'The very thought of you'

 

"Projection No. 5 (2007), by ROSE MARASCO, a celebrated Portland, Maine-area photographer, in her show "Rose Marasco: Index,'' April 24-Dec. 6, at the Portland Museum of Art.

Don Pesci: Toward a state zoning board in Conn.

  VERNON, Conn.

The Stamford Advocate puts it this way:

“[Governor Dannel] Malloy has proposed House Bill 6851 now before the Legislature. It would create an 11-member quasi-public agency and give it control of train station projects statewide.

“The agency would be called the Connecticut Transit Corridor Development Authority. Four members would be appointed by the governor and three by other political leaders in the Legislature. The other four members would be state commissioners, whose jobs are bestowed by the governor.

“The new authority would have the power to seize property within half a mile of any train station, enter into contracts with private developers, build what projects it chose and sell bonds to finance them.”

“According to the bill, the authority would "ensure that development near transit stations occurs more quickly and in concert with statewide transportation initiatives."

“The authority would have no obligation to city leaders except to ‘coordinate.’ Mayors could not vote on projects but would be ‘consulted.’"

But for a sharp-eyed legislator, State Rep. Gail Lavielle, of Wilton, the bill might have passed through the usual legislative process without much fuss or notice.

Mrs. Lavielle asked DOT Commissioner Jim Redeker whether he was aware of the bill. Nope – never heard of it.

Scholars now tell us that Otto Von Bismark, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, did NOT say, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” But Bismark, who knew how to turn a phrase, very easily could have said it. The making of laws in other than a totalitarian state is not a pretty process. In a one-party state like Connecticut, it is fairly easy for the dominant party to stick a pig in a poke and slide it, unobserved, through the sausage making machine.

Gov.  Dannel Malloy has a genius for opacity and secrecy. But this pig, thanks largely to Mrs. Lavielle, is now out of the poke, squealing about the countryside. House Bill 6851 simply replaces the operations of municipal zoning boards with the equivalent of a state zoning board, and the noise it has made in Stamford, Mr. Malloy’s old stomping grounds when he was mayor of the city from 1995 to 2009, is raucous and rebellious. As mayor, Mr. Malloy was not on good terms with opposition to his authoritarian rule, but he may have met his match in Stamford Zoning Board member Barry Michelson, who is not alone in considering House Bill 6851 an undemocratic land grab and a reckless abridgment of local control.

The intent of the bill is clear on the face of it. “This means,” Mr. Michelson said, “the state doesn't want local folks to control their development as they see fit. They want to tell local folks what they feel is in the best interest of local folks."

And who is “they”? According to the bill, four members of the Board are appointed by Mr. Malloy, three by political leaders in the Democratic dominated General Assembly, and the remaining four are state commissioners who serve at the behest of Mr. Malloy. It is Mr. Malloy who will control the decisions made by the new state zoning board. These decisions, unlike those of a municipal zoning board, need not be affirmed at public hearings. The new zoning process is on auto pilot; all land within a half mile of any train station – on both side of the track – may be seized by a state that does not wish to observe the niceties of eminent domain possession.

The bill carves out a corridor one half mile on both sides of a rail station in which municipal zoning laws are inoperative, legislators are deprived of representing the interests of businesses people in their districts, and property is treated as if it belonged to the state which, under the auspices House Bill 6851, rents the property at will to its nominal owners.

Even Bismarck in all his glory would have flinched in the presence of such an arrogant, undemocratic and likely unconstitutional raid on private property. The ownership of property and the disposition of property are married together in such a way as to be indivisible. The person – or in this case the gubernatorial board invested with kingly powers – who may dispose of the property is the true owner of it. And the ownership of property is no little thing under constitutional governance, because it is bound up with “the inalienable” rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, “among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”

The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason and adopted in 1776, makes plain the vital connection between property rights and happiness: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Owing to Mrs. Lavielle’s timely intervention, the bill has been sent back to the legislative shop for much needed repairs.

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net)  is a Vernon, Conn.-based political writer.

Keep left

 

"Chevon'' (mixed media on panel), by JULIE GRAHAM, in her show "If It's Not One Thing...,'' at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through March 29.

Kudos to Raimondo for going after 30 dubious license requirements

  Of all of new Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo's proposals, a little noticed one might have the biggest long-term impact if approved: Repealing more than 30 professional licensing requirements that are unnecessary  for  the public welfare and  that  entrenched  individuals and companies  have used to keep out competitors.

They add layers of red tape that suck life out of local business. Bravo to the governor for going after these impediments to job creation.

Llewellyn King: A third way on the immigration issue

Is there a big, new idea about immigration? Is there a way of looking at the issues beyond polarization? Is there a way of stabilizing the lives and the living conditions for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants who hide in the shadows of society, living in fear, and costing the United States as much as $100 billion a decade in services and lost taxation revenue?

Is there a way of making those who employ undocumented workers, or those with dubious papers, from falling into unintended criminality themselves? Is there a “third way?”

The Immigrant Tax Inquiry Group (#itig), based in Malibu, Calif., has been pondering the implications of taxation in the immigration debate. It was formally established as a not-for-profit foundation in 2010.

ITIG’s idea is big — a new front, in effect. It brings the immigrants out of the shadows, identifies them and gives them respect, while mitigating the impact on the rest of us. It also soothes those who want nothing to do with paths to citizenship.

As I understand it, the ITIG proposal is simple: cater to the illegal worker by issuing a 10-year, renewable work permit and taxing the employer at 5 percent of the wage for employing one of these workers. This would bring the undocumented worker, and his or her family, out of the shadows, provide revenue for their cost to society, and enable them to have dignity and security without citizenship. I can attest, from my own reporting, that not every immigrant wants citizenship and a vote.

The plan has been incubating for decades among a coterie of thinkers who want a practical humane solution to the problem.

Mark Jason, executive director of ITIG, knows something about immigrants. He was educated partly in Mexico and has worked there to improve conditions so fewer people will take the long walk north.

Over the years, Jason, has discussed his ideas with people as disparate as Ronald Reagan (a family friend, when Reagan was governor of California), Cesar Chavez, the National Farm Workers Association founder and leader, and recently retired Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

Jason told me that Reagan was interested, although this was before he became president and enacted his own immigration plan in 1986, which was straight amnesty. Chavez, he said, was more concerned with conditions in the fields than with the legal status of immigrants, partly because many farm workers come on contract. Waxman, who was a prolific legislator, liked Jason’s ideas and encouraged him to “think big.”

The ITIG plan is put forward in a detailed report on the Web, complete with revenue projections in graphs and charts.

Jason has worked as a tax consultant, an IRS agent and a farmer in Mexico, where he helped establish a honeydew melon farm near Puerto Vallarta. The farm has three missions: produce and export melons (350 tons in 2014), teach the local farmers better practices, and end the incentive to leave.

What frustrates Jason is the difficulty he has had in getting his ideas circulated in the immigration debate. Although the report by ITIG is detailed and clearly represents an important new dimension in the debate, it has not yet gotten traction in Congress nor, more surprisingly, among immigrant advocacy groups.

The plan, under which workers would get a 10-year work permit, get drivers licenses where states allow it, and travel freely between the United States and their country of origin. It would also convey the benefits enjoyed by American families on the immigrant family, such as education and the protections of the law.

Jason is using his own resources to push the plan. “It is not a panacea, but a practical way to get people out of the shadows and into the economy,” he says.

He sees his plan as the solution not to the whole immigration dilemma but as a recognition of reality; as a way of protecting society from the cost of a shadow population. Jason believes it creates an asset where there is a liability — but real legal status is not changed.

Jason told me his wife fell in love with him because “she said I liked to fix things.”

Immigration is a big job for a handyman, but Mark Jason is at work.  

Llewellyn King (lking@kingpublshing.com) is host and executive producer of ''White House Chronicle,'' on PBS, and a long-time publisher, journalist and international business consultant.

Frankfort, Maslin, O’Hara: Altering behaviors to boost student success

nebhe.org

Across the U.S., an estimated 60% of incoming community college students require developmental courses to be ready for college-level work, according to estimates by experts. As these courses act as a gateway to further studies, those who fail are most often lost to higher education: Less than a quarter will earn a degree or certificate within eight years.

Connecticut’s Middlesex Community College, an institution serving approximately 3,000 students at locations in Middletown and Meriden, is using new approaches based on behavioral science to improve retention among all students, with a particular focus on students who have historically struggled to earn a degree. In the following Q&A with the New England Board of Higher Education, Jill Frankfort, co-founder of Boston-based Persistence Plus, talks to Adrienne Maslin, dean of students at Middlesex, and Ross O’Hara, behavioral researcher at Persistence Plus, about issues facing community colleges in retaining underprepared college students and the potential offered by interventions that target psychosocial factors related to student success.

What are the challenges facing Middlesex Community College with regard to students being underprepared for college?

Maslin: Our experiences parallel those at other community colleges across the country. At Middlesex, approximately 55% of new students enroll in developmental education courses each year. Of these students, 60% successfully complete those courses, with about 40% moving on to college-level courses within one semester and about 60% within two. Many students, however, are never able to move into college-level courses, with the exception of those courses that do not require college-level reading, writing or math skills. And those are pretty few in number. Of course, the ways in which students are underprepared vary, particularly when you’re talking about the diverse students at a community college. Although our population of traditional, straight-from-high-school students has grown, we have many students who are older and have been away from the learning environment for quite some time. These students tend to have weak math skills and sometimes weak writing skills as well.

Many state legislatures have passed or are considering bills that reform or eliminate developmental education. How has Middlesex responded to legislation passed in Connecticut in 2012 that sought to streamline developmental education?

Maslin: The main objective of the 2012 legislation is to prevent students from languishing in developmental education with no clear path out, which is consistent with the goals of most community colleges, Middlesex included. The challenge, however, which we have begun to remedy, is that students who place into developmental courses frequently need more time on task to master the concepts of the course. To better help these students at Middlesex, we now offer developmental education in a variety of ways for both English and math. First, students can opt to take introductory courses that have developmental education embedded into them.

These students are expected to put more time into the course, but are also provided with the extra assistance necessary to succeed. This allows students to catch-up on key skills while still engaging in college-level work. Second, students can enter into the “Accelerated Learning Program,” which pairs a developmental education and a college-level course. Students take these classes concurrently and earn credit for both, again allowing students to move seamlessly into college-level work while improving in any areas of concern. Finally, students can still enroll in a more traditional developmental education course, as has been the model in the past.

What has Middlesex done to increase retention, particularly among students who historically have low persistence rates, such as those in developmental education courses?

Maslin: Certainly we’re optimistic that offering students more options for transitioning into college-level courses will boost retention among these students. In addition, we now have a full-time retention specialist who’s available to help students with any issues—academic, financial or personal—that may cause them to withdraw. We’ve also put into place a variety of initiatives to support students through the use of technology. One example is our partnership with Persistence Plus—a service that can help support students who may be unable or initially unwilling to take advantage of student services offered in-person.

What is Persistence Plus and how does it work?

O’Hara: Persistence Plus leverages mobile technology to motivate, engage and support more students to degrees. We provide daily, low-touch interventions, known as nudges, to students via their cell phones. These nudges are based on research that tells us that psychosocial factors often play as large a role, if not larger, than academic and financial difficulties in students’ decisions to withdraw from college.

What kinds of psychosocial factors?

O’Hara: Much of this work centers on normalizing the college experience for new students. When many college students struggle, they often assume that everybody else is doing fine and that they simply don’t have what it takes. This attitude tends to be more pervasive among first-generation students and students from low-income backgrounds who have fewer opportunities to discuss college with their families and mentors. Changing these attitudes, therefore, is often the first step to changing students’ performance. For example, students who believe that they can improve their academic abilities, instead of believing that intelligence is set in stone, tend to work harder when struggling and ultimately perform better in college.

Some nudges, therefore, share stories about other students who struggled at first but then did exceptionally well in college. Other nudges let students know that many people go to their professors or the tutoring center for help and that it’s not only normal, but it’s expected of them. Ultimately, we want students to realize that being confused or getting a bad grade is not a sign that they should quit.

Is Persistence Plus the first intervention to target psychosocial factors among college students—or, more specifically, students in developmental education courses?

O’Hara: Certainly not. Many researchers in psychology and education have demonstrated that psychosocial factors can be successfully changed in college students and doing so can lead to better academic outcomes. With regard to developmental education, one of the most noted applications of this research to date is a program called Pathways—two developmental math courses developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This program, like Persistence Plus, targets psychosocial factors that can lead students to quit when they don’t understand math, such as the belief that one is simply “not a math person.”

The goal of Pathways is for students to develop strategies for persevering in the face of adversity, a concept they call “productive persistence.” Early results from Pathways were very exciting, with completion rates rising from 6% to 51% in the first year. It’s findings like these that have informed the ways in which Persistence Plus aims to support student success.

What have results been like for students using Persistence Plus at Middlesex?

O’Hara: In fall 2013, we had just over 300 Middlesex students using Persistence Plus. After the first semester, we saw a seven-percentage point higher retention rate among students using Persistence Plus versus those in the general population. We’re particularly excited, though, about our results with developmental education students. Of our cohort of 300 students, approximately 30% were enrolled in at least one developmental education course, and 60% of those students returned to Middlesex for fall 2014, a rate six-percentage points higher than the general population. Also exciting, this advantage in retention was consistent for developmental education students enrolled both full-time and part-time.

How have Middlesex students reacted to the service?

Maslin: Students have had many positive reactions to Persistence Plus. One student commented how “it’s like you can’t really fail” because the nudges help motivate you. Students in developmental education, specifically, have mentioned the sense of community that nudges foster. One student said that nudges were a reminder that they were not “the only one having a crisis in the middle of the semester or worrying about finals.” Another student remarked that “knowing what other students had to say in regards to getting help and reaching out to professors made me want to push harder.”

Nudges, therefore, seem to be effective in normalizing the challenges of college for these students. Also, when we asked another Middlesex student what was most helpful about nudges, they replied “The fact that they were right there on my phone!” It appears then that students enjoy the accessibility of having supportive and personalized messages delivered to them on their cell phones.

What’s next for Middlesex in terms of supporting underprepared students?

Maslin: As we adapt to new models of developmental education, making sure that the students who struggle most are given a chance at success is critical to our mission. With President Obama’s proposal to fund two years of community college, the potential influx of students further underscores the need to find innovative ways to support students with a range of academic and personal backgrounds. Our work with Persistence Plus adds to burgeoning evidence that psychosocial factors play a key role in student success, especially among those underprepared for college and most in need of additional academic support.

We’ve been excited to see that low-touch mobile support is welcomed by students and seems effective at moving the needle on persistence, and we look forward to continuing to support our students to degree achievement in-person, on their phones, and by other means that we haven’t thought of yet.

 This comes via our friends at the New England Board of Higher Education, where New England Diary's overseer, Robert Whitcomb, used to be on the editorial advisory board.

Slow down and read a book, or admire its remains

"Slow Down'' (vintage book parts), by CONNY GOELZ-SCHMITT, a sculptor and collage artist, in her show "Uncovered,'' at the Kingston Gallery, Boston, April 1-29.

She says:

"A central element in my work is the continuous process of deconstruction, reallocation and recreation.

"For centuries ideas have been manifested in books.

"Once no longer read they come to be obsolete.

"Uncovered, the remains reveal other possibilities beyond the dispersion of knowledge.

"This is not the end of their physicality. They become building blocks and they communicate with color and shape.

"The book papers in my collages tell new stories through their aged material. Shrines are created from the remains of the books.

"Some of the shrines become totems or morph into sculptures with reflections and shadows.''

On NPR: ISIS.... and Google?

  This interview includes the idiotic assertion that the same sort of people who want to do a Silicon Valley startup are the same sort of people who want to join #isis.

The people who want to join the latter include large numbers of psychopaths who look forward to killing, raping and destroying, using the excuse of 7th Century Arab tribal barbarism. The folks who have founded the likes of Google are creators.

Mexican cigarette market: a model for marijuana legalization

  The Mexican cigarette market a model for marijuana legalization.

Why world needs SWIFT punishment of Russian aggression

This Journal of Political Risk piece explains why much tougher  banking sanctions are needed against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Department of Correction

 

"All Me #2, 2005'' (dye on carved and tooled leather), by WILFRED REMBERT, represented by Adelson Galleries, Boston.

The long arm of art

 

"Still Life With Octopus detail'' (porcelain sculpture),  by SUSAN SCHULTZ, at the Cate Charles Gallery, Providence, in her show there through March 28. Her work has its roots in "the natural world''. 

China in Africa

  Journal of Political Risk Webcast discussion on China in Africa.

Charles Pinning: Gardner heist was a lark

 "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,'' by #rembrandt, one of the works stolen from the Gardner Museum 25 years ago.

Twenty-five years ago, in the wee hours after St. Patrick’s Day 1990, thirteen works of art valued at $500 million were stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It stands as the biggest art theft in history, and it remains unsolved.

Among the pieces stolen were three Rembrandts, including his only known seascape, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” and Vermeer’s, “The Concert,” and there only 34 Vermeers known to exist.

My immediate thought was: Who would steal art so famous it couldn’t be sold?

Professional art thieves would not waste precious time popping a relatively worthless eagle finial off the top of a flag pole, as they did in the Gardner theft, nor would they pinch a bronze, Shang Dynasty drinking beaker (a Ku), regardless of its value; not when their obvious prizes were the Rembrandts and Vermeer, a Manet and a handful of Degas.

Year after year, I listened as the “experts” rolled out their conventional theories of the crooks having Boston underworld connections, be it Whitey Bulger or any of an assortment of local thugs.

No-no-no!

There is a 600 year old problem-solving principle that has often been employed in science and forensics called Occam’s Razor, and it is extremely applicable in this case: among competing hypotheses the one with the fewest assumptions should be preferred.

The simplest, cleanest theory of this robbery eliminates thugs who wouldn’t be familiar with a precious out-of-the-way museum like the Gardner, who wouldn’t know Manet from mayonnaise. Nor were they sophisticated professionals who would operate swiftly, not spend an hour and twenty-one minutes dancing around a museum in the middle of the night. My theory has the least amount of assumptions, and it begins right across the street from the Gardner at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Students from the Museum School, as it’s popularly known, are in and out of the Gardner all the time, studying the art, drawing it.

The guards on the night of the theft were two: a 23-year-old music student at Berklee College of Music and a 25-year-old local musician. The Gardner, the SMFA and Berklee are all within a 10-minute walk of each, two minutes by car.

Is it not possible, if not probable, that art students hanging around a museum and musician-guards would get to know each other, at the museum itself or at clubs and parties?

Weeks prior to the theft, the guards had entertained friends in the museum at night, hanging out drinking, strolling the galleries….

In my view, the theft was committed by students, perhaps in league with former or then-present guards. The theft was a lark, pulled off for the thrill of it.

The big problem: what to do with the art once it was in their possession. My imagination was fired up. In 2006, I set about writing a fictional version of the heist, using all the known facts and cast of characters.

In the spring of 2013, the FBI held a press conference, claiming that they knew who stole the art, they just didn’t know where it was. If the Feds knew who stole the art, why not name them? It could only hasten its recovery. To me, they were obviously bluffing, hoping to flush out someone who had knowledge of the art.

My novel about the heist, Irreplaceable, came out in the summer of 2013. I alerted the staff of the Gardner Museum via email, figuring that they would have a natural interest in the story. The Gardner’s Director of Security, Anthony Amore, replied hot and swift:

“…the claim that the FBI is bluffing is ridiculous and irresponsible. I will not be purchasing it [your book].”

Were she alive today, I believe that the flamboyant, rapacious Isabella Stuart Gardner would pursue the recovery of her art with as much tenacity and imagination as she’d brought to its acquiring. She certainly wouldn’t have tolerated 25 years of theories that have produced nothing.

Inscribed above the museum’s original entrance is her motto: “C’est mon plaisir.” This was a woman who well-understood doing something for the fun of it, and because she could.

Charles Pinning is a Providence-based writer.

Netanyahu's big win and fear of a West Bank ISIS

I suspect that a major reason for Benjamin Netanyahu's big win in the Israeli election was the well-founded fear of many Israelis that giving all or part of the West Bank to the Palestinians would open up Israel to  innumerable attacks across its borders from Islamic State killers. Given what has happened in much of the Mideast, it only stands to reason that the #isis crowd would move into an Arab-run West Bank, too.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Cutler's cold, beautiful coast

 

"Cutler, Maine,'' by PAULA MARTIESIAN, in the show "Thirty Years: Martiesian, {Kenn} #speiser & Bert,'' at the Bert Gallery, Providence, through March 28.

My wife and I rented a house in Cutler for a week in the summer of 1982. It was reachable only by a mile-long dirt road, One time we had to get pulled out of its mud by a local garage owner, who said "This is God's country!'' It was a terrible place to bring a toddler, but we brought one, and a dog. The water, of course, was far too cold to swim in.

It was also seals' country and drug smugglers' country -- with a foggy, deeply indented coastline perfect for sneaking in contraband. A very beautiful place (especially on the rare days without fog) but one to which I have no desire to return.

--- Robert Whitcomb

Pressing on with South Coast Rail

  By JOYCE ROWLEY, for ecoRI News

NEW BEDFORD

“We're forging ahead,” Jean Fox, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's project manager, told the South Coast Rail Task Force at its Feb. 25 meeting, when questioned whether the change in administration would affect the South Coast Rail. “We’ve got our marching orders and we’ve not been told otherwise.”

The 20-year-old South Coast Rail (SCR), now in its preliminary design stage, has chugged along despite a protracted planning and environmental review. Last summer, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (#mbta) awarded a $12 million preliminary design contract to the engineering firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, with an option for a $210 million 10-year final design and construction contract.

“It’s pretty exciting. The goal was to get approximately 15 percent design completed by June 30, 2015,” Fox said. “We’re on target for #most tasks.”

In January 2014, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a final environmental impact statement for an electric train line that will extend the existing MBTA Stoughton commuter rail line. Passing through the 2,000-acre Hockomock Swamp on an abandoned rail bed to #taunton, the new branch will split in Berkley. The main line will connect to New Bedford on existing freight tracks, and a branch will continue to Fall River.

But record snowfall beginning with the first storm on Jan. 26-27 left the T demobilized throughout Greater Boston, leaving some at the meeting questioning the viability of the project.

“Is the state thinking of spending $3 billion on a new line when the T hasn’t worked well for a month?” asked Kyla Bennett, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Fox said that $2.3 billion was allocated in the state transportation bond last year to build the SCR. Fox said they would be meeting with Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration about the project soon.

“Our goal is to sit down with them and see where we fit in," Fox said. “It’s a transportation priority and has been for several years. We can show a cost-benefit analysis of the transportation, environmental and economic development potential for the project.”

Blame for the T’s winter problems has been laid at the 9 feet of snow that incapacitated commuter lines to Worcester, Springfield, Lakeville and Stoughton; at the use of T parking lots by residents who had to stay off the streets during parking bans which then left T commuters with no place to park; on outdated equipment on some lines that couldn’t make it through deep snow.

Now, over a month later, all commuter rail lines are still on revised schedules. It remains to be seen whether promises to get the entire system in order by March 30 can be met.

In a interview with ecoRI News later, Bennett questioned the allocated amount of funding, as well as the wisdom of spending billions of dollars on a rail line that may not be used.

“I think the $2.3 billion is a vast underestimate,” she said. “Public records requests to get the most recent cost estimate were denied.”

Her group won on appeal to the state, but then only received the estimate with minor modifications. The estimate hasn’t changed much since the 2011 draft, Bennett said.

“I don’t know how much it will cost to fix the T, let alone what it will cost to do both,” she said. “The reason this matters is because if it is more, then that’s even more that we won’t put into fixing existing infrastructure.”

Transportation justice SCR Task Force Chairwoman Susan Teal disagrees. The Rochester resident said both maintenance of the existing lines and development of the new branch are needed.

“There's plenty of money for both,” Teal said at the recent meeting.

All other major cities in Massachusetts tie into Boston via rail, except Taunton, New Bedford and Fall River. All three are “Gateway Cities” and all three have consistently pushed for the connection.

Most proponents of the rail expect it will make a connection to Boston and jobs, but will also help draw businesses to the region. In fact, regional planning agencies the Southeast Regional Planning and Economic Development District, Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Old Colony Regional Planning Council show anticipated growth in surrounding communities.

“Just look north to Lowell to see what rail does for a community,” Fox said. “It brings in higher-paying high-skilled jobs and builds new housing stock.”

Nearly $2 million in technical assistance grants to 31 communities over the past seven years has promoted the SCR’s “Smart Growth” planning efforts to mitigate potential impacts in advance. In fiscal 2015, the MBTA spent $353,830 on technical assistance to communities under SCR’s program.

Smart growth is a buzz-phrase for planning to minimize sprawl and reduce vehicle trips, and resulting greenhouse-gas emissions. It includes building transit-oriented development that reduces the need for additional highway infrastructure.

“Smart growth has been impactful and productive,” Fox said.

Bennett questioned the anticipated greenhouse gas-reduction benefits that the SCR may create. Instead, she said the money would be better spent creating jobs in the three targeted cities so people could work where they live.

“People are going to pay $500 to $600 per month to travel four hours on a train for what jobs in Boston?” Bennett said later. “Taking cars off the highway even if there is ridership won’t necessarily make a difference. Cars backfill in the highway when people realize there’s more room.”

Next month, the MBTA will begin construction of independent utilities, including grade crossings and a rail bridge at Wamsutta Street that will serve active freight. These components of the project need to be built even if the SCR isn't completed, according to Fox.

David Warsh: MIT: The 'Duffy's Tavern' of American economics

  SOMERVILLE, Mass.

As something of beat reporter, I have half a dozen good stories about economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in various stages of preparation. So what to make of a recent book, #mit and the Transformation of American Economics (Duke, 2014).

I love it, naturally. Not only does it contribute fundamentally to our knowledge of how Paul Samuelson and Robert #solow at MIT more or less invented the field we call macroeconomics and came to dominate the field for a time, but it illuminates the difference between history and journalism.

Transformation is the hardbound annual supplement to the journal History of Political Economy, which is published quarterly by Duke University Press.  Each year a research conference assembles an array of scholars writing on a single broad topic; 18 months later, suitably edited, their papers appear in book form.  The topic of the conference to be held next month is “Economizing Mind, 1870-2015: When Economics and Psychology Met… or Didn’t.”

Each volume is in conception the creature of an organizing editor, in this case, E. Roy Weintraub, a Duke professor of economics who, one way or another has been on the trail of the MIT story for nearly  40 years.  He is the author of, among other books, How Economics Became a Mathematical Science, and last year, with Till Düppe, of Finding Equilibrium: Arrow, Debreu, McKenzie and the Problem of Scientific Credit (Princeton, 2015).

In an introduction, Weintraub lists six competing explanations that have been advanced to account for MIT's rise to the top of the economics profession:

The oldest narrative and most familiar invokes a Keynesian Revolution, swift transformation in which a mimeographed version of The General Theory of Employment Interst , carried to Harvard by Canadian graduate student Robert Bryce, converted first a circle of graduate students, then Harvard Prof.  Alvin Hansen, and finally wunderkind Paul Samuelson, who promptly decamped to the technological institute down the street. There is no better account of this version than  The Coming of Keynesiaism to America: Conversations with the Founders of Keynesian Economics (Edward Elgar, 1996), edited by David Colander, of Middlebury College,  and Harry Landreth, of Centre College.

A second narrative emerged in From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism  a HOPE conference volume from 1998 edited by Mary Morgan, of the London School of Economics, and Malcolm Rutherford, of the University of Victoria.  The theories of demand, production and the firm had all been matters of contention in the 1930s, but by the mid-1950s, Weintraub writes, all were settled chapters in graduate and intermediate microeconomic textbooks.  How were they thus “stabilized?”  It couldn’t have been the highly literary Keynes. Instead it was the new importance that others attached to the role of models and measurement, a thesis elaborated by Morgan in The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think(Cambridge, 2012) and further illuminated by Weintraub.

A third set of stories emphasizes the effects of World War II:  the United States; post-war hegemony overwhelmed various national traditions, especially in Britain and Vienna. Only the U.S. had the resources to educate, train and employ economists, so naturally the science came to be spoken with an American accent.  Roger Backhouse, of the University of Birmingham and the University of Rotterdam,  editor, with Philippe Fontaine, of The History of the Social Sciences since 1945, (Cambridge, 20120),  contributes an essay to the current volume, ”MIT and the Other Cambridge,” describing the 15-year battle known as the “capital controversy” through which the American Cambridge took control.

A fourth interpretation contends that the Cold War turned economics and game theory into a Procrustean bed for purposes of exercising social control.  None has gone further down this road than Philip Mirowski, of the University of Notre Dame, in Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, (Cambridge, 2002), but Mirowski is not represented in the current volume. Instead essay on the history of operations research, by William Thomas, of History Associates, Rockville, Md., is said to refute Mirowski’s central claim.

Yet another version puts demand for economists; services at the heart of the story, first at MIT, where interest in the “new economics” was greatest, then at several other schools of business and engineering, especially Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (today Carnegie Mellon University), as described in The Roots, Rituals and Rhetoric of Change: North American Business Schools After the Second World War (Stanford, 2011), by Mie Augier, of the Naval Post Graduate School,  and James March, of Stanford University. The role of the GI Bill of Rights in re-shaping U.S. higher education plays a central role here.

A sixth factor, advanced by Weintraub in the Transformation volume, argues that  the rise of MIT stemmed from its willingness to appoint Jewish economists to senior positions, starting with Samuelson himself.  Anti-Semitism was common in American universities on the eve of World War II, and while most of the best universities had one Jew or even two on their faculties of arts and sciences, to demonstrate that they were free of prejudice, none showed any willingness to appoint significant numbers until the flood of European émigrés after World War I  began to open their doors.

MIT was able to recruit its charter faculty – Maurice Adelmam, Max Millikan, Eugene Rostow, Paul Rosenstein-Rodin, Solow, Evsey Domar and Franco Modigliani were Jews – “not only because of Samuelson’s growing renown,” writes Weintraub, “…but because the department and university were remarkably open to the hiring of Jewish faculty at a time when such hiring was just beginning to be possible at Ivy Leaguer Universities,”.

Many essays stand out.  Backhouse nails down the details of Samuelson’s decision to sign on at MIT.  Harro Maas, of Utrecht University, describes the efforts of the University of Chicago to lure Samuelson in the later 1940s. Perry Mehrling, of Barnard College, contributes a perspicacious essay describing the difficulty the MIT tradition, with its emphasis on the general equilibrium of a system of prices, had in coming to grips with the role of money, which the tradition customarily has abstracted away. And Beatrice Cherrier, of the University of Caen, provides a lively overview of the history of the department to begin the volume.

At one point Cherrier quotes a 1967 letter Solow wrote to his colleague Franklin Fisher, who had reported from Israel the view there that the MIT department is too committed to orthodoxy that Samuelson and Solow had devised to be able to recognize promising future developments, especially in theory. Solow wrote,  “Peter Diamond and Peter Temin will help a lot. Miguel Sidrauski may develop very well…. The department has agreed to go for another econometrician, if we can find a young star. .. I think the prospects are good that we can remain the Duffy’s Tavern of economics, where the elite meet to eat.”  The reference is to a popular radio show of the 1940s, an adumbration of the sentimental  1980s television series Cheers.

Fisher was right; Solow was wrong (though Cherrier doesn’t say so). Leadership in theory was about to pass from MIT, though its preeminence in applied economics would soon become apparent. But Solow’s metaphor is especially well chosen, and not just because of the gemütlichkeit of the customary table upstairs at the MIT faculty club, where the economists met most days for lunch.

The broadcast of Duffy’s Tavern always began the same way: a rendition of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling'' interrupted by the ringing of a phone: "Hello, Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Archie the manager speakin'. Duffy ain't here—oh, hello, Duffy."

The centerpierce of Transformation is an appreciation of Solow by Verena Halsmayer, of the University of Vienna. In “From Exploratory Modeling to Technical Expertise: Solow’s Growth Model as a Multipurpose Design,” Halsmayer makes a serious attempt to rescue Solow – the manager of the MIT economics department for 30  years – from the shadow of the brilliant Samuelson and evaluate the younger man’s principal contribution, the Solow model of economic growth.

It was a farther-reaching development than is generally understood, she argues, nothing less than a replicable “design” for a specific way of doing economics. a relatively unencumbered means of combining theory with measurement so as to interrogate the real world with “high hopes of producing useful and practical knowledge for economic governance.” As his student George Akerlof once put it, Solow began the process of turning the word “model” into a verb.

Transformation is the latest draft of history, a promising start on what promises to be a very complicated process.  More will follow relatively quickly:  Michael Weinstein, an MIT PhD who for many years was a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, is completing a book-length essay on Samuelson.  Backhouse has begun a full-scale biography. Much more remains to be done including a proper biography of Solow.

Yet for all the value of careful history, it remains, by definition, a rear-view mirror  That is why we have journalism, too.

David Warsh, a longtime economic historian and financial journalist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.

Col. Bacevich to speak on U.S. military actions abroad

  Prof. Andrew Bacevich, a distinguished military historian, political scientist and  retired Army colonel, will be speaking on American military interventions abroad at the meeting Thursday evening of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations.  With ISIS, Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea, it will be an interesting evening. Professor Bacevich is a well known skeptic about the utility of American military actions in such places as the Mideast.

Those great New England hurricanes of deep history

By ecoRI News

WOODS HOLE, Mass.

Intense hurricanes, possibly more powerful than any storms New England has experienced in recorded history, frequently pounded the region during the first millennium, from the peak of the Roman Empire into the height of the Middle Ages, according to a new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (#whoi).

The findings could have implications for the intensity and frequency of hurricanes the United States could experience as ocean temperatures increase as a result of climate change, say study’s authors.

A new record of sediment deposits from Cape Cod show evidence that 23 severe hurricanes hit New England between the years 250 and 1150, the equivalent of a severe storm about once every 40 years. Many of these hurricanes were likely more intense than any that have hit the area in recorded history, according to the study. The prehistoric hurricanes were likely category 3 storms (Hurricane Katrina ) or category 4 storms (Hurricane Hugo) that would be catastrophic if they hit the region today, according to Jeff Donnelly, a WHOI scientist and the study’s lead author.

The study is the first to find evidence of historically unprecedented hurricane activity along the northern East Coast, Donnelly said. It also extends the hurricane record for the region by hundreds of years, back to the first century, he said.

“These records suggest that the pre-historical interval was unlike what we’ve seen in the last few hundred years,” Donnelly said.

The most powerful storm to hit Cape Cod in recent history was Hurricane Bob in 1991, a category 2 storm that was one of the costliest in New England history. Storms of that intensity have only reached the region three times since the 1600s, according to Donnelly.

The intense prehistoric hurricanes documented by the study were fueled in part by warmer sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean during the ancient period investigated in the study than have been the norm off the East Coast during the past few hundred years. However, as oceans temperatures have slowly inched upward in recent decades, the tropical North Atlantic sea surface has surpassed the warmth of prehistoric levels and is expected to warm further over the next century as the climate heats up, Donnelly said.

He said the new study could help scientists better predict the frequency and intensity of hurricanes that could hit the U.S. coast in the future.

“We hope this study broadens our sense of what is possible and what we should expect in a warmer climate,” Donnelly said. “We may need to begin planning for a category 3 hurricane landfall every decade or so rather than every 100 or 200 years. The risk may be much greater than we anticipated.”

Donnelly and his colleagues examined sediment deposits from Salt Pond in Falmouth. The pond is separated from the ocean by a 4.3- to 5.9-foot-high sand barrier. Over hundreds of years, strong hurricanes have deposited sediment over the barrier and into the pond, where it has remained undisturbed.

The researchers extracted 30-foot-deep sediment cores that they then analyzed in a laboratory. Similar to reading a tree ring to tell the age of a tree and the climate conditions that existed in a given year, scientists can read the sediment cores to tell when intense hurricanes occurred.

The study’s authors found evidence of 32 prehistoric hurricanes, along with the remains of three documented storms that occurred in 1991, 1675 and 1635.

The prehistoric sediments showed that there were two periods of elevated intense hurricane activity on Cape Cod — from 150 to 1150 and 1400 to 1675. The earlier period of powerful hurricane activity matched previous studies that found evidence of high hurricane activity during the same period in more southerly areas of the western North Atlantic Ocean basin, from the Caribbean to the Gulf Coast. The study suggests that many powerful storms spawned in the tropical Atlantic between 250 and 1150 also battered the East Coast.

The deposits revealed that these early storms were more frequent, and in some cases were likely more intense, than the most severe hurricanes Cape Cod has seen in historical times, including Hurricane Bob and a 1635 hurricane that generated a 20-foot storm surge, according to Donnelly.

High hurricane activity continued in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico until 1400, although there was a lull in hurricane activity during this time in New England, according to the study. A shift in hurricane activity in the North Atlantic occurred around 1400, when activity picked up from the Bahamas to New England until about 1675.

The periods of intense hurricanes uncovered by the new research were driven in part by intervals of warm sea surface temperatures that previous research has shown occurred during these time perio