Whitcomb: Things Fall Apart; Florida Less a Tax…

Whitcomb: Things Fall Apart; Florida Less a Tax Haven; Squalor on the South Lawn; Catheter Con

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist PHOTO: Bill Gallery

“Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.’’

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— From Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Order of the Day for D-Day, June 6, 1944, as issued late on June 5.

“We’ll meet again
Don’t know where
Don’t know when
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.’’

— From the World War II song “We’ll Meet Again’’

Here are lyrics:

And a famous recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5C4meGkNyc

The song was played at the end of the 1964 nightmare comedy Dr. Strangelove

“Secrecy lies at the very core of power.’’

— Elias Canetti (1905-1994), European writer

“Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.’’

— Veronica Wedgewood (1910-1997), English historian

“A bull market is like sex. It feels best just before it ends.“

— Barton Biggs (1932-2012), American money manager

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While driving down to Jamestown, R.I., last week, I marveled at the glorious views from the bridges that connect parts of our archipelago. The views never get old.

American elms, with their hourglass look, are among the most beautiful trees, but for many decades they’ve been ravaged by Dutch Elm Disease. Read about efforts to save them:

Look at old photos and paintings showing these gorgeous trees – now mostly gone — along New England streets, town commons and school campuses. I well remember Memorial Day parades under the elms. Then there’s Eugene O’Neill’s (1888-1953) play Desire Under the Elms…. As a boy, he spent his summers in New London, Conn., which had lots of elms then.

Perhaps U.S. military pilots could take lessons from the seagulls on our summer beaches as these flying rats sweep down and pluck sandwiches and potato chips from sunbathers.

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While reading the obituary of a boyhood friend of mine the other day, I thought of how little we know about people we thought we knew. (For that matter, we don’t know enough about ourselves.) In this case, the obit listed some nice things about my friend’s interests, past jobs, family background and so on. But it had nothing about his being sent to jail for stealing from his clients, something I discovered separately.

He came from a family with four boys who lived down the road from us. The family seemed golden – everyone was smart, athletic and good-looking. But the father died at 38, one of the boys at 15 and another became an alcoholic – and later a local hero of Alcoholics Anonymous. I saw him for the first time in more than 50 years, a month before he died. He looked fine; the obituary gave no cause of death. The fourth boy became a distinguished physician. He died of a brain injury after falling down stairs after retiring.

One thinks of the quote from Ecclesiastes:

“I looked again and saw that under the sun the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the strong. Food is not given to the wise, nor is wealth given to those who have good judgment, nor is success given to those who have knowledge, because time and chance come upon all of them.”

Of course, it would be nice if the words “not always” were in there.

Banning Free Speech in Pawtuxet

The Gaspee Days Commission, which runs the annual Gaspee Days Parade in Warwick’s Pawtuxet section, to happen this year on June 13, wants to ban any political activities (leafleting, etc.) close to the parade. The parade commemorates the burning of the British revenue schooner, HMS Gaspee, by anti-British Rhode Island “patriots” in 1772.

This ban smells unconstitutional.

Floridian Tax Quandary

Maybe Florida will not turn out to be so wonderful for very rich people seeking to avoid paying high taxes in Blue states, such as Massachusetts, with services generally much better than in Florida. That’s because the mass of the population – however much they may hate taxes — need and/or want those services.

By the way, Massachusetts, despite its 4 percent surtax on household income over about $1.1 million, is now ranked as having the best economy of any state.

READ HERE

That the people of the commonwealth, home of some of the world’s greatest academic institutions, invest a lot more in both industry and academic R&D than is seen in most other states is one big key to its success, as is having a public-education system that’s still among America’s best. However, the system has been slipping a bit as it has become less rigorous in recent years. (Bring back passing the MCAS test as a requirement for graduating from high school!) Other good things include having a dense public-transportation system. Winters, however, are downers for many people.

Rhode Island, however, doesn’t look good, mostly for various historical reasons.

The more it becomes part of the Greater Boston economy, the better.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who still has presidential ambitions, has a plan that would result in jacking up the property-tax burden on the state’s wealthiest people (many of whom made it their legal domiciles to avoid taxes and most of whom are Republicans).

This would be in order to end property taxes (which have been surging) on 90 percent of Florida’s homeowners, which at first glance sounds very politically popular. Those surging taxes, and local fees, as well as soaring insurance premiums in the hurricane-prone peninsula, are leading an increasing number of middle-class people to leave, or decide not to move to the Sunshine State. (And maybe some fear the Burmese python population explosion?) The influx of well-heeled tax avoiders, many or most of whom don’t live in Florida full-time, has helped drive up real-estate prices to unaffordable levels for many middle-class people.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis PHOTO: Public Domain

Still, a problem: What would DeSantis’s plan do to localities’ ability to pay for schools, police, firefighting, libraries and other services? The millions of people who have moved to Florida expect the sort of local services they had where they came from.

Places with many very rich people, such as Palm Beach and Naples, might be okay. That is, unless the biggest tax avoiders there decide to flee to a “better” “low-tax” tax state (low except for, say, regressive sales taxes). There’s always New Hampshire, with no state income or sales taxes, but the annual cool snap there, aka winter, dissuades more than a few of the very well-heeled from homesteading there.

But poorer Florida localities could have a very tough time if DeSantis’s plan is enacted. They’d have to consider creating huge new fees and/or raising current ones to pay for services. And service cutbacks tend to lower property values. DeSantis suggests using state government fiscal surpluses to help out poorer places, but projections are that Florida will soon have to deal with a big budget deficit.

Sort of amusingly, the Florida situation reminds me of the uproar by billionaires over New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to enact a new tax on properties there owned by people officially domiciled elsewhere (such as Florida!) worth more than $5 million.

Anyway, the Florida situation is tangled in the law of unintended consequences.

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At the federal level, the anti-tax mania and rapidly expanding spending (welcome to the Iran war!) will probably, sometime in the next few years, produce a federal debt crisis of biblical proportions, with interest rates jumping.

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IMAGE: File

The income from the endowment of some universities, such as members of the Ivy League, is being taxed by Trump in the many millions to stick to institutions he envies and resents. But such nonprofit institutions are not supposed to be taxed. The hundreds of millions of dollars that Trump’s weaponized IRS is taking from these institutions include money that could otherwise go to scholarships and medical and other scientific research that would benefit the country.

Meanwhile, many profitable U.S. corporations, including such famous names as Tesla, United Airlines, CVS and Walt Disney, paid $0 in federal corporate-income taxes in 2025. Despite collectively reporting over $105 billion in pre-tax income, these companies avoided taxes by using federal deductions and credits. And you can bet that some executives of these companies, many of whom were big Trump donors, manipulated their tax returns to avoid paying personal-income taxes.

By the way, as I’ve said before, I think corporate income taxes should be eliminated. They lead to corruption and abet economic inefficiency.

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Trump’s illegal and idiotic war against Iran is using up a lot of U.S. weaponry that NATO members need to buy to defend themselves from Russian aggression. That seems fine with Russian asset Trump.

Meanwhile, while Ukraine focuses on attacking Russian military and energy facilities, Russia, a terrorist state, focuses more and more on killing Ukrainian civilians.

Violent Grifting

Coming attraction! On June 14, to celebrate the Orange Oligarch’s 80th birthday, and, it’s asserted, Flag Day, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a for-profit martial-arts organization based in – natch! – Las Vegas will stage a bloody show in a giant cage now being erected on the South Lawn of the White House.

Active-duty military personnel are being pressured to attend, but only if they fit “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth’s homoerotic fitness criteria.

It’s unclear at this point how much of the total expenses of this spectacle will be paid for by the taxpayers and how much by the deeply corrupt UFC, and how much the Trump mobster family will financially benefit.

But note that Trump purchased $15,001 to $50,000 of stock of TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of UFC, on March 25. Perhaps some journalist will find out if he had TKO stock before that.

So this show combines the glorification of violence (all hail Jan. 6, 2021!) and the mega-grifting so central at the top of today’s rapidly decaying America.

Fraud Alert!

Medicare members should look at their billing notices ever more carefully, as scams proliferate. The latest one I came across is charges by a dubious enterprise called Memphis DME Supply LLC for “300 intermittent urinary catheter; coude (curved) tip, with or without coating (teflon, silicone or sil A4352-KX).’’

Many people around America who have not been in any procedures using these devices – and their insurers – have been getting fraudulently billed for the nonuse of this equipment. Alert your insurers!

Medicare fraud is far more likely to be perpetrated by providers than by patients.

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Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal, and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.

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