This New England

New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg is a perfectly respectable choice for commerce secretary -- stolid, careful, pro-business -- sort of a throwback to the Eisenhower administration. Or, Calvin Coolidge, whom he resembles in some angular way.

He is also rich -- another requirement for high federal office. He had plenty of money already, but, in the one really sexy aspect of his career, he won about $800,000 in a Powerball lottery! Theologians are trying to make sense of that!

His exit will probably mean that after interim GOP Sen. Bonnie Newman leaves by pre-arrangement after next year's election that Congressman Paul Hodes, a Democrat, will get the seat.

It sure isn't a GOP state anymore.

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The economy is cutting into big energy projects. When it starts growing again, we'll have more problems than ever with energy, especially in New England, which still imports almost all of its energy from friendly places including Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Too many New Englanders continue to favor alternative-energy projects, but not anywhere near them.

Windswept, taiga-like Aroostock County, Maine, is not anywhere near most of them.The closest that most New Englanders have gotten to "The County'' is to eat its famous potatoes. -- allegedly better than Idaho's.

Anyway, Maine regulators have decided to at least delay a $625 million power-grid expansion that would have been needed to support a big wind farm way up in Aroostock Too bad for them and the rest of us because this project would have connected the Aroostock grid to the rest of New England's. Aroostock is now connected only to New Brunswick's grid.

The so-called Maine Power Connection would have let us benefit from Aroostock 's capacious wind-power potential. Try again after the recession -- in 2012?

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The sense of entitlement of financial-industry executives continues to amaze.

Consider Robert Reynolds, chief executive of Boston-based Putnam Investments, in saying that "The best people will go to other places to work'' if their compensation is limited by such provisions as the $500,000 salary cap for financial-industry execs of companies getting federal bailout money -- after executives ran them into the ground while enriching themselves

Please tell us how recent history shows that the "best people'' were running such companies while paying themselves gargantuan compensation, as a result of mutually beneficial sweetheart deals with their boards.

Please show us how getting paid $1 million instead of half that really results in, say, being twice as good.

The "best people'' -- compared to whom?

What a racket this executive-pay bonanza has been for the past two decades. And it's useful to note that putting your money in mattress (or leaving it in your checking account) the past 10 years would have been safer than sticking it in most Boston-based mutual funds -- not only because of their poor investing but because of their enthusiastic fees, which enrich the likes of Mr. Reynolds.

Meanwhile, Fidelity Investments continues to assert that the company is not for sale. Maybe not at the time of this writing. But one learns quickly in business that everything is for sale at the right time and the right price, and that denials can become affirmations in the blink of a CEO's eye. Creative destruction. Or maybe just destruction.

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I'm sure that while many people have noted in recent days that even as tax revenue flows to Washington many of the rich leading citizens of that city assiduously avoid paying taxes.

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Read Walter Isaacson's new piece in Time, "How to Save Your Newspaper,'' and newspaperproject.org

 Tags  Bonnie Newman Fidelity Investments Judd Gregg Maine Power Connection Paul Hodes Putnam Investments Robert Reynolds

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