly illuminating.

Take the Blizzard of Jan. 22-23, 2005, perhaps the most notorious blizzard in recorded Cape history. Kelley’s observations are stark and emphatic. He recalls that all of Nantucket was “without power,” “80 mph gusts” lashed the coast, and “31 inches” of snow buried Hyannis. (The Cape Cod Times reported 10-to-15-foot drifts and 27-foot swells.) Another entry reads “Benchmark.”  

In New England meteorological lingo the benchmark is 40°N 70°W and helps identify the impacts that a winter storm might have on a region. When the center of an intense low-pressure area moves directly across those coordinates in the winter southeastern New England coastal communities can  often expect a massive snow event, if it is cold enough. The Cape has been in the bull’s eye on many occasions.

“The very snow in the air had a character of its own…the snow of the outer Cape.…”

                                                            --Henry Beston, The Outermost House (1928)

Kelley brings an encyclopedic knowledge and perspective to storms big and small. Maybe surprisingly, then, he is not convinced that The Blizzard of 1978 warrants its place on a list of top winter tempests in Cape Cod history. In fact, he calls that one a “dud” – on Cape Cod. But one man’s dud is another man’s bomb.

Make that bombogenesis.

Don Wilding, a Cape Cod historian, writer and speaker, thinks otherwise. While other winter beasts certainly merit consideration, “nothing tops ’78,” he asserts. That storm (Feb. 6-7) did not qualify as a blizzard on the Cape, certainly not for the snow, which \changed to rain. Rather, this classic nor’easter was a severe wind (92 mph recorded in Chatham) and tidal event (14-½ foot tides measured in Provincetown). “It was a different experience on the Cape”  than farther west, which got very deep snow, Wilding notes.

More of a winter hurricane (a definitive “eye” passed over the Outer Cape), the storm stalled out and hit at high tide on a new moon (astronomically high), when tides would have been “only” four feet above normal. More so, it ravaged the coast, most dramatically rearranging Coast Guard Beach in Eastham and Nauset Spit (later storms would inflict similar damage on Orleans and Chatham beaches).

Satellite view of the Blizzard of ‘78

“The storm had been terrific…”

                                                            -- Joseph C. Lincoln, Cape Cod Yesterdays (1935)

That blockbuster storm evoked an existential threat that presaged future peril. Its lasting legacy was less physical and more psychological. True, its coastal savagery surprised many forecasters at the time (grainy black and white images from space were still relatively new accessories, and there wasn’t much sophisticated computer guidance). But, more importantly, it shocked most sensibilities. When the storm swept Henry Beston’s long-revered “Outermost House’’ out to sea it affected Cape Codders’ psyche. The tiny structure was named “The Fo’castle,’’ was designated a literary landmark by the federal government in 1964, and was seen as a sturdy symbol of the new environmentalism of the 1970s.    Tempests before that storm were recalled mostly for their maritime death and destruction. The shoreline was mere collateral damage.

Henceforth, the idea of coastal areas being routinely imperiled became front and center.  Advances in climate-related technology and early-warning alerts  probably fed that psychology. The ’78 monster became a psychological benchmark.

Still, before the days of Doppler radar and ensemble modeling, the most memorable Cape storms were chronicled by journalists, not in meteorologists. Old newspapers, magazines and books told the story, not the latest GOES satellite composites. And back then, words, not images or metrics, filled minds and bled hearts. That makes Kelley’s written work so compelling today.

Ironically, Thoreau, who wrote what may be the most  memorable manuscript about Cape Cod, is not among the scribes who captured the exquisite cruelty of winter on the barred and bended arm; none of his four trips to the Cape in the mid-1800s occurred in  winter.  

“A winter-closed house gives the effect of mournfulness.”

                                                            --Gladys Taber, My Own Cape Cod (1971)

Henry Beston was more daring. His eyewitness accounts are riveting. During a year-long stay at the Outermost House, in Eastham, he wrote in January 1927, “So began the worst winter on the Cape for close upon fifty years, a winter marked by great storms and tides, six wrecks, and the loss of many lives.” He was enthralled by the fierce gale that hit on Feb. 19 and 20, describing a “convulsion of elemental fury.” Later, in March, he details the wreck of the three-masted schooner Montclair off Orleans. (Her bones still reappear after a good winter thrashing.)      

Then there is the account of the terrible Portland Gale, in 1898.  Much of Joseph C. Lincoln’s work was set in a fictionalized Cape Cod. But Lincoln remembered the Nov.  26 and 27 storm, so named for the sinking of the side-wheel steamer Portland, plying between Boston and the Maine city. Storm damage was catastrophic. There was tremendous damage to the Provincetown waterfront and its fishing fleet. Regionally, more than 400 people perished and 150 boats were destroyed. Nearly 200  people went down with The Portland off Cape Ann. The exact number  isn’t known because the ship manifest was lost. Among the dead were a newly married couple of Lincoln’s acquaintance. Eerily, he memorializes, “… the young wife’s trunk, with all her bridal finery, was washed ashore at Orleans.” The bodies of the couple were never found.

The late-Noel Beyle, local author and agitator, relished winter weather. His black and white photo-essay booklets on all things Cape Cod are tinged with gallows humor. “The real test of wills,” he thought, “is whether the weather is hot or cold!  That is the true contest on Cape Cod, regardless of the season, and it’s paramount most every winter.” April may be the cruelest month, he joked. Consider the April 6-7 blizzard that blanketed the Cape in 1982. Its “north-to-northwest gale” and full-moon tide caused “severe erosion along parts of the Bay shoreline.”

“It does get a bit rough at times… to tough out all these fun winter storms!”

                                                            --Noel Beyle, Cape Cod Weather Oddities (1982)

Of course, other storms deserve honorable mention. Some bloggers on americanwx.com rank the Jan. 26-27, 2015 blizzard (named Juno by The Weather Channel) right up there with the 2005 blizzard. (Sandwich recorded 34.4 inches of snow). The Feb. 8-9, 2013 “extreme nor’easter” Nemo bore resemblance to its 1978 ancestor (it was a benchmark storm too). Three notable storms from the last century weren’t the beneficiaries of the 24/7 news cycle or social-media promotion: the Feb. 17-18, 1952 nor’easter (S.S. Pendleton disaster); the March 2-5, 1960 blizzard (record Nantucket snowfall of 31.3 inches); the Feb. 9-10, 1987 storm (a rare Cape-only blizzard; at the time, said to be the worst blizzard in 30 years). Surely, over time, their standings will be diminished.     

Much was made of the three roaring nor’easters that struck the Cape in March 2018 over the span of just 11 days. All three storms were essentially benchmark events. And the coastal erosion that the trio caused was depressingly brutal at such places as Nauset Beach in Orleans. Their formation and subsequent track was, weather.com reported, unusual but not unprecedented. The three potent systems that formed in early 2015 were of similar occurrence; they also passed near the benchmark. Storms, like history, can repeat themselves.        

Before he became known as “Dr. Beach,” Stephen P. Leatherman wrote Cape Cod Field Trips, published in 1988. A geologist by training, his expedition underscores that the Cape is a relative geologic infant, a product of the last Ice Age, which ended about 12,000 years ago. He traces its origin and evolution from “yesterday’s glaciers” to “today’s beaches.” It is exclusive real estate.   

The Cape’s location makes it a desirable target for storms. It’s on the edge of a continent and on the edge of an ocean. It also sits about half-way between the equator and the North Pole, and thus in a region where tropical and arctic air clash. Throw in a fluctuating jet stream and the Labrador Current and Gulf Stream, too. As a consequence, weather comes from all directions. Tim Kelley boasts that “Cape Cod has the most interesting weather on earth.” Especially the winter variety.

“This storm, it is true, had extraordinary credentials.”

                                                            --Robert Finch, The Outer Beach (2017)

In many ways Kelley himself bridges past and present -- yesterday’s journalist and today’s meteorologist. His state-of-the-art tools allow him unparalleled access to high-tech prediction but his old-school weather logs allow him deep access to recollection -- a key intangible that gives his on-air presentation the depth of soul. Something we need now. Even when the power goes out.

In a data-driven world, we also demand  nontechnical, accessible explanations of events that just might be beyond our ability to explain and act on. Meanwhile, there’s the age-old drama/conflict: man vs. environment. In any case, Kelley reminds us, “Weather is a balance of extremes; ‘normal’ is abnormal.”

How will Boreas, Greek god of winter, and other divines manage the ferocity of storms not yet dreamed up? For those seeking comfort, take solace in Mark Twain’s universal exasperation. Trapped for days indoors during the Blizzard of 1888 and his wife unable to travel, he wrote Olivia the following:

“… a blizzard’s the idea; pour down all the snow in stock, turn loose all the winds, bring a whole continent to a stand-still: that is Providence’s idea of the correct way to trump a person’s trick.”

 xxx

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer, financial adviser and former banker. He is a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and New Boston Post. His work has also appeared here as well as in The Providence Journal, The Cape Codder, golocalprov.com, nationalreview.com, and insidesources.com. A version of this essay has appeared in Cape Cod Life.

James P. Freeman: Hyannis's Famous Baxters succeed on sea and shore

— Photo by James P. Freeman

“As the son of a son of a sailor
I went out on the sea for adventure
Expanding the view of the captain and crew
Like a man just released from indenture”

-- Jimmy Buffet, “Son of a Son of a Sailor” (1977)

With thick fog lifting off a placid morning harbor over a pleasant Memorial Day weekend, Sam Baxter laughed at recalling a vivid memory he would just as soon forget.

Dressed for the  sun and armed with a window-cleaner squeegee on a poll, he was clearing off 18 moisture-laden picnic tables on the patio at Baxter’s Fish N’ Chips, when,  pausing for a moment, the thought struck him. “I used to do this on my great uncle’s boat,” he said, wincing. The vessel was, in actuality -- a black and white photo confirms -- a ferry boat named Gov. Brann that used to make excursions to and from Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. In the 1970s it was converted into a floating ramshackle seafood courtyard with tables and benches and docked against the restaurant. Grueling drudgery for a youngster, it was Sisyphean work. But now, smiling, with the Gov. Brann long gone, Baxter admitted, “I like this better.”

Life has never been better at Baxter’s.

For one hundred years there has a been a business bearing the Baxter name at the end of Pleasant Street, just off Main Street in Hyannis, the largest of seven villages comprising the Town of Barnstable. Today’s iteration of commerce sits on pilings -- Baxter’s Wharf -- nestled within the innermost part of the harbor that connects with Lewis Bay, which connects with Nantucket Sound. The harbor is the largest recreational-boating  port and second-largest commercial fishing port on Cape Cod, behind only Provincetown.

In fact, Hyannis Harbor has played a pivotal role in regional maritime lore: In 1602, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold was the first to survey the area; in 1639, settlers from England incorporated the Town of Barnstable; in 1666, Nicolas Davis, among the first settlers, built a warehouse for oysters on Lewis Bay; and, in 1840, over 200 shipmasters established dwellings in Hyannis and salt works became an important industry.

Furthermore: In 1849, Hyannis Harbor Light was built, marking the channel in Lewis Bay; in 1854, the first railroad cars reached Hyannis, signaling increased commercial development (by century’s end the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad had rails extending to Hyannisport Wharf, which hauled many tons of coal, fish and agricultural products); and, in 1928, Joseph P. Kennedy and his wife, Rose, purchased the Malcom Cottage in Hyannisport; an adjacent residence would later become the “Summer White House” under his son John F. Kennedy.

Today, the cedar-shingled Baxter’s building, painted in the classic seaside colors of gray with white trim, is nondescript and houses the Boathouse (a private club) and Fish N’ Chips (the public restaurant). The outside looks like the kind of place that Guy Fieri might discover on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

But that wouldn’t do it justice.

At Baxter’s, genetics carry more ballast than aesthetics. Once inside you will understand. Five generations of history sway fore and aft before your eyes. The ghosts in these walls call you back in time. They almost dare you to immerse yourself in a time that was simpler but, for seafaring people like the Baxters, very difficult indeed. And dangerous.

The long lineage of Baxters on Cape Cod extends way, way back.  

It begins with Benjamin D. Baxter.

Born on Camp Street in West Yarmouth, in January 1833, he was one of a family of 15 children. Like many boys at the time, he went to sea when he was 12. His life is captured in an extraordinary compendium entitled Hyannis Sea Captains. In 1939, author C.R. Harris wrote that the book was written as the last of the “deep water men of Hyannis” were leaving the good earth. And with them, he warned, “was going the record of adventure and achievement of … sturdy characters who were pioneers in the world of commerce through the medium of transportation by sail.” Baxter fit that description and was, by all accounts, a remarkable mariner.

Captain Baxter commanded the transport Promethus as well as two gunboats, the Vedette and the Chasseun, during the Civil War. Later, in the merchant service, he commanded the ships Nearchus and John N. Cushing. For years he traded in the East Indies. At one point, writes Harris, the Cushing was dismasted in a typhoon. Baxter “managed to sail it into a river, rigged a jurymast, with his crew, and sailed it to its destination, after it had been given up for lost.”

But it was his command of the Gerard C. Tobey for which he gained further esteem and “perpetuated the fame” of the bark for his speed records. Barks (derived from the French barques) are sailing vessels with distinctive rigging (three or more masts, having the fore and main masts rigged square and only the mizzen rigged fore and aft). During the golden age of sail, in the mid-19th Century, barks were the workhouses of the sea (analogous today to Boeing 737 jets, workhorses of the air). In 1878, Baxter retrofitted the Tobey with double topgallant and main skysails, both unusual with a bark. On the first leg of one of its last voyages, it sailed from Wiscasset, Maine, to Cardiff, Wales, in 18 days. (Today’s transatlantic crossing, with engines, is about seven days.) These boats were smaller than most other ocean-going ships and could sail with fewer crew members and  so were cheaper to operate. \

After 30 years at sea, Baxter retired in Antwerp, Belgium, and engaged in the ship chandlery and outfitting business. Then, in ill health, he returned to Hyannis to spend his remaining days. (At one time he had a shoe store in what is now the Hyannis Inn, 209 Main St.) He died in April 1897 and is buried in Hyannis.

Captain Baxter had four daughters and one son. Benjamin D. Baxter Jr. was born on Park Square, in the Marcus Crocker House. Junior became a stevedore and U.S. shipping master. Notably, on Nov. 4, 1904, he was appointed by the U.S. director of customs as deputy collector and inspector for the District of Barnstable. In these roles Baxter oversaw much of the maritime commerce in Hyannis. Given the circumstances, he must have seen the potential at the end of Pleasant Street. The family had been operating the dock since the early 1900s.

So he bought the property in 1919.  

The next generation of Baxters -- Benjamin D. Baxter and Warren Baxter Sr. (Sam’s grandfather) -- were fixtures on the Hyannis waterfront. At first, they had a fuel depot next to the Steamship Authority that served the local fleet and by the 1940s and 1950s a thriving fish market. Then Baxter’s Fish ‘n’ Chips opened in 1957, after Sam’s grandmother   had started frying local fish. The fish market closed in 1966 as supermarkets became the primary retail distribution channel. But the next year, Baxter’s Boathouse opened as a “companion bar and restaurant to the more family-friendly fish and chips half,” reported The Cape Cod Times. The only alcohol served was Budweiser on tap and vodka with cranberries. Nothing else.

Ben Baxter was a scrappy character: a tinkerer, collector and restorer. He was also a fisherman and captain. He lived in a house on the water’s edge that was built in 1898 and flooded severely by three hurricanes in 1954. Among his special talents was sailing. He befriended and raced many Kennedys, including the future president. He actually had the audacity to beat John F. Kennedy and claimed, in 1993, that he had effectively retired the Scudder Cup.

The Baxter-Kennedy relationship is as long as a generational yardarm.

Evidence abounds in the restaurant. An envelope postmarked Aug. 3, 1961, contained a thank you note from the White House and addressed to Warren Baxter. Next to it, encased in glass, is a short companion article dated Aug. 16, 1961, from Time Magazine. It reads: “Baxter’s Fish Market was standing anxiously by, awaiting the order for lobsters and fish for chowder.” President Kennedy was entertaining Lester B. Pearson, then the Canadian prime minister, at the compound.

Warren Baxter Jr. (known as “Barney,” after Barnabas was rejected), a Marine Corps veteran, and Sen. Edward Kennedy were friends and the senator would patronize the restaurant to say hello and enjoy fried clams. Sam recalls -- casually and hilariously -- one day seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger, adorned with  an apron, cooking his own swordfish in the kitchen. Just another day in the office…

Both the Boathouse and Fish N’ Chips are peppered with nautical artifacts and memorabilia. The late senator’s water skis hang from the ceiling. A buoy from the movie Jaws is tucked over a gable. And a ghost in living color eerily jolts your attention: a photo of the fishing boat Andrea Gail. Several times she was docked at Baxter’s before “The Perfect Storm,” of Oct. 29-Nov. 2, 1991, in which she went down.

Today, Baxter’s is run by Sam, now 47, and his brother named, appropriately, Ben, 54.

The fifth-generation Ben Baxter just retired from the Barnstable Police Department after 34 years of service. He bears an uncanny resemblance to his captain namesake, sans beard. They share something else, too. At their core they were journeymen. One cruised the high seas while the other patrolled the highs on the streets. You can picture them at a table in the Boathouse trading salty stories over rum and ribaldry. “Aye, Aye!”

Sitting with the brothers in their second-story office overlooking the harbor, the mood and the water glisten with nostalgia as friendly currents and conversations lead to the present. The crammed space is a tangle of wires and memories. Computers, not sextants, guide navigation and operation. The family institution reflects 2019.

While fish and chips are still the most popular items with customers, today’s menu features new takes and tastes,  such as gluten-free selections and salads. Years ago the old chalk board menu was replaced with an electronic one. Today’s offerings include an all-natural proprietary Bloody Cocktail Mix (don’t ask for the secret recipe, you’ll have better odds of discovering a buried treasure off Nantucket) and, of course, colorful merch.

Some things change very little.

Business opens on the second Friday in April and continues through Columbus Day. Words like “consistency” and “quality” are imperatives. The Boathouse is a private club that requires membership. (Two years ago, celebrating its golden anniversary, $50,000 in membership proceeds were donated to charity.) Maintenance and insurance can be crushing. (Hurricane Bob, on Aug. 8 1991, flooded the entire space.) Many of the 75 seasonal staff return each summer (Adriano, manager and chef, has been a mainstay for 22 years; he is considered like family.) And already the next-gen of Baxters is onboard.

Incredibly, not one dime is spent on marketing or advertising. The brothers say word of mouth suffices – along with word of boat. The harbor side of the building comes with a dock letting boaters  park and get food delivered to them. As Ben says, “Docking and dining is first come first serve, on Saturday and Sunday there is usually a wait time.”

“I’ve been here full time my whole life,” Sam quips, still cheerful after all these years. The brothers hope to be serving new generations for the rest of their lives, just as previous Baxter generations have done.

“Having a family-run business for over 50 years,” Ben ruminates, “is almost unheard of nowadays. Having a business located on the property our great grandfather started a hundred years ago is even more rare. It means a lot to me.” He adds, “I want my children to be proud of their name and heritage.”

For Sam and Ben the familiar refrain needs extension. They are literally sons of a son of a son of a son of a sailor.

A shorter version of this article appears in Cape Cod LIFE, where the article first appeared.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer. He is a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and New Boston Post. His work has also appeared, besides in New England Diary, in The Providence Journal, The Cape Codder, golocalprov.com, nationalreview.com and insidesources.com.

James P. Freeman: Noel Beyle, a brilliant, zany and workaholic Cape chronicler

This is a version of an article that first appeared in Cape Cod Life.

Noel W Beyle

He sold books and bravado. He relished humor and history. And he peddled curios and curiosity. He was  one of Cape Cod’s most memorable characters.

Noel W. Beyle, who died on June 14, 2017 at 76, was a writer and historian. He was also husband to Sue,  whom he always referred to as “my bride.” The self-proclaimed “Mayor of West Eastham” lived on a dune overlooking Cape Cod Bay in a home constructed of three one-story Army barracks during World War II and known to locals as West Eastham Town Hall; during the summer a sign warned passers-by of a poison ivy yet encouraged them to “pick what you want.” In his later years, he drove a white delivery truck bearing the custom-made corporate logo “Viagra Oyster Company.”

He was  also a prolific collector and seller, ranging from vintage postcards (at one point he owned nearly 60,000)) and  an eclectic collection of antiques -- not to mention calendar art, nostalgic signage and kitsch junk. Many likely knew him from his decades-long presence at the Wellfleet Flea Market, where, with a wool hat, purple crocs, glasses and mustache, he sold memorabilia by the boatload.

He was featured many times on  Channel 5’s  (in Boston) Chronicle program. In one memorable segment he was golfing on Cape Cod Bay ice in the middle of winter.

He wrote columns on local historical stories and for many years put together  the Cape Cod Five Cent Saving Bank’s calendar of vintage photographs and commentary. He was a lover of dogs (he had one in the 1970s named -- of course! -- “Kitty Kitty,” just to see people’s reaction when they called “here, kitty, kitty…”) and a philanthropist. Many local charities benefited from his quiet generosity.

Foremost, though, he was a storyteller. For more than 40 years Beyle was a local fixture who scoured the peninsula in search of a good story. He canvassed, cultured  and composed stories. Even when he sang, lectured and performed standup comedy, he was telling stories. Driving on Route 6A in the mid-1970s, he surmised once that “there is a story almost every four seconds here if you’re observant.”

Beyle seemed to many of us a member of  a lost breed: a charming eccentric.

But his qualities– an intense love of history and a playfulness, combined with a strengths in marketing, moxie and mischief -- produced one of the greatest collections of publications about Cape Cod.

From 1976 (Entering Eastham) to 1987 (“Fishy” Stories of Cape Cod) and beyond 2000, (assorted cookbooks and photo-journal texts) Beyle published 40 booklets ranging from weather oddities to the old Target Ship and everything in between the Bourne Bridge and Race Point, including Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands.

In 2011, he estimated that he had sold nearly a million copies of his pamphlet-sized books, which ranged from 50 to over 100 pages. Editions from the 1980s sold originally for under $1.  Today, however, virtually every edition is out of print and many are offered online for 25-50 times their initial sale price. Most of the work was published by the Beyle-conceived First Encounter Press. The Cape Cod Times believed that this was “probably (Eastham’s) first publishing firm.” Before “local sourcing’’ became synonymous with farming, Beyle was ahead of the curve. All of his booklets were printed on the Cape.

Today, reading and rummaging through the entire catalog is revealing and great fun.

The four booklets written in 1979 -- Cape Cod Off Season, 6A All The Way, The Cape Cod Lampoon and The State of Cape Cod -- are marvels of style, wit and personality. Beyle worked with a number of talented illustrators throughout the years, including James E. Owens and Kathryn M. Meyers. But the accompaniment of William Canty in Off Season (and others) is the hilarious literary equivalent of a Frank Sinatra/Nelson Riddle collaboration from their monumental concept albums during the early Capitol Records years.

There is a lyrical and luminescent quality to his writing. Take 6A All the Way, for instance. It is a kind of whimsical retrospective as Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” was a metaphorical one. Turn to page 53 and see the Brewster General Store over the course of over 150 years.

A hallmark of his work is that it reflects who we were and what we have become.

Beyle employed a trademark technique that creates a striking impression of time and space and emotion -- the recurring interaction of the silly and the serious; the flow of advertisements for local businesses that blend in seamlessly with pictures and graphics. In many ways they are part of the story itself. Evidence of this technique abounds in Cape Cod to the Rescue. This 1984 story about the grounded merchant ship Eldia (pages 24-25) showcases dramatic pictures of the crippled vessel along with recipes for shrimp scampi and ads for a dry cleaner and photography studio. Such an idiosyncratic presentation could have easily degenerated into a hopelessly tangled mashup. But it didn’t.     

Stylistically, Beyle was slightly diabolical, if not contumacious. He wrote with a nod to the classic Cape novelist Joseph C. Lincoln combined with an attitude recalling Monty Python and Mark Twain. ]

He inhabited a retrospective universe of black and white images and silent history, but his unique storytelling brought Technicolor of insight and appreciation to the subject matter. That may explain his appeal. His stories talk back. And laugh back, too.

He took some time in late 1979 to reflect on his methods. In an interview of Beyle by Samuel Howe in The Register,  Beyle said “the concept is simple: to make sure that some of the old and new about Cape Cod  is caught and put down on high-quality paper -- whether it takes just the right typewritten word, an old scrapbook picture, or a catchy cartoon.” He didn’t have to go looking for humor. Invariably, it found him. 

Given the efficiency of today’s digital world, the quality and prodigious output Beyle achieved in the analog world he worked in is hard to believe. He began writing in 1962 on a then state-of-the-art IBM Selectric typewriter and never looked back. He had an email address but rarely used it. He had a beguiling distain for cell phones. And Web site? -- not on your life!

Much of his success can be attributed to an old-fashioned idea: an indomitable work ethic.

In June 1979 he told The Cape Cod Times, “A lot of people don’t think I work… I run around trying to be funny -- I’ve been doing that all my life.” He was 38 then and worked 12-16-hour days. Back then, it was customary for him to type 150 or so personal letters to those on his “Friends” list, alerting them to new booklets and thanking them for their financial support. One letter, dated Feb. 24, 1982, wished the addressee a “much-belated new year.” That was quintessential Noel Beyle.  

Pat Mikulak noted long ago in Cape Cod Life that “Beyle is zany…” and that his “forte is play on and with words, so if you’ve gotten to taking life too seriously, we’re sure he’d suggest that you go out and get a Beyle of his books.” =

Each quirky one of them is worth a reread or first read in 2019.]

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a veteran New England-based writer, including as a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and New Boston Post. His work has appeared in The Providence Journal, The Cape Codder, golocalprov.com, nationalreview.com and insidesources.com, as well as Cape Cod Life and New England Diary.

James P. Freeman: Mogul August Belmont Jr. and the digging of the Cape Cod Canal

The Bourne Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, with the Canal Railroad Bridge in the distance.

This article first appeared in Cape Cod Life.

August Perry Belmont Jr. was a product of his age, in an age that needed his products.

The Gilded Age—a period roughly from post-Civil War Reconstruction (1865) up to the first Progressive Era (early 1900s) was marked by energetic entrepreneurship, industrial vitality, technical invention and innovation. Commerce was transformed by new developments in steel, petroleum, electrification, transportation and finance. Engineering advances produced the transcontinental railroad, the telephone and the light bulb. New technologies yielded elevators, skyscrapers, trolleys, subways, bridges and canals.

With little regulation and fierce allegiance to laissez-faire capitalism, vast monopolies and interlocking trusts were created by such titans as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan. 

Nearly forgotten is August Belmont Sr. Belmont was among the defining figures of the Gilded Age. He emigrated from Prussia in 1816 and later founded August Belmont & Company, a Wall Street firm. He was a fixture of New York’s high society and his lavish lifestyle reportedly was the inspiration for Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920). By the time of his death, in 1890, he left  the huge sum for the time of $50 million to his wife and four surviving children.

Belmont’s second son, August Belmont Jr., was a builder and financier. He built New York City’s first subway route (Interborough Rapid Transit) in 1904 and was a major figure in thoroughbred racing (New York’s Belmont Racetrack). He also served as a major in the U.S. Army during World War I, in his 60s. But, arguably, Belmont’s crowning achievement was the Cape Cod Canal.

In Images of America: Cape Cod Canal, Timothy T. Orwig wrote that the need to find a shortcut across Cape Cod was “ancient.” Given its treacherous currents and shifting shoals, passage around the Outer Cape was fraught with danger and known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Ever since the Sparrowhawk went down in 1626 off Orleans, over 2,700 wrecks and 700 lost lives have been recorded around the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Not to mention untold tonnage in cargo.

As early as 1623, Miles Standish, military leader of Plymouth Colony, advocated building a canal. In 1697, a Massachusetts General Court resolution called for “a passage [to] be cut through the land at Sandwich from Barnstable Bay.” Remarkably, in 1776, George Washington authorized the first of many surveys to consider the feasibility of such an undertaking. And by the late 1800s, President Chester Arthur saw the prospect of a canal as a military asset and considered coastal waterways among his highest priorities. 

Nevertheless, nearly three centuries of legislative ineptitude combined with virtually no heavy industry, made the project impossibly impractical. That is until the early 20th Century saw a coalescing of financial power, industrial power and will power. 

Technically, a crude canal  had already sliced through the peninsula. That distinction belonged to what was known as “Jeremiah’s Gutter” (also known as “Jeremiah’s Dream” and “Jeremiah’s Drain”). It formed naturally after The Great Storm of 1717 and made travel between Orleans Town Cove (fed from the Atlantic Ocean) and Eastham’s Boat Meadow Creek (fed from Cape Cod Bay) possible. In 1804 a canal was first dug over this periodically flooding lowland owned by Jeremiah Smith. According to Robin Smith-Johnson, in Cape Cod Curiosities, “It was also used as an escape route by local boatmen in the War of 1812.” But by 1817, 100 years later, it was effectively impassable.  

Belmont was perfectly suited for the gargantuan task at hand. Construction of the new canal was a personal as well as professional endeavor for him. Author and historian J. North Conway makes the connection in his wonderfully engaging book, The Cape Cod Canal: Breaking Through the Bared and Bended Arm.

While Belmont was motivated by profit—improving transport of raw materials and finished products in and out of New England via shipping through a toll canal—he had personal ties to the Cape, despite his New York roots. “Part of Belmont’s… reason for involving himself in the digging of the Cape Cod Canal,” writes Conway, “was due to his deep affection for his maternal grandfather, Commodore Matthew Perry, who lived on Cape Cod.” Perry is credited with opening trade with Japan to the West in 1854. So it was appropriate that the ceremonial first shovelful of earth marking the start of the Cape’s Big Dig occurred on June 22, 1909 at the Perry farm in Bourne. 

The sheer scale of the undertaking and associated disruption was not without controversy. Harper’s Weekly in 1908 lamented that “the new conditions which must prevail on the peninsula will cause the disappearance of the simple and unaffected people.…” The magazine did recognize that “40,000 vessels pass around the Cape annually… while only between 3,000 and 4,000 ships traverse the Suez Canal during the same length of time.” A year and a half later, the same publication  wrote more approvingly of “The Conquest of Cape Cod.” Shortening the trip by 74 miles between Boston and Southern ports, “it is in the saving of lives, ships and cargoes that the canal will be chiefly valuable.”

Belmont, like  other businessmen of his day, insisted that the project not involve government intervention. His chief engineer, William Barclay Parsons (Belmont’s engineer for the New York subway and a member of the Panama Canal Commission), underscored such sentiments before the Boston Chamber of Commerce in May 1910. “This is a private enterprise,” Parsons said, “supported by private capital invested under a state charter… asking for neither federal, nor state, nor municipal aid.” And it should come as no surprise that Belmont employed Gilded Age financing structures to make the canal a reality. His Boston, Cape Cod and New York Canal Company bid out a contract to build the canal. Cape Cod Construction Company was the winner: a company controlled by Belmont.

The Bourne Bridge was finished in May 1911 followed by the Buzzards Bay Railroad Bridge (November 1911) and Sagamore Bridge (February 1913). An engineering and picturesque marvel spanning 13 miles, the new canal was 25 feet deep and roughly 125 feet wide. It cost over $11 million to build. Over 16 million cubic yards of sand, stone, clay and glacial boulders were removed. And six men lost their lives.

The new waterway opened to great fanfare in a ceremony on July 29, 1914. Among the dignitaries in attendance was Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even President Woodrow Wilson wrote a “hearty congratulations.” 

World war and a new progressive direction in America changed everything. Just the day before the grand opening, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, leading to World War I. At President Wilson’s direction, the United States Railroad Administration took control of the canal in July 1918. After the war, in April 1919, the government filed a petition to begin condemnation proceedings to formally acquire the canal. 

August Belmont Jr. died in December 1924. After years of legal, political and financial haggling, the sale of the Cape Cod Canal took place in April 1928. The Belmont estate received a mere $4.5 million in proceeds. And based upon Belmont’s overall investment, J. North Conway estimates the estate lost nearly $5 million.

Congress gave authority to the United States Army Corps of Engineers to take over operation and maintenance of the canal. Work began to effect badly needed improvements: widening and deepening the canal, and constructing new bridges. The modernization of the Cape Cod Canal became a public-works program. Leisure would complement commerce. A sprawling federal government acted like a die grinder to temper the sharp edges of the Gilded Age. Power shifted away from unbridled titans to Washington bureaucrats. 

The new and improved canal was squarely a byproduct of progressive policies put into place during the Great Depression. Such New Deal programs as the Public Works Administration, Emergency Relief Act and Rivers and Harbors Act in the mid-1930s helped finance the $37 million cost. Several hundred workers helped build the two distinctive vehicular bridges and unique vertical-lift Railroad Bridge, still standing and functioning 84 years later. Toll free. 

Perhaps fittingly, a black and white postcard of the sparkling new Sagamore Bridge dated June 22, 1935 (the official dedication of the rebuilt canal) noted that “Mrs. August Belmont parted the ribbon.” 

Mark Twain’s novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today was a biting satirical commentary about a by-gone age. His work exposed the appearance of gross materialism, political corruption, corporate greed and widening social inequality just beneath the surface of glossy, heady progress. 

Twain actually traversed Cape Cod before Belmont’s canal became reality.  

“‘This, gentlemen,’ said Jeff, ‘is Columbus River, alias Goose Run. If it was widened, and deepened, and straightened, and made, long enough, it would be one of the finest rivers in the western country.’”

James P. Freeman is a New England-based  columnist and financial adviser and a former banker.

The drawbridge over the canal that was replaced by the Sagamore Bridge.

James P. Freeman: Questions for Kavanaugh's kickoff

1908 cartoon, by W.C. Morris,  highlighting the dangers  associated with the football.

“Football is football and talent is talent. But the mindset of your team makes all the difference.”

–Robert Griffin III, Quarterback, Baltimore Ravens and 2011 Heisman Trophy Winner

As Americans prepare for fall and football, the new political season kicks off the day after Labor Day with public hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the confirmation process of  Federal Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Little is known about the judge’s mindset or how he’ll play on the team. And during the upcoming televised stagecraft partisan Senators will likely get bogged down in jurisprudential minutia unintelligible to every day people.

So here are some questions that might elicit better insights:

1. Judge Kavanaugh, on Jan. 22, 1973, the court affirmed the legality of a woman’s right to abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Since that time, it is estimated that there have been over 60 million abortions in the U.S. It is still a contentious issue. Much has changed in those 45 years: biological and scientific revelations, legal and economic assumptions, and political and social values. Given all we know today, what are your thoughts on “fetal viability”? Is it time to reconsider that concept as it applies to constitutional law? Why or why not?

2. Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789 there have been a total of 113 people who have served on the high court. Of this elite and select group — among the living and the dead — whom do you most admire and why?

3. You worked in the 1990s on the team (led by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr) investigating the Whitewater matter. Those efforts eventually, and remarkably, led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. In February 1998, you were part of a panel discussion about the future of the Independent Counsel Statute (1978). You raised the question of whether a sitting president could be subject to criminal indictment at all. (You called it a “lurking constitutional issue” that should be “resolved so that we can determine whether the Congress or an independent counsel can investigate a president when his conduct is at issue.”) What are your thoughts on the matter today? What parallels do you see between the investigation of Clinton and today’s investigation using an independent counsel that is edging ever so close into the red zone of President Trump’s presidency?

4. What is the most important opinion you have written as an appeals judge? Why?

5. Here’s a riddle: Which of the following is considered in some circles a violation of state and federal law and hence an affront to individual liberties? (A) Requiring identification to board a plane. (B) Requiring ID to purchase cigarettes and alcohol. (C) Requiring ID to open a bank account. (D) Requiring ID to enter into corporate and government offices. (E) Requiring ID to vote in state and federal elections. If you guessed “E” you are correct! If public officials initiate steps in choice E, are such measures unconstitutional? Why or why not? Might any of these be deemed unconstitutional? Why or why not? On the night President Trump nominated you to the court, did you need to show ID to walk into the White House?

6. Since the inception of the court, there have been 91 Protestant judges named out of 113 justices. Roger B. Taney was the first Catholic to serve on the court, beginning in 1836. In more recent times, Catholics have dominated the court. At one point, when justice Antonin Scalia was alive, there were six Catholic justices on the same court. If you were to be sworn in to the court today you would be the fifth Catholic justice (joining John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor). How has your Catholic faith shaped and informed your judicial philosophy? Did the court get it right last year in the separation of church and state case Trinity Lutheran v Comer?

7. Are The Federalist Papers still relevant today in terms of interpreting and understanding the original intent of the Constitution? Why or why not?

8. In an October 2016 ruling, PHH v Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a case involving the unbridled power of what some would call extra-constitutional congressional creations, you wrote that, “Indeed, other than the President, the Director of the CFPB is the single most powerful official in the entire United States Government, at least when measured in terms of unilateral power.” You added, “The concentration of massive, unchecked power in a single Director marks a dramatic departure from settled historical practice and makes the CFPB unique among independent agencies.” Can you further articulate your philosophy on the separation of powers and overreaching executive authority? What other government entities, in your estimation, resemble those of the CFPB?

It remains to be seen on Sept. 4 if Brett Kavanaugh will fumble the opening kick off or return it for a long touchdown. But it is certain he will be brushing up on the playbook.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based essayist and a former banker.

James P. Freeman: Democrats demand truckloads of docs on Kavanaugh to confirm their disdain

Sen. John Cornyn (R.-Texas) described it this way: “Well, you might call this the great paper chase.” The senator was not referencing the 1971 novel or the 1973 movie or the 1978-79 television series each named The Paper Chase and based on goings-on at the Harvard Law School. Instead, he was referring to the process of retrieving the massive paper trail left by U.S. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Despite the fact that public hearings for Kavanaugh will begin on Sept. 4 (the day after Labor Day) Senate Democrats insist that the judge’s entire back catalog of written work -- like going back to the vaults to recover all of The Rolling Stones original recordings on tape since 1962 -- be made available to them before a vote is made in the full Senate on his Supreme Court nomination. Democrats aim to delay any vote until after the mid-term elections holding out hope that they may retake the Senate. (Currently, Republicans control the chamber, with 51 members; no date is set for the Senate vote.)

However, recalcitrant Republicans counter that determined Democrats are behaving like paper wasps, gathering dead wood not to build a nest of objective information, but, rather, to build a rickety narrative about Kavanaugh in order to defeat his placement on the high court. Save for hope, Democrats -- notwithstanding the upcoming public hearings -- are using a bold new tactic to spur the vetting process in their favor. And it’s a long shot.

They actually filed several FOIA requests.

FOIA stands for “Freedom of Information Act” and became federal law in 1967. The act, says foia.gov, “has provided the public the right to request access to records from any federal agency. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government.” There are more than 100 agencies subject to FOIA requests. Last year, according to the Office of Information Policy of the Department of Justice, government agencies received over 820,000 requests.

The Hill reports that Democrats submitted requests to the CIA, the National Archives, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security for documents “tied to Kavanaugh's three-year period as staff secretary for President George W. Bush.” Democrat petitioners have also asked for an expedited response given the enormity of the paperwork sought.

It is estimated that these documents could be in excess of 1 million pages, notes USA Today. By comparison, senators had far fewer records to review under two past justice to be confirmed to the high court (182,000 pages of documents on Neil Gorsuch and about 170,000 pages on Elena Kagan). More documents will be produced about Kavanaugh than any other nominee in history, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Judiciary member Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D.-Conn.) called the FOIA requests an “extraordinary step,” “unprecedented” and a “last resort.” The senator also believes that this action has never been done with regard to a Supreme Court nominee. Blumenthal told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Senate Republicans are “hiding” and “concealing” Kavanaugh documents.

But as Gabby Morrongiello wrote in The Washington Examiner, “Normally, records from Kavanaugh's time in the White House would be protected by the Presidential Records Act, which allows former presidents to keep their White House files secret for up to 12 years after leaving office.” President Bush left office, in January 2009.

The National Archives is indeed screening nearly 1 million of these pages to ensure none of the material is subject to executive privilege under the Act. “It says,” reports npr.com, that the review “will not be completed until the end of October.” As a consequence, Senate Republicans have moved to obtain documents directly from Bush’s legal team in order to expedite the process.

Republicans, meanwhile, argue that all this Democratic bluster is merely political stagecraft.

They recall that during Kavanaugh’s 2006 nomination as a judge to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Democrats then never demanded such a ferocious examination of his paperwork related to his White House work. Last week, Grassley released nearly 5,800 pages of documents from Kavanaugh's tenure as associate White House counsel to Bush. Already, the Judiciary Committee has received over 125,000 pages of these type of documents. And the committee is expected to release substantially more documents in the coming weeks.     

Finally, Republicans say -- professing mock horror -- that Democrats are also acting disingenuously. They contend that Senate Democrats announced their opposition to Kavanaugh immediately after his nomination, without regard for the need for extensive review of documentation before such opposition.

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Grassley comments, “It stands to reason that Senator Schumer wasn’t too concerned about Judge Kavanaugh’s record before he announced his opposition. Why is it so important to Senator Schumer now?” Further, with regard to documents already in the public domain, “How much more do Democratic leaders need to know when they’re already voting no?”

Democrats are essentially saying  that they detest Mick Jagger but need to listen to all his music to confirm their disdain.

After the final vote on the judge by the full Senate, it would be understandable if Kavanaugh acted as the character Hart did at the end of The Paper Chase novel: Where the finally tally of grading was pitched off in a form of a paper airplane -- a metaphor, perhaps, of a scoring and vetting system that should be thrown out.

The judge will have many papers from which to build his aircraft.  

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer who writes the Word Wise column for Inside Sources. He is a former columnist with The New Boston Post and The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, The Cape Codder, newenglanddiary.com, golocalprov.com, and nationalreview.com.

James P. Freeman: Applying data analysis to Supreme Court nominees

U.S. Supreme Court Building.

Last autumn, techrepublic.com concluded, with its feature “How big data won the 2017 World Series,” that America’s pastime was more the cold science of analytics than the graceful art of, say, a George Springer swing. This fall, progressives hope that big data will win the day to thwart Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court.

When the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game was published in 2003, it acted as a catalyst for Major League baseball teams to “start taking data-based decision making more seriously.” The employment of metrics was also rooted in cost-effective ways to win. The prize was the Fall Classic.

Baseball, already known for its rich sediment of data, hired experts to “make data-driven decisions based on predictive analytics.” Perhaps the biggest manifestation of data predicting outcomes is the use of “the shift” — a technique where a coach will move his defensive players to one side of the field knowing, in advance, that a hitter will put a ball into play there a statistically significant number of times. (Shifts increased from 2,350 in 2011 to 28,130 in 2016). TechRepublic notes that teams with a “prowess with data” — the once moribund Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros — are recent World Series champions.

Some now believe that these methodologies can be applied to Supreme Court nominees.

Data for Progress is, in its own words, “the think tank for the future of progressivism.” Claiming that “a new generation of progressives is rising,” it wants to be the Elias Baseball Analyst for left-leaning causes. Using scientific techniques to support progressive activists and issues, it also aims to “challenge conventional wisdoms about the American public that lack empirical support.”

Areas of its research include: “Multilevel Regression and Poststratification analysis,” to provide “reliable sub-national opinion estimates on progressive issues;” “deep learning textual analysis of media;” and “data mining and analyzing social media data for politicians and pundits to find interesting trends and patterns.”

Pitchers and catchers beware!

In another sign of the miniaturization and mobilization of complex matters on social media, Data for Progress prefers to distribute its research over the internet because “data can only help interpret the world.” (Many credit its co-founder, Sean McElwee, with inspiring the “Abolish ICE” movement based upon a tweet he posted in early 2017.)

Today, however, McElwee is focusing on the Supreme Court. And his opposition to Judge Kavanaugh.

Data for Progress believes that a Kavanaugh seat on the high court would set back progressive causes in areas such as voting rights, Medicaid, corporate pollution, unions, gerrymandering, and, most urgently, abortion rights.

A key component of its approach is that ideological implications can be measured. Data for Progress uses a political science methodology called Judicial Common Space, which seeks to answer, among other things, why courts make the decisions they do. Judicial politics, like a Chris Sale slider, can be measurable and explainable. Or can it?

Justices are “scored” or measured in similar ways that members of Congress are measured for their roll call votes. So, Justice Sonia Sotomayor appears on the left of the spectrum and Justice Clarence Thomas appears on the right. But, like all computer modeling, how Kavanaugh fits into the equation — hence, how he would affect the ideological balance of the court — is entirely hypothetical.

Data for Progress suggests that judicial reasoning is necessarily a linear process; past judicial decisions are a measurable and definitive predictor of future decisions. This in turn determines where judges stand on an ideological plane.

For Data for Progress — even if its quantitative analysis stands close scrutiny — prospective liberal justices are acceptable and conservative justices are not. Big data is now political fodder for modern progressives.

But history may prove McElwee and Data for Progress wrong.

In a recent piece for The Nation, McElwee argues that “Democrats Must Stop Pretending the Supreme Court is Apolitical.” He worries about the looming “threat” of a Supreme Court that could “reverse progressive legislative accomplishments.” When did Democrats stop believing the court was apolitical?

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, attempted a ''court-packing” plan. His motivations were entirely political. He intended to shape the ideological balance of the court so that it would cease striking down his New Deal legislation. And in 1987, Democrats launched a full partisan attack on the nomination of Robert Bork to the high court. The conservative jurist was soundly defeated over what conservatives believe were purely political motivations. There is a long history of partisan battles in picking Supreme Court justices.

And Data for Progress’ fears of the court — and, by extension, the nation — being held hostage by conservative justices for years to come may be mistaken. In fact, big data may prove Data for Progress to be just another political lever of the progressive organ. And render their rantings moot.

Fivethirtyeight.com concluded three years ago that “Supreme Court Justices Get More Liberal As They Get Older.” The “ideological drift” of justices is cited in a 2007 academic paper. The authors of the study, using scores based on data from the Supreme Court Database, write that: “Drift to the right or, more often, the left is the rule, not the exception.”

A 2005 New York Times expose, “Presidents, Picking Justices, Can Have Backfires,” should be a reminder to Data for Progress that, despite a wealth of data, Supreme Court justices’ ideology is malleable and subject to change. As President Eisenhower learned of  Chief Justice Earl Warren and President George H.W. Bush learned of Justice David Souter.

Whatever their political persuasions, Americans are now keeping score in two spectator sports because of big data.

James P. Freeman is a former banker and now a New England-based essayist. This piece first appeared in Inside Sources.

James P. Freeman: McConnell the central figure in reshaping the Supreme Court

Perched high above the fray, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.Ky.) has comported himself in going about the people’s business like that of the reserved Barred Owl: observing keenly, roosting quietly, and acting decisively. Such attributes have allowed McConnell — a tactical and strategic master of parliamentary maneuvers — to calmly consolidate power, particularly with regard to shaping Supreme Court appointments.

President  Trump may have nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but Kavanaugh’s likely confirmation to the court this year will be because of something McConnell understood almost five years ago.

In November  2013, at the urging of then-Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), Democrats — voting along party lines — changed the rules of the Senate. This became known as “the nuclear option.” As The Atlantic then noted, under the new rules, “presidential nominees for all executive-branch position — including the Cabinet — and judicial vacancies below the Supreme Court could advance with a simple majority of 51 votes.”

(The rules for legislation were untouched, but the nuclear fallout was that the 60-vote threshold for overcoming a filibuster on nearly all nominations was dead; the net effect is that the minority party is nearly powerless to stop these nominations.)

Furious, then-Minority Leader McConnell issued a stern and prescient warning to Democrats on the Senate floor: “You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think.”

McConnell could not have imagined that members of his party — and, by extension, conservatives — would soon be the beneficiaries of his prophetic words.

After the 2014 mid-term elections, Republicans regained control of the Senate. The significance of this became apparent upon the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in February 2016. An intellectual heavyweight, he was, by all accounts, the staunchest conservative on the court. And Republicans rightly feared that President  Obama would not replace Scalia with another conservative. They were correct.

Obama nominated Appeals Court Judge Merrick B. Garland, a centrist, to the Supreme Court in March 2016. He was indeed no Scalia. The Washington Post wrote that Obama figured that “the highly regarded jurist might blunt some of the expected political attacks and ultimately embarrass Senate Republicans into dropping their fierce opposition to the nomination.” Obama badly miscalculated Republican judicial motivations.

In a stroke of bold politics, McConnell imposed a blockade of the Garland nomination, letting it languish — without a hearing or a vote — until after the 2016 presidential elections. The action, or inaction, denied Obama the chance to replace Scalia. If anything, it proved a successful delaying tactic.

McConnell could hardly have foreseen a Trump (Republican) presidency but he knew that even if Republicans fell back into minority status in the Senate and Democrats retained the presidency after the elections, he could engineer a filibuster of Garland or another Supreme Court nominee. (Recall that the nuclear option did not apply to nominees of the high court.)

But Trump won, and Republicans still controlled the Senate.

Fulfilling a promise to nominate conservative justices, the new president nominated Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch in early 2017. Expressing their displeasure, Democrats in the Senate threatened to filibuster the conservative jurist, an option still available to them.

While Reid went nuclear in 2013, McConnell went thermonuclear in 2017.

Republicans in the Senate changed the rules whereby the nuclear option would also apply to Supreme Court nominees, not just lower-court nominees. (Democrats had threatened a similar change before they unexpectedly lost the 2016 election). Last month, The New York Times reminded its readers that “simple majority approval for considering and confirming Supreme Court nominations is the standing policy of the Senate now.”

While both parties have tinkered with procedural changes in the Senate in the short run, Republicans are using it to their advantage for the long run.

The Boston Globe recently reported that Trump (guided by Republicans) has already appointed 44 judges since taking office — “including more appellate judges than any president in American history at this point in his tenure.” He has another 88 nominees currently pending before the Senate. “If,” The Globe asserts, “Trump is able to fill just the current vacancies alone, he will be responsible for installing more than one-fifth of the sitting judges in the United States.”

Barring a political catastrophe for them this November, McConnell and the Republicans will likely retain power in the Senate. Consequently, they will continue controlling Supreme Court nominations and other federal court nominations. At least for two more years.

The retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy means that there are no longer any justices serving on the Supreme Court who were nominated by President  Reagan. However, should just one more justice leave the high court before the 2020 presidential elections, Trump’s changes to the composition of the court would rival those made in the Reagan era.

History will show that McConnell also played a critical role in reshaping the court for generations to come.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based essayist. This piece first ran in Inside Sources.

James P. Freeman: Those scary 'stans' of pop music

Eminem, who boosted the 'stan' sentiment with his song "Stan'' in 2000.

Gentle reader, are you consumed — in thought, word or deed — by your favorite actor, athlete or rock star? If yes, you’re considered a “stan.”

In today’s celebrity-obsessed culture, stan is a fitting portmanteau of stalker and fan (derived from fanatic or the Latin adjective, fanaticus). According to en.oxforddictionaries.com, it is defined as “an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.” And given modernity’s looseness with language and linguistics, the word may be used as a noun (i.e., “Kylie Jenner has millions of stans”) or a verb (i.e. “millions stan for Kendall Jenner”).

Many point to the song “Stan” by rapper Eminem (released as a single in 2000), about the warped idolatry of a disturbed fan of the Slim Shady himself, as giving popularity to the stan sentiment. Still others point to rapper Nas who, in 2001’s “Ether,” intentionally used the word for what became its popular connotation.

We’ve come a long way from the delirium of Frank Sinatra’s rabid 1940s “Bobby Soxers,” perhaps the earliest stans.

There was “Beatlemania” in the 1960s. Later, in the 1980s, young Madonna enthusiasts were known as “Wannabes.” Before the death of Jerry Garcia, in 1995, for decades legions of loyalists (“Deadheads”) lived a lifestyle synonymous with members of The Grateful Dead. Now we have “Sheerios” (Ed Sheeran), “Finaddicts” (for fans of the Jaws franchise), “Llamas” (Cowboy Junkies), and “Streepers” (Meryl Streep). And closer to home: “Red Sox Nation” (Boston Red Sox).

Social media — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit — have given rise to a weird mass intimacy (“like me” and “follow us;” “hearted”) between object (celebrity) and subject (stan). And vice versa.

This twisted relationship has spawned the professional fan. Part mystic. Part hysteric. Part parasitic.

And the new digital symbiosis practically requires that stans don the same clothes, drink the same Armand de Brignac, and download the deep-cut track. But don’t dare disagree or think differently. Or become a detractor. Just ask Wanna Thompson.

The New York Times recently reported that she incurred the wrath of the stans of Nicki Minaj (known as, appropriately, “Barbz”) and the artist herself (via a practice known as celebrity “clap back” — she has 20.2 million Twitter followers) when Thompson (a freelance writer with a mere 14,000 followers at the time) wondered if the singer would “put out mature content?” That simple question produced a hailstorm of scorn and derision toward Thompson.

It’s fun to imagine what stans’ reaction would be today if John Lennon posted on Snapchat that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus now.”

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based columnist. This piece first ran in Inside Sources.

James P. Freeman: Aided by the U.S., China's hybrid economy looks to continue to surge

As Americans escaped for burgers, barkers and beer over  the Fourth of July, they were not only celebrating the nation’s independence. Some well-informed ones might  also have been celebrating that the trade war with China had not arrived in their backyards before the fireworks finale. Surely, they are mindful that 99 percent of the fireworks they set off came directly from China.

Maybe President  Trump didn’t get the memo that imports of fireworks dwarfed exports by a ratio of more than 40 to 1. As NPR amusingly noted, this “exploding trade deficit” has not prompted the kind of protectionist crackdown that the president has directed at other industries. At least not yet.

As Trump lights his own bottle rocket of tariffs targeted at China (so far, 25 percent on $50 billion out of $636 billion in total exchange of goods), with threats he may use heavier artillery -- and with China countering, dollar for dollar -- it is particularly timely to revisit a recurring but relevant question: Can China’s economy continue to flourish moving forward with the hybrid (capitalistic/highly controlled) model that the government has implemented?

The answer is a resounding Yes!

Last March, Yukon Huang, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote in The New York Times that “China has never been a normal economy.” He believes that unbalanced growth is a sign of successful industrialization; surging debt is a marker of financial deepening, rather than profligate spending; and, perhaps surprisingly, corruption has spurred, not stalled growth. Future success, he allows, hinges “on whether the Chinese government can strike the right balance between state intervention and market forces.”  Huang also says China’s remarkable progress can be credited in part to its leaders’ willingness “to set aside communism for pragmatism.”

Cary Huang, writing for the South China Morning Post last fall, as the centennial of Lenin’s Russian Revolution quietly passed, says that China is now more a “Leninist capitalist state” than a “Marxist socialist one.” Even as China is among the most exploitative nations in the world, (income and wealth inequalities, lack of political and other freedoms), “it is all the more ridiculous to call an economy, the world’s second-largest, ‘socialist’ when 70 percent of it is privately owned, when it hosts the world’s largest army of billionaires, or when it grapples with issues such as a debt crisis, stock market woes and a real estate bubble,” argues Huang.

The creation and embrace of this hybrid capitalism -- state capitalism -- is not entirely new. However, China has fostered (and to a lesser extent Malaysia and Russia also have) the rise of what The Economist called in 2012 a new kind of “hybrid corporation.” It behaves like a private-sector multinational but is backed by the state.

These new economic and corporate alloys of conventional capitalism might confound certain world leaders (and perhaps distract the one with Twitter Tourette’s syndrome) but China’s leaders intend to continue policies that have reaped rewards.

As Americans look to the next quarter, the Chinese look to the next quarter century.

Earlier this year, China’s Communist party cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to rule for life. He has been president since 2012 but the move is seen as a means to consolidate his power and continue his successful policies (not to mention his predecessors'). Richard McGregor, senior fellow at the Lowry Institute, told The Financial Times this past February, “I don’t see any indication of a faster pace of what Westerners see as economic reforms and what Chinese see as tinkering with their hybrid economic model.”

China was the world’s largest economy  until it was displaced by Great Britain as the Industrial Revolution swept through Europe. China (aka the Middle Kingdom) then fell behind -- remaining agrarian and poor. But since economic reforms were implemented in 1978, China has roared backed. From that period until 2014, its annual GDP growth averaged 10 percent; now it’s closer to 6.8 percent (U.S. first-quarter annualized GDP growth was calculated at 2.2 percent). China has raised per capita GDP almost 49-fold, from 155 current U.S. oollars (in 1978) to 7,590 U.S. dollars (in 2014), lifting 800 million people out of poverty.

It is expected that in 10 to 20 years this demographic will become a massive middle class.

As China shifts emphasis from heavy industry toward health care, technology, education and entertainment to accommodate a consumer-oriented economy, (and self-reliance) it already is the world’s largest exporter, according to weforum.com.  17 percent of its goods and services head to the U.S., 15.9 percent to the European Union, 15.5 percent to Hong Kong and 6.4 percent to Japan. (As President Trump further agitates trade with North American, Asian and European allies, China will absolutely exploit such frictions.) China is expected to become the world’s largest economy once again by 2030.

With President Trump considering a military Space Force, the Chinese are wisely filling space on earth. In 2013 China launched the Belt and Road Initiative. Having underwritten $900 billion in loans already, China aims to modernize the infrastructure of the ancient Silk Road, linking Europe and Eurasia. With 71 countries participating -- from Poland to Pakistan -- it also promises to revive ex-Soviet states, according The Economist. And strategically important Turkey, where over 1,000 Chinese firms operate.

But America still factors into China’s long-term prosperity.  As long as America runs large debts (everything suggests that it will continue) China prospers. It owns $1.19 trillion, or nearly 20 percent, of U.S. debt held by foreign countries. Kimberly Amadeo wrote this past May in thebalance.com that this helps China’s growth by keeping its currency weaker than the dollar. This also keeps its products (hence exports) cheaper than U.S. goods. 

As America’s largest foreign creditor, China is able to exert more political and economic influence over America as it unwittingly finances China’s grand hybrid experimentations.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer. He is a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and The New Boston Post. 

James P. Freeman: Curling toward GOP victory

Curling in Toronto in 1909.

“Cry out full-throated and unsparingly,

Lift up your voice like a trumpet blast…”

                                                --Isaiah 58:1a

If voters mean what they say -- constantly expressing dissatisfaction with the current hyper-partisan political class and calling for its removal -- they could convert hyper-pandemonic emotion into action by dismissing Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren in 2018. An able replacement would be Beth Lindstrom. She is the saucer that could cool the Senate’s tea. And, maybe, ferocious minority factions.

If this is, as we are reminded daily, the Year-of-The-Woman in American politics, Lindstrom, a moderate Republican, counters the argument that her party is comprised of old white men, tired and empty. And should she win her party’s nomination to unseat Warren this autumn, her candidacy removes one stone from the hand holding the political rocks  that Warren likes to throw: the progressive granite of gender politics.

If you are Warren, you must hope that Lindstrom is not your challenger in November. For Lindstrom, personable and perspicacious, makes the improbable seem possible -- Warren’s wicked claw paralyzed; the screech silenced; the progressive oppression lifted.

For this column, appearing sturdy, cheerful and thoughtful over English Breakfast, fittingly, at a Boston hotel, the single biggest take-away is that Lindstrom is serious and compelling.

“A strong economy,” she says, is still the biggest issue for Massachusetts residents. Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency stock markets have anticipated the unbridling of America’s economic might. Higher wages, bigger bonuses and lower taxes (mere crumbs to likes of Warren and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) are filtering into wallets and purses. A recent national poll found that the second and third most important issues to respondents were, respectively, the economy and taxes. (Healthcare ranked number one; a relative non-issue in Massachusetts since Romneycare in 2006.) This bodes well for Lindstrom’s focus on economics.

Though never elected to office, Lindstrom brings just enough public-sector experience (executive director of Massachusetts State Lottery (1997-1999); director of Consumer Affairs in Gov. Mitt Romney’s cabinet -- overseeing regulatory agencies including banking, telecommunications, energy, insurance and licensure (2003-2006)) and private-sector experience (a founder and owner of small businesses) to understand the complexities of modern government.

As President Calvin Coolidge noted nearly a century ago, “the chief business of the American people is business.” But today much of America’s business is government. Lindstrom’s skill-sets and her MBA degree, therefore, will come in handy as Trump steers his massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure initiative into a hybrid of public-private partnerships (with lots of still-unknowns).

In January, Lindstrom launched a Business Growth Tour, intended to “collaborate with Massachusetts business owners on the steps that can be taken to help them grow and expand.” Lowering costs and reducing regulation present a “fair opportunity,” she insists. Small business owners make a big voting bloc. In 2016, there were nearly 640,000 small businesses in Massachusetts. They employed 1.4 million workers, representing nearly 47 percent of all  workers in the commonwealth. And nearly 90,000 of these businesses are minority-owned.

Warren, meanwhile, defends her questionable lineage, and her support of Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- both saturated with excessive regulations. Do small-business proprietors think that  there are too few regulations?

Perhaps unintentionally, Lindstrom’s presence is that of a restorer of Rockefeller Republicanism -- to frustrate today’s right-wing pathology; and repairer of the breach -- the chasm between professional politicians and everyday citizens. She speaks in tones of incrementalism, not extremism.

For the doubters -- those wondering if she knows how to win in liberal Massachusetts -- Lindstrom managed Scott Brown’s successful Senate campaign eight years ago. The inconceivable to the achievable.

Lindstrom senses a tremulous electorate in 2018, like what she felt in 2010. But today it’s harder to define; and it’s not yet articulated into a slogan. (In 2010, Brown ran to capture “the people’s seat.”) She may be forgiven for defining herself as an abstraction: “A common-sense Republican.” But what does that mean? Standard definition is yesterday’s technology and yesteryear’s candidacy. It will need some high-def refinement before Warren pounces. (In 2012, incumbent Brown called himself a “Scott Brown Republican,” letting Warren ill-define him.)

Her fractured party and its national leaders pose problems, too.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky bemoans Republicans embracing Trump’s $1.5 trillion in new debts (reminiscent of Obama-era levels) and projections for unbalanced budgets for the next decade. Ironically, Rand joined Warren in opposing the recent “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018,” which increases the debt ceiling and spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two years. Lindstrom believes that the GOP must remain “the party of fiscal responsibility” and determine whether spending that is “necessary versus nice.” She favors congressional term-limits and a presidential line-item veto to force the government to think long-term, not each election cycle.

Like many Americans, she winces at the president’s “tone, temperament and tweeting” but thinks that more Americans will continue reaping the benefits of Trump’s economic policies by this year’s mid-terms. And, like many Americans, she supports his tax cuts; she expects that higher growth rates (not the paltry, so-called “new normal” touted after the Great Recession) will “temper higher debts and deficits.”

Talk of voters abandoning the GOP en masse in November may be premature. Just this month, a Politico/Morning Consult poll showed Trump’s approval rating equaling the percentage of voters who disapprove of his job performance (47 percent). And on a “generic congressional ballot” basis, the same poll found that the GOP now enjoys a one-point advantage over Democrats, as of Feb. 12. Will Americans reward his policies and ignore his personality this fall?\  

Still, while Trump may be the elephant in the room, he is not on the ballot in 2018.

Fortunately for Lindstrom, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker will be on the ballot. Baker, like Lindstrom, is a moderate. And more importantly, he is also the most popular high-level politician in Massachusetts. A January WBUR poll found that 74 percent of Massachusetts voters approve of the job that Baker is doing. That means  that he is more popular than Warren, and Lindstrom hopes  that his coattails will carry Republican votes down ballot.

(Incidentally, the same poll found that: “The one somewhat positive number for Trump is that a plurality of Massachusetts voters (43 percent) say the president has been good for the overall economy.”)  

For the next few months, Lindstrom looks to build her brand. Currently fewer than 8 percent of Massachusetts residents know who she is; Warren is recognized by nearly 95 percent of residents. That’s a challenge also facing her principal Republican opponents, state Rep. Geoff Diehl and former hedge-fund executive John Kingston. But all three Republicans are confident that they will meet April’s GOP state convention threshold to appear on September’s primary ballot. It’s still early.

Voters have been watching more Olympics than politics lately. Nevertheless, they may soon understand that Lindstrom’s campaign is analogous to the winter sport of curling, which requires resistance, patience and persistence to win. Whereas Diehl and Kingston are the two-man luge. Exciting and daring, certainly, but susceptible to crashing.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.

James P. Freeman: R.I.'s moderate Democrat Gina Raimondo a very consequential governor

The Slatersville Stone Arch Bridge, in  the old Blackstone River Valley industrial zone.

For more than 200 years water has flowed underneath a bridge in North Smithfield, in the Blackstone Valley corridor of the smallest state in the Union, which helped usher in  the American Industrial Revolution. The Slatersville Stone Arch Bridge, the oldest masonry bridge in Rhode Island -- built in 1855 to replace the original wooden structure and subsequently listed on the National Register of Historic Places – was for decades neglected and structurally deficient. Now it’s undergoing a complete rehabilitation at a $13.5 million cost. The bridge is symbolic of the state’s rise and fall. And now its revival.

Much of that effort is being spearheaded by Gov. Gina Raimondo.

Amidst the partisan tempest -- The Great Political Uncentering -- Raimondo, 46, the state’s first female executive, stands in defiance of political trends. And recent history. She’s seeking re-election this year, after a record of public service that has been a series of calculated experiments. She is arguably the nation’s most consequential reform-minded, results-oriented politician. She is resuscitating a nearly extinct species -- Truman Democrats. She is a pro-growth moderate and has handled heavy turbulence.

For an insular and provincial state -- where coffee milk is the official drink, Catholic Mass is still televised on Sunday mornings and, unbelievably, New England Cable News is not offered for viewing by the largest telecommunications provider -- the last decade was particularly cruel. Nothing went as planned and many plans went for nothing.

In the wake of The Great Recession of 2008-2009, Rhode Island’s already corroded economy saw unemployment spike close to 12 percent while housing prices plunged 27 percent. In 2010, after luring it away from Massachusetts, the state financed Curt Schilling’s scandal-plagued video-game start-up, 38 Studios, with $75 million in bonds before the company went bankrupt, two years later. And in 2011, sparking national headlines, Central Falls, a city with a population of 19,376, covering an area a little over a square mile (more densely populated than Boston), filed for bankruptcy, raising concerns that other heavily encumbered municipalities (including the capital, Providence) might follow suit.  

Residents probably needed a professional psychologist to lead them out of their depressed state.

Instead, they chose a thoughtful capitalist. Raimondo -- a Rhode Island native with degrees in economics (Harvard), sociology (Oxford) and law (Yale), and co-founder of the state’s first venture-capital firm, Point Judith Capital -- was elected state treasurer in 2010. So began the secular resurrection.

Raimondo immediately understood a law of modern politics that most public officials refuse to acknowledge or act upon: Demographics is destiny.

Overly generous and ambitious, yet massively underfunded, pension assurances to Rhode Island’s aging population coupled with a rapidly hemorrhaging fiscal condition (exacerbated by the recession) were certain to wreak financial havoc. A series of cascading municipal failures would likely render the state itself technically insolvent. And that would be unchartered territory (a state declaring bankruptcy is not a contingency properly addressed under current bankruptcy laws). Raimondo foresaw that imminent horror.

So, the treasurer did something astounding. She conducted town-hall-style meetings exposing the severity of the crisis. And she told the unions and pensioners something that  few Democrats ever say to those loyal constituents: “No!”

She engineered an overhaul by suspending cost-of-living increases and raising the retirement age for retirees, pointing the system towards solvency. Raimondo also understood state law. While many state pension systems are determined by contract (making modifications more difficult under constitutional law), Rhode Island’s, by statute, lets the government, if so inclined, make changes via swift legislative maneuvering, not protracted judicial wrangling.

It worked.

Predictably, though, public-sector unions fulminated and sued. A September 2014 Washington Post editorial noted, “In the face of ferocious opposition from labor, she explained the plain budgetary impossibility of maintaining pensions at the levels promised by politicians in Providence.”

Still, she was able to win the governorship that year with 41 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Later, in 2015, she negotiated legal settlements that preserved the reforms in the face of continued legal opposition. Her efforts are proof that pension reforms can be administered and may prove to be a model for other states suffocating under mountains of indebtedness.  

Just after Raimondo was elected governor (the first Democrat in over 20 years to win the office despite Rhode Island being heavily Democratic) and after the national Republican congressional victory in 2014, The Daily Beast’s Joel Kotkin demanded that Democrats go back-to-the-future: “Time to Bring Back the Truman Democrats.”

“To regain their relevancy,” he hypothesized, “Democrats need to go back to their evolutionary roots. Their clear priorities: faster economic growth and promoting upward mobility for the middle and working classes. All other issues -- racial, feminine, even environmental -- need to fit around this central objective.”

Raimondo, perhaps instinctively, has embraced much of this sensible framework. Most of it via a back-to-basics moderate agenda. Actually, future-to-the-basics.

In February 2016, she launched Rhode Works, a comprehensive 10-year transportation improvement program to repair crumbling roads and bridges. Rhode Island ranked dead last (50 out of 50 states) in overall bridge condition and is one of the only states that did not charge user fees to large commercial trucks on its roadways, which do most of the damage to roads and bridges. Tolling on certain roads begins this winter. Unsurprisingly, she is facing more opposition. This time from trucking associations, leery of the legislation; claiming that they’re being  unfairly discriminated against, they are threatening lengthy lawsuits. But her infrastructure initiative might be a template for the anticipated trillion-dollar federal program.

Raimondo has also looked north for much of her inspiration. It’s home to another moderate.

In her fourth State of the State address she made this startling admission: “For decades, we just sat back and watched as Massachusetts rebuilt and thrived. Boston and its suburbs flourished, while the mill buildings along {Route} 95 and the Blackstone River stood vacant and crumbling. The resurgence in Massachusetts didn't just happen. It wasn't an accident. They had a strategy and a plan to create jobs and put cranes in the sky. They used job-training investments and incentives to create thousands of jobs in and around Boston.”

Why not study a success story?

Unlike many parochial powerbrokers of the past who were content to resist change, at the state’s peril, Raimondo recognizes that Rhode Island’s is  part of a regional economy. Indeed, in many ways it is dependent on Massachusetts’s economy. Two-thirds of Rhode Island’s population is within a 20-minute drive to any Massachusetts border. (Incidentally, she made the trip at least twice last year by appearing on WGBH’s Greater Boston program, marketing her ideas and progress.)

Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker is the most popular governor in the country, with a 69 percent approval rating. He too is a moderate (a Rockefeller Republican), a technocrat, and also up for re-election this year. While Raimondo’s most recent approval rating stands at only 41 percent, that figure may be distorted and artificially low. Baker’s reforms have centered on the inner workings of government, largely lost on everyday residents. Raimondo’s reforms, meanwhile, have been about the very public machinations and expressions of government. Her controversial actions have directly affected,  and been clear to, the entire electorate.

Today, the unemployment rate is 4.3 percent. Last March, The New York Times wrote, “Ms. Raimondo’s frenzy of economic and job development is striking because Rhode Island has long been in a slump. It was the last state to emerge from the recession that began in 2007. As recently as 2014, it bore the nation’s highest unemployment rate for seven months in a row.” At the same time, private-sector employment has reached its highest level ever.

Even with forward momentum, the governor may be more popular outside the state than within. Two years ago, Raimondo and then-Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, a Republican who is now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., were cited by Fortune Magazine as two female governors being among the world’s 50 greatest leaders. And last month, she was named as new vice chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Big challenges, however, still loom large locally. The Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston’s minor-league affiliate, are threatening to leave the state. (Will the public finance a nine-figure stadium for a rich, privately owned team?) Nearly a third, or $3.1 billion,  of the state budget is funded by the federal government. And opioids continue to consume lives.    

But due to Raimondo’s centrist leadership -- despite the occasional progressive flourish (tuition-free community college) -- she has largely validated Kotkin’s hypothesis by focusing primarily on economic matters. Rhode Island might finally be poised for a 21st Century renaissance.

As the Slatersville bridge undergoes its third iteration in its third century, Rhode Island voters are reminded of this possibility in 2018 -- the Year of the Woman.  Should Raimondo be re-elected and serve a full second four-year term, she would be just the third woman (all Democrats) in American history to do so (after Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm and Washington’s Christine Gregoire).

And with the Clintons out of the running,  serious Democrats must consider her fortitude and record of accomplishment  when they’re looking for vice-presidential timber for 2020.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.

James P. Freeman: A bumpy trip though Massachusetts's circus of 2017

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools”
—  William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act V, Scene V)

The struts and frets of 2017 confirm we are on a portentous path to a dusty death.

Is there a doctor still in the house?

The Massachusetts Medical Society rescinded its opposition to physician-assisted suicide. Perhaps that phrase was too forthright in these sensitive times. So, a statement from the society reads “medical aid-in-dying.” The society’s governing board will, for now, adopt of position of “neutral engagement.” Theirs might be a dutiful death.

Newly offensive public statues and monuments were the rage. In Boston a street sign, “Yawkey Way,” so-named 40 years ago, became an object of moral grandstanding. Red Sox owner John Henry is now “haunted” by the racist legacy of a predecessor  owner, Tom Yawkey. Never mind that the Yawkey Foundation is one of the largest charitable organizations in the city. Henry and fellow progressives are more concerned about erasing history than improving it.

The Boston Globe — which Henry owns — haunted many subscribers with delivery and production problems. The Globe got it wrong in asking its readers this question: “Does Boston deserve its racist reputation?” More probing would have been: “How does racism still exist after a century of pure-bred progressivism in Boston?”

Bad news. The Boston Herald filed for bankruptcy and was sold for pennies on the dollar.

Boston Public Schools needed a bigger piggy bank, surprisingly, as it paid certain employees with off-the-books payments, revealed an IRS audit. But they won’t be pressing the snooze button. BPS announced (based upon computer research) the rescheduling of most of its starting times next school year.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term. No mention during the campaign that Walsh overwhelmingly crushed free speech and freedom of the press during the Free Speech Rally in August.

Andrea Campbell, 35, will be the first African-American woman to lead the Boston City Council. Her presidency, says The Globe, will make the council the “most diverse in the city’s history.” Forget political diversity, though. Republicans need not apply — there are none on the council.

For all the region’s proud progressives, don’t kiss and tell. The following codswallop appeared in wearyourvoicemag.com:  “10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask on a First Date.” Warning: “What do you do for fun?” isn’t one of them.

Amazon came calling and Massachusetts went groveling. Twenty-six Commonwealth entities submitted bids to become the company’s second headquarters.

Take the long road home. State Sen. Thomas McGee, a Democrat from Lynn, proposed legislation that would bring more toll roads to Greater Boston. Funds would be allocated to all statewide transportation needs, including the troubled MBTA. For roadways, however, Massachusetts already spends an average of $675,939 per state-controlled mile — a figure exceeded only by Florida and New Jersey.

Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura Healey continued her quest as progressivism’s most litigious social-justice warrior. Her personal vendetta against the Trump administration included 24 instances of legal intervention in just the first six months of the year. How about Ticketmaster? Drug dealers?

A high school girl golfer beat a high school boy golfer by shooting the best score in the Central Massachusetts Division 3 boys’ golf tournament this fall. But she did not get the trophy, sparking national headlines and progressive incredulity.

In more gender-related news, the Girl Scouts of America advised against children hugging relatives. Such activity, reported The Washington Post, “could muddy the waters when it comes to the notion of consent later in life.” Meantime, the Boy Scouts of America accepted girls into their ranks to “shape the next generation of leaders.” And the singer Pink is raising her daughter gender-neutral. No wonder kids are confused today.

Poor Johnny and Jane.

Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at Cambridgeport School, refused to accept a gift of Dr. Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump — a gesture recognizing “National Read a Book Day.” The Seuss illustrations are “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes,” she wrote in a letter to Trump. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered Soeiro posed for a picture in 2015 wearing a Seuss outfit and holding a copy of Green Eggs and Ham book. Only in Cambridge. Well, maybe not …

In a letter to parents, the Boyden Elementary School, in Walpole, bizarrely asserted that its annual Halloween costume parade “is not inclusive of all the students and it is our goal each and every day to ensure all student’s individual differences are respected.” Instead, trading a parade for political correctness, the school laughably said that Halloween would be known as “black and orange” spirit day. Call it Banned in Boyden.

Not on my ocean view! Having faced a “very vicious and very well-funded lobbying organization” to protect Nantucket Sound for 17 years, said Bloomberg, the last gale warnings were issued for America’s largest proposed  (and now dead) offshore wind project, known as “Cape Wind.” It’s officially kaput. Some wonder if Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth will now close, as scheduled, in 2019. Power down, green protesters!

Scandals ran down Beacon Hill. Former Democrat state Sen. Brian Joyce was indicted in a sweeping federal corruption case. i And Democrat Stan Rosenberg stepped down as state Senate president amid an investigation of sexual-assault allegations against his civil-law husband, Bryon Hefner — while he conducted state business. Rosenberg said the Senate has a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual harassment.

Charlie Baker is running for Comedian-in-Chief of the Commonwealth. When the popular incumbent announced his re-election, a running joke circulated within the GOP:  “For which party?” Confirming his unassailable allegiance to progressivism instead of conservativism, the governor signed bills mandating free birth control and bilingual education.

Always in character, thin-skinned progressive U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren got her feathers ruffled with faux-outrage, once again. She said President Donald Trump used a “racial slur” during a White House celebration of Native Americans when he referred to her as “Pocahontas.” Funny, did she consider the 1995 eponymous movie to be a slur, too? Millions didn’t. The Disney animation grossed over $141 million during its theatrical release in the United States.

Among the initially named visiting fellows at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics for the 2017-2018 school year were two improbable scholars:  former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and former U.S. Army intelligence-analyst-turned-traitor Chelsea Manning. Harvard students are falling behind … Fordham students. Two students were kicked out of a coffee shop at Fordham University for violating a “safe space” with their “Make America Great Again” hats.

Shootings were up 18 percent in Boston. There was no evidence, nonetheless, that those weapons were modified with “bump stocks.” But bump stocks were outlawed in Massachusetts as a threat to society.

Fifty years after The Summer of Love, take the flowers out of your hair but be sure to put some LSD in your head. People looking to get an “extra edge at work are turning to [the] illegal drug to boost their focus and creativity,” reported fox25boston.com. They are micro-dosing, which involves taking small amounts of the substance about twice a week. Says computational neuroscientist Selen Atasoy, “It’s really like jazz improvisation, what LSD does to your brain.” Will it block progressive impulses in 5/4 time?

Psychedelic meet-up groups are trending in Portland, Ore.; San Francisco, and New York. Cutting-edge hipster millennials in Boston are likely meeting now.

Meanwhile, the opioid crisis rages on. However, for the first nine months of 2017, Massachusetts reported a 10 percent decline in deaths over the like period in 2016, likely a result of more immediate administration of Naloxone, which reverses the effects of overdose. Theirs is a dusky death.

Needham-based TripAdvisor, the travel and restaurant Web site (which includes reviews and public forums), got into trouble when it repeatedly removed posts warning of alleged rape, assault and other injuries at Mexican resorts. And, forbes.com reported, a writer in London tricked TripAdvisor by creating a “fictional eatery” that became the city’s top rated restaurant. Trust but verify.

Snowflakes actually coated the College of Holy Cross in May. A committee was formed to determine what to do about the fact that its founding president owned slaves, and what to do with a now-objectionable sports name: “Crusaders.” As National Review noted, “where there’s a will, there’s a microaggression.”

Not to be outdone, Pope Francis, a leader in thoughts and words, is considering a change in one word of “The Lord’s Prayer.” The pontiff, conversant in nine languages, is concerned about the word “temptation.” He believes that the phrasing in the Our Father prayer “is not a good translation.” Will this translate to stemming high rates of disaffiliation plaguing the Catholic Church?

Next year, should it be tempted to arrive, marks the 45th commemoration of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. Since then, it is estimated that over 58 million abortions have taken place in America. As a stark reminder, the only gravestone on the premises of the chapel at Holy Trinity Church in Harwich reads: “In memory of The Unborn – Denied the Precious Right to Life (1973-   ).” Theirs was a despicable death.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com

James P. Freeman: Taylor Swift shows herself as a coldly calculating capitalist and techno tyrant

Taylor Swift

Fans of Taylor Swift (a part-time resident of Watch Hill, R.I.) should prepare themselves for despair. In youthful vernacular, Hundo P will dissolve to Sus and Salty AF. Girls will cry. Fingers will point. Ticketmaster will shrug … And Taylor Swift will need a bigger bank. A databank.

In early November, Swift, America’s biggest and most influential pop sensation, announced a massive new world tour beginning next May (stopping at Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium on July 28). She is employing Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan, a new process to purchase tickets, where Swift and Ticketmaster are committed “to getting tickets in the hands of fans. Not scalpers or bots.” Their collaboration, they say, will help fans — mostly teenage girls — get the best access to tickets “in a really fun way.”

Those efforts will fail. Badly.

On Dec. 5, many Swift fans felt Swiftboated. That date marked the beginning of her Presale (a ticket-buying window usually limited to fan clubs and corporate sponsor clients, but prone to ticket-buying bots masquerading as humans). The date also marks the time when young fans will learn a bitter lesson in economics and literature that no school can teach. A date — an early Pearl Harbor Day for “Tay” fanatics — when dollars, disappointment, and Orwell collide. Even non-fans should take notice.

Ticketmaster, America’s largest primary ticket distributor, conceived Verified Fan last year after Adele’s 2016 world tour.

When tickets first went on sale, in December 2015, 10 million people initially attempted to purchase 750,000 tickets. The market acted supremely efficiently with this vicious demand-supply imbalance:  Prices rose dramatically (face value is not necessarily indicative of market value). Conveniently, though, Ticketmaster and ticketless fans blamed high-speed computer programs (called bots) and scalpers for market disruptions (price gouging). So, Ticketmaster created Verified Fan with this noble goal:  ensuring more so-called “true fans” secure valid tickets at reasonable prices.

But Verified Fan is troubling on a practical and philosophical level.

Just ask U2 and Bruce Springsteen fans.

Last August, Springsteen on Broadway, a limited engagement, used the new system that, in the words of observer.com, “wasn’t born to run properly.” Fans were subjected to a “confusing” and “complicated” process. To make matters worse, “Verified Fan didn’t stop bots and scalpers from reselling tickets.” In fact, seats were “listed on StubHub for $2,500 before tickets even went on sale to the general public.”

More recently, U2 fans (for whom, or perhaps against whom, Verified Fan is being used for the first time on a full-scale arena tour) expressed loud Irish stage whispers over the new process anticipating the band’s 2018 tour. Malfunctioning codes (read on) and miscommunication, among other problems, greeted Presale and General Sale participants seeking tickets for next year. So bad was the global reaction that U2’s manager felt compelled to respond to numerous fan sites. On Twitter, there is a thread #Verified Scam. It is sure to grow more active.

But Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster take “Taylor Swift Tix Powered by Ticketmaster Verified Fan” to a whole new devious and disingenuous level.

Unlike hyperventilating analog Beatles fans in 1964, hyperactive digital Swift fans in 2017 had to register on her official Web site and further register (linking) on Ticketmaster’s website to become a “verified fan” (and further register with a given concert venue).

It sounds simple enough. However, unlike U2 and Springsteen fans, Swift fans were encouraged to participate in “unique activities” to bolster their verified fan status. For unsuspecting young people, the euphemistic and purposely vague phrase “unique activities” (which sounds like it came straight out of a Cold War-era espionage enterprise) means, in ticket industry parlance, “boosting.”

This disturbing practice was explained on Swift’s Ticketmaster FAQ site. Boost activities “come in all shapes and sizes.” Her fans were implored to “watch the latest music video on the portal, purchase the album, post photos, and engage on social media to boost your opportunity to unlock access to tickets.”

Even before boosting began, there was reasonable skepticism about the entire initiative. Some accused the entertainer of scamming her most dedicated fans. Those sentiments gain credible strength given the preposterous activities fans were instructed to indulge.

There were music boosts, merchandise boosts, UPS boosts (where fans could spot and track — Seriously! — the exclusive Taylor Swift UPS Truck), friends and family boosts, video boosts, and social media boosts. Theoretically, more activity meant more opportunity to move up the virtual electronic line to get tickets. “While boosts are optional, we hope you’ll play along with the Taylor community and to help you unlock the best opportunity to access tickets!”

Ticketmaster isn’t Sesame Street. But it still wanted you to “come on down …” A series of Swift-sanctioned YouTube videos — examples of strategic marketing — targeted her young fan base with animated kitten cartoons. One tells fans Ticketmaster’s new approach is “better” and “fun.” In another, the female announcer says, “you’re the best fans” “doing the best things” “to get the best seats possible.” And, the voice continues with sinister serenity, “it was easy to do, because who doesn’t love boosting their faith?”

Place not your faith in boosts.

Throughout the entire marketing campaign Swift and Ticketmaster strongly implied that all the boosting aerobics would result in true fans actually purchasing face value tickets. They won’t. And many fail to understand this crucial point. Just like popsugar.com. It mistakenly asserted on a Nov. 18 posting, “dedicated fans will be able to purchase tickets in advance through the Ticketmaster …” Potentially millions won’t. Simply registering for Verified Fan guaranteed fans absolutely nothing. Fans only had the opportunity for access. They are guaranteed neither access nor tickets.

This all smacks of false advertising. And pay to play. Or, more precisely, pay to prey.

More dangerous is that while fans are paying Swift for swag, they are also unwittingly paying both Ticketmaster and Swift for the privilege of obtaining lots of their personal information (cell phone, email, credit card, and social media — Twitter and Facebook). They are not only custodians of this information, but they actively monitor and track that sensitive information. And they determine if you are a true fan or even a living human.

Even if this strategy is a “brilliant scheme,” Elana Fishman writes in racked.com, “challenging fans (and their parents) to assert their loyalty by spending the most money possible feels problematic, particularly considering how expensive concert tickets are in the first place.”

For Ticketmaster and Swift, Big Brother and Big Sister, the new thought police of entertainment, big fan data collection is more important than ticket distribution and fan satisfaction. What happens to all this data? Who will have access to this data, after the last song is sung? Will tracking continue indefinitely? The tour begins in Arizona but will likely end in Oceania.

For now, though, Ticketmaster will use “data science technology,” a software program, to determine winners and losers. Boosting activities for the Swift tour closed on Nov. 28, the last day for fans to register as Verified Fans. Afterwards, recode.com explains, “Ticketmaster [will] take time to figure out if [you’re] human, looking for clues like past ticket-buying history and social posts, and lets ticket-buyers know if they’ve made the cut.”

After all this, inquisitive young minds will be asking this question: “When will I know my final spot in line?”

The answer is inadequate:  Sometime after the 28th. Certain fans (not all) who are certified as “verified” will receive an email message with further instructions about the Presale. Early on Tuesday, Dec. 5 (the start of the Presale, “T-Day”), verified fans got a text message with a link to search for tickets and a second text message with a unique code to access tickets. Even with access, tickets are not guaranteed. Remember, fans will never be told where their final spot in line lies. If anyone knows, it’s Ticketmaster.

Verified Fan and boosting have never been used in tandem on something as big as Swift’s new stadium tour. Dave Brooks, executive editor of the concert-industry trade magazine Amplify, estimated in August that demand for Swift tickets is at five to 10 times the amount of available seats. And boosting probably created added levels of artificial demand. December 5 promises mountainous chaos.

All entertainers want to capture hearts and minds. Now they want to capture data.

Swift’s cuddly embrace of Verified Fan and Boosting means she has shed her quirky, feel-good, girl-power persona. In its place is a new calculating capitalist and tenacious technologist. A cold character.

Legions of disappointed fans will learn a painful lesson. At school, everyone gets an award. At Taylor Swift Presale, not everyone gets a ticket. Ticketmaster and Swift will eventually learn a lesson, too. Passion is an emotion, not a metric, and devotion can not be measured by bits and bytes. True fans are humans, not data points.

This piece first appeared in The New Boston Post. James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and  a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His wortk

 

James P. Freeman: Boston's mayor should keep his ambitions within reality

Boston Mayor Martin ("Marty'') Walsh.

“Believe or not I’m walking on air
I never thought I could be so free
Flying away on a wing and a prayer, who could it be?
Believe it ornot it’s just me”

— Theme from The Greatest American Hero (“Believe It or Not”)

In homogeneously progressive Boston  pell-mell fantasy  can exceed partisan reality.

Appearing on WGBH's Greater Boston a day before Election Day to promote his book Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, former aide to the late U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill, was getting a second thrill going up his leg. When asked who in the Democratic Party today is closest to the late senator (presumably in temperament and spirit), Matthews responded with understated hyperbole:  “Maybe the mayor here.”   

And on WCVB-TV’s Sunday political program OTR five days after Election Day, the usually rational Patrick Griffin was clearly under the influence of hypnosis. Or something else. When asked during the roundtable discussion who had the “best week,” the Republican strategist responded with overstated gusto. “Marty Walsh!” Where the mayor, newly reelected, is now poised and positioned to begin a “national narrative.” Well.

Cue the needle scratching over the record.

With little enthusiasm (just 27 percent voter turnout in the general election; 14 percent in the primary), little competition (his challenger lost by over 30 percentage points), and little in the way of transformational advancement during a single term (understandable after following the longest-serving Boston mayor, the late Thomas Menino (five terms, 1993-2014)), Boston Mayor Marty Walsh won re-election. And, summoning ghosts in machine politics, Walsh is — so say observers — now worthy of higher office in Massachusetts and, possibly, a position in national affairs. Play me a new song.

Walsh’s parochial progressivism may in fact appeal to those outside  Routes 128 and I-495. And that may even extend beyond, to the hills of Williamstown and West Stockbridge, if he were to seek statewide office. But it stops there. (Besides, he will have to wait until 2022 to run for governor, when, presumably, Charlie Baker will be leaving, with the state in better condition than when he found it, after serving two terms.)

Thrilling for conservatives, Walsh’s platitudinous progressive record will play like warped vinyl on the national stage. It will be punched through with holes, and its collection of Democratic covers will be relegated to the bargain bin of bad ideas. Like abandoned vinyl records. 

Still, it will be fun listening. (Will he reprise Hillary Clinton’s “Listening Tours”?)

How does Walsh propose to solve problems in the country that he hasn’t been able to solve in the city or the commonwealth? The playlist is long but exposes progressivism’s universal shortcomings:  affordable housing, income inequality, climate disruption, sanctuary cities (some calling for sanctuary states), and public education.

And his first forays into the national spotlight proved opportunistic and potentially disastrous: He essentially blamed his hyper-interest in Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid as a form of payola, a political payoff to honor the legacy of a commitment made by the Menino administration. No friend of the First Amendment, he essentially suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press during the monstrously overblown Free Speech rally last August on Boston Common, despite favorable media coverage. That won’t work on the National Mall.

In many regards, Walsh is instinctively progressive but he has learned lessons from his Massachusetts mentors.

If you can’t fix it, expand it. Former Gov. Deval Patrick proposed in 2013 massive growth of the state’s transportation system, while he ignored the troubled MBTA. If you can’t improve it, market it. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s persistent message in tweets and books is that ever more government is what is needed to make America great again.

Walsh hasn’t written any books, but that didn’t stop him in 2016 from actually issuing a suggested reading list to all Bostonians. Reading is not fundamental in Boston. The booklist directive reflects the new soft sell of progressive bullying:  from the cold engineering of public power to the warm “engagement” of like-minded citizens. For Walsh’s Boston (like Warren’s America) believes in diversity of all aspects of life. Except thought. Or political party.

Walsh can’t even claim one thing that Patrick and Warren could:  reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans. Because there are no Republicans in the elected part of Boston government.

City Hall is not a standard steppingstone to the Oval Office. Only two mayors have gone on to become president of the United States. The first was Grover Cleveland, former mayor of Buffalo, N.Y. (1882), who is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). And the last was Calvin Coolidge, former mayor of Northampton, Mass. (1910-1911), who, as vice president, became president in 1923, when President Warren Harding died of a heart attack. Coolidge is the only American to be a mayor, lieutenant governor (1916-1919, Massachusetts), governor (1919-1921, Massachusetts), vice president, and president. He might be the last.

Mayors fare better becoming senators. Today, they include Dianne Feinstein (San Francisco), Bernie Sanders (Burlington, Vt.) and Cory Booker (Newark, N.J.). There might be a practical explanation behind these histories.

As citymayors.com explains, “Americans, not surprisingly, have come to respect big-city mayors as managers, but not necessarily as custodians of important values.”

Over the last 30 years, Massachusetts politicians have had difficulty articulating ideas — exporting local values? — that resonate with voters outside of the commonwealth, into electoral victory for national office. Probably, their loud, turgid progressivism is incomprehensible to the nation. And moderates are undoubtedly viewed with suspicion — guilty-by-approximation to progressives. Walsh must be acutely aware of the performance of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (1980), Gov. Michael Dukakis (1988), the late Sen.  Paul Tsongas (1992), Sen. John Kerry (2004), and Gov. Mitt Romney (2012) in presidential contests. What will happen to Elizabeth Warren in 2020?

With or without Warren, Walsh may decide next decade, cape in hand, that he will be the Greatest American Hero to progressive causes. For now, though, those lofty aspirations are prematurely foolish.

Should America reject Warren and Walsh’s propulsive progressivism, the consolation prize might be membership in an exclusive club. They could join George McGovern, who won just one state in 1972. In a landslide, he swept Massachusetts. As they likely would too.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal and here, in newenglanddiary.com.

James P. Freeman: With Halperin scandal, etc., time to pull the plug on NBC

“Perhaps the surest test of an individual’s integrity is his refusal

to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.”

—  Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The NBC Peacock is no longer fanning its colorful plumage.

It is now cowering and no longer proud, given the news of sexual misconduct by a contributor at its affiliate, MSNBC. Trouble is an ongoing program at the cable network. Left-leaning viewers — and all serious students of politics -- should be looking to pull the plug on MSNBC.

Mark Halperin is the latest collateral damage in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment/sexual predator scandal. Halperin is a former political director of ABC News, former co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics,   host of Showtime’s The Circus (a politics-focused documentary series), an author (Game Change), and, since 2010, a political analyst at MSNBC. He is also accused by multiple women of sexual harassment during the time he worked at ABC.

One woman, Lara Setrakian, wrote about her ugly Halperin experience for The Washington Post. And another, Eleanor McManus, did the same, writing on cnn.com. After acknowledging his “inappropriate” behavior, MSNBC and NBC have terminated Halperin’s contract. (Other media enterprises have also severed relationships with him.)

The Halperin case is troubling on several levels — most importantly, of course, about the well-being of the affected women. But also troubling are issues surrounding Halperin’s — and, particularly, MSNBC’s — integrity and character.

Halperin said, “I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain.” Now?  This suggests that, until recently, Halperin considered and understood his lewd actions to be acceptable behavior.

It is not far-fetched to suggest, then, that a man unable to distinguish between fundamental basics of right and wrong behavior on a personal level, is also unable to distinguish between right and wrong on a journalistic level, too. Notably, Halperin was suspended in 2011 by MSNBC about a vulgar comment he made regarding President  Obama on the show Morning Joe. He was encouraged to “take a chance,” ironically, by hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. That episode explains a lot. Especially about MSNBC.

Just as disturbing for MSNBC — and, for that matter, the larger media industry — Halperin’s boorish behavior was well known to many people long before last week’s revelations. As thedailybeast.com reported, “According to numerous sources at NBC, MSNBC, ABC and Bloomberg, the private allegations of Halperin’s sexual misconduct were an open secret, particularly in New York City and D.C. political media, for many years.” One prominent cable-news host told The Daily Beast, “Everybody knew.” Except, apparently, the Morning Joe hosts. And MSNBC executives.

Still, it is hard to believe that the normally sanctimonious Brzezinski (along with her pugnacious fiancé, Scarborough; they are the penultimate politically connected, media-savvy power couple; the “In-Crowd”) did not know. In her on-air statement last Friday, Brzezinski seemed almost surprised by the serious charges against Halperin. (She said, with trembling voice “Now, ah, we’re looking at it, we’re talking about it …” and added, “We need to know what happened …”)  Now? How did they not know of this “open secret” before last week?

What isn’t surprising is this:  Readers of this column are likely subject to more intense scrutiny and vetting for their jobs than Halperin was when passing through the sieve-like gates of talent acquisition at MSNBC.

Sexual harasser?  Check.

In 1996, Microsoft and  the National Broadcasting Co.  formed a partnership with the goal of fusing branded content and state-of-the-art technology for both television and online distribution. The collaboration became MSNBC. It was launched nearly three months before Fox News and was seen, at first, as an alternative to CNN. But with the rise in  ratings of Fox News  over more than a decade, MSNBC turned decidedly left, attracting a definitively progressive audience. Today, long after Microsoft divested its interests, the network is competing with Fox News for cable news and commentary supremacy (and ratings).

Morning Joe, incidentally, occupies the same time slot that was held by Imus in the Morning, the radio program simulcast on MSNBC. The Imus cable program was dropped in 2007 after Don Imus uttered a racial slur against the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

At MSNBC it seems that personal integrity is not linked to professional integrity.

Halperin joined a  roster of misfits and malcontents — poseurs of serious journalism — at MSNBC where standards seem fluid, if unnecessary. Mike Barnicle, unrepentant, is still a frequent contributor to Morning Joe and is opaquely listed as “Veteran Columnist,” despite resigning from The Boston Globe in 1998 amid plagiarism charges as a columnist. Another MSNBC veteran, the Rev.  Al Sharpton, unapologetic in his role as inflamer of racial tensions in New York City during the incendiary Tawana Brawley incident in the 1980s, has had longstanding issues of unpaid taxes; since 2011, he has hosted the now weekly PoliticsNation. And Brian Williams, was removed as anchor of NBC’s Nightly News in 2015 after embellishing several stories (called “inaccurate statements”) that were “ego-driven.” His time in Purgatory was brief; he is now host of The 11th Hour With Brian Williams. As the in-house advertisement on MSNBC says:  “This Is Who We Are.”

And who can forget past contributors to journalistic excellence at MSNBC?

Keith Olbermann, former host of The Countdown, was suspended in 2010 for apparently violating an NBC News ethics policy by making campaign donations to Democratic congressional candidates. He left in 2011. Ed Schultz, former host of The Ed Show, was suspended in 2011 for calling Laura Ingraham a “right wing slut.” His show was cancelled in 2015. And Melissa Harris-Perry, professor at Wake Forest University, and former host of MHP,  apologized in 2013 for comments on her show about Mitt Romney’s  African-American adopted grandchild. Mercifully, she and the network parted ways last year. Truth, justice and the MSNBC way.

True journalists must be lonely at MSNBC and its parent, NBC. One of them was Ronan Farrow, a former MSNBC contributor and former freelancer at NBC News. While at NBC, after months of scrupulous research and on-the-record sourcing, he had an iron-clad explosive exposé on Harvey Weinstein’s exploits. But NBC News President Noah Oppenheim killed the story, which ultimately appeared in The New Yorker. (Raising legitimate conflict-of-interest concerns as Oppenheim also moonlights as a Hollywood screenwriter.)

On a daily basis, though, NBC reporters use anonymous sources without hesitation for negative stories about President Trump. Such are the tribulations of intrepid journalists at a national media conglomerate with many layers of hierarchical management (MSNBC, NBC News, NBC Universal, Comcast).

Earlier this year, Ted Koppel, an elder statesman of journalism and a former host of ABC’s Nightline, said, in a feature segment for CBS Sunday Morning during an interview with Sean Hannity, that the Fox host and his show were “Bad for America,” lamenting the political polarization of American life. Especially regarding cable news programs. Koppel’s sentiments are understandable and largely correct. For Fox is hardly "fair and balanced''.

But Fox has also cleaned its house of the likes of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly — and, most recently, Eric Bolling — before the Weinstein scandal broke. In retrospect, it is highly probable that Halperin would still be at MSNBC had the Weinstein story not been made public. Ironically, MSNBC is the biggest beneficiary of Fox’s personnel problems. For this year's third quarter, MSNBC had its most-watched quarter ever, it was reported in September. And, remarkably, the network is in the closest competitive position to Fox News in 17 years. Just imagine what new viewers are being exposed to every day. When will Koppel dwell on MSNBC?

Next June will mark the 10-year anniversary of the death of NBC’s well-respected Tim Russert, the longest-serving moderator of Meet The Press. NBC and MSNBC would be unrecognizable to him today, and his journalistic excellence and impeccable integrity are unrecognizable to those who reduce such attributes to parody at NBC and MSNBC.

Meanwhile, the Peacock scampers, searching for the giants. But the ghosts of Huntley-Brinkley, John Chancellor and Tim Russert are long gone.

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer,  former columnist with The Cape Cod Times and former banker. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.