The colors are stored in the house
Work by Zoe Tilley Poster, at Long River Gallery, White River Junction, Vt.
Kent Jones: Trump’s lust for tariff power threatens economic democracy and encourages corruption
Effects of an import tariff, which hurts domestic consumers more than domestic producers are helped. Higher prices and lower quantities reduce consumer surplus by areas A+B+C+D, while expanding producer surplus by A and government revenue by C. Areas B and D are dead-weight losses, surplus lost by consumers and overall.
— From Wikipedia
From The Conversation, except image above
Kent Jones is a professor emeritus of economics at Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass.
He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The future of many of Donald Trump’s tariffs are up in the air, with the Supreme Court expected to hand down a ruling on the administration’s global trade barriers any day now.
But the question of whether a policy is legal or constitutional – which the justices are entertaining now – isn’t the same as whether it’s wise. And as a trade economist, I worry that Trump’s tariffs also pose a threat to “economic democracy” – that is, the process of decision-making that incorporates the viewpoints of everyone affected by the decision.
Founders and economic democracy
In many ways, the U.S. founders were supporters of economic democracy. That’s why, in the U.S. Constitution, they gave tariff- and tax-making powers exclusively to Congress.
And for good reason. Taxes can often represent a flash point between a government and its people. Therefore, it was deemed necessary to give this responsibility to the branch most closely tied to rule of, and by, the governed: an elected Congress. Through this arrangement, the legitimacy of tariffs and taxes would be based on voters’ approval – if the people weren’t happy, they could act through the ballot box.
To be fair, the president isn’t powerless over trade: Several times over the past century, Congress has passed laws delegating tariff-making authority to the executive branch on an emergency basis. These laws gave the president more trade power but subject to specific constitutional checks and balances.
Stakes for economic democracy
At issue before the Supreme Court now is Trump’s interpretation of one such emergency measure, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
Back in April 2025, Trump interpreted the law – which gives the president powers to respond to “any unusual and extraordinary threat” – to allow him to impose tariffs of any amount on products from nearly every country in the world.
Yet the act does not include any checks and balances on the president’s powers to use tariffs and does not even mention tariffs among its remedies. Trump’s unrestrained use of tariffs in this way was unprecedented in any emergency action ever taken by a U.S. president.
Setting aside the constitutional and legal issues, the move raises several concerns for economic democracy.
The first danger is in regards to a concentration of power. One of the reason tariffs are subjected to congressional debate and voting is that it provides a transparent process that balances competing interests. It prevents the interests of a single individual – such as a president who might substitute his own interests for that of the wider public interest – from controlling complete power.
Instead it subjects any proposed tariffs to the open competition of ideas among elected politicians.
Compare this to the way Trump’s tariffs were made. They were determined in large part by the president’s own political score-settling with other countries, and an ideological preference for trade surpluses. And they were not authorized by Congress. In fact, they bypassed the role of Congress as a check and balance – and this is not good for economic democracy in my view.
A protester holds a sign as the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Nov. 5, 2025. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The second danger is uncertainty. Unlike congressional tariffs, tariffs rolled out through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act under Trump have been altered many times and can continue to change in the future.
While supporters of the president have argued that this unpredictability gives the U.S. a bargaining advantage over competitor nations, many economists have noted that it severely compromises any goal of revitalizing American industries.
This is because both domestic and foreign investment in U.S.-based industries depends on stable and predictable import-market access. Investors are unwilling to make large capital expenditures over several years and hire new workers if they think tariff rates might change at any time.
Even in the first year of the Trump tariffs, there is evidence of large-scale reductions in hiring and capital investment in the manufacturing sector due to this uncertainty.
The third danger concerns that lack of accountability involved in circumventing Congress. This can lead to using tariffs as a stealth way of increasing taxes on a population.
Importing companies generate revenue for the government through the additional levies they pay on goods from overseas. These costs are typically borne by domestic consumers, through increased prices, and importing companies, through lower profit margins.
Either way, Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act interpretation has allowed him to use tariffs in a way that would – if allowed to stand – bring in additional government revenue of more than US$2 trillion over a 10-year period, according to estimates.
Trump frames the revenue his tariffs have raised as a windfall of foreign-paid duties. But in fact, the revenue is extracted from domestic consumer pockets and producer profit margins. And that amounts to a tax on both.
Corruption concerns
Finally, the way Trump’s used the act to roll out unilateral and changeable tariffs creates an incentive for political favoritism and even bribery.
This is down to what economists call “rent seeking” – that is, the attempt by companies or individuals to get extra money or value out of a policy through influence or favoritism.
As such, Trump can, should he wish, play favorites with “priority” industries in terms of tariff exemptions. In fact, he has already done this with major U.S. companies that import cell phones and other electronics products. They asked for special exemptions for the products they imported, a favor not granted to other companies. And there is nothing stopping recipients of the exemptions offering, say, to contribute to the president’s political causes or his renovations to the White House.
Smaller and less politically influential U.S. businesses do not have the same clout to lobby for tariff relief.
And this tariff-by-dealmaking goes beyond U.S. companies looking for relief. It extends into the world of manipulating governments to bend to Washington’s will. Unlike congressional tariffs under World Trade Organization rules, International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs discriminate from country to country – even on the same products.
And this allows for trade deals that focus on extracting bilateral deals that take place without considering broader U.S. interests. In the course of concluding bilateral Trump trade deals, some foreign governments such as Switzerland and South Korea have even offered Trump special personal gifts, presumably in exchange for favorable terms. Presidential side deals and gift exchanges with individual countries are, as many scholars of good international governance have noted, not the best way to conduct global affairs.
The harms of having a tariff system that eschews the normal checks and balances of the American system are nothing new, or at least shouldn’t be.
Back in the late 1700s, with the demands of a tyrannical and unaccountable king at the front of their minds, the founders built a tariff order aimed at maintaining democratic legitimacy and preventing the concentration of power in a single individual’s hands.
A challenge to that order could have worrisome consequences for democracy as well as the economy.
Cast off the ‘surly bonds of earth’
“Return To flight” (acrylic paint and copper leaf on wood panel), by Boston area painter and registered nurse Kathleen George.
Lynn Arditi: As health-insurance costs surge, families puzzle over options
“The Sick Girl", by Michael Ancher, 1882, in National Gallery of Denmark, a nation that has very good health care.
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News (except image above). This article is part of a partnership between KFF Health News and National Public Radio.
PROVIDENCE
New York-based performer Cynthia Freeman, 61, has been trying to figure out how to keep the Affordable Care Act health plan that she and her husband depend on.
“If we didn’t have health issues, I’d just go back to where I was in my 40s and not have health insurance,” she said, “but we’re not in that position now.”
Freeman and her husband, Brad Lawrence, are freelancers who work in storytelling and podcasting.
In October, Lawrence, 52, got very sick, very fast.
“I knew I was in trouble,” he said. “I went into the emergency room, and I walked over to the desk, and I said, ‘Hi, I’ve gained 25 pounds in five days and I’m having trouble breathing and my chest hurts.’ And they stopped blinking.”
Doctors diagnosed him with kidney disease, and he was hospitalized for four days.
Now Lawrence has to take medication with an average cost without insurance of $760 a month.
In January, the cost of the couple’s current “silver” plan rose nearly 75 percent, to $801 a month.
To bring in extra cash, Freeman has picked up a part-time bartending gig.
Millions of middle-class Americans who have ACA health plans are facing soaring premium payments in 2026, without help from the enhanced subsidies that Congress failed to renew. Some are contemplating big life changes to deal with new rates that kicked in on Jan. 1.
It often falls to women to figure out a family’s insurance puzzle.
Women generally use more health care than men, in part because of their need for reproductive services, according to Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler, a professor at Brown University’s School of Public Health.
Women also tend to be the medical decision-makers for the family, she said, especially for the children.
“There’s a disproportionate role that women play in families around what we think of as the mental load,” said Tobin-Tyler, and that includes “making decisions around health insurance.”
Before the holidays, Congress considered a few forms of relief for the premium hikes, but nothing has materialized, and significant deadlines have already passed.
Going Uninsured?
As the clock ticked down on 2025, B. agonized over her family’s insurance options. She was looking for a full-time job with benefits, because the premium prices she was seeing for 2026 ACA plans were alarming.
In the meantime, she decided, she and her husband would drop coverage and insure only the kids. But it would be risky.
“My husband works with major tools all day,” she said, “so it feels like rolling the dice.”
NPR and KFF Health News are identifying B. by her middle initial because she believes that her insurance needs could affect her ongoing search for a job with health benefits.
The family lives in Providence. Her husband is a self-employed woodworker, and she worked full-time as a nonprofit manager before she lost her job last spring.
After she lost her job, she turned to the ACA marketplace. The family’s “gold” plan cost them nearly $2,000 a month in premiums.
It was a lot, and they dug into retirement savings to pay for it while B. kept looking for a new position.
Because Congress failed to extend enhanced subsidies for ACA plans, despite ongoing political battles and a lengthy government shutdown over the issue, B.’s family plan would have cost even more in 2026 — almost $3,000 a month.
“I don’t have an additional $900 lying around in my family budget to pay for this,” she said.
B. had already pulled $12,000 out of retirement funds to pay her family’s 2025 rates.
Unless she finds a new job soon, the family’s projected income for 2026 will be less than 266% of the federal poverty level. That means the children qualify for free coverage through Medicaid.
So B. decided to buy a plan on the ACA marketplace for herself and her husband, paying premiums of $1,200 a month.
“The bottom line is none of this is affordable,” she said, “so we’re going to be dipping into savings to pay for this.”
Postponing a Wedding
The prospect of soaring insurance premiums put a pause on Nicole Benisch’s plans to get married.
Benisch, 45, owns a holistic wellness business in Providence. She paid $108 a month for a zero-deductible “silver” plan on Rhode Island’s insurance exchange.
But the cost in 2026 more than doubled, to $220 a month.
She and her fiance had planned to marry on Dec. 19, her late mother’s birthday. “And then,” she said, “we realized how drastically that was going to change the cost of my premium.”
As a married couple, their combined income would exceed 400% of the federal poverty level and make Benisch ineligible for financial help. Her current plan’s monthly premium payments would triple, costing her more than $700 a month.
Benisch considered a less expensive “bronze” plan, but it wouldn’t cover vocal therapy, which she needs to treat muscle tension dysphonia, a condition that can make her voice strain or give out.
If they get married, there’s another option: Switch to her fiance’s health plan in Massachusetts. But that would mean losing all her Rhode Island doctors, who would be out-of-network.
“We have some tough decisions to make,” she said, “and none of the options are really great for us.”
Lynn Arditi reports for Ocean State Media, a National Public Radio affiliate.
Chris Powell: Hartford mayor panders to the anti-ICE mob
MANCHESTER, Conn.
If the country is in big trouble, it's not just because the president pretends that he has authority to wage war wherever he wants. It's also because the country is full of people who are striving to obstruct immigration-law enforcement, full of people who hallucinate that the government is getting ready to kill them, and full of elected officials who pander to both groups.
Among those officials now is Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, who last week blamed the president and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the conflict that occurred during a protest outside the federal building in Hartford, where ICE has an office.
Some protesters went behind the building and blocked the garage exit as two vehicles, presumably operated by ICE agents, were leaving. Video shows at least one protester in front of and leaning on an exiting car. Witnesses say someone, presumably an ICE agent, pepper-sprayed the blockaders and then the two cars made their way out by pushing through the mob, with a protester being knocked over but not injured.
The incident was the protesters' fault, not ICE's, just as the fatal incident in Minneapolis last week was caused by people who also set out to impede an enforcement operation.
At a press conference the day after the Hartford incident, Mayor Arulampalam called it "the direct result of the lawlessness and recklessness of the Trump administration." Oh, sure -- Trump and ICE made those protesters block the garage, and the ICE agents were wrong to try the clear the exit so they could do their work, though they are federal police officers just like FBI agents and impeding them is a federal felony.
With the mayor declaring that the work of the immigration agents is illegitimate, more criminal interference with ICE may be expected in Connecticut, at least until the FBI and local police make some arrests.
This doesn't mean that the fatal shooting of the protester by the ICE agent in Minneapolis was justified, though it may have been. It means that she and her friends were not just protesting peacefully but seeking confrontation and interfering, just like the protesters at the Hartford federal building garage.
This distinction was lost on the people who held other protests in Connecticut last weekend -- and lost on the journalists who interviewed them without posing critical questions.
A protester from Fairfield said, “It feels like it could happen to anyone now," though “it" doesn't seem to have happened to anyone not impeding or caught up in an ICE enforcement operation.
A protester from Stratford concurred, saying, “I don't know who among us is safe," though no one at her protest was attacked either.
Critical questions being out of fashion in journalism in Connecticut, no one seems to have asked the protesters just what, if anything, should be done about the illegal immigration that has overwhelmed the country. But questions should have been prompted by the signs the protesters carried, which called for ICE to be abolished or banished from Connecticut.
So should there be no immigration law enforcement?
That's the implication of the slogan on many other protest signs: “No human is illegal." But that's a straw man; no one has made such a silly claim. What's illegal is the presence in the country of people who have not been properly admitted after a background check. The sanctimony of this slogan seems to advocate a return to open borders.
ICE needs closer supervision and Congress should require it. As with regular police officers, agents making arrests should always be identified by badges and name tags and should not be masked. As with ordinary arrests, detainees should be promptly identified on public registers so press and public can keep track of them.
But as with regular police officers, ICE agents may be more sinned against than sinning, as they are sometimes assaulted by their desperate targets and protesters. People who impede them are insurrectionists as much as the January 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol were.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Walking it out
“Urban+Desert+1,’’ by Catherine Picard-Gibbs, at Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, Mass., Jan. 23-Feb. 22
Overstudied?
Dutch map from 1651.
1659 public notice in Boston declaring celebration of Christmas illegal.
“So many able historians have worked over seventeenth-century New England that one would think there was little left to be learned from the people who lived there - fewer than 100,000 {colonists — mostly of English origin} at the end of the century. Seldom, apart perhaps from the Greeks and Romans, have so few been studied by so many.”
— Edmund Morgan (1916-2013), historian at Yale University
Choreography of images
“The Origins of Asymmetry’’ (oil on patterned fabric and drawer with woodcut print), by Sónia Almeida, in her show “Stages,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., Feb. 14, 2o26 to Feb. 24, 2027.
The museum says:
“The artist is fascinated by patterns, image-reproduction technologies, and instructional materials. ‘Stages’ reflects her interest in how an artwork performs and the choreography it implies for viewers, but also in process: steps and layers, of which there are many in Almeida’s richly textured works.’’
Llewellyn King: Trump regime uses ICE as part of its assault on the rule of law; we are all imperiled
“Equal Justice Under Law,” by Robert Ingersoll Aitken, over the western façade of the U.S. Supreme Court Building.
—Photo byMattWade
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The men you see in masks on your television savagely arresting people may not seem like your affair. But they are your affair and mine, and that of every other American.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates outside of the law. It doesn’t disclose charges, and no one arrested sees a court of law.
ICE agents are also the affair of the whole world, for while they are symbols of local terror, they are also symbols of America’s withdrawal from the one critical underpinning of civilization: the rule of law.
Without it, society isn’t much. No one is secure, even those who are in charge.
At another time, the victim may be the oppressor. When there is no law there is only fear. One day, the persecutor behind the mask may find himself persecuted by another man behind another mask.
Once power is wielded indiscriminately, it is free to serve many masters.
During a campaign by the government of Argentina to suppress left-wing political opponents, known as the Dirty War, from 1976 to 1983, a new way of settling personal disputes arose.
The police arrested so many and killed them secretly — between 10,000 and 30,000, and the victims became known as the “disappeared” — that soon murder became easier. If you didn’t like a rival or even a family member, you “disappeared” them — and that was that. No one would report such disappearances to the police for fear that it was the work of the police.
When I was in Argentina after the Dirty War, I was told about a man who didn’t like his mother-in-law and disappeared her. Lawlessness breeds lawlessness.
Currently, in areas of America where ICE is present, there is a common assumption that if someone suddenly goes missing, it means that ICE has detained them, and they are likely being sent to a detention center for deportation.
Mickey Spillane, the American crime writer, once said the only difference between the police and the criminals was that the police were employed by the government. We see that with ICE.
In 1215, at Runnymede, the nobles of England told King John to cut it out. They demanded an end to the arbitrary confiscation of property and his majesty’s habit of handing out sentences without trial.
Habeas corpus (“that you have the body”) dates in English law to before the Magna Carta, but it was codified there. The Napoleonic Code embraces many of the same elements as the Magna Carta, although Napoleon eschewed English common law when he revised French law into the code in 1804.
Now, about half of the world’s legal systems are based on the French code and half, including 49 U.S. states, are based on English common law. Louisiana has a hybrid of the two.
Nonetheless, it is a tenet of both systems that the individual will face trial and know his or her accusers, that the accused could be tried by his or her peers, and that the accused has rights.
Historically, the British relied heavily on the rule of law. In fact, law and its application became a mainstay of maintaining order in Britain and in the Empire. It was part of the concept of British exceptionalism.
The dignity and openness of trials were an important part of the colonial ethos. In Southern Rhodesia, before the country suffered a civil war and became Zimbabwe, I was a defendant for a minor dispute with a hotel over a bill. Even though I had settled the bill, I was ordered to appear before the native commissioner’s court in the remote area of the country where the hotel was situated.
The court was a room with a single table and chair. Everyone else sat on the floor. It was crowded with justice-seekers and defendants, all of them black.
Only the commissioner and I were colonials. I thought the process would be nothing more than a courtesy call, a wink and blink.
Finally, the great man with bushy, unkempt, white hair and a mustache called me to the table. He read the now-moot complaint and dressed me down in terms I have never been dressed down, before or after, ven by irate readers.
He said I was a disgrace to Britain, to my ancestry, to my family, and to my school. But, he said, I had especially let down the Empire. I was warned that if I ever faced him again for any reason, no matter how minor, I would get strict punishment.
It was really a rough way to treat a teenager, but it was part of the justice of the day that had to be seen as being even-handed and blind.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens wrote that “the law is an ass.” I think it is a beautiful beast, despite running afoul of it in colonial Africa. We need it back in the U.S. stable.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy consultant. His email address is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
‘Juvenation’
Hermit Thrush, Vermont’s state bird.
— Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren
“Look. And smell. Breathe deeply. Feel the air; touch it now and sense its purity, its vigor, its super-constant juvenation (that supposedly has given Vermonters their long life — if you discount their stubbornness.)’’
— Evan Hill, in The Connecticut River
‘Rootedness in exile’
From Eva Sturm-Gross’s show “Beasts of Eden,’’ at AVA Gallery and Art Center, Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 16-Feb. 14.
The gallery says:
“What does it mean to inherit a broken tradition? Eva Sturm-Gross’s premier solo exhibition, ‘Beasts of Eden,’ represents an invitation into a fragmented symbolic world. The mystics of the Middle Ages teach us that the reality of creation is a shattered one, like the shards of a broken vessel. Her work thus balances the central tension of Jewish diaspora, communicating both a longing for messianic redemption on the one hand and a rootedness in exile on the other. This rootedness is expressed principally by Sturm-Gross through the animals of the Upper {Connecticut River} Valley, her homeland. The creatures that populate ‘Beasts of Eden’ are drawn from her encounters with the natural landscape surrounding her childhood home in Hartland, Vermont. Biblical narratives here are portrayed by the fauna of the Upper Valley.’’
Taste test
Untitled photo by Cang Xin, at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
.
Boston’s Big Three
The Boston Garden in 1994. It was demolished in 1998 and replaced by the TD Garden, though many still call that building The Boston Garden.
“Boston’s three major industries are sports, politics and revenge.’’
— Larry Moulter, writer, former sports-sector executive (including as manager of the Boston Garden), political operator, and writer.
Light is usually appreciated
In James Turrell’s show “Into the Light,’’ at MASS MoCa, in North Adams, Mass.
The museum says:
“In James Turrell’s hands, light is more than simply a source of illumination: it is a discrete, physical object. His sculptures and architectural interventions elevate our experience and perception of light and space. Squares of sky seem to float, suspended, in ceilings or walls; architecture disintegrates; and brilliant geometric shapes levitate in midair.’’
Philip K. Howard: America’s paralyzing ‘back-of-house problem’
The westbound part of the Washington Bridge, connecting Providence and East Providence, R.I., via Interstate 195, was closed for critical safety reasons in December 2023 and is not scheduled to reopen until December 2028, a frustrating delay that can be largely laid t0 administrative incompetence and the entanglements of red tape. Its closure has caused much economic and other damage to the region.
Washington used to be petty and inept. Now it’s a roller-coaster. What will Trump do tomorrow? New York too. Is the “warmth of collectivism” promised by Mayor Mamdani a precursor for class warfare?
Americans are right to want a new vision for governing. But the political instinct for radical cures ignores a main cause of public frustration—the inability of government to do almost anything sensibly.
Sooner or later the focus on affordability will shine the spotlight on how government spends taxpayer dollars—almost 40 percent of GDP is spent by government. How much is wasted, how much productive initiative is stymied, when government is effectively unmanageable?
Public fraud on an industrial scale in Minnesota is the latest evidence that government is out of anyone’s control. In that case, as fraud expert Linda Miller explains, oversight officials had no authority to hold suspicious payments pending investigation. Most of the failures of the red tape state—for example, years-long processes for infrastructure permitting and defense procurement—can be traced to the disempowerment of responsible officials to act on their best judgment.
It’s hard to have a sober discussion on rebooting public operations, however, when holding on tight to avoid worse fates. Perhaps it’s asking too much of political leaders to get off the soap box. The chainsaw approach by Trump’s DOGE initiative failed because it dramatically slashed the number of public employees instead of cutting the red tape that prevents them from doing their jobs.
What’s new is growing public recognition that American government has a “back-of-house” problem, as Manhattan Institute’s John Ketcham calls it—that many public failures are due to inept operations, not poor policies. Biting critiques of the red-tape state by liberal writers Marc Dunkelman (Why Nothing Works) and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Abundance) ask why Democrats—supposedly the party of good government—do nothing to overhaul these inept structures.
Dislodging powerful interest groups at the public trough is unlikely to attract political support, however, without broad outrage. So, instead of talking to deaf ears, perhaps the next step is to amp up the pressure by quantifying just how much money the red tape state is costing taxpayers. A private “spring cleaning commission” could be organized by civic leaders to do the work of analyzing the main areas of public waste and ineffectiveness, and propose simpler frameworks that citizens can demand.
In an essay on authority and freedom, published over the weekend by The Atlantic, I describe what the new frameworks should look like. In John Ketcham’s “back-of-house” essay, republished by The Washington Post, he relies on our work to conclude: “American governance…needs a new model of public decision-making—one capable of reversing over-proceduralization and its harmful effects. Howard argues, rightly, that someone must be empowered to make trade-offs in service of the national good.”
If you like the idea of a private “spring cleaning commission,” please share your ideas on how it should be organized and led.
Philip K. Howard, a New York-based government reformer, civic leader, lawyer and photographer, is chairman of Common Good, the nonpartisan reform group.
The ‘sound of the land’
The earliest known photograph of a snowman, c. 1853, by Mary Dillwyn.
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
— “The Snow Man,’’ by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), Connecticut-based poet and insurance executive
Story of our lives
“Misdirection” (charcoal and acrylic ink on paper), by Ben Sears, in the group show “Plus One,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Feb. 4-March 1.
‘The beauty of decay’
“Abundantia’’ (ink jet print), by Tara Sellios, in her show “Ask Now the Beasts,’’ at the Fitchburg (Mass.) Art Museum, through May 24.
The museum says:
“Tara Sellios is a Boston-based artist whose monumental photographs highlight the beauty of the grotesque. Sellios creates still life vignettes from organic materials, including animal bones, insect specimens, and dried flowers which she photographs using a large format 8 X 10 camera. Printed at a large scale, Sellios’s photographs capture the vivid details of her materials. Sellios’s imagery takes inspiration from Christian devotionals including illuminated manuscripts, altarpieces, and stained glass windows while engaging with historical traditions of still life painting, particularly Dutch vanitas paintings. ‘Ask Now the Beasts’ derives its title from the Book of Job, exploring the concepts of the harvest and the apocalypse. In this new work Sellios considers the cyclical nature of Earth, intertwining symbols of death and references to life with the beauty of decay.’’
Llewellyn King: Memories of a ‘91 trip to Venezuela; of course it’s much worse now
Venezuela’s main oil-producing region.
Editor’s note: New England used to heavily depend on oil from Venezuela for heating. Much heating oil for the Northeast now comes from Canada.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
In 1991, the state oil company of Venezuela, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., known as PDVSA, invited the international energy press to visit.
I was one of the reporters who flew to Caracas and later to Lake Maracaibo, the center of oil production, and then to a very fancy party on a sandbar in the Caribbean.
They were, as a British journalist said, “putting on the dog.”
At that time, PDVSA executives were proud of the way they had maintained the standards and practices which had been in force before nationalization in 1976. The oil company was, we were assured, a lean, mean machine, producing about 3.5 million barrels per day.
They were keen to claim they had maintained the same esprit under state ownership as they had had when they were privately owned by American companies.
They had kept political interference at arm's length, executives claimed.
PDVSA's interest then, as it has always been, was more investment, particularly in its natural gas, known as the Cristobal Colon project.
In President Trump's takeover of Venezuela's moribund oil sector, natural gas hasn't been much mentioned — although there may eventually be more demand for natural gas from Venezuela than for its oil.
We had a meeting with Venezuela's president, Carlos Andres Perez, who was called CAP. He painted a rosy future for the country and its oil and gas industry.
CAP believed the oil revenues would modernize the country. Particularly, he said that technology was needed to make the heavy oil more accessible and manageable.
And there's the rub. While everyone is quick to point out that Venezuela's oil reserves are the largest in the world, all oil isn't equal.
Venezuela's oil is difficult to deal with. It doesn't just bubble out of the ground. Instead, 80 percent of it is highly viscous, more like tar than a free-flowing liquid. And it has a high sulfur content.
In other words, it is the oil that most oil companies, unless they have special production and refining facilities, want to avoid. It takes special coaxing to extract the oil from the ground and ship it.
Venezuelan oil has a high “lifting cost” which makes it expensive to begin with. At present, that cost is about $23 per barrel compared to about $13 per barrel for Saudi Arabian oil.
During the energy crisis, which unfolded in the fall of 1973 with the Arab oil embargo, U.S. utilities considered pumping it with a surfactant (a thinner) to Florida and burning it directly in boilers like coal.
As evidence that the oil operation hadn't been damaged by nationalization, executives proudly told us that PDVSA produced more oil with 12,000 employees than the state oil company of Mexico, PEMEX, produced with 200,000.
In other words, the Venezuelans had been able to resist the temptation to turn the oil company into a kind of social- welfare program, employing unneeded droves of people.
Now I read the workforce of PDVSA stands at more than 70,000 and oil production has slipped to about 750,000 barrels a day.
By 1991, the oil shortage which had endured since the Arab oil embargo had eased, and PDVSA was worried about its future and whether its heavy oil could find a wider market.
Particularly, it was worried about the day when it would run out of the lighter crudes and would be left only with its viscous reserves.
Two oil companies have been shipping oil to the United States during the time of revolution and sanctions: Citgo, a PDVSA-owned operator of gas stations in the United States, and Chevron. Both have waivers issued by the United States, although Citgo is under orders to divest and is set to be bought by Elliott Company (owned by Paul Singer, a Trump supporter), which may play a big role going forward in Venezuela as its expertise is in lifting.
About that party on a sandbank. Well, PDVSA wanted to show the press that it could spend money as lavishly as any oil major.
We were flown in a private jet to an island, then transported on speedboats to a sandbank, where a feast worthy of a potentate was set up under tents. The catering staff had been taken off the sandbank, so the effect was that the party had miraculously emerged from the Caribbean Sea.
On X: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS and an international energy-sector consultant. He’s based in Rhode Island.,
Important for Maine and beyond
Rising Tides: Adapting to Coastal Maine's Future
$45.00
Hardcover - 10×10
Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future captures the memorable voices of Mainers in a rapidly changing world. These include oyster farmers and other aquaculturalists, fishermen, marine biologists and other scientists, and community leaders who are navigating dramatic changes along and off Maine’s iconic coast.
Presenting deep geological, climatological, and human history, in-depth interviews, and other research, the book shows the challenges and opportunities as rising seas caused by global warming, along with sometimes controversial shoreline development, are reshaping ways of life along The Pine Tree State’s storied coast. The vivid changes include shifting fisheries, new industries and markets and the technology that pushes them.
The problems, opportunities, and adaptations in Maine carry lessons for coastal communities around the world. These are global issues described locally through the stories of Mainers on the frontlines. A powerful and timely portrait, Rising Tides is both a warning and an inspiration. It displays the dangers posed by change while also serving as a testament to the ingenuity and determination required not only in Maine but on coasts everywhere.