Vox clamantis in deserto
Chris Powell: Arrogant "undocumented immigrants'' out of the shadows; fictionalizing parking for the handicapped
As they blocked Main Street in downtown Hartford by unfurling a 50-foot banner protesting deportations and an unfavorable (to them) U.S. Supreme Court decision, "undocumented immigrants" -- the politically correct term for illegal aliens -- and their supporters declared last week that they were "coming out of the shadows."
"I'm undocumented, unafraid, and here to stay," one announced through a bullhorn.
Nine protesters were charged by police with disorderly conduct.
Their disappointment was understandable but their indignation was misplaced and their presumption of a right to inconvenience and bully everyone else was contemptible.
After all, few illegal aliens are "living in the shadows" in Connecticut. Hartford and New Haven have declared themselves "sanctuary cities," formally committed to nullifying federal immigration law, as state government itself is committed more or less, now that it is providing driver's licenses and college-tuition discounts to illegals. All Connecticut's members of Congress favor amnesty for illegals.
Besides, "living in the shadows" is what lawbreakers do, although it's not as if any immigration-law violator is in danger of being persecuted for innocent characteristics like ethnicity, homosexuality or left-handedness. Every nation has the right to immigration law -- indeed, controlling immigration is the definition of nationhood -- and illegals have violated the law just as much as anyone else has.
Yes, the country's failure to enforce immigration law, induced by pressure from unscrupulous employers and groups that don't want any immigration-law enforcement, has contributed to the extenuating circumstances of millions of young people whose illegality was the responsibility of their parents. Politics has been obstructing legislation that might give them a "path to citizenship" -- and not just the politics of legislators hostile to immigration but also the politics of legislators hostile to achieving border control before amnesty. But that's democracy for you. Building consensus can take time.
Breaking a perfectly legitimate law and then demanding that it be changed in one's favor while one bullies innocent people on the street is pretty arrogant. Who do the illegals think they are -- Citigroup or Tribune Publishing, which undertook illegal corporate acquisitions in Connecticut, confident that they were influential enough to get the laws and regulations repealed?
If their arrogance is going to extend to blocking traffic, the illegals should go back in the shadows.
* * *
Because of legislation signed last week by Gov. Dannel Malloy, Connecticut's official emblem for reserving parking spots for the handicapped has been what the governor calls "modernized." It's more like fictionalized.
The old emblem showed a stick figure sitting in a wheelchair. The new emblem has the stick figure leaning forward in a racing pose as if engaging in a game of wheelchair basketball. The idea is to dispel the supposedly retrograde idea that the handicapped are handicapped and instead suggest that people with disabilities can lead active lives -- as if anyone thought there was some law against it.
But of course if the handicapped were not disadvantaged in some way, they would hardly need preferential parking, and most of the people whose cars are equipped with handicapped parking permits are not athletes but old folks unsteady on their feet, carrying canes, or lugging oxygen canisters.
So the new emblem is just another symptom of the political correctness plaguing Connecticut under the Malloy administration. In this respect the collapse of state government's finances is fortunate, for nothing will be spent to replace the handicapped parking signs just to get rid of the old emblem. The signs with the old emblem will be replaced only as they wear out. For the time being the PC brigades may have to settle for taking the signs off bathroom doors.
Chris Powell is a Connecticut-based columnist on politics and society and managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Want to dance?
"Floating in space, here's a Yellow and Black Garden spider that has its web on our front porch. It's a very small creature magnified by the use of a macro lens. I erased the web because it was distracting.''
-- From photographer Thomas Hook, New England Diary's man in Southbury, Conn.
"Floating in space, here's a Yellow and Black Garden spider that has its web on our front porch. It's a very small creature magnified by the use of a macro lens. I erased the web because it was distracting.''
Whenever I see a spider, I unfortunately think of "Design,'' the great Robert Frost poem below:
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
'When in the course of human events...'
Bobby Baker is a Massachusetts-based photographer many of whose photos have appeared in this site and its predecessor, "This New England''.
The road to Milltown and Miltown*
"Work from "A Useable Past: American Folk Art,'' at the Colby College Museum of Art, in Waterville, Maine, July 9-Jan. 8. The show primarily features the work of self-taught artists who worked in the eastern U.S. in the 19th Century. * Read S.J. Perelman's The Road to Miltown, or Under the Spreading Atrophy.
Would't it get boring?
"For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who bears eternal summer in his soul."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Old Player''
"
Robert Whitcomb; Treatment for Brexit bathos; 'The Genius of Birds'
This first ran in Robert Whitcomb "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocalProv.com.
"There's been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if somehow NATO's gone, the Trans-Atlantic Alliance is dissolving, and every country is rushing off to its own corner. That's not what's happening."
-- President Obama
Quite right. And the Western World has been prosperous for long stretches without the E.U.!
The 51.8 percent vote in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union stemmed from, among other things, the failure of the E.U. to slow the flood of refugees from nasty places and, somewhat related, the dwindling job prospects of millions of people hurt by globalization and computerization. Outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, had vowed to cut net immigration into the U.K. to 100,000 a year. In fact, it rose to 333,000 in 2015.
Then there was the desire to protect the orderly British way of life.
The British and many people on the Continent understandably fear for their tolerant and opensocieties when so many people from illiberal, corrupt, religiously fanatic and indeed barbaric cultures flee to Europe for its safety andprosperity, not to mention welfare benefits, butrefuse to give up some of the nasty archaic aspects of the cultures whence they came. The British “Leave’’ voters want to adjust the influx of immigrants from non-Western cultures to a pace that allows for thegradual education of these newcomers so that they come to accept the values of an open, tolerant, democratic and secular society.
What happens next?
Future events might include:
· The U.K. deciding not to leave the E.U. after all. For one thing, the referendum isn’t legallybinding!
· Letting Scotland veto Brexit since, under one legal interpretation, leaving requires the Scottish Parliament’s approval and the Scots have strongly favored staying in the E.U.
· Renegotiating the U.K.’s membership in the E.U. -- for example, giving Britain and other member nations more power to control population movements into their nations.
The U.K. will muddle through with new arrangements with the E.U., perhaps along the lines of non-members Norway and Switzerland and, I hope, develop even closer connections with its offspring the United States.
Brexit should remind us that we need to strengthen the unity of the wider West – Europe, the U.S. and Canada -- especially as aggressive dictatorships, particularly Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as well as Islamic terrorists, pose intensifying dangers. NATO must block Putin’s obvious plan to take over the Baltic Republics and that part of Ukraine he hasn’t already grabbed. And the U.S., the U.K and the E.U. need to accelerate negotiations to enact the TransatlanticTrade and Investment Partnership to strengthen the West on both sides of the Atlantic.
An analysis at the World Economic Forum in Davos listed the 10 best nations to live in. All except Japan are Western democracies. Brexit may spawn new ways of thinking to keep it that way.
xxx
MontyBurnham, who chairs the Preservation Society of Newport County, controlled her exasperation in her recent status report on long-delayed upgrades to three Newport mansions – upgrades that would draw in more tourist money to the City by the Sea.
Tedious Nimby legal actions have long held up a long-overdue welcome center at The Breakers as well as refreshment services at Marble House and The Elms. The society will almost certainly finally triumph this year, letting these improvements be implemented next year. But what a pity it will have taken so long to offer these amenities. America has become an increasingly difficult place to do public projects, no matter how good for the general public.
xxx
Republican leaders have long denounced the Affordable Care Act without coming up with a detailed plan with a cost-benefit analysis to replace it.
The tradition continues with House Speaker Paul Ryan’s election-year healthcare replacement “plan’’ for the ACA. As usual, it involves further complicating the tax code -- in this case, with a new tax credit for people (including rich folks) to buy insurance in markets to be regulated by the states.
The speaker doesn’t project how much the credit would be worth, what the total cost would be, how many people it would cover and the range of health conditions to be covered by such policies. So, at this point anyway, it means pretty much nothing.
Meanwhile, the most cost-effective and least complicated way to improve American healthcare – extending Medicare to everyone – remains off the table. Lobbyists rule!
xxx
Jennifer Ackerman’s new book, The Genius of Birds, about birds’ cognitive abilities, is quite something. Birds use tools, plan, have capacious memories and complex social lives. Many species are anything but what we think of as ‘’birdbrained’’.
But then, the more we learn about nonhuman animals the more we’re surprised by how many species are smart and deeply feeling creatures. Pigs, certainly. (And some fish?)
And yet we continue to terrify, kill and eat intelligent animals.
Robert Whitcomb is overseer of New England Diary.
Todd McLeish: The wildlife effects of defoliation by caterpillars
Hills deforested by caterpillars.
The massive defoliation of trees in southern New England by winter moth and gypsy moth caterpillars this spring and summer has totally changed the look of the regional landscape. And while scientists say it’s unlikely that many trees will die as a result of one year of defoliation, it raises the question of how it will affect other species of wildlife.
University of Rhode Island ornithologist Peter Paton noted that several varieties of songbirds are likely benefiting from the huge number of caterpillars swarming the area. Black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos, two species that are known to eat large numbers of caterpillars, including the prickly gypsy moth caterpillars that many other birds avoid, are likely to thrive this year. He said birdwatchers in the region have noticed an unusually large number of very active cuckoos since the birds arrived from their wintering grounds in South America in May. As a result, these birds will probably have a very successful nesting season.
“Last week I was watching some robins 40 feet up in a tree foraging, which is a pretty unusual place to find them eating,” Paton said. “So I’m guessing they were probably feasting on caterpillars, too.”
Paton also observed blue jays and hairy woodpeckers tearing apart some of the abundant caterpillar cocoons, another unusual behavior brought about by the caterpillar infestation.
“And if the defoliation ends up killing trees,” he said, “that could eventually have a positive impact on woodpeckers,” which consume insects that live in dead trees and which drill nesting cavities in dead trees.
As for other possible impacts on wildlife, he speculated that the absence of leaves on many trees will enable sunshine to filter down to the forest floor and other areas that are typically shady, which may provide additional sunny areas for turtles and snakes to nest and sun themselves.
On the other hand, fewer shady areas may make it more difficult for wood frogs and salamanders living in the forest to remain cool and moist, according to David Gregg, executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey.
“Ferns and other forest floor plants are also more likely to have a negative experience of this phenomenon than a positive one,” he said.
Natural History Survey botanist Hope Leeson said there will be both winners and losers on the forest floor, depending on the needs of the species living there. “If there is an understory of trees and shrubs, they’ll be happy to have the sun.”
Leeson noted greenbrier as one plant that will thrive with the additional sunlight penetrating to the forest floor, and it will provide benefits to other species that may be at risk.
“At the moment, any small mammal living in the forest doesn’t have any cover,” she said. “Deer have eaten all the tree seedlings and shrub seedlings, so there isn’t anything for the mice and chipmunks to hide under. Once the canopy was removed by the caterpillars, it made it easy for the hawks and owls to see the small mammals pretty well.”
The increased growth of greenbrier, she said, will provide the small mammals with new places to hide.
Both Leeson and Gregg also noted that some unwanted invasive species may also thrive this year, thanks to the defoliation. Amur cork trees, for instance, an Asian species, have invaded forests throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and are now found in small numbers in coastal forests of Rhode Island as well. They grow very slowly in the shade, with some 25-year-old trees no more than 8 feet tall with trunks only an inch or two in diameter.
“They just wait it out in a shady situation,” Leeson said. “They just eek out an existence and wait for the moment when there’s light, and that’s when they put on a lot of growth.”
This year could be the year they will shoot skyward.
According to Rick Enser, retired biologist for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, if the region experiences another gypsy moth infestation next year, tree mortality will likely increase, which could create gaps in the forest for new species to move into.
“Unfortunately, invasives are highly adept at dispersal, although small infestations within forest openings should theoretically be reduced or eliminated as the canopy returns,” he said.
Enser noted winged euonymus, also known as burning bush, as one invasive species that can spread quickly to new areas and survive when the forest canopy returns. It’s a shrub that has become a primary concern at URI’s W. Alton Jones Campus in West Greenwich.
Since it has been more than 30 years since Rhode Island has experienced such a severe defoliation, many of the environmental effects are uncertain and unstudied, leaving some scientists with more questions than answers.
“I was wondering about the nutrient balance,” Gregg said. “Normally oak leaves breakdown in a certain way at a certain time, but this year they've been consumed by caterpillars and turned into manure and sprinkled all over the forest floor. So is that good for the plants? What’s the nutrient analysis of gypsy moth poop?”
Author and EcoRI News contributorTodd McLeish runs a blog about wildlife. Hit this link to read it.
David Warsh: RIP: Great Britain, 1688-2016
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
My English friend first noticed the tendency years ago when English football hooligans began wearing the red and white Cross of St. George to matches in preference to the Union Jack. The latter ensign dated from 1606, when James I ordered the blue and white St. Andrew’s cross of the flag of Scotland to be sewn onto the English banner to represent his dual monarchy. For the next hundred years the striking new design was seen mainly on the masts of his British majesty’s ships at sea.
Not until 1688 did the English parliament get into the act, when its members invited the Dutchman William of Orange and his English wife to become King William III and Queen Mary II, fending off the restoration of hierarchical Catholic governance under James II. Crowned in 1685, James was chased off the throne and out of the country in 1688.
This was the “Glorious Revolution,” long cherished by the English as supposedly peaceful, aristocratic and consensual. It has been persuasively reinterpreted recently as “violent, popular and divisive” by Yale historian Steve Pincus and extensively illuminated by Deidre McCloskey in her Bourgeois Trilogy as the first truly modern revolution, precursor to the American and French experiences.
This was modernization based on a Dutch model, not a French one, writes Pincus. It included a broad array of inventions associated with becoming a nation-state: republican governance; elected representatives of the citizenry; the rule of law; bourgeois values of various sorts, especially the fundamental and widespread curiosity we now describe as “scientific”; and, not incidentally, the strong army and first-rate navy required by a nation bent on global domination. The Union Jack became Britain’s official flag only after both parliaments passed Acts of Union in 1707.
Elizabeth, England’s first Protestant queen, had begun her rule in 1558. For the next 250 years, Britain battled Spain, the Netherlands and France for control of Europe, North America, and the sea, finally emerging mostly victorious in 1815. Long before, writers including Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith had begun comparing its hegemony to that of the Roman Empire.
The Victorian era, broadly construed, lasted for a century, but as early as 1890 it was becoming clear that the empire had become overextended. In The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895-1905 (Princeton, 1977), Princeton historian Aaron Friedberg argued that the Boer War, in South Africa, exhausted Britain’s willingness to tax itself to pay to maintain its status as the world’s dominant power.
Two long and bitter wars with Germany in the 20th Century further sapped Britain’s human, military and financial capacity. An attempted military intervention, with the aid of France and Israel, against Egypt in Suez in 1956 succeeded militarily but failed utterly politically and diplomatically. Gradually its naval forces were pulled back from Singapore. Hong Kong remained a commercial enclave long after it ceased to be a naval strong point; its sovereignty and governance were handed over to China in 1997.
What remained, until last week, was Britain’s capacity for moral leadership. Britain had declined to join European Coal and Steel Community in the years after World War II. French President Charles de Gaulle then fended off its attempt to join the European Economic Community (“the Common Market”) that emerged in the late 1950s. Britain finally entered the EEC in 1973, but opted out of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which abolished most border controls among member states. The landmark Maastricht Treaty of 1992 created the European Union and the concept of European citizenship, E.U. passports and the free movement of labor among the member nations. Subsequent treaties have extended the principle of central European government from its seat in Brussels, and expanded membership to 28 member states.
What happened last week was not just Britain’s retreat from Europe; it was the abandonment of the project that began in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a dream of empire that turned out be a spectacular success. Britain now will return to being the island nation celebrated by Shakespeare as “this fortress built by Nature for herself/ against infection and the hand of war.” None of us who were raised on this story can be less than sad at the news; those who have labored in its service are heartbroken.
What happens now in Britain? Martin Wolf, economics columnist of the Financial Times, put it succinctly: Britain has prospered inside the E.U. but it will not do as well outside. It seems doubtful that London can remain the same immensely powerful global financial hub it has become – central banks such as the Bank of England have power only by dint of governments’ authority to tax.
Elites are fuming; they can hardly believe their comfortable way of life has been put at risk; so are the young, who voted overwhelmingly (75 percent of 18-24-year olds, 56 percent of 25-50 year olds) to remain.
Can the vote be reversed? British law may offer some exits.
My English friend first noticed the tendency years ago when English football hooligans began wearing the red and white Cross of St. George to matches in preference to the Union Jack. The latter ensign dated from 1606, when James I ordered the blue and white St. Andrew’s cross of the flag of Scotland to be sewn onto the English banner to represent his dual monarchy. For the next hundred years the striking new design was seen mainly on the masts of his British majesty’s ships at sea.
Not until 1688 did the English parliament get into the act, when its members invited the Dutchman William of Orange and his English wife to become King William III and Queen Mary II, fending off the restoration of hierarchical Catholic governance under James II. Crowned in 1685, James was chased off the throne and out of the country in 1688.
This was the “Glorious Revolution,” long cherished by the English as supposedly peaceful, aristocratic and consensual. It has been persuasively reinterpreted recently as “violent, popular and divisive” by Yale historian Steve Pincus and extensively illuminated by Deidre McCloskey in her Bourgeois Trilogy as the first truly modern revolution, precursor to the American and French experiences.
This was modernization based on a Dutch model, not a French one, writes Pincus. It included a broad array of inventions associated with becoming a nation-state: republican governance; elected representatives of the citizenry; the rule of law; bourgeois values of various sorts, especially the fundamental and widespread curiosity we now describe as “scientific”; and, not incidentally, the strong army and first-rate navy required by a nation bent on global domination. The Union Jack became Britain’s official flag only after both parliaments passed Acts of Union in 1707.
Elizabeth, England’s first Protestant queen, had begun her rule in 1558. For the next 250 years, Britain battled Spain, the Netherlands and France for control of Europe, North America, and the sea, finally emerging mostly victorious in 1815. Long before, writers including Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith had begun comparing its hegemony to that of the Roman Empire.
The Victorian era, broadly construed, lasted for a century, but as early as 1890 it was becoming clear that the empire had become overextended. In The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895-1905 (Princeton, 1977), Princeton historian Aaron Friedberg argued that the Boer War, in South Africa, exhausted Britain’s willingness to tax itself to pay to maintain its status as the world’s dominant power.
Two long and bitter wars with Germany in the 20th Century further sapped Britain’s human, military and financial capacity. An attempted military intervention, with the aid of France and Israel, against Egypt in Suez in 1956 succeeded militarily but failed utterly politically and diplomatically. Gradually its naval forces were pulled back from Singapore. Hong Kong remained a commercial enclave long after it ceased to be a naval strong point; its sovereignty and governance were handed over to China in 1997.
What remained, until last week, was Britain’s capacity for moral leadership. Britain had declined to join European Coal and Steel Community in the years after World War II. French President Charles de Gaulle then fended off its attempt to join the European Economic Community (“the Common Market”) that emerged in the late 1950s. Britain finally entered the EEC in 1973, but opted out of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which abolished most border controls among member states. The landmark Maastricht Treaty of 1992 created the European Union and the concept of European citizenship, E.U. passports and the free movement of labor among the member nations. Subsequent treaties have extended the principle of central European government from its seat in Brussels, and expanded membership to 28 member states.
What happened last week was not just Britain’s retreat from Europe; it was the abandonment of the project that began in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a dream of empire that turned out be a spectacular success. Britain now will return to being the island nation celebrated by Shakespeare as “this fortress built by Nature for herself/ against infection and the hand of war.” None of us who were raised on this story can be less than sad at the news; those who have labored in its service are heartbroken.
What happens now in Britain? Martin Wolf, economics columnist of the Financial Times, put it succinctly: Britain has prospered inside the E.U. but it will not do as well outside. It seems doubtful that London can remain the same immensely powerful global financial hub it has become – central banks such as the Bank of England have power only by dint of governments’ authority to tax.
Elites are fuming; they can hardly believe their comfortable way of life has been put at risk; so are the young, who voted overwhelmingly (75 percent of 18-24-year olds, 56 percent of 25-50 year olds) to remain.
Can the vote be reversed? Apparently just possibly. Hit this link.
There is a distinct possibility that Scotland will choose to remain in the European Union. In that case the Union Jack may actually come apart. Those ancient flags will reappear: the azure Saltire, worn by Scottish soldiers fighting in France in the 14th Century; the red-on-white St. George’s cross, brought back in the 12th from Malta after the Second Crusade.
Meanwhile, what about the rest of the world? That is a much more complicated story. You can expect to hear plenty more about it in the coming months, beginning with the other huge multi-national organization based in Brussels — the sprawling military-industrial complex known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
David Warsh, a longtime economic historian and financial columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.
There is a distinct possibility that Scotland will choose to remain in the European Union. In that case the Union Jack may actually come apart. Those ancient flags will reappear: the azure Saltire, worn by Scottish soldiers fighting in France in the 14th Century; the red-on-white St. George’s cross, brought back in the 12th from Malta after the Second Crusade.
Meanwhile, what about the rest of the world? That is a much more complicated story. You can expect to hear plenty more about it in the coming months, beginning with the other huge multi-national organization based in Brussels — the sprawling military-industrial complex known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
David Warsh, a longtime economic historian and financial columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.
Especially after this day
"Let Evening Come'' (beeswax and pigment on birch board), by Georgia Nassikas, in the current group show "Outside/In'', at the Providence Art Club.
Oh them again
"Artists'' (gouache on paper mounted on panel), by Leslie Roberts, in the show "From Atmosphere to Edge,'' at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through July 31.
George McCully: Don't try to turn colleges into technical schools to feed business
The annual Leadership Summit of the New England Board of Higher Education set for Oct. 17 scheduled for this coming October poses the question, “How Employable Are New England's College Graduates, and What Can Higher Education Do About It?”
The Summit will address numerous well-chosen, commonly current questions in and around this topic, predicated on the assertion that “New England employers consistently claim that they can't find sufficient numbers of skilled workers—especially in key tech-intensive and growth-oriented industries like information technology, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.” The strategic questions are, “Is higher education to blame? Are our colleges and universities still operating in "old economy" modes, in terms of services, practices and strategies for preparing students for career transitions and employability?” And, “Can New England's colleges and universities be the talent engine that they need and ought to be?”
The following addresses the factual premises, their historical context, and strategic issues, in a constructive attempt to clarify and enrich the discussion at the Summit.
First, as to the facts on employability: It is commonly believed, but incorrectly, that today’s college graduates have high unemployment; a recent study found that compared to other age and education cohorts, they actually have the lowest rate of unemployment—about 2 percent. Moreover, today’s job market operates on a new model of employment—the so-called “on-demand” or “gig” economy of short-term jobs perhaps interspersed with underemployment. The Summit needs to begin, therefore, with everyone on the same page with current data on unemployment, employment and underemployment.
As to history, this whole discussion arises from the confluence of two massive trends: the information technology (IT) revolution and the soaring, excessive costs of college matriculation.
The IT revolution, as we all know, is transforming all areas of life and enterprise, at an accelerating pace. It is now in what Steve Case, founder of AOL, calls its “Third Wave,” progressing rapidly from the “Internet of things” to the “Internet of everything.” As this revolution has gained speed and momentum, technological turnover has accelerated and pervaded job markets, so that everyone has now to run and jump to keep up with it. A large part of employers’ difficulty in filling jobs with suitably skilled employees is a side-effect that has become the new normal in high-tech businesses. That will not change, and cannot be blamed on colleges and universities; whether they can realistically be expected to do anything meaningful about keeping up with and advancing it is an open question.
The concurrent soaring college and university costs—and huge loans to help cover them—has made parents and students increasingly concerned about affordability, student indebtedness and practicality. This has had commercializing effects on college and university cultures, in which students and their parents consider themselves increasingly as consumers purchasing credentials for continued financial support and jobs.
Simultaneous grade-inflation, reduction of onerous study workloads, anxiety over what professors want rather than what students should want for themselves, excessive grade-consciousness, and questioning whether the investment is worthwhile, often boils down to a vicious circle: whether the investment will lead to a steady job that will enable paying off the loans.
The combination of these two trends is the dangerous situation we have today. If the job market is in constant, rapid and accelerating turnover so that jobs and even careers become short-term investments in ephemeral results by both employers and employees—and if the culture of colleges and universities is commercialized, operating as an investment in job security—how can colleges and universities, as relatively sluggish institutions already behind the curve, possibly now be expected to provide rapid-turnover kinds of training for rapid-turnover jobs?
Even if they succeed in training students for today’s job market, that same training will become obsolete tomorrow, and then what will the investment have been worth? How can New England’s colleges and universities, caught in this crunch, be presumed to have any real or viable “need” or obligation to be “the talent engine” for current or future job markets?
Here it is strategically useful to distinguish clearly between “education” and “training.” “Training” is “knowledge and skills development” and is the focus of this discussion; “education” is “self-development”, which is what our colleges and universities were created to do, as in the Classical tradition of liberal education. Education certainly includes training, but is both broader and deeper, intensely personal and social—focusing on the cultivation of values. Education is more about who ,training is more about what, students are and will become in their subsequent lives and careers.
It has long been conventionally accepted that the mission of “higher” education in colleges and universities, as distinct from that in schools, is to bring training in disciplined scholarship to bear on the cultivation of personal values, as in liberal education. This is not something that goes in and out of fashion with changes in economies or technologies. While the training function needs to be currently in tune with useful knowledge and skills in fast-changing technology and job markets, the challenge of keeping au courant is real, but always subordinated to the permanent and characteristic mission of higher education.
Here, modern technology itself can help. Training these days is done most productively and efficiently by computers and the Internet, as has been conclusively demonstrated by MOOCs. Obviously the employers who are complaining about the technical preparedness of prospective hires, know best what training (knowledge and skills) they want those new hires to have. They happen also, however, to be in the best position to provide it themselves.
Case (incidentally, a graduate of Williams College), in his book The Third Wave, put it succinctly: Let higher education develop character—which, he advises, is what the innovating entrepreneurs should be looking for in hiring—and let the businesses then train for the special skills they currently and prospectively need. MOOC-style courses could be the instrument of choice for such training; highly flexible, cost-effective, and productive, they can be quickly developed by anyone for any subject and trainee population, at minimal costs, and readily superseded as needs change.
Can colleges and universities help address this employment problem generated by the technological revolution? Yes—they might at tolerable cost to themselves (perhaps supported by businesses who, after all, need the workforce), incentivize this training with (limited) credits toward degrees for online MOOC training; they might provide various certifications apart from degree credits for MOOC students. They might open room and board facilities to MOOC enrollees, especially in summer or other off-season months, at least partially supported by the businesses needing them. They might provide to MOOC trainees a range of supplementary educational support services by adjunct faculty. Adjuncts might assist with running MOOCs, and businesses might have their MOOC instructors appointed as adjunct members of the faculty, if the cost-sharing could be worked out.
There is a wide variety of facilitating and affiliating options for training, short of undertaking full responsibility. But in this whole context, the suggestion that New England’s colleges and universities should assume, or be expected to assume, responsibility for supplying technically prepared employees to businesses, is an idea that is close to absurd and dead on arrival.
George McCully is a former historian, professor and faculty dean at higher education institutions in the Northeast, then professional philanthropist and founder and CEO of the Catalogue for Philanthropy. This piece first ran in the news Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
Lia Spiliotes: To narrow N.E. rural healthcare gaps, boost nurse practitioners
Rural America lives with layers of demographic and geographic obstacles to health care, and not surprisingly, rural Americans face bigger health challenges than their urban and suburban neighbors. Berkshire County, the second most rural county in Massachusetts, is no different.
More than residents elsewhere in the state, our neighbors and communities struggle with high rates of obesity, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental illness and addiction to smoking and other drugs. The suicide rate in Berkshire County was the highest in the state in 2013, and admissions to mental-health facilities are above the norm.
Berkshire County mirrors other remote rural geographic regions in the nation, where recruiting primary-care providers is an ongoing challenge of economics, retirement, the allure of specialty medicine and big-city compensation. In these areas, the supply of primary-care physicians falls below federal standards. (Kaiser Foundation 2015).
The good news is that the education, experience and quality of physicians and nurse practitioners at Community Health Programs in Berkshire County, where I have been interim CEO since January, is on par with any of the best healthcare organizations in which I have worked in Massachusetts. Equally important is the work we are doing to educate patients about the front-line role that nurse practitioners play in the delivery of high quality primary care. Increasingly, patients understand that nurse practitioners are excellent partners in providing primary care.
National studies have shown that patients assigned to either nurse practitioners or primary-care physicians have comparable health outcomes. More than a dozen states — including Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — have long-since passed measures freeing nurse practitioners from physician oversight in treating, diagnosing and prescribing medication to patients.
States that have already done so show fewer emergency-room admissions, improved health status, and better overall healthcare experiences. Yet in Massachusetts, physician organizations have resisted giving nurse practitioners sufficient autonomy to practice to the full extent of their training. We need to maximize the use of nurse practitioners as a vital healthcare resource.
This lack of full practice authority for nurse practitioners has broad implications for healthcare access in Massachusetts, particularly in underserved communities. Competition for primary-care providers is intensifying. Physician salaries at community health centers, which serve mostly lower-income residents, remain 25 to 30 percent below entry-level salaries at many hospitals and private physician practices.
Outdated practices
At rural health centers, which continually struggle to attract providers away from urban areas, the impact is even more profound if nurse practitioners cannot provide the full range of patient care. The health of rural communities is compromised by policies that protect outdated ways of delivering primary care.
The role of nurse practitioners should grow as our health system moves toward the team-oriented, patient-centered care approaches — the foundation of post-Affordable Care Act healthcare delivery. Often referred to as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), this coordinated model emphasizes a critical shift to staying well, not just getting better.
In addition, care for higher-risk patients with chronic needs, who account for so much of our overall healthcare spending, is better managed. In states that have lifted restrictions on nurse practitioners, early data show a reduction in ER admission rates, improvements in residents’ health status and increased patient satisfaction.
The time has come for the Massachusetts legislature to pass House Bill 1996/Senate Bill 1207. The bills, which draw upon guidelines developed by the Institute of Medicine, would remove barriers preventing nurse practitioners and certified registered nurse anesthetists from practicing to the full extent of their training. The bill also ensures that Massachusetts can meet workforce demands, address gaps in access to care and adopt new care models tied to healthcare delivery and payment reforms.
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, of the 2,050 rural U.S. counties, 77 percent are designated as health- professional-shortage areas. Around 4,000 additional primary- care practitioners are needed to meet current rural healthcare needs. There is no single fix to meeting the health needs of rural Americans, but by elevating the role of nurse practitioners, we believe we can begin to close the gap.
Lia Spiliotes, a Cambridge Management Group (cmg625.com) partner and senior adviser, is interim chief executive officer of Community Health Programs, the Federally Qualified Health Network in Berkshire County, and serves on the board of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. This piece first ran in The Berkshire Eagle.
James P. Freeman: Why Mass. AG Healey should be ousted
In his dutiful and forceful concession remarks in November 2014, John Miller, the Republican candidate that year for Massachusetts attorney general, gave fair warning: “The fight for impartial, fact-based justice from a non-partisan attorney general goes on.” Miller, even in defeat, believed – and presumably feared — that the Bay State was still in “desperate need” of an attorney general who would take a “professional, not a political approach” to the office.
His fears are confirmed.
In June of 2016, it is now evident that the winner that November night, Maura Healey, is using her office to punish those whose views of public policy differ from her own. As a consequence, Healey is no longer fit to hold the office of attorney general.
As reported last week, Healey is now using the power of her office to investigate conservative groups with supposed ties to ExxonMobil. Her subpoena charges that the oil giant lied to shareholders and consumers about the risks of global warming in its communications and shareholder filings.
Healey is seeking 40 years-worth of ExxonMobil documents and communications with right-leaning “think tanks.” Locally, these include the Beacon Hill Institute and Acton Institute. According to The Boston Herald, the basis of the investigation is “deceptive business practices.” The energy company countered by filing a federal lawsuit claiming, rightly, that Healey’s action is no more than a “fishing expedition,” part of a “political agenda,” and the attorney general is “abusing the power of government.” It is a disgracefully overt political maneuver.
Remarkably, both the Left and Right have been critical of state attorneys-general engaged in this scrutiny of ExxonMobil. Harvey Silverglate, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, called the investigation “pure harassment.” Added Silverglate, “It’s not the way scientific or factual or even political battles are settled in this country, which last I checked is still a free country.” The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote that the attack on ExxonMobil is really a “front,” and that the real target is “a broad array of conservative activist groups.”
So this is what we have come to in Massachusetts: a hyper-partisan attorney general, motivated by political expediency, who believes that ExxonMobil defrauded the public and its shareholders by systematically advancing the idea of “climate denial.” Seriously.
Where is the outrage on Beacon Hill? Where is the outrage from the prestige media in greater Boston?
Perhaps more so than any other Massachusetts elected official – including Sen. Elizabeth Warren — Healey is the penultimate programmed progressive. Her core belief-system centers around identity politics and so-called diversity… of everything; except political thought.
On her Web site, maurahealey.com, Healy calls herself the “People’s Lawyer” (she is, apparently, the lawyer of all of the people, except, that is, conservative people). In a January posting she brags that she is “looking ahead to the challenges around the bend and we’re already pushing hard on our top priorities.” ExxonMobil’s thoughts on so-called climate disruption are a priority for the people of Massachusetts?
Healey’s behavior is reminiscent of the Lois Lerner and IRS scandal from a few years ago. Then, as now, conservative groups were targeted under a legal pretense. If Healey’s actions were based in fact and based on the law, warranting the full force and authority of her office, why hasn’t she called for the complete divestiture of ExxonMobil investments by the state’s pension system (which in 2015 was valued at $151 million in the Domestic Equity portfolio)?
Among the first official undertakings by Healey in 2015 was a social-media “campaign.” It involved the collection of testimonials from same-sex couples for an amicus brief that was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting national recognition of gay marriage. However laudable, such time and expense amounted to a political lagniappe but not a legal imperative.
In Massachusetts, it seems identity politics is a greater priority than identity theft, which should be a priority.
Identity theft – the unauthorized use of personal information to defraud or commit crimes – is the fastest-growing crime in America. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security notes that victims spend “between 30-60 hours of their time” and “approximately $1,000 of their own money clearing up the problem.”
The Boston Globe noted two years ago that 1.2 million people in the Commonwealth had personal information and financial data compromised in 2013. In February 2015, a “data breach” occurred at insurer Anthem, compromising personal information of 78.8 million Americans. One million of those reside in Massachusetts.
But don’t tell that to Healey.
On mass.gov/ago, victims are cautioned: “You should be aware that not all identity-theft complaints can or will be investigated.” These people, unlike ExxonMobil, will likely not be accorded a vigorous campaign. What is unsettling is that Healey and fellow progressives believe they can effectively combat climate disruption to their satisfaction but not identity theft.
Healey will probably not resign from office. She also probably not be impeached under the articles of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As a last resort, however, she should be recalled. Interestingly, the voter initiative and referendum provisions in the constitution specifically exclude the recall/removal of judges. But the Constitution is silent regarding recall/removal of executive branch officers.
Let the petition begin.
James P. Freeman is a columnist for The New Boston Post.
Jarrod Hazelton: Brexit a triumph of ignorance
Brexit is perhaps most appropriately summed up in the words of Mr. Donald Trump:
“Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!”
A Tweet heard (naturally) ‘round the world, whose expression of ignorance wa signored by his supporters even as it was rightfully lampooned by everybody else. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted strongly for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union; England and Wales voted to leave.
Support for Brexit worldwide is a veritable Who’s Who of international Nuevo-fascism: Trump, Zhirinovsky, Putin, Marine le Pen. It is also the direct result of unabashed ignorance. Take, for example, the recent remarks by U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage.
One of the central tenets of the Leave campaign was that £350 million per week in payments to the European Union would be diverted to the British National Health Service after Brexit. This incredible incentive is certainly something to consider, but for the fact that it was a total fabrication. Rather than admit this, Farage has instead made the preposterous assertion that he never said such a thing, regardless of the Leave campaign tour bus being emblazoned with the £350 million figure as it traversed the English countryside. Perhaps one of his handlers forgot to mention the design change. Additionally, a Tory member of the European Parliament, David Hannan, back-pedaled on immigration, claiming less than 24 hours after the Brexit vote that immigration levels from the E.U. into Britain might remain unchanged after Brexit goes into full effect. Who knew that the UK had just voted in favor of a group of BRINOs (Brexitors In Name Only)?
Lying in politics is certainly not new but the size of such preposterous claims in recent history is impressive. Trump is a virtual cacophony of spewing, festering untruths, and yet his followers go along with his claims regardless of veracity. Instead, he maintains a stronghold on their collective frustration at being excluded from a system that has long since left them behind.
What Brexitors and Trump supporters have in common may be less xenophobia, bigotry, racism and a longing to take back “again” whatever it is they feel is no longer theirs than ignorance. In America, Trumpists, are nostalgic for a country that once afforded them labor protections, defined-benefit pensions, generous employer-subsidized healthcare, affordable education and other things that have been stripped from them, albeit with scraps still trickling down to them from the rich interests so powerful in Washington, D.C.
Ironically, market forces that have assaulted Brexitors and Trump and Sanders supporters who will refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton may ultimately solve their problems for them. Sovereign wealth funds lost over 30 percent of their interests in the U.K. overnight as the pound crashed with the Brexit news, and won’t stand for this to go on. Businesses in Britain will realize the vast expense of hiring and retraining based on citizenry regulations to be too egregious. And Brexit Remorse may lead to a second referendum, and/or negotiations to leave the E.U may result in a realm of clauses and capitulations that would truly make a Brexit In Name Only.
The prevailing ignorance, xenophobia, bigotry and socio-economic factors behind market forces may solve themselves for a time, but in so doing no lessons will be learned.
Jarrod Hazelton, who holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago, is a financial analyst.
Killer glow
"All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power."
-- Dante
We need the rain
"Chance of Showers'' (oil on linen), by Donato Beauchaine, in the current group show "Outside/In,'' at the Providence Art Club.
Chris Powell: Leaving E.U. essential to protecting British sovereignty, democracy, culture
Recognizing that the objective of the European project, ever-closer political and economic union, meant the destruction of democracy, sovereignty and the country’s very culture, Britain has voted in a great referendum to withdraw from the European Union.
The majority arose from a remarkable combination of the free-market, limited-government political right, the core of the Conservative Party, with the working-class political left, the core of the Labor Party, both party cores repudiating their leaderships as well as the national elites.
The result has enormous implications for the United Kingdom, starting with whether it can remain united, since Scotland -- formerly the most industrious and inventive province in the world, now perhaps the most welfare-addled -- probably will make a second attempt to secede, figuring that free stuff is more likely to flow through continued association with the E.U. than with England, which is growing resentful of the freeloaders up north.
But there are enormous implications for the world as well. The E.U. project has never won forthright ratification by the people of its member states and indeed has sometimes refused to accept rejection by them. Indeed, the whole E.U. government is largely unaccountable. So the British vote quickly prompted demands for similar referendums in France and the Netherlands, where conservative populist movements have been gaining strength.
The politically correct elites are portraying the British vote as a "xenophobic" response to free movement of labor across the E.U. and particularly as opposition to the vast recent immigration into Europe from the Middle East and Africa. This immigration is widely misunderstood as being mainly a matter of refugees from civil war. In fact this immigration has been mainly economic and it has driven wages down in less-skilled jobs while increasing welfare costs throughout Europe, which explains the British Laborite support for leaving the E.U.
But it is not "xenophobic" to oppose the uncontrolled and indeed anarchic immigration that the European Union has countenanced. For any nation that cannot control immigration isn’t a nation at all or won’t be one for long. Since most immigration into Europe lately has come from a medieval and essentially fascist culture and involves people who have little interest in assimilating into a democratic and secular society, this immigration has threatened to destroy Europe as it has understood itself. Britain has been lucky to be at the far end of this immigration, but voters there saw the mess that it has been making on the other side of the Channel. They wisely opted to reassert control of their borders.
Their example should be appreciated in the United States, which for decades has failed to enforce its own immigration law and as a result hosts more than 10 million people living in the country illegally and unscreened. Fortunately few of this country’s illegal immigrants come from a culture that believes in murdering homosexuals, oppressing women and monopolizing religion. But the negative economic and social effects here are similar to those in Europe and properly have become political issues.
The main lesson of Britain’s decision may be an old one -- that nations have to develop organically, arising from the consent of the governed and a common culture, and that they can’t be manufactured by elites. Having defended its sovereignty and indeed liberty itself against Napoleon and Hitler, Britain now has set out to defend them again. So rule, Britannia -- Britannia, rule thyself.
From “Rule Britannia’’:
The nations not so blest as thee
Must in their turn to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
Chris Powell is a political writer and also the managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
An observant rest
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
-- John Lubbock