IRELAND | USA More to Be Pitied than Scorned

Fintan O'Toole

The following is by Fintan O’Toole, published as "THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT," The Irish Times, April 25, 2020.

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful. 

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic. 

Columbia Pictures' first film (1922). 

As the American writer George Packer puts it in [the June 2020 issue of] The Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.” 

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence. 

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV. 

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated. 

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas? 

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender 

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety. 

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order. 

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”. 

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.” 

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus. 

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted. 

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence. 

Fertile ground 

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it. 

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection. 

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here. 

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality. 

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element. 

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics. 

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Fintan O’Toole,"THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT," Irish Times, April 25, 2020.

NYC COMPTROLLER | 4th Annual FOCEA Reunion, Florida

FOCEA, Florida 2019. L to R: Eric Wollman, John Tepper Marlin,
Steve Newman. Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

January 27, 2019–Today we had the fourth annual Florida meeting of the Former Office of the Comptroller Employees Association, which goes by the name of FOCEA.

Eric Wollman (in the Kingsborough Community College shirt, not to be confused with the Kansas City Chiefs) has joined Steve Newman and John Tepper Marlin in retirement from the Office of the Comptroller. Eric wondered whether he should retire the FOCEA name. No, we said.

We talked about how hard it was to figure out 2018 taxes, and how some people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are going to be (or already are) nastily surprised by the impact of the anti-blue-state cap of $10,000 on state and local taxes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of December 2017. There has long been a steady stream of retirees to Florida and this will encourage the flow.

Previous FOCEA Florida meetups (number of former employees): 1st (2), 2016 . 2nd (3), 2017 . 3rd (2), 2018

WELLESLEY IN VERO | Professor Ann Witte

Wellesley College alumnae in Vero Beach, Fla. at a lunch featuring Wellesley
Professor Emerita Ann Witte (in blue, front row), an expert on early childhood
education and personal finance. Alice Tepper Marlin '66 is holding the "W"
end of the banner.

March 23, 2018 – Professor Ann Witte spoke earlier this month about early childhood education to a group of Wellesley Alumnae at Bay Colony, a community near Indian River Shores Town Hall on A1A in Vero Beach, Florida.

Her research has focused not only on early childhood care and education but also on  how to empower people to manage their finances and how memory affects and changes as time passes.

At Wellesley College, she was a tenured professor of economics who taught personal finance (ECON 223) in the 2006-2010 period, an interesting one! The Wellesley Economics Department web page includes the obituaries of two economic professors whom I knew quite well, Soviet-Russian expert Marshall Goldman and housing-value econometrician Chip Case. Professor Goldman was on the Executive Committee of Economists for Peace and Security with me, when I was serving as Treasurer.

She also worked on ways to improve financial education including development of a MOOC and flipped classrooms. She served as a consultant to research projects to help people manage their finances and co-authored two books in that arena with fellow Wellesley College instructor Saundra Gulley.

She uses statistics and microeconomics to analyze and affect public policies and was a principal investigator of the 2012 National Survey of Early Education and Care in the United States.

Other Wellesley College-related posts: 2014: Wellesley '66 Visits the LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton . 

CHARLIE MINER, R.I.P. | Grandson of FDR's First Treasury Secretary

Charlie Miner (R) enjoying his great-nephew and great-great-niece and her (unrelated) Angry Bird. (Photo by JT Marlin.) 

March 20, 2018 – Charlie Miner, Jr. interrupted his studies at Princeton (Class of 1943) to volunteer as a bomber pilot.

He died yesterday, according to his daughter, and Vero Beach resident, Charmaine Caldwell.

A memorial service in Vero Beach is planned for May 3 and possibly another subsequent one in East Hampton. 

The following is a slightly edited (with a sad new ending) version of an article I wrote about Miner for The Vero Portfolio, May-June 2015 issue, p. 24.

Charlie Miner was one of seven grandchildren of his illustrious grandfather, FDR’s first Treasury Secretary, Will Woodin. His mother was Woodin's eldest daughter, Mary, who married an infantry captain, Robert Charles (Charlie) Miner, Sr.

Charlie Miner, Jr. divided his time at the end of his life between Vero Beach and East Hampton. When his beloved cousin Anne Gerli died in 2016, he gave up spending time in East Hampton. 

At Princeton, Miner studied engineering and joined the war effort as pilot of a B-25 Mitchell twin-engine bomber, which had a crew of three or more. Miner flew many of the 17 bombing missions of his Air Force unit over northern Italy. [More about his contribution to the war effort here.]

He was lucky to have survived. Of 16 million American veterans of World War II, fewer than one in 16 survived as of 2015, only 80,000 in Florida. That year Miner was one of only about 250 World War II vets left in Indian River County, and may be Indian River County's oldest surviving European-theater WWII bomber pilot.

Miner told me how much he loves Vero Beach, Fla. Years ago in the 1950s and 1960s, he spent time with his mother (who divorced Charlie Sr. and did not remarry) in the Riomar social life. It  revolved, he said, around rotating dinners and celebrations among the original 12 houses. The 30 residents took turns throwing parties. The Riomar Inn came later. John's Island—where Miner and his late wife Maisie lived now—opened in 1970 and was at first resented because it drew people away from Riomar (and then it became successful and was imitated by the Moorings).

Charlie Miner’s grandfather, Will Woodin, was the man who dealt with the Wall Street and banking panic that started in 1929 and was not put to rest until FDR came into office in March 1933. FDR's first Treasury Secretary was given wide latitude in addressing the problem. 

Will Woodin was born in Pennsylvania and settled in New York after a successful career as the CEO of a huge business, American Car & Foundry (ACF) selling railroad rolling stock. It was called the "Car Trust" because back then a "car" was a railway car. From 1916 to 1928 he headed up a company whose stock was one of the 20 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A cousin of his headed up the locomotive company (ALCo) that was another of the 20.

Woodin had four children. The eldest and youngest settled in Vero Beach — Mary Woodin Miner and Libby Woodin Rowe. Libby’s husband, Wally Rowe, and a brother bought homes in Riomar. Mary and Libby eventually lived in Vero Beach most of the year. Charlie’s mother lived in John's Island after Riomar and died in 2007 at 102.

Charlie remembers not just the bridge that connected the two sides of the Indian River, "Beachland Boulevard" where Route 60 crosses, before the concrete-arch Barber Bridge.  He remembers the drawbridge that was built earlier, in 1995. Before that, back in the 1930s, there was a bridge made of wooden railroad ties and swung around horizontally to let boats through the Indian River. 

Back in those early days Beachland Boulevard was the northern edge of Vero Beach, and there wasn’t a Riverside Theater. Charlie says the money was raised in several ways. Rosie and Sterling Adams organized a dance every year. He and his cousin, Bill Rowe, used to sell season tickets and organized an auction of donated prizes to raise money for the theater. The Theater is, of course, now a major institution in Vero.

Charlie (R) and me in 2014. Photo by
Alice Tepper Marlin.

What Charlie Miner liked about Vero is that it is quiet. That was one of the original motivations of the developers, along with the availability of rail transportation and ocean beaches. There is no strip with night clubs, no airport. As Charlie says, “I’m not a teenager anymore.”

Charlie’s Advice for a Long and Happy Life:

• For a long life: Every morning a meal of two eggs and tomato juice or V-8 (with or without the hair of the dog). 
• For a happy life: “Enjoy life while you can. If you want to do something, don’t wait. Do it while you can because life goes by quickly. You may never get another chance.” He says his 93 years have “Gone… Boom!”

During the many recent years that I have been studying and writing about FDR's forgotten first Treasury Secretary, Charlie's grandfather, I and my wife Alice have been amused and impressed by Charlie's joie-de-vivre and his sharp recollections of his long life. Learning of his death at 96 years old was a sad moment.

TECH JOBS | Is Tech an Ally or Threat to Wall Street? (A Dialogue)

Tech Jobs vs. Wall Street Jobs (The American Banker, One Year Ago, March 16, 2017)

One year ago the American Banker displayed the chart at left, suggesting that tech jobs were in competition with many Wall Street jobs.  

Greg David recently in his Crain's blog expressed appreciation for the growth of tech jobs in New York City, as a diversification of highly paid employment within NYC. 

The following unedited (except for formatting) dialogue on this topic between Edward Greenberg, an attorney in New York City, and me were posted as comments on the Crain's blog and are re-posted here by permission of Mr. Greenberg. 

An underlying question is whether tech jobs are substitutes for Wall Street jobs, as indicated in the chart above, or are complementary.

Will more use of technology in the financial sector

• Strengthen Wall Street? 
• Hollow out its employment base?
• Permit financial jobs to migrate to other cities?

Edward C. Greenberg 
Response to Greg David, March 1, 2018

Very nice news but for context – there are 80,000 (2/3 of NYC's) such "defined" jobs in Los Angeles, a city with less than 1/2 the population of NYC. The population of the LA metro area is 13.5 million and NYC's is 20.3 million.

LA is not considered a "tech hub" like Northern Ca or even Boston. So while the number of tech jobs in NYC sounds like, and is in fact, good news, it is being employed by our politicos for their own PR purposes. By NOT comparing these figures to other major cities the figures become distorted and not indicative of anything that our politicos can take credit for.

Forbes does not list NYC in its top 10 cities for tech job growth. It does list cities like San Diego, Raleigh, Nashville (metro area) and Jacksonville, FL (where there has been a 72.4% increase in tech jobs from 2001 to 2017.

Every new job in NYC is good news but other cities are doing better in attracting these type businesses and jobs. If NYC "rests on its fake laurels" it will continue to fall behind other cities in attracting these jobs.

The author is spot on regarding the amorphous "definitions" employed to define tech sector and "eco-system" jobs. A coffee shop across the street from Google HQ which serves Google employees is clearly part of the tech "eco-system".

John Tepper Marlin
Response to Edward C. Greenberg, March 1, 2018.

I agree that understanding the significance of the tech sector in New York City requires comparing New York with other cities. The New York City Comptroller's Office did this in 1999, just before the way the job numbers are aggregated was changed.

In addition, the idea that Wall Street should be pitted against the tech sector as a source of jobs misses a big part of the story, which is Wall Street's need for tech support and tech's dependence on Wall Street

An MIT Professor solemnly told me 20 years ago that New York City could never catch up with Boston as a source of startups servicing financial institutions. MIT was developing “aggregators” that would, he said, soon be collecting financial information from individuals and assembling them in one place, across platforms. That process is taking longer than he predicted.

Meanwhile, New York City financial technology jobs have been growing because Wall Street wants these vendors close by. Those high-frequency traders have to be nanoseconds from their platforms.

Wall Street and NYC tech workers stand or fall together. NYC's preeminence in the financial world of the next decade depends on both.

The 1999 NYC Comptroller's report on the growth of tech jobs noted the difference between counting tech occupations and tech-oriented companies. The data-counting problems are too great to opt for one or the other. The problem is with the aggregation process. We depend on the BLS for data, and the BLS makes it hard to count payroll local jobs by claiming that disclosing information would allow researchers to get down to the company level and discover proprietary information.

It is sad for that reason that BLS moved many research functions out of New York City to Boston (and Philadelphia). NYC's 1911 Triangle Fire gave rise to the Labor Department and New York City was one of the earliest research centers on job data. Senator Ted Kennedy was reportedly active in promoting the move of BLS staff positions moved from New York to Boston.

A good understanding of how financial and technology jobs interface is important to New York City. It is also important to the country. We need more and better research on what is happening to jobs in the intersection between finance and technology.

Edward C. Greenberg 
Response to John Tepper Marlin, March 1, 2018


Agreed – with one key addition.


Lots of traditional Wall St, banking and financial service jobs moved from NYC to NJ, FL, S. Dakota and Utah. The concept of "geographic proximity" is rapidly becoming an anachronism. The notion that an NYC company would have "back office personnel" 500-1,500 miles from Gotham was unthinkable 25 years ago. Today it is the norm.

The Internet did not come into meaningful public use until the 1980's; computer driven trading came in about the same time. Pick up a WSJ, NYT, Forbes, Fortune or The Economist from the era. Try to find one that remotely predicts the manners of business and locations of major insurers, banks and stock trading which would exist in 2018.

Geography as a factor will soon be entirely irrelevant. Gothamites still don't believe the number of companies and jobs in these sectors moving to or already located in FL, TX and various other flyover states most of which New Yorkers have never set foot in. Did your buddy use the term "near shoring" in 1999? Betcha a beer he didn't.

John Tepper Marlin 
Response to Edward C. Greenberg, March 7, 2018

Yes, geography is less relevant than it used to be. But no, geography will never be irrelevant, even to technology. The way in which it is relevant is changing.

One of the strengths of the United States is that we have many strong population centers that are highly interconnected. New York City's greatest strength has been its ability to lead the country in finance and communications. This in turn pulled in many corporate HQs.


Financial institutions have always used every means of communication they could. Before the telegraph, they used carrier pigeons as well as horseback couriers.


Today, I'm not in New York City (I'm away from the nasty Northeastern weather) but I feel as much in touch as if I owned a huge flock of carrier pigeons or a large staff of messengers operating on routes dotted by inns with stables.


I still rely heavily on face-to-face meetings – especially when it comes to meeting new people. Personal contact may actually be more likely to mislead than seeing what someone writes, but some part of us wants to see people talk.


What is changing since 1999 is that many businesses have learned how to reduce the need for continuous face-to-face contact. Work at home, control from a remote location, and conference calling are all functioning more widely and reliably than they first did.


The natural duopoly of newspapers and bankers, and their centralization in financial centers (my great-grandfather edited Holland's then-greatest newspaper in Amsterdam, founded on family links among bankers and newspapers), survived the introduction of the telegraph and the radio. It has also survived the creation of the Internet.


We have seen recent stories about Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs seeking new locations because of high costs and inefficiencies, and the growth of new tech centers in the Midwest.


This decentralization is a good thing for the United States, even if it creates challenges for New York City. Instant reporting and high-frequency and program-driven trading is vulnerable to cyber-malfunctions, accidents or cyberattacks. After 9/11, companies built huge physical back-office locations in readiness for a need to move. It made sense to decentralize.

Geography is still relevant because cyberspace still depends on interruptible physical computers and power generation.

Edward C. Greenberg 
Response to John Tepper Marlin, March 7, 2018

You make some excellent points but if history teaches us anything it is that centers of power and commerce change for good or ill and many become irrelevant or disappear entirely.

Nobody predicted the Detroit of 2008 in 1960 or 1970. The notion that Pittsburgh would not be a steel producer by the late 20th century was predicted by no one in the years after the war. There was no mention of the Internet in any business or general circulation publication in 1960. Buffalo and Newark have 1/2 the populations today that they had in 1960. Who predicted 30 years ago that Jacksonville, Fl, Utah, S. Dakota and other places would be centers of banking, finance, insurance and credit transactions?

The ten most populous American Cities in 1960 were:

1 New York, New York 7,781,984.
2 Chicago, Illinois 3,550,404.
3 Los Angeles, California 2,479,015.
4 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2,002,512.
5 Detroit, Michigan 1,670,144.
6 Houston, Texas 938,219.
7 Baltimore, Maryland 929,024.
8 Cleveland, Ohio 876,050.
9 Washington, District of Columbia 783,956.
10 St. Louis 750,000.

Nobody predicted that by 2010 the above list would morph into:
1 New York City, New York 8,175,133.
2 Los Angeles, California 3,792,621.
3 Chicago, Illinois 2,695,598.
4 Houston, Texas 2,099,451.
5 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1,526,006.
6 Phoenix, Arizona 1,445,632.
7 San Antonio, Texas 1,327,407.
8 San Diego, California 1,307,402.
9 Dallas, Texas 1,197,816.
10 San Jose, California 945,942.

Cleveland, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis “disappeared". Jacksonville, Fl had a population of 201,000 in 1960 and 907,000 in 2017. Not even the town fathers saw that coming and as a result the city has been on a years-long road building project to handle the daily commuters.

Predictions of future development of population movements and industries in the US have been historically wrong. No expert, urban planner, or politician foresaw the dominance of e commerce, the existence of Facebook, Apple, Amazon or the abundance of indigenous oil/natural gas during the gas crisis of the 1970s. The Dec. 3, 1973, cover of Time Magazine, "The Big Freeze", featured a lengthy scientific article about the earth's temperature decreasing and the coming of a new ice age. This expert prediction came before the catalytic converter was required for autos, which were spewing exhaust 5 times dirtier than current cars which burn cleaner fuels. Trucks were then burning dirty diesel, and there was extensive burning of coal to generate electricity.

What odds do you think you would have received by making a bet in 1970 that in 2018, the fastest-growing states in America would be in order: Idaho, NV, Utah, Washington, FL, AZ, TX, CO, Oregon and S. Carolina (10th). Six of those states are clearly not in the sunbelt.

So, I understand your well-made points but society and business moves so fast in the 21st century that the day when geography plays little to no role in most (not all) business is already upon us. One need only visit or do business with companies in places like Miami, San Diego any major TX city and a few dozen others to see how fast NYC is becoming old by comparison. If NYC's mass transit system continues to disintegrate and employ equipment nearly 100 years old, businesses and residents will accelerate the on going trend to depart. Daily 2-hour commutes have become unnecessary and unacceptable to workers, entrepreneurs and others who have options to avoid the cost and misery of driving, buses, trains and/or subways.

The number of businesses, artisans and professionals who have left NYC and have benefited economically stands as daily proof that while in the real estate business location is everything, in the business and artistic worlds.... not so much anymore.

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS | Wellesley Savior of the Everglades

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

We know that 17 were killed, of many more victims, from random murders by an angry student with an AR-15.

It happened at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Few people outside Florida know anything about Marjory Stoneman Douglas. More people should. Perhaps Stoneman Douglas the person is inspiring Stoneman Douglas the students.

Marjorie Stoneman was born in Minneapolis on April 7, 1890 and died in 1998, 108 years old. She was a great writer who cared deeply about votes for women and the environment. She is best known for saving from development what is now the Everglades National Park.

She was a top student at Wellesley College and was elected the Class Orator, not the last Wellesley student to be selected (alas, Stoneman was not able to be there) to speak at the Wellesley Commencement and go on to great things. I have great admiration for Wellesley, having seen how well they and the Baldwin School educated my wife Alice Tepper Marlin. (We celebrate our 47th wedding anniversary in September.)

It was a great moment when former Wellesley President Diana Chapman Walsh in her 1993 inaugural speech cited the work of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and in the next paragraph cited the work of Alice Tepper Marlin!

Stoneman Douglas began her postgraduate days with a short marriage to an older man who, alas, turned out to be a con artist. She recovered by joining her father at the Miami Herald, working first as a society reporter, then an editorial writer, becoming increasingly engaged in her profession. Despite the pain he caused her, she retained the name of her ex-husband to the end of her life.

After working for the newspaper for some years, she started writing articles on the civil rights of women and others who were not allowed to vote, and on conservation issues. She won a wide readership and published hundreds of short stories. It was the era of The Masses and hard-hitting writing was in vogue. She was less a feminist than an activist. She said: "I'd like to hear less talk about men and women and more talk about citizens."

She helped preserve the Everglades against efforts to drain this swamp in favor of development, by writing in 1947 the book The Everglades: River of Grass, which had an impact similar to that of Rachel Carson's later book (Silent Spring, 1962) on the overuse of DDT. Stoneman Douglas was called "Grande Dame of the Everglades" and was pilloried by developers.

The book that saved
 the Everglades.

She prevailed over the developers, not for the last time. The same year her book on the subject was published, 1947, Everglades National Park was created. The National Park Service ever since has been her friend.

In the 1950s, however, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers became her enemy. The Corps was working with developers to drain swampland upriver from the Everglades. She argued persistently that the Everglades was at the end of a long-tailed system. The Park depended on a flow of water from Lake Okeechobee, and that in turn depended on the Kissimmee River's continuing to feed the lake.

To help expand her influence, in 1970 she formed the Friends of the Everglades. She lobbied for her viewpoint as head of the organization. How good was she? In his introduction to her 1987 autobiography, Voice of the River, John Rothchild shows how good. He describes her appearance in 1973 at a public meeting in mosquito-haunted Everglades City:

Mrs. Douglas was half the size of her fellow speakers and she wore huge dark glasses, which along with the huge floppy hat made her look like Scarlett O'Hara as played by Igor Stravinsky. . . . She reminded us all of our responsibility to nature . . .  Her voice had the sobering effect of a one-room schoolmarm's. The tone itself seemed to tame the rowdiest of the local stone crabbers, plus the developers, and the lawyers on both sides. I wonder if it didn't also intimidate the mosquitoes. . . . The request for a Corps of Engineers permit was eventually turned down. This was no surprise to those of us who'd heard her speak.

Stoneman Douglas won again, protecting what she had created, the Everglades National Park. Her book went into a revised edition in 1987, the same year that her biography appeared. Her many awards included the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When she died, the British newspaper The Independent summed up her life:

In the history of the American environmental movement, there have been few more remarkable figures.

Postscript: Stoneman Douglas reportedly donated her Medal of Freedom to her alma mater, Wellesley College.

ART BIZ | Vero Beach, Fla., Feb. 9-11, 2018

Vero Beach Insider Interview on Feb. 9-11 Exhibit

The Vero Beach Insider is a radio show that focuses on female entrepreneurs in the Vero Beach, Florida area.

The January 31, 2018 show celebrates the Feb. 9-11 Fourth Annual "Art on the [Marsh] Island" Show.

Marsh Island is on the mainland end of the Wabasso Bridge, which my wife and I call the Five-and-Dime Bridge because is it State Road #510. (Get it? 5 and 10?) It connects the Barrier Island with Sebastian, Florida.

We went to this show last year and it was worthwhile. The whole Marsh Island development is of interest.

To listen to the interview, click here and start listening at the 9-minute mark. And don't forget to come to the show on February 9-11. See you there, maybe.

COMPTROLLER'S OFFICE | 3rd FOCEA VB Reunion, 2018

FOCEA meets again at Citron Bistro, Vero Beach, Florida. L to R: Eric Wollman,
John Tepper Marlin. Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

January 28, 2018 – On this date, Eric Wollman, the founder of FOCEA, the Former Office of the [New York City] Comptroller Employees Association, paid his annual visit to Vero Beach, Florida. This is our 3rd annual reunion.

Last year we had with us former 1st Deputy Comptroller Steve Newman (http://bit.ly/2EkNo01). This year it was back to the two of us.

Eric and I had lunch with Alice Tepper Marlin at Citron Bistro on the Barrier Island of Vero Beach, off A1A near the Indian River Shores Village Hall.

Eric attends the annual Uniformed Services Patch Collectors' meeting in Titusville, Florida, and then drives down to visit on his way to relatives farther south. I asked him whether FOCEA would continue to exist now that he himself is retired and was heart-broken to discover that in his own retirement Eric is losing touch with retirees.

Can anything be done?  Meanwhile, I will continue to post on informal FOCEA get-togethers, such as the one with my successor as Chief Economist, Frank Braconi, last year (http://bit.ly/2Gv2hhi).

Here is a story from Eric Wollman about the retirement this month of Yvette Hibbert, whom I knew well at the Comptroller's Office:

NYC COMPTROLLER | 2nd Annual Florida Meeting

Standing, L to R: Steve Newman and
Eric Wollman. Seated: John Tepper
Marlin. Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

The second annual Florida meeting of the Former Office of the Comptroller Employees Association (FOCEA) took place in Vero Beach, Fla., with a 50 percent increase in attendance over last year! That is, attendance of full members rose from two to three:

• Deputy Director, Contracts, Bureau of Asset Management, Eric Wollman, Esq.
• Former First Deputy Comptroller Steve Newman.
• Former Chief Economist John Tepper Marlin. 

The combined number of years of NYC Comptroller's Office service of those attending the Florida meeting was 40+24+13=79.

The meeting occurs annually during the week following a collectors' convention in Titusville, Fla. But this is not a rule–FOCEA has no rules.

The meeting started at 12:30 pm with drinks, chips and avocado dip, and continued with crusted tuna slices and salad, finishing with blueberries and ice cream and coffee.

Spouses, FOCEA Florida Meetup, 2017. L to R:
Alice Tepper Marlin, Rosemary Polsky-Newman.
Photo by JT Marlin.

The main topic was Transitions, it being the end of the first week of the Trump Administration.

(The lineup of NYC Mayors and Comptrollers is unchanged from the 40-year list shown in the 2016 meeting report.)

The attendance of spouses doubled, from one to two:

• Rosemary Polsky-Newman.
• Alice Tepper Marlin.

The meeting adjourned at 4:30 pm. 

More photos
2016 Florida FOCEA Meeting.
1992-93 NYC Gatherings.

INNOVATION | Top Five States for Entrepreneurs

The Channel Company's CRN arm has ranked the U.S. states for their suitability as a the home of young entrepreneurs seeking to establish a solution-providing startup.

The states were ranked on a variety of criteria including the Kauffman Foundation's ranking of the rate of entrepreneurship formation.

The ranking is described as a comparison of U.S. states according to their contribution to innovation and growth, with a focus on assisting innovators in providing solutions to current problems.

The top five were:

• California
• Florida
• Washington
• New York
• Tennessee

INCOMES | U.S. Counties, 2013

The dark blue areas have seen significantly higher personal incomes in 2013.
The brown areas have been flat or have seen declines. The others are
closer to the national average increase of 1.3 percent.

Personal income data by county for 2013 were just released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Of course, the numbers being for the year 2013 when it's nearly 2015, the reaction could be: Ho hum.

But the delay is made up for by the reliability and importance of the numbers. They provide a good comparative look at the counties.

Personal income data by county tell us how their neighbors are doing over time and relative to the rest of the country.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers on jobs and unemployment are released faster because we agree to suspend disbelief in our eagerness to have the data in our hands. The BLS tries to adjust the data to mask the variability of the data resulting from seasonality and small sample coverage in the household survey. The BEA's per capita personal income numbers by county are closer to a final answer to the important question: "How are we doing, money-wise?"

Some regional data are in the table below, abbreviated to make it easier to talk about and handle (the full table is at www.bea.gov under "Regional"). The top line is the summary for the United States. Per capita income grew from $42,332 in 2011 to $44,765 in 2013. There was quite a jump between 2011 and 2012, 4.4 percent, but the increase between 2012 and 2013 was less than one-third the rate, 1.3 percent.

Knowing that the country as a whole had a spurt of personal income in 2012 and then fell back to a lower rate in 2013 helps interpret how each state and county was doing.

The states vary considerably among themselves and between years in the change in their share of the increased income. Arkansas jumped 6.8 percent in 2012 and then rose only 0.8 percent in 2013. The District of Columbia actually saw a loss of per capita income in 2013, but at $75,950 in 2012 that was a loss from a high base.

The variability is even greater among counties. Indian River County (Vero Beach) saw its per capita income grow 5 percent in 2012, but then it declined in 2013. Palm Beach grew 4.8 percent from its high base of $57,252 and kept growing in 2013 at the national rate of 1.3 percent.

Table 1. Per Capita Personal Income by County, 2011-2013	Per capita personal income and Rank in State				Change and Rank in State
	Dollars			Rank	Percent change		Rank
	2011	2012	2013	2013	2012	2013	2013
United States	42,332	44,200	44,765	--	4.4	1.3	--
Alabama	35,010	35,942	36,481	--	2.7	1.5	--
Alaska	48,181	49,906	50,150	--	3.6	0.5	--
Arizona	35,512	36,624	36,983	--	3.1	1.0	--
Arkansas	34,089	36,423	36,698	--	6.8	0.8	--
California	44,749	47,505	48,434	--	6.2	2.0	--
Colorado	44,183	46,315	46,897	--	4.8	1.3	--
Connecticut	57,547	60,223	60,658	--	4.7	0.7	--
Delaware	42,696	44,031	44,815	--	3.1	1.8	--
District of Columbia	74,103	75,950	75,329	--	2.5	-0.8	--
Florida	40,215	41,041	41,497	--	2.1	1.1	--
Indian River (Vero)	51,890	54,501	54,448	5	5.0	-0.1	62
Miami-Dade	38,242	39,467	39,880	17	3.2	1.0	41
Orange (Orlando)	36,333	37,479	37,844	24	3.2	1.0	44
Palm Beach	54,616	57,252	57,985	2	4.8	1.3	34
St. Lucie	31,289	30,932	31,182	40	-1.1	0.8	49
Georgia	36,422	37,229	37,845	--	2.2	1.7	--
Hawaii	42,989	44,578	45,204	--	3.7	1.4	--
Idaho	33,677	35,142	36,146	--	4.4	2.9	--
Illinois	44,169	46,009	46,980	--	4.2	2.1	--
Cook	46,966	48,948	49,661	7	4.2	1.5	90
Indiana	36,367	38,136	38,622	--	4.9	1.3	--
Iowa	42,656	44,014	44,763	--	3.2	1.7	--
Kansas	42,098	43,380	44,417	--	3.0	2.4	--
Kentucky	34,568	35,857	36,214	--	3.7	1.0	--
Louisiana	38,501	40,617	41,204	--	5.5	1.4	--
Maine	38,802	39,863	40,924	--	2.7	2.7	--
Maryland	52,191	53,659	53,826	--	2.8	0.3	--
Baltimore	51,886	53,835	54,009	6	3.8	0.3	14
Baltimore City	42,071	43,386	44,053	15	3.1	1.5	10
Massachusetts	54,235	56,713	57,248	--	4.6	0.9	--
Suffolk	55,608	57,491	57,660	6	3.4	0.3	14
Michigan	37,163	38,585	39,055	--	3.8	1.2	--
Minnesota	45,220	47,377	47,500	--	4.8	0.3	--
Mississippi	32,108	33,446	33,913	--	4.2	1.4	--
Missouri	38,016	39,933	40,663	--	5.0	1.8	--
Montana	36,890	39,142	39,366	--	6.1	0.6	--
Nebraska	43,721	45,914	47,157	--	5.0	2.7	--
Nevada	37,445	39,229	39,235	--	4.8	0.0	--
New Hampshire	47,664	50,056	51,013	--	5.0	1.9	--
New Jersey	53,323	54,932	55,386	--	3.0	0.8	--
Atlantic	41,397	42,288	42,425	19	2.2	0.3	18
Bergen	67,248	69,281	69,495	4	3.0	0.3	19
Burlington	49,471	51,149	51,638	12	3.4	1.0	12
Camden	44,229	45,063	45,544	15	1.9	1.1	9
Cape May	50,908	53,070	53,932	9	4.2	1.6	3
Cumberland	35,413	35,468	35,825	21	0.2	1.0	10
Essex	53,597	54,318	54,606	7	1.3	0.5	15
Gloucester	43,488	44,833	45,169	16	3.1	0.7	13
Hudson	49,111	49,978	50,172	13	1.8	0.4	17
Hunterdon	69,717	74,534	75,523	2	6.9	1.3	6
Mercer	53,037	55,933	56,906	6	5.5	1.7	2
Middlesex	50,267	51,730	52,291	11	2.9	1.1	7
Monmouth	59,875	61,997	62,901	5	3.5	1.5	4
Morris	71,914	74,826	75,054	3	4.0	0.3	20
Ocean	42,121	43,016	43,214	18	2.1	0.5	16
Passaic	43,853	44,600	44,688	17	1.7	0.2	21
Salem	41,138	41,550	41,997	20	1.0	1.1	8
Somerset	72,704	76,918	77,685	1	5.8	1.0	11
Sussex	50,800	52,592	52,958	10	3.5	0.7	14
Union	52,297	53,638	54,382	8	2.6	1.4	5
Warren	46,070	48,115	49,040	14	4.4	1.9	1
New York	51,941	54,099	54,462	--	4.2	0.7	--
Albany	50,275	52,587	53,515	7	4.6	1.8	16
Bronx	32,565	32,680	32,852	60	0.4	0.5	44
Dutchess	47,083	49,378	49,627	10	4.9	0.5	48
Erie	42,925	45,063	45,496	16	5.0	1.0	35
Essex	36,268	38,392	39,309	34	5.9	2.4	4
Kings	41,038	42,211	42,306	24	2.9	0.2	53
Nassau	68,979	72,460	72,549	3	5.0	0.1	58
New York	116,329	120,382	121,632	1	3.5	1.0	34
Putnam	55,844	58,865	58,955	4	5.4	0.2	56
Queens	43,140	44,431	44,966	19	3.0	1.2	27
Rensselaer	41,961	43,371	44,152	22	3.4	1.8	15
Richmond	49,839	51,223	51,328	9	2.8	0.2	55
Rockland	54,294	56,746	56,657	6	4.5	-0.2	60
Suffolk	53,774	56,819	56,940	5	5.7	0.2	54
Ulster	41,818	44,045	44,527	20	5.3	1.1	30
Westchester	75,291	80,505	80,363	2	6.9	-0.2	61
North Carolina	36,508	38,538	38,683	--	5.6	0.4	--
North Dakota	47,868	56,310	53,182	--	17.6	-5.6	--
Steele	55,909	81,029	53,918	16	44.9	-33.5	50
Ohio	38,631	40,230	41,049	--	4.1	2.0	--
Oklahoma	38,980	41,399	41,861	--	6.2	1.1	--
Oregon	37,707	39,258	39,848	--	4.1	1.5	--
Pennsylvania	43,806	45,577	46,202	--	4.0	1.4	--
Rhode Island	44,571	46,257	46,989	--	3.8	1.6	--
South Carolina	34,079	35,347	35,831	--	3.7	1.4	--
South Dakota	44,439	45,676	46,039	--	2.8	0.8	--
Tennessee	37,151	39,002	39,558	--	5.0	1.4	--
Texas	41,016	43,271	43,862	--	5.5	1.4	--
Utah	34,235	35,891	36,640	--	4.8	2.1	--
Vermont	42,968	44,443	45,483	--	3.4	2.3	--
Virginia	47,076	48,715	48,838	--	3.5	0.3	--
Washington	44,565	47,055	47,717	--	5.6	1.4	--
West Virginia	33,954	35,140	35,533	--	3.5	1.1	--
Wisconsin	40,780	42,475	43,244	--	4.2	1.8	--
Wyoming	49,260	52,469	52,826	--	6.5	0.7	--
1. Per capita personal income was computed using Census Bureau midyear population estimates. Estimates reflect county population estimates available as of March 2014.
2. Percent change was calculated from unrounded data.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

The New York State counties are interesting. The average incomes confirm the reputation of Manhattan (New York County) as dwarfing neighboring county incomes. The next-highest skip over the "Outer Boroughs" and go to Westchester, Nassau, Putnam, Suffolk and Rockland counties in New York State and a similar group of high rollers in New Jersey. Westchester saw a big 6.9 percent leap in personal income in 2012, but it and Rockland both saw a small decline in per capita incomes in 2013.

Notice the oddly high variability of per capita income in Steele County, ND. A 45 percent increase in 2012 and a one-third decrease in 2013. However, the explanation is simple. The total population of the county is under 2,000 people, so a few families with highly correlated incomes - for example, all dependent upon revenue from the same oil well - could skew the county numbers.