Ruptured Democracy? Add a Think Tank

A full-page advertisement (there are still a few!) in today’s print New York Times salutes an act of philanthropy but is full of ironies.

The gift is $59 million from the HMO fortune of Leonard Schaeffer and his wife to the University of Southern California, for establishment of a (named for him) Institute for Public Policy & Government Service at USC’s “campus” (building) in Washington D.C.

“Confidence in our political system and our ability to protect democracy are at historic lows,” the ad reads. The gift “will establish a coast-to-coast think tank for bolstering our democracy.” The institute will “train new leaders,” conduct research to “advance public policy proven to improve citizens’ lives” and “serve as a nexus” for “public and private sector leaders, researchers, policy experts and elected officials to exchange ideas and solve global issues.”

So: Another glass-walled urban hive of modern America’s well-degreed class to formulate thinking about why so many of their fellow countrymen do not share the democratic propositions embraced by this elite. This does not seem likely to move the ball in 2024 and thereafter.

For all I know, USC trustee Schaeffer, who was the founding chairman and CEO of Wellpoint, is a worthy citizen–“a recognized expert and published author in health economies and health policy”–and means to contribute here. But with a fortune that derives from the medical-financial sector (Wellpoint is now called Elevance) that has helped alienate so many among the disaffected millions in the U.S., he isn’t the ideal benefactor of a forum for repairing deep social divisions.

Huge naming donations to richly endowed universities are another symbol of the rupture between the establishment and the estranged. Even with $59 million, this latest platform for proper civic intercourse may reach “coast to coast,” but will struggle to connect with a lot of what’s between. –March 3, 2024

A Twilight Strategy on Hong Kong

The grim progression of bloody autocrats in major as well as lesser quarters of the globe can make for personal and political paralysis here in the U.S. When Alexei Navalny is snuffed out in Russia and Vladimir Putin grinds on to occupy Ukraine, or when Xi Jinping stamps out dissent in greater China and pursues dissenters in their escapes, what is left for American “friends of freedom” to do?

That was on the table this week at a lunch I attended in New York City with two dozen others from news media or NGOs that support independent reporting. Hong Kong was the specific focus. Increasingly pro-Beijing officials there have trampled on longstanding rule-of-law protections for speech, and the worsening restrictions have swept up hundreds to jail and already (along with uncoincidental economic woes) led hundreds of thousands to leave the once-great city.

We talked mainly about Jimmy Lai, the 76-year-old former publisher of Apple Daily, the tabloid that the Chinese Communist Party most needed to–and forcibly did–shut down. The ailing but (according to his longtime aide Mark Simon, who was with us) still-earnest Lai has been locked up for three years now on trumped-up charges while the Hong Kong authorities orchestrate his main event: a show trial for violating the “national-security law” imposed there in 2020 and widened since.

Blessedly, remnants of pre-Communist Hong Kong have formed support organizations for Lai and other dissidents, most notably the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. Its president, author-journalist and ex-civic leader Mark Clifford, also addressed our gathering, held under the auspices of the Overseas Press Club.

We discussed the importance of lending continued independent media ears to Hong Kong’s stifled voices, even as China’s rulers seek to cite contact with Western interests as evidence of collusive sedition. More broadly, it is helpful to spotlight constantly the role of outside business, institutions and governments–especially the U.K.–in their interactions with a repressive Hong Kong and, of course, its Chinese masters. Beijing is bothered by the attention–this is why opposing sounds are silenced.

Many of us personally renounced our onetime links to Hong Kong long ago, but that of course was an empty proclamation. What is more meaningful is a sturdy chronicling of the suffering of those who remained under the tyrant’s lash (including Jimmy Lai, who chose to stay) and of the predations of a dictator and system with eyes on another target, Taiwan. The weight of world opinion is not enough at any particular point to force evil back, but ultimately it can bend history. The first order now is to deny cover to complicity with the thugs. —Feb. 23, 2024

He Comes to Bury the Tax Cutters

Michael J. Graetz long ago established himself as a nettle in the side of those who promote lower tax rates for economic growth–in recent times what’s known as a “supply-side” agenda. Today Princeton University Press publishes the Ivy League law professor’s book chronicling the last 45 years of that cause, “The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America.” He traces the origin of the modern antitax push to Howard Jarvis’ finally-successful (in 1978) crusade to cut and limit property taxes in California. To Graetz’s credit, he has sophisticated awareness of tax politics, more than most Washington Beltway pundits. For one thing, he recognizes the role of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and even begins the book with a quotation from my former boss there, the late Robert L. Bartley. Graetz acknowledges what his adversaries were on to, and even concedes that some supply-side response to the stagflation of the late 1970s was “probably necessary.” His jaundiced view of tax-cutting legislation has undeniable elements of truth: much of the horse-trading was about gains for purely special interests, and the unwillingness to reduce the reach of government while cutting levies to pay for it has spawned enormous deficits. (The Laffer Curve for identifying when lower rates bring more revenues has been spongy in application—politicians and advocates aren’t inclined to find the apex and stop there.) As a result, tax policy has helped to foster greater inequality of result in America, whatever else it did.  A shrewd defender of progressive, broad-based taxation should stop there—and perhaps acknowledge that the wealthy in more socialist societies abroad also find plenty of loopholes. Unfortunately, Graetz doesn’t offer even-handedness, instead making gratuitous political swipes that serve only to pigeonhole him as one more attack dog of the left. There’s the accusation of racial animus as a motivation for tax cutters (as a way to strike at black beneficiaries of the welfare state—but then what explains Jack Kemp?). There are numerous digs at peripheral right-wing figures, and of course at Donald Trump. (And when Trump’s 2017 tax bill aims to remove a break for the rich—the SALT deduction—he dismisses it as a slam on blue states.) There’s even a harkening back to the fall of Alger Hiss!  Yes, in politics common cause is made with assorted forces whose agendas are ancillary to your own, and supply–side economists were no exception. U.S. tax policy is hard to separate from the right vs. left wars. That’s the reason Graetz’s book, for all its nitty-gritty on form 1040, bears a supportive blurb from the president of the ACLU. –Feb. 13, 2024

Chase Is Happy to Be ‘Just Another Bank’

This Wall Street Journal article of the past week spotlights the unusual (for today) strategy of opening numerous bank branches by the nation’s largest such financial institution, J.P Morgan Chase. It comes at a time when most other banks are retreating from the branch ubiquity approach, something many had embraced in urban areas not 15 years before–when New Yorkers often complained that a favorite storefront had been replaced by “just another bank.” It also comes as consumer banking in the U.S. and especially abroad is increasingly conducted online and among younger patrons by phone app. Chase–perhaps influenced by the success that upstart rivals like Capital One and TD banks as well as credit unions have had in marketing their customer-friendliness–believes the human contact is a pathway to provision of high-margin services to banking clients. The Journal reporter contrasts Chase’s stance with that of another giant, Bank of America. A starker comparison might be to Citibank, a New York City institution which today has no branch east of Holbrook on Long Island. That leaves 65 miles of some of the biggest wallets around (think the Hamptons) to the likes of Chase.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/jpmorgan-chase-bank-branches-expansion-cc7973dc

Hamptons Farmland: A Death and a Legacy

A significant but underappreciated aspect of the South Fork of Long Island land-preservation story is the role that old farming families have played. This is particularly true of the Polish clans that so prominently figured in the agricultural belt below the moraine that runs along the Water Mill to Bridgehampton stretch, some of the most picturesque and familiar to Hamptons visitors because it follows much of the “back road” that travelers take to avoid congestion on the main highway (County Road 39 and state route 27). In some cases these Poles emerged from early immigrant labor in the fields and mills to owning large blocks of rich soil that became even richer real estate as the 20th Century progressed. That saga was in view this week with the death of Joan B. Zaluski at age 93–she was matriarch to one significant brood and widow to locally prominent William Zaluski Jr. As several of these farm families sold their parcels from the 1960s on, to avoid inheritance taxes and to take advantage of the Hamptons land rush, the Zaluskis kept much of their holding–including a landmark farmhouse on Deerfield Road–and were key participants in efforts to maintain vestiges of the former character of the South Fork. This 1999 newsletter from the Peconic Land Trust, which has been instrumental in much of that preservation, noted their milestone in that effort.

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

UPDATE April 7, 2006–As this week’s Newsday article spells out, the Brookhaven development rollout is likely to include an enormous amount of warehouse space to service eastern Long Island.

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.