Losing the Virtue of Volunteerism

The Wall Street Journal last week published this ungenerous review of Chris Anderson’s new book, Infectious Generosity. And I can’t say the critic was wrong to zing the boss of TED Talks for “embarrassing naivete” in his plea for more universal kindness. But after reading the work and listening to Anderson make his case to a sympathetic audience at New York’s Players Club, I’d make a separate point. Most of his talk and much of the book is about monetary gifts. Basically, he’d like all of us and particularly the wealthy to tithe and if we did it would raise enough trillions to address all global needs. Money is what made the mostly-free TED broadcast of ideas to the planet possible; Anderson sold his Future publishing company in the dot-com bubble and funded a foundation that grew TED. But riches aren’t the only thing for humanity to share. His book does note several other qualifying acts, including the old-fashioned virtue of volunteering. Being a highly “social” sort, he emphasizes the positive vibes transmitted through the online (self-) promotion of good deeds, and surely that is a major (and underappreciated) aspect of today’s internet content. However, most volunteer efforts even in this web era are done quietly, through countless community organizations that, at best, get an occasional photograph in the local tribune. (America has long excelled at this public spiritedness, as Tocqueville famously ascribed to “little platoons.”) Many give of their time and labor without compensation–even, ahem, mere unmonetized bloggers are engaged in a form of this when creating “content.” Long as the history of volunteerism is, though, its core is not entirely secure. The shrinkage and in some cases collapse of service and fraternal organizations across the U.S.–part of the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon–deprives us of a significant source of these efforts. Especially is this true in what are called “marginalized” areas. Maybe the contemporary substitutes that Anderson highlights–great fortunes for philanthropy, and viral “sharing” of individual kindnesses–are enough to cover the civic gap that’s forming. In keeping with his stretched optimism, I will so stipulate.

‘Infectious Generosity’ Review: Giving Until It Feels Good – WSJ

Long Island Supe Wants to Build

Even with diminished editorial resources, like most “dailies,” Newsday remains often the only public-affairs coverage resource for much of its home base of Long Island, N.Y. So this week it reported the striking pledge of the new town supervisor in Brookhaven to open up housing development there. Republican Dan Panico said he would seek to eliminate approval-process steps that could cut the lead time for subdivisions by a year and free existing owners to add accessory units with just a checkoff. In hamlets such as Yaphank and Medford, that could mean a last frontier for mid-range (but still expensive) home building in Suffolk County, where barriers to growth are high. Parts of the town are within a 45-minute drive–with favorable traffic–of employment spots on the privileged East End (Hamptons) as well as long-settled communities to the west. Vast stretches of Brookhaven are reserved as natural-resource areas such as pine barrens and estuaries, as well as for the 5,265-acre grounds of the eponymous national laboratory there, but it offers enough recently rural land to move the needle on local housing supply. (Already, one such project has gone ahead.) As important, Panico’s promise suggests a “YIMBY” political openness that no longer exists in most of the surrounding areas. Timing may be opportune: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul still wants to extend carrots to localities blessing “affordable” development, although she has pulled back from sticks that suburban interests resisted last year. The Democrat–who lost Long Island in her tight election race in 2022–may find common cause with the GOP upstart there.

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/brookhaven-supervisor-dan-panico-jzrqopak

Trashy People in Fancy Zip Codes

Litter and large-scale refuse dumping is a continuing–perhaps even worsening–problem in the towns of Southampton and East Hampton, N.Y., as this week’s article in the local Star reports. As more McMansion residents accumulate more furnishings, go through more food wrappings in their industrial-scale kitchens and collect more yard waste from their lavish grounds, the potential offload increases. That’s compounds a landfill problem on all of Long Island, raising costs and probably leading corner-cutters of all income strata to toss their debris wherever they think they can hide it. Often that’s in one of the nature preserves, though usually not where there are active trails and hikers to keep watch and clean up. That’s a good reason to expand the trail network as much as possible–a generally accepted notion these days, even if it was decidedly not when the Hamptons hiking enthusiasts got going in the 1980s. “Tragedies of the commons” are fewer when there’s stewardship, and civic groups can provide that when given the responsibility. Of course, they can’t well perform law enforcement, but from the comments in the Star piece, neither in the case of abandoned trash can the towns.

https://www.easthamptonstar.com/villages/202414/talking-trash-dumping-hotspots

A Top College for Long Island–Two Cheers

The New York Times at year end caught up with a significant academic story in its backyard, the emergence of Stony Brook University on Long Island as a prestige state research institution. But, being today’s Times, it had to worry whether this “will come at the cost of equity.” As a newly minted flagship of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, with a fattened endowment from private sources, Stony Brook is attracting more competitive applicants. If it stays midsized, that could displace less capable students and/or cause lesser branches of SUNY to lag further. Which could happen, but the upside is a potentially tremendous boon to high-value output from Suffolk County as graduates stay and form enterprises or work in technical fields. Stony Brook sits near Long Island Sound, between the old-money Gold Coast of Nassau County and the affluent twin forks of the East End. It’s an hour’s drive from most of the Hamptons; despite the area’s bounties, it has lacked a higher-ed magnet. Stony Brook is particularly significant for a stretch of the island that is primed for growth in the years ahead. A state such as New York that is losing population, including high earners, might find this campus an apt investment in its future.

Tight End of the College Sports Craze

Sometimes journalists look for the opposite of the silver lining. That’s the case with this month’s New York Times report on how the now-giant business of “college” football has tightened the home-rental markets in university towns hosting big sports events. Viewed commercially, one great aspect of the NCAA-bred fandom is that it has spread wealth around the nation. Most of the athletic powers are located in flyover country, away from the financial and corporate centers of capital in the U.S. For at least half a dozen weekends a year–more often in those places that also sport top-notch basketball programs–the tables are turned, with alumni and other followers converging for games and other social revelry. Yes, it can fill up the available beds. After awhile, however, people and properties adjust. Some folks get the short end of the stick, as always happens, though maybe they can catch a few of the extra bucks in the wind. One other benefit of what is a decidedly mixed blessing of big-dollar sports productions: They are a remarkably unifying element among a population that is otherwise rent asunder by politics, race, status and various other “isms.” The teams gather tribes that anyone can join.

Down by the Hamptons’ Riverside

Long Island’s town of Southampton covers 295 square miles including a varied range of communities, some quite different from the village of Southampton that is familiar to seasonal visitors. One hamlet, called Riverside, is a pocket of relative distress, greatly Black and Latino-immigrant. It sits on the south side of the Peconic River, separating it from the more familiar Riverhead on the other side. Sometimes Hamptonites lump the two together, though Riverhead is not part of Southampton town. That distinction has come to the fore as Southampton moves to bring development to Riverside—the first major such effort since Suffolk County opened a sheriff’s station, courthouse and jail there decades ago. Riverside has what so many East End communities say they need—“affordable” housing—and the town wants more of it there so as to contain the daily traffic throng to the Hamptons from points west (part of which, ironically, funnels through Riverside). To do that it needs, among other investments, a big sewer plant. All well and good, but it turns out, as this latest useful report from the East End Beacon explains, this is not so welcome in Riverhead. There’s lots of news nowadays in these parts—the bridge between the affluent and preservationist South and North Forks of Long Island—and any transitions will merit further attention.

Riverhead Has Reservations about Riverside Redevelopment as Sewer District Formation Continues

An Old, Internal WSJ Divide Has Gone National

My former Wall Street Journal colleague Paul Gigot (he’s now the commentary boss there) was aptly and well honored by the American Enterprise Institute earlier this month and delivered remarks (see below) about how many on the political right aren’t up to the challenge of defending the U.S., and world freedom. This mirrored personal exchanges the two of us had 30 years ago when we were both editorial columnists. Paul believes, as did our boss and mentor Robert Bartley, that America has a deep capacity for expending resources and will on a projection of military power in many key nodes around the globe to maintain said freedom. Then, and still, I have a more libertarian skepticism about that project. Now, however, there are varied conservative voices approaching such a view, and Paul is sounding the alarm about that. He argues persuasively for the maintenance of Pax Americana (my words); I’ll stipulate that despite periodic mischief and failure, the U.S. is reliably a better guarantor of a just order than other actors wanting to throw their weight around. The issue–now more than ever, with untold budget deficits and deep political rancor–is whether the U.S. is up to carrying that burden. Paul says yes, “We can make spending choices,” and to not push forward is to retreat to “the corner that Barack Obama and the left wanted to back us into.” It’s true that Obama and his heir Joe Biden have widened the welfare state. But the three cornerstone middle-class entitlements–Social Security, Medicare and the home-ownership tax breaks–are ever more in bipartisan embrace, and only growing in fiscal weight. No politician dares break that lock, for fear of being demagogued by the waiting ideological foe. Unlike cases such as New York City in the 1970s when pragmatists took hold to maintain vital functions in the face of insolvency, there is no workout by wisemen to be obtained by a federal intervention. My friend Paul engages in magic realism to suggest otherwise in the service of his worthy cause.

2023 Irving Kristol Award Presentation

Was Hamptons Democrats’ Sweep a Clean One?

The sweep by Democrats in the Southampton town council election this month on New York’s Long Island might at first glance seem a victory for growth controls and land-use preservation. On the island’s East End, the party has been more identified with zoning and other planning tools for limiting development than its GOP rival.

But late developments in the race for Southampton supervisor have cast doubt on this. The clear winner was Maria Moore, the mayor of Westhampton Beach, a self-governed village within the overall town of Southampton. She defeated Cynthia McNamara, an incumbent on the town council who sought to move up to the supervisor post. (The supervisor sits as one of five council members but has considerably more sway over town affairs.)

The race was considered competitive and Moore’s 13-percentage point victory was a surprise. It followed a rush of campaign signs, ads and mailers for Moore in the closing days, introducing her in the many areas of the town where she had little previous presence and also barraging McNamara with attacks on her alleged links to unpopular Republicans elsewhere as well as to threats to natural resources. A particular thrust came from a putative group called Citizens for Clean Water. (An existing such outfit in New Hampshire with a similar logo disavowed any connection.)

It transpired after the election that this group, and some $140,000 in late money to the Moore campaign, appears to emanate from Robert Rubin, founder of Golf at the Bridge, a private country club in the Bridgehampton hamlet of the town. The Bridge is also a 20-lot luxury home development and the course is seeking approval from the town for “staff housing” on its scenic acreage as well. (Golf links on the East End increasingly are hard-pressed to find affordable digs for their labor.)

The plot thickens with suspicions of some disappointed McNamara backers that Moore was advanced by Democrats as a stand-in for their term-limited Supervisor Jay Schneiderman. Were this to be true, it could further cloud whether she was the “green” choice in this race, as Schneiderman has been criticized during his eight-year tenure for pro-growth stances. (The town council is considering a measure to loosen the term limits, which would allow Schneiderman to return to office.)

In large measure, Moore was backed by a familiar lineup of Democrat allies–labor unions, environmental lobbyists and bureaucracy-savvy developers, in this case the Long Island Builders Institute. Whether that will amount to cleaner water (a big East End concern) than McNamara’s election would have, is hard to say. McNamara in a pre-council capacity did lend her support to a major planned community (with golf course) set for her home hamlet of East Quogue, but Schneiderman is seen as backing the project also.

The full facts and acknowledgments from the campaign have yet to surface. What is clear is that the furtive way this election played out, with murky motivations and more than the usual ferocity of hit pieces, has left an unusual level of bitterness in a water-conscious town where grudges are only more unwelcome residue.

UPDATE Nov. 24, 2024: A year after the posting above, new and related recriminations surface in the ad below appearing in the latest issue of the Southampton Press. The implication is that Moore is doing Rubin a favor in trying to close a nearby sand and gravel operation. That business has long been in the sights of local officials and environmentalists–so Rubin’s golf-course housing development would not be alone in wanting it shuttered.

Long Island’s East Is Far from Red

Republican Ed Romaine’s victory in an unusually high-profile race for Suffolk County executive in New York has thus far obscured what was a stark triumph for Democrats on the eastern reaches of Long Island in yesterday’s election.

Democrats swept landslide wins in East Hampton town, seem to have scored a surprise trifecta in more competitive Southampton town and appear to have fought to a standoff in Southold town on the more GOP-leaning North Fork.

The gains made in Southampton, where the parties have traded power in recent decades, are most significant. A highly energized Democrat operation succeeded in retaining the key supervisor post by a solid margin for Maria Moore, mayor of Westhampton Beach, against town councilwoman Cynthia McNamara, previously a potent vote getter. Even more telling, the wave apparently brought in young legislative staffer Michael Iasilli to the town council, displacing Republican Richard Martel, a popular figure from the sizable hamlet of Hampton Bays. Iaselli leads Martel by 219 votes with only a small number of absentee ballots outstanding.

Another candidate on the Democrat line, Bill Pell, easily finished first in the Southampton council race, assuring the party of continued dominance of the town government. Pell, however, is a trustee of the town wetlands with a broader support base–it is Iaselli’s bid that is the bigger measure of Democrat strength, along with the new supervisor Moore.

Southampton was historically a GOP stronghold, although that began to change in the late 1990s and early 2000s as anti-development sentiment and a rising population of cosmopolitan newcomers affected the politics. The parties have traded off council dominance, with stronger personalities in each holding sway, while Republicans have kept hold of the trustee spots. That much appears to have remained true on Tuesday, with wins of 3 of 5 seats.

East Hampton’s transition was earlier and more abrupt. In a 1983 election, the council turned sharply to the Democrats after early battles over land use and preservation. It has remained so for nearly all of the 40 years since, even as the town’s trustee positions were more a partisan mix till recently. Nowadays, and clearly this week, Republicans are not even in the game there–they even lost a town justice post that had been their last redoubt.

The GOP’s problems in many affluent suburbs, outside the South especially, have grown obvious. The party’s resurgence lately in much of Long Island, fueled by antagonism toward criminal-justice and immigration policies of urban Democrats, has been one of the great contrarian stories. As the battleground becomes more local in the most gilded and environmentally-conscious precincts to the east, however, the issues are different and the outcomes more akin to those of today’s U.S. Northeast. –Nov 8, 2023

Colorado v. Airbnb: A New Front

Politicians are happy to find unpopular business sectors to hit with tax increases or other costly impositions. Cable-TV franchises would be one example–holders aren’t liked and they don’t have the lobbying heft that, say, despised insurance companies do. Lately, another soft target has been found: short-term housing rentals. The rise of this practice, identified with online services Airbnb and Vrbo but practiced by corporate landlords as well as homeowners, has buffeted the hospitality industry while also offering wider choices for travelers. But that means there’s a disparate group of beneficiaries (those offering square footage and those renting it, neither tightly organized) and at least two concentrated sources of opposition: competing hotel operators (plus their unions) and the neighbors of such rentals, who don’t like the churn of visitors. So the local political equation thus seems clear, and the result is open season on the “Airbnbs.” Various jurisdictions, including now the giant city of New York, have curbed such availability. In another twist, noted this week in the Colorado Sun, a governor is seeking to quadruple the property tax on owners who make a habit of renting out. However, in a state with many beds on offer to budget-conscious or chalet-seeking skiers, the move provoked more resistance than the political equation suggests. Watch this space, so to speak.

Short-term rental owners show up in force to oppose Colorado lawmakers’ plan to tax their homes at a much higher rate