Poland Rises Above Past Conflict With Ukraine Because “Russia Has Always Been the Bigger Evil”

(p. A1) . . . the paradox of foreigner-leery governments taking in huge numbers of Ukrainians has been especially stark in Poland, long one of the world’s most ethnically homogeneous countries with a deep-seated mistrust of outsiders and a tangled, often painful history with Ukraine.

. . .

. . . , consider the change of heart Ryszard Marcinkowski, 74, a retired Polish railway worker, experienced.

. . .

He grew up with horror stories about the brutality of Ukrainian nationalists told by his parents and aunt, all refugees from formerly Polish lands in what, since World War II, has been western Ukraine.

Yet when millions of Ukrainians started arriving in Poland last February [2022], Mr. Marcinkowski drove to the border to deliver food and other supplies.

“I had a very bad image of Ukrainians from my family but realized that I had to help them,” Mr. Marcinkowski said. “For Poland,” he added, “Russia has always been the bigger evil.”

For the full story, see:

Andrew Higgins. “Insular Poland Opens to Wave Of Newcomers.” The New York Times (Thursday, February 23, 2023): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 22, 2023, and has the title “How Poland, Long Leery of Foreigners, Opened Up to Ukrainians.”)

Billions in Subsidies for Solar and Wind Are Wasted by Delayed Approvals of Connections to a Slow-Growing Grid

(p. A1) Plans to install 3,000 acres of solar panels in Kentucky and Virginia are delayed for years. Wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota have been abruptly canceled. And programs to encourage Massachusetts and Maine residents to adopt solar power are faltering.

The energy transition poised for takeoff in the United States amid record investment in wind, solar and other low-carbon technologies is facing a serious obstacle: The volume of projects has overwhelmed the nation’s antiquated systems to connect new sources of electricity to homes and businesses.

So many projects are trying to squeeze through the approval process that delays can drag on for years, leaving some developers to throw up their hands and walk away.

More than 8,100 energy projects — the vast majority of them wind, solar and batteries — were waiting for permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2021, up from 5,600 the year before, jamming the system known as interconnection.

. . .

(p. A15) It now takes roughly four years, on average, for developers to get approval, double the time it took a decade ago.

And when companies finally get their projects reviewed, they often face another hurdle: the local grid is at capacity, and they are required to spend much more than they planned for new transmission lines and other upgrades.

. . .

Electricity production generates roughly one-quarter of the greenhouse gases produced by the United States; cleaning it up is key to President Biden’s plan to fight global warming. The landmark climate bill he signed last year provides $370 billion in subsidies to help make low-carbon energy technologies — like wind, solar, nuclear or batteries — cheaper than fossil fuels.

But the law does little to address many practical barriers to building clean energy projects, such as permitting holdups, local opposition or transmission constraints. Unless those obstacles get resolved, experts say, there’s a risk that billions in federal subsidies won’t translate into the deep emissions cuts envisioned by lawmakers.

. . .

Delays can upend the business models of renewable energy developers. As time ticks by, rising materials costs can erode a project’s viability. Options to buy land expire. Potential customers lose interest.

. . .

When a proposed energy project drops out of the queue, the grid operator often has to redo studies for other pending projects and shift costs to other developers, which can trigger more cancellations and delays.

It also creates perverse incentives, experts said. Some developers will submit multiple proposals for wind and solar farms at different locations without intending to build them all. Instead, they hope that one of their proposals will come after another developer who has to pay for major network upgrades. The rise of this sort of speculative bidding has further jammed up the queue.

“Imagine if we paid for highways this way,” said Rob Gramlich, president of the consulting group Grid Strategies. “If a highway is fully congested, the next car that gets on has to pay for a whole lane expansion. When that driver sees the bill, they drop off. Or, if they do pay for it themselves, everyone else gets to use that infrastructure. It doesn’t make any sense.”

. . .

Massachusetts and Maine offer a warning, said David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute. In both states, lawmakers offered hefty incentives for small-scale solar installations. Investors poured money in, but within months, grid managers were overwhelmed, delaying hundreds of projects.

“There’s a lesson there,” Mr. Gahl said. “You can pass big, ambitious climate laws, but if you don’t pay attention to details like interconnection rules, you can quickly run into trouble.”

For the full story, see:

Brad Plumer. “U.S. Solar Goal Stalled by Wait On Creaky Grid.” The New York Times (Friday, February 24, 2023): A1 & A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 28, 2023, and has the title “The U.S. Has Billions for Wind and Solar Projects. Good Luck Plugging Them In.”)

Brilliant, Courageous, Charming, WASP Publisher Defended Human Rights

(p. A24) John Macrae III, a dashing publisher who gambled on groundbreaking books and dauntlessly defended authors who defied injustices committed by their own governments, died on Feb. 1 [2023] at his home in Manhattan.

. . .

Mr. Macrae was among those who urged his fellow publishers to boycott the Moscow Book Fair in 1983 to protest the Soviet Union’s treatment of dissidents.

He flew to Poland with his stepson Nick and a portable folding kayak to navigate the Vistula River and meet with anti-government leaders undetected. He then met with intermediaries for Lech Walesa, leader of the outlawed Solidarity trade union, and persuaded him to write his autobiography.

Mr. Macrae also championed Salman Rushdie when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in 1989 accused Mr. Rushdie of blaspheming Islam in his novel “The Satanic Verses” and enjoined Muslims to kill him.

“Jack traveled to Cuba and Iran on human rights missions,” Jeri Laber, a founder of Human Rights Watch, said, noting that in addition to making “several trips on his own to Communist Poland,” he traveled to Communist Czechoslovakia to meet with the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, later to become the Czech Republic’s first president.

. . .

Amy Hertz, a former Dutton editor, wrote in The Huffington Post in 2010 that as a publisher Mr. Macrae “went after memoirs from apartheid South Africa and the end of the Cultural Revolution in China so that people would understand the suffering caused by lack of freedom.” And, she said, “he brought over the great Russian poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, and he worked with them to get Russian dissidents released from prison.”

“Jack’s brilliance,” Ms. Hertz added, “and what he passed along to me, is in not worrying about what’s on the page you’re looking at when evaluating a proposal or a manuscript. His brilliance is in hearing the thinking behind the author’s words, inchoate in the holy mess that when I worked for him was usually spread across his office floor. He taught me to find that kernel and to burnish it.”

. . .

“He was probably the last of the old-time, gentleman WASP publishers — born into the business,” said Charles McGrath, a former editor of The New York Times Book Review. “He had immense personal charm, and it was hard not to get swept up by him.”

Late in life, Mr. McGrath added, “he found out he had multiple sclerosis, but didn’t let that slow him down. He zipped around the office — and the city, for that matter — in a motorized wheelchair, as cheerful as ever.”

For the full obituary, see:

Sam Roberts. “John Macrae III, 91, Publisher And Rights Champion, Is Dead.” The New York Times (Friday, February 24, 2023): A24.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Feb. 27, 2023, and has the title “John Macrae III, Eclectic Publisher and Rights Champion, Dies at 91.”)

Russian-Speaking Ukrainian Says When You “Have Felt a Whiff of Freedom . . . You Don’t Want to Go Back”

(p. A4) EASTERN Ukraine –— After a year of war, I remember most the things people said.

Svetlana, a woman in her 60s from Kharkiv, standing amid the press of refugees at a train station, explained why Russian-speaking Ukrainians like her, who had lived half their life in the Soviet Union, did not want to live under Russian control.

“We have felt a whiff of freedom,” she said. “After that, you don’t want to go back.”

For the full commentary, see:

Gall, Carolotta. “We Have Felt a Whiff of Freedom.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 25, 2023): A4.

(Note: on 2/27/23, I spent time searching for the online version of this article on the NYT web site and failed to find it.)

E.S.G.–“Extremely Silly Grandstanding”

Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) E.S.G. — which refers to environmental, social and governance standards — has become a point of contention for red-state legislators defending the fossil fuel industries that employ their residents.

. . .

(p. B4) So what is E.S.G., anyway? As investors rename their firms and their funds in a race to ride the E.S.G. wave, cynics see the debate over the term’s definition as degenerating into everyone seeing gibberish. Because funds can define E.S.G. nearly any way they want, they have come to resemble an extra-strange goulash. Sometimes, these new or newly rebranded operations are just elegantly simple greenwashing and nothing more.

For the full commentary, see:

Ron Lieber. “YOUR MONEY; Bankers Are Suing Lawyers In Kentucky’s E.S.G. Battle.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 25, 2023): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 24, 2023, and has the title “YOUR MONEY; The E.S.G. Fight Has Come to This: Bankers Suing Lawyers.”)

Americans “Vote with Their Feet” Against Higher Taxes

(p. A15) The Tax Foundation’s 2021 State Business Tax Climate report ranks California’s state and local taxes as the second highest in the nation, just below New Jersey and above New York. People are fleeing these states.

. . .

I analyzed all 50 states’ net domestic migration levels and compared those levels with each state’s overall tax ranking. The ranking includes a weighing of taxes on corporate profits, individual income, sales, property and unemployment insurance.

The 10 states with the lowest taxes gained an average of 948 per 100,000 total population. For states that ranked 11th through 20th on taxes, the average was 457. For states ranking 21st to 30th, the gain was only 97. Net domestic migration turned negative for states ranking 31st to 40th with a loss of 141. And for the 10 states with the highest taxes, the average loss was 809 per 100,000.

These findings strongly reinforce the popular saying that people vote with their feet. They will leave places with relatively high taxes for those with lower levies. It may surprise Mr. Newsom, but people generally want to keep more of the money they earn.

For the full commentary, see:

James L. Doti. “Californians Aren’t the Only Tax Refugees.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 11, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

The Tax Foundation’s report mentioned above is:

Walczak, Jared, and Janelle Cammenga. “2021 State Business Tax Climate Index.” Washington, D.C.: Tax Foundation, 2020.

Joyce Meskis Was the Principled Entrepreneur Behind Denver’s Wonderful Tattered Cover Bookstore

The Tattered Cover in Denver is my favorite bookstore. I remember one time as I was exiting, running into Scott Parris, then an economics editor at Oxford University Press, who would later be the acquisition editor for my Openness to Creative Destruction. I remember he asked me if I had seen any books in economics in the Tattered Cover that looked promising. On another memorable occasion I visited the bookstore with my daughter Jenny’s Montessori middle-school class as a bookend to the class’s trip to Estes Park. It is a large welcoming bookstore, with comfortable chairs, good coffee, and a wonderful and diverse selection of books. At least it was during the years that Joyce Meskis owned it. (It may still be–I have not visited for several years.)

(p. B12) In 1995 the writer A.E. Hotchner presented Joyce Meskis, owner of the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, with a PEN American Center award recognizing her efforts on behalf of freedom of speech and expression.

“In this room,” he said at the awards ceremony, “there are writers, editors, publishers, and the rest of you are readers. If this woman fails, we all fail. We don’t exist unless the bookseller can sell us.”

And that was before Ms. Meskis went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court to prevent law enforcement officials from knowing what books one of her customers had bought.

Ms. Meskis, who built the Tattered Cover into one of the most successful independent bookstores in the country, died on Dec. 22 [2022] in Denver, the National Coalition Against Censorship announced.

. . .

In addition to creating a bookstore famed for its vast selection and bibliophile-friendly atmosphere, Ms. Meskis often took a stand in matters related to censorship and the First Amendment. Sometimes those positions were not easy ones to embrace.

. . .

To Ms. Meskis, owning a bookstore was about more than just sales. As she told The Arizona Daily Star in 1992, “It’s my view that as booksellers we have our own version of the Hippocratic oath — to maintain the health and well-being of the First Amendment.”

. . .

Her stances didn’t always involve government regulation and court battles. In the late 1980s, she vowed to continue selling Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” despite anonymous telephone threats after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran declared the book blasphemous and called for the author’s death.

. . .

If Ms. Meskis was celebrated for her First Amendment stands, she took that spotlight reluctantly.

“Trouble finds us, we don’t go looking for it,” she told Publishers Weekly, an oft-repeated line. “When you’re in a general community, you will always have challenges. There are things I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect so many court battles. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

For the full obituary, see:

Neil Genzlinger. “Joyce Meskis, 80, Bookseller Who Defended Readers’ Rights.” The New York Times (Thursday, January 12, 2023): B12.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Jan. 11, 2023, and has the title “Joyce Meskis, Bookseller Who Defended Readers’ Rights, Dies at 80.”)

Over 100,000 “Non-Covid Excess Deaths” Per Year in 2020 and 2021

(p. A15) Covid-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it. During the first two years of the pandemic, “excess deaths”—the death toll above the historical trend—markedly exceeded the number of deaths attributed to Covid. In a paper we just published in Inquiry, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that “non-Covid excess deaths” totaled nearly 100,000 a year in 2020 and 2021.

Even these numbers likely overestimate deaths from Covid and underestimate those from other causes. Covid testing has become ubiquitous in hospitals, and the official count of “Covid deaths” includes people who tested positive but died of other causes.

For the full commentary, see:

Rob Arnott and Casey B. Mulligan. “How Deadly Were the Covid Lockdowns?” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023): A15.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 11, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

The Mulligan and Arnott commentary is based on their academic article:

Mulligan, Casey B., and Robert D. Arnott. “The Young Were Not Spared: What Death Certificates Reveal About Non-Covid Excess Deaths.” INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing 59 (Jan.-Dec. 2022): 00469580221139016.

“Nonprofit” Hospitals “Enjoy Lucrative Tax Exemptions” but Often Pressure Poor to Pay More

(p. 1) More than half the nation’s roughly 5,000 hospitals are nonprofits like Providence. They enjoy lucrative tax exemptions; Providence avoids more than $1 billion a year in taxes. In exchange, the Internal Revenue Service requires them to provide services, such as free care for the poor, that benefit the communities in which they operate.

But in recent decades, many of the hospitals have become virtually indistinguishable from for-profit companies, adopting an unrelenting focus on the bottom line and straying from their traditional charitable missions.

To understand the shift, The Times reviewed thousands of pages of court records, internal hospital financial records and memos, tax filings, and complaints filed with regulators, and interviewed dozens of patients, lawyers, current and former hospital executives, doctors, nurses and consultants.

The Times found that the consequences have been stark. Many nonprofit hospitals were ill equipped for a flood of critically sick Covid-19 patients because they had been operating with skeleton staffs in an effort to cut costs and boost profits. Others lacked intensive care units and other resources to weather a pandemic because the nonprofit chains that owned them had focused on investments in rich communities at the expense of poorer ones.

And, as Providence illustrates, some hospital systems have not only reduced their emphasis on providing free care to the poor but also developed elaborate systems to convert needy patients into sources of revenue. The result, in (p. 22) the case of Providence, is that thousands of poor patients were saddled with debts that they never should have owed, The Times found.

Founded by nuns in the 1850s, Providence says its mission is to be “steadfast in serving all, especially those who are poor and vulnerable.” Today, based in Renton, Wash., Providence is one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the country, with 51 hospitals and more than 900 clinics. Its revenue last year exceeded $27 billion.

Providence is sitting on $10 billion that it invests, Wall Street-style, alongside top private equity firms. It even runs its own venture capital fund.

For the full story, see:

Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Katie Thomas. “Entitled to Free Treatment But Hounded by Hospitals.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, September 25, 2022): 1 & 22-23.

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Dec. [sic] 15, 2022, and has the title “They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay.”)

As People Die of “Old Age” Will the FDA Ever Approve Longevity Drugs?

The FDA has required that new drugs be proven to be effective against a disease, and the FDA has refused to consider old age to be a disease. Perhaps as more government institutions give “old age” as the reason for a death, the FDA will reconsider.

(p. A6) LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II died of “old age,” according to her death certificate, which was released on Thursday by the registrar general of Scotland. The certificate, which lists her occupation as Her Majesty the Queen, also notes that the queen died at 3:10 p.m. on Sept. 8 [2022] at Balmoral Castle.

The first fact is indisputable, given that the queen was 96. But the report offers no further details about the cause of her death, which came two days after she was photographed standing and smiling as she greeted Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss.

For the full story, see:

Mark Landler. “Record Says Queen Died of ‘Old Age’.” The New York Times (Friday, September 30, 2022): A6.

(Note: bracketed year added.]

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 29, 2022, and has the title “Queen’s Death Certificate Reveals Cause and Time of Death.”)

United Nations “Innovation Matters” Podcast Posts Episode on Diamond’s Openness to Creative Destruction

The United Nations’s “Innovation Matters” podcast on 2/24/23 posted Part 1 of a discussion of my book Openness to Creative Destruction.  Anders and I had an animated conversation, and a lengthy one, so the United Nations says we can look forward to them posting a Part 2 and a Part 3.

You can listen to the podcast on the following platforms: SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.