Vox clamantis in deserto
Will tolls make 'Connecticut Turnpike' less unpleasant?
On Route 95 in Stamford, Conn., among the most congested stretches of a crowded road.
Adapted from an item in Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal 24.
People of a certain age will remember the toll booths on Interstate 95 in Connecticut, a stretch we used to call the Connecticut Turnpike. To impatient drivers the booths seemed to come every few hundred yards and must have been a major source of state employment. (Older drivers will also remember the soft bump-bump-bump as they rode over the Nutmeg State’s concrete roads, once favored in the state over asphalt.)
For various reasons, the tolls and the manned booths where they were collected were removed in 1988. That speeded up traffic for a while but since the very existence of roads spawns cars and that stretch of 95 is close to what became in the ‘90s the boom town of New York City, and its extension in Stamford, the congestion has gotten worse and worse.
Meanwhile, in large part because of Republican anti-tax mania, the federal gasoline tax has not been raised for 24 years and cars have been more fuel-efficient. Thus there’s been less and less money to fix the roads.
And so Connecticut officials are considering bringing back the tolls, albeit this time, of course, the money would be collected automatically through the wonder (and Orwellian nightmare) of electronics. The state would presumably use at least some of that money to help fix up its roads. It’s too bad that the Feds have been so unhelpful in helping to maintain the Interstate Highway System, on which construction started in the Eisenhower administration. And the Trump White House has talked (in its usual incoherent way) about shoving more of the financial obligations of public infrastructure back to the states.
My old friend Philip K. Howard, chairman of Common Good, the public-policy reform organization, wrote recently:
“Where can {transportation} infrastructure funding come from? One obvious source is the gasoline tax, which hasn't increased in 24 years. Raising the gasoline tax by 25 cents would raise over $40 billion per year, and fund most needed highway and transit projects. This could be supplemented by a ‘carbon tax’ on other fossil fuels. Another funding source would be tax revenue from repatriated offshore corporate earnings.
“New fees and taxes come out of our pockets, of course. But kicking the can down the road will cost us far more. An hour stuck in a traffic jam is multiple times more expensive than an extra 25 cents on each gallon of gasoline. Deferring maintenance is generally economically disastrous — increasing costs by a factor of 10…’’
“The next time you're in a traffic jam — starting, say, this afternoon — think about Congress. It created a paralytic regulatory structure that prevents fixing infrastructure. Now it also refuses to help pay for it. Only Congress can cut these bureaucratic knots, raise funds, and get America moving again.’’
By the way, a study of taxes of the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (mostly highly developed nations) shows that overall (federal, state and local) tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product ranked the United States as 31st. Denmark was ranked first.
Cool summer wear
"Twisted Torso'' (gouache on paper), by Laura Watt, in the show "Grids,'' at Periphery Space gallery, Pawtucket, R.I., April 29-May 27.
The title and subject of the show comes from the 1979 essay "Grids,'' by Rosalind Krauss. The show shows the work of six artists fascinated with the grids. They explore pattern, repetition and geometry in nature and everyday life.
Don Pesci: Twain, TR and imperialism
Mark Twain during TR's administration.
Theodore Roosevelt on Twain – “I wish I could skin Mark Twain alive.”
Twain on Roosevelt – “We have had no President before who was destitute of self-respect for his high office. We have had no President before who was not a gentleman; we have had no President before who was intended for a butcher, a dive-keeper or a bully.”
VERNON, Conn.
Occasionally, columnists back up against a thorny subject much in the way an innocent traveler in the woods backs up against a porcupine. The collision is often painful for both the porcupine and the columnist.
Although the deathless struggle between Twain, a longtime Connecticut resident, and TR has been known for more than a century, it is rarely mentioned in print. Twain scholars know that Twain and TR were natural enemies on the matter of American imperialism, TR favoring the civilizing benefits of imperialism, always good for the native population and American businesses on the hunt for overseas markets, and Twain opposing it – strenuously.
TR’s animal spirits were aroused by “killing things,” as his political opponents said, and the notion that the American idea should extend beyond its Monroe Doctrine borders to Hawaii, during Twain’s time, still an island paradise controlled by the native population, Cuba and the Philippines, both part of the far-flung Spanish Empire, and wherever else three prominent American expansionists -- Theodore Roosevelt, whose ambitions for personal glory knew no bounds, William Randolph Hearst, a pro-imperialist newspaper owner, and Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, a close friend of TR and a shaker and mover in Congress -- though that the United States should extend its reach in the world.
Twain was still in Europe when a diffident President William McKinley, largely at the urging of pro-imperialist, ''civilizing'' forces in the United States, ordered the U.S. Navy into Cuba, there to support rebel groups agitating for democracy and freedom from Spanish rule. We all recall Hearst’s war-whoop: “Remember the Maine; To Hell With Spain.”
The Maine went down in Havana Harbor, a sinking likely caused, it was revealed seventy years after the event, by an internal fire that had ignited explosives aboard the war ship. At the time, Hearst, dollar signs always in his eyes, happily circulated the notion that the Maine had been sunk by the Spanish and said so in many lurid and sensational stories printed in his paper. Roosevelt went off as a colonel to command a regiment in Cuba and later stormed San Juan Hill with his “Rough Riders.” The Philippians, Guam especially, was set free of the Spanish navy. America’s imperial outreach was intended to Christianize and civilize savage nations, open markets to U.S. goods and announce brashly to the world that, in an era of colonializing powers, the United States had come of age. The imperialists had the stage pretty much to themselves, and then Twain, who at first supported the Cuban adventure because he thought it might help a nation struggling against a colonial power to attain independence, returned home – with a pen dipped in the fires of Hell.
TR found that San Juan Hill was easier to storm than Twain who, to his last breath, insisted as a matter of principle, along with John Adams, that while the United States is a friend to democracy everywhere, it is the custodian only of its own.
The Twain-TR struggle continues today under different battle flags. The presence of a resurgent Islam in modern times has changed the calculus somewhat. Among other things, a resurgent Islam is intent upon 1) sweeping Western influence – religious, cultural and legal -- including democracy, from its own sphere of influence, 2) restoring a sphere of influence it held for roughly 1,500 years as an imperial power, and 3) bringing all other faiths and social orders under Islam at the point of a sword.
The contest between a resurgent Islam and a West that has internally surrendered to a superior spiritual force – demographics show that Islam will out-produce the West in the only product that really matters, children, in the not too distant future – places before those of us in the United States who believe Twain got the better of the argument over TR the age old questions: Without a more than equal countervailing force, how does the West preserve itself from destruction?
Can there be a difference between imperialism and intervention? And has there ever been in the history of the world a non-imperialist nation whose mission is the preservation and extension of Western Cvilization?
Don Pesci is a writer (mostly on politics) who lives in Vernon, Conn.
Expert on global pandemics to speak at PCFR
The main types of influenza viruses in humans. Solid squares show the appearance of a new strain, causing recurring influenza pandemics. Broken lines indicate uncertain strain identifications.
Rand Stoneburner, M.D., the distinguished international epidemiologist, will speak at the April 19 meeting of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com). Dr. Stoneburner, who has done extensive work with the World Health Organization and other major public health organizations, will talk about Zika, Ebola and what he sees as the biggest global disease threat – an influenza pandemic. He’ll have some graphics.
Meanwhile, see:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-trump-administration-is-ill-prepared-for-a-global-pandemic/2017/04/08/59605bc6-1a49-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html?utm_term=.45d46676dada&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Philip K. Howard: 4 approaches to fixing America's infrastructure
An image from Philip K. Howard's "Peripheral Visions'' photos, which he has taken over the years, especially in cities. This goes along with his public-policy expertise in America's infrastructure, especially regarding transportation.
He says: "These images frame the repetitive patterns of daily landscapes that we feel but rarely consciously observe. Shot on 35mm film at slow shutter speeds to convey how most of us experience these moments, they are impressionistic, with large prints taking on a pointillistic quality.'' Mr. Howard's photos can been seen at philipkingphoto.com.
A new White House office of innovation, led by Jared Kushner, has been created to apply business techniques to make government work better. Leaving aside state enforcement powers, much of what government does is deliver (or subsidize) goods and services. What would have to change to make those government functions more business-like?
Fixing America’s fraying infrastructure, for example, enjoys broad public support. As a builder, President Trump would seem uniquely qualified to oversee this initiative. But government can’t seem to get projects moving. Only 3.6 percent of the $800 billion 2009 stimulus plan was put to use on transportation infrastructure. No one was able to make the needed choices—as President Obama put it, “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”
How would a business go about fixing America’s infrastructure? It would make choices in four broad categories, none of which Washington will do.
1. Set priorities. Washington has no action plan to rebuild the rickety power grid, or to prioritize interstate bottlenecks. It basically leaves the setting of projects to states and localities—as with the “bridge to nowhere.”
Solution: Put someone in charge of setting national priority projects, which then receive federal support. Australia, for example, has a central committee that receives applications from states and decides which get federal support.
2. Cut red tape. Decade-long review and permitting procedures compromise or kill projects by a) doubling the effective cost, b) creating uncertainty that discourages public and private capital from sponsoring projects, and c) skewing project design toward mollifying whoever threatens to sue. Lengthy environmental review—often thousands of pages of mind-numbing detail—turns out to be harmful to the environment in most cases, because it delays fixing polluting bottlenecks.
Solution: Set deadlines (two years maximum for major projects; six months for fix-it projects), and create clear lines of authority to make needed decisions. Only Congress can do this. Scores of well-meaning laws since the 1960s have resulted in a jumble of competing obligations and balkanized authorities, at the federal, state and local levels.
Clear lines of authority are essential; that’s how greener countries such as Germany are able to approve major projects within a 1-2 year timetable. The nonprofit Common Good, which I chair, has a three-page legislative proposal that: a) gives the chair of the Council of Environmental Quality, who reports to the president, the job of keeping environmental reviews focused on important issues; b) gives the director of the OMB the authority to resolve all interagency disputes and to balance competing regulatory concerns; c) preempts state and local approvals for national projects if their approval processes extend beyond federal timetable, and; d) expedites and limits lawsuits.
3. Outsource design and construction. Most businesses, like government, have no special know-how in large construction projects. Typically, businesses solicit “design-build-maintain” bids which put the contractor on the hook for long-term success of the infrastructure. Government, by contrast, tries to “spec” out every detail in advance—with the predictable result that government fails to anticipate contingencies and ends up paying for costly change-orders and higher maintenance.
Solution: Require best-practices procurement as a condition for federal infrastructure aid. Other countries, such as Australia, make much more use of so-called 3P arrangements (Public-Private partnerships), even in situations where the infrastructure has no revenue stream and the developer is repaid out of general tax revenues. It is generally more cost-effective to let private developers take the risks of the numerous contingencies and to bear the responsibility of maintenance.
4. Don’t be reluctant to invest in good projects. Businesses look at the return on capital invested. By most accounts, the economic benefits of fixing America’s infrastructure are huge—returning $5.20 on each $1 invested in modernizing the Interstate highway system, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Plus 2 million jobs. Plus a greener footprint.
A business would use whatever financing was available to achieve returns on this level. It would even raise price of products if it thought it customers saw the benefit. If a penny-pinching business let its physical plant deteriorate, to the harm of its customers, it would soon be taken over by someone else. Perhaps that’s what happened in the last election.
Solution: This should be the easiest change, because it requires no legal amendments. The Republicans’ refusal to consider any new revenue streams to fix broken infrastructure is another symptom of its dysfunction. Ask Alexander Hamilton: Raising revenues to invest for the greater good does not violate conservative principles. The decision here could hardly be more obvious: For example, a 25-cent rise in the gas tax, which has stayed at the same level for a quarter century, would finance about half of President Trump’s ten year trillion-dollar initiative.
Washington will resist these changes, because, unlike business, it doesn’t want to make new choices. That requires someone taking responsibility. In Washington, the deck is stacked for the status quo—no new infrastructure without a decade of review, no permit without approval from a dozen agencies, no new taxes even if traffic bottlenecks cost billions. No is everywhere. Maybe no is a good presumption for new laws, but not when government needs to deliver goods and services.
Back in the old days, when Washington leaders worked things out, the deal for an infrastructure initiative would be obvious. Democrats agree to streamline environmental review, and Republicans agree to raise taxes in exchange for a streamlined process that cuts costs in half.
Infrastructure is a kind of canary in the mine of democracy. Everyone says they want infrastructure, but there’s no movement. That’s because dense bureaucracy, by stifling any capacity to deliver projects in a reasonable time frame, has removed the oxygen of democracy. A congressional leader might be more amenable to funding infrastructure if he knows that his district’s stretch of Interstate 80 will get a new lane next year. What Washington needs is what every successful business has: a hierarchy of responsibility that allows responsible people to hammer out accommodations and start making decisions again.
Philip K. Howard is a New York City-based civic leader, author (The Death of Common Sense and The Rule of Nobody among them), lawyer and photographer. He is chairman of Common Good (common good.org), the legal- and regulatory-reform organization.
Cod and science vs. anecdote
Adapted and expanded from an item in Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com
The decline of cod, presumably New England’s most famous fish, is a prime example of why we need government oversight of certain species. In the “tragedy of the commons,’’ fishermen will almost always take the short view and maximize profits by taking out of the sea as many fish as they can as fast as they can.
For years fishermen have complained that federal rules aimed at preserving cod stocks through fishing bans or tight limits on catches are based on faulty science and conflict with fishermen’s (anecdotally based) observations. Well, that science was pretty damn good but Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, in response to complaints from the industry, much of which is based in Gloucester, ordered the state to do its own survey.
The chief finding: Cod populations have been plunging in the Gulf of Maine, with stocks down about 80 percent from a decade ago. For political reasons, Mr. Baker would have preferred a more upbeat report that avoided offending a local industry as he goes into a re-election campaign next year.
The fish are disappearing, partly from overfishing and, probably, partly from global warming. (Consumers can help by not ordering cod.) Also perhaps playing a big role is the reduction in the species' food supply, suggests my businessman friend Stephen Key, who has been in various parts of the food sector for years. All of that increased commercial fishing for bunker/menhaden (used for fish-oil pills etc.), must have an impact, and not just on cod.
The fact is that there are times when only government can save species. Consider the role of the Feds, under President Theodore Roosevelt, in stopping what seemed to be the imminent extinction of the American bison (aka buffalo) by trophy and meat hunters.
'Proud-pied April'
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
-- William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 98''
Winged art
"Wings'' (mixed media ink jet print), by Mara Trachtenberg, in the joint show "Wings,'' with Uli Brahmst, at Hera Gallery, Wakefield, R.I., through May 5.
This show interpretes the wing motif, as idea and physical subject, in different media. Wings are symbols of flight, hope and freedom. Ancient myth has it that winged creatures can transverse the physical and cosmic realms --- through diverse realities.
New England needs interstate transfer compact for college students
Stafford Peat, who asked the questions and put together this piece, is a senior consultant at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE.org), on whose Web site this piece originated. Her questions are directed to Patricia A. Shea is director of Academic Leadership Initiatives at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and Jane Sherman, the Passport State Coordinator at WICHE’s Interstate Passport Networ
Students in New England take increasingly varied pathways to a degree. They are highly mobile and move among two-year colleges and four-year public and private higher education institutions (HEIs), among four-year and two-year colleges and back, and transfer in-state and out-of state. Four in 10 students who begin college at a New England institution transfer from one institution to another at least once in their academic careers.
While most stay in the state where they began college, 10 percent transfer to another New England state, and 13 percent transfer outside the region, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
One result of this mobility is the loss of credits, time and money. Although many states in the region have initiated “transfer pathways,” the fact remains that, for New England college students, no interstate transfer compact crosses the six states’ borders.
In the West, a new transfer compact has emerged relying not on credit hours, but on the learning outcomes students have achieved in lower-division college courses. Under the leadership of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), Interstate Passport focuses on lower-division general education as the common denominator among most institutions. Students attending one institution can transfer courses to another institution in a cross-border “block,” rather than through individual course-by-course matches.
The Interstate Passport framework consists of nine knowledge and skill areas, including oral communication, written communication, natural sciences and critical thinking, among others. These areas are based on the Essential Learning Outcomes developed by the Association of American Colleges & Universities as part of its Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative, and on research conducted by WICHE into the general education expectations of HEIs in the region. For each knowledge or skill area, the core of the program is made up of the Passport Learning Outcomes (PLOs).
How were the Passport Learning Outcomes developed?
For each of the nine knowledge and skill areas, two-year and four-year faculty members with expertise in that area from each of the seven original states (CA, HI, ND, OR, SD, UT, WY) comprised a team that met in-person and by conference call. Each team member also consulted systematically with other faculty members in that state, resulting in a lengthy and wide-ranging negotiation by which the Passport Learning Outcomes were agreed upon. In several areas, the interstate faculty teams’ deliberations were also informed by the recommendations of their respective professional academic associations.
The early results for the Interstate Passport program are beginning to come in. As of February 2017, 21 institutions in six states were formal members of the Interstate Passport Network. Institutions in an additional 10 states are exploring or preparing to apply for membership. A total of 9,082 student passports were issued in fall 2016—the first term they could be awarded.
Interview with Pat Shea and Jane Sherman
What are the benefits to students and states in being part of the Interstate Passport Network?
For students, lower-division general education (LDGE) transfers as a completed Block of courses, with all credits intact. Students know that ahead of time, which means fewer lost credits and no additional LDGE course requirements after transfer, resulting in greater motivation to continue, faster time to graduation, lower costs and fewer foregone earnings.
For institutions, more and faster completions mean improved accountability metrics. Aligning student learning outcomes, rather than course titles, descriptions or syllabi, means less arduous articulation arrangements and greater curricular autonomy for each institution or state. Offering a guarantee of completed LDGE to students from other Interstate Passport Network member institutions—i.e., institutions with aligned learning outcomes—will mean attracting more, and better prepared, transfer students.
What was the previous nature of interstate transfer among Western states?
Most states had done quite a bit of work to smooth transfer within their borders. But across state lines the story was very different. Too often students were required to complete additional general education requirements after transfer—sometimes only a few courses, sometimes many—when the specific disciplines, courses or numbers of credits didn’t match.
What is the biggest accomplishment so far of the Interstate Passport?
Without a doubt, the biggest accomplishment so far is the very real shift in focus from courses—titles, descriptions, syllabi and credits—to student learning outcomes with the level of proficiency that faculties expect of students who complete a quality general education program. Of course, at this stage, there is reassurance for the receiving institution in knowing that the Passport is undergirded by courses and credits at the sending institution, but there is no need to delve into each course or credit; the Passport is accepted as a whole.
Are there any states outside the West participating in the project?
Institutions in states in the Southern and Midwest regions are currently exploring the Interstate Passport, either as individual institutions or as part of a system or statewide effort developing their Passport Blocks. These states include Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia.
How were they recruited?
Most of the current Interstate Passport states were initially reached through their regional Commissions and Compacts—WICHE, SREB and MHEC. Other interest has come through numerous conference presentations and articles in higher education publications.
Can you offer concrete examples of the “Blocks” of credits on which interstate transfer is based?
Lower-division general education programs tend to range between 30 to 40 total semester credits, with the majority at 32-38. And most cover very similar sets of disciplines. You can find a sampling of institution’s Passport Blocks at http://www.wiche.edu/passport/membership/network_members.
What lessons have been learned so far in the project to accomplish seamless transfer across state lines?
We have learned that arrangements to smooth transfer within states are highly varied—all are helpful, and none are problem-free. Very few states or institutions have worked on transfer across state lines.
The assignment of responsibilities–both formal and informal–for policy development and implementation for transfer also varies widely from state to state. Consequently, how each state approaches new initiatives has been unique.
On the other hand, there is a high level of agreement among faculty about what lower-division students should learn in general education, and faculty members find it highly rewarding to work on this program with faculty in their own and other states.
Overall, we have learned that the Interstate Passport—due to its focus on learning outcomes—appears to provide both an academic focus and a larger perspective on transfer of LDGE within which a great deal of organizational and curricular variation can be accommodated.
In addition to the current Interstate Passport Network of institutions, do you envision more states and institutions will join?
Yes, definitely. The more states and institutions that join the Interstate Passport Network, the greater the benefit to students and institutions.
If New England states or institutions were interested in joining the Interstate Passport Network, how would they join?
Project consultants are available at no cost to talk with or meet with interested institutions or states. Faculty members and administrators from early adopter states are also available to talk with their counterparts in other states. In order to join, institutions review the Passport Learning Outcomes for consistency with their own Lower Division General Education learning outcomes; identify their courses that allow their students to achieve the Outcomes; agree to both award the Passport to their students and recognize the Passport of transfer students whom they admit; track the retention and GPA of Passport holders for at least two terms after transfer; and advise students about the Interstate Passport.
All nonprofit, regionally accredited, public and private, two-and four-year institutions are eligible to apply at http://www.wiche.edu/passport/membership. For more information contact Stafford Peat at speat@nebhe.edu or Pat Shea at pshea@wiche.edu or 303.541.0302
Is there a fee or other costs to join the Interstate Passport Network?
So far, all the work of developing and implementing the Interstate Passport has been covered by multiple foundation and federal grants. In the future, there will be a modest annual fee, scaled to institutional size, to cover administrative costs of the Network.
Looking down the road, what is the future of the Interstate Passport Network?
Current member institutions and states envision a broad-based, nationwide network of two- and four-year institutions leading the way in a student-centered approach to transfer based on student learning outcomes. There is much interest in developing a Passport tailored to STEM majors, and eventually to other pathways as well, as resources become available.
Myth and magic in art
"Leviathan'' (watercolor), by Erik Schmidt, in the the group show "Myth & Magic: Brickbottom Artist Association Members' Exhibition, '' April 27-May 27 at the Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, Mass.
The gallery says that "the universe and the beauty of creation form the foundation of
many works of art. This large and varied group explores myth and magic in painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and mixed media.''
Green energy will triumph despite Trump
A Smartflower home solar-energy device. Smartflower's American operations are based in Boston.
Adapted froman item in Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com
President Trump’s rolling up of the Obama administration’s initiatives to slow global warming caused by burning fossil fuels will not only hurt the environment and public health. It will also harm the economy by slowing U.S. development of technology for clean energy – technology that our international trading partners are working on enthusiastically. A retreat toward more reliance on fossil fuel will make America less competitive. This technology development creates well-paying jobs. GE Chairman Jeff Immelt and other corporate leaders have been eloquent on this subject.
Mr. Trump has seemed quite obsessed with appealing to the dwindling number of people who mine coal or otherwise profit from this poisonous material, even as he also said he’d boost fracking for gas and oil, which would hurt the coal industry. Gas is providing an ever higher proportion of the energy to power electricity plants because it’s cheap and plentiful and far less polluting than coal.
But then, don’t look for coherence from Donald Trump or deep research by his followers. But it’s clear that what we can expect in his (first?) term is a modest increase in coal-mining, with more miners dying of black lung and cancer or in mine collapses, more environmental devastation of parts of Appalachia (poisoned streams, sheared-off mountaintops, etc.) and the continued transmission of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other poisons into the air from coal-fired plants.
But not for long. This filthy way of extracting and using energy is doomed, whatever Donald Trump’s appeals to the desperate and hidebound people of Coal Country.
In the not-too-distant future, most Americans will get their electricity from solar, wind and other nonpolluting energy generated close to where they live; the coal mines will all be shut and Appalachia will begin the long process of healing their ravaged land and building a diversified economy.
Politics at the dump
Where I grew up in{Norwich} Vermont, there is no municipal garbage removal. You have to bring your trash to the dump every weekend. Something like three hours on Saturday morning, the entire town goes in. It is actually a very efficient place to do politics. I would go to the garbage dump, get petitions signed, give out literature, talk to voters.
-- Robby Mook (Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in her 2016 presidential race.)
William Morgan: Appalachian Connecticut
"
Sayles Mill, Dayville, c1882, being demolished.
Photos and commentary by William Morgan
Windham County, Connecticut's rural northeastern corner, has a reputation for classic Yankee countryside: stonewalls, dairy farms and such picturesque villagesas Woodstock, Pomfret and Canterbury. The mill towns of the Quinebaug Valley tell another story.
From Putnam down toward Norwich, once prosperous 19th-Century mills stand idle, or are being demolished. Attawaugan, one of six villages in the town of Killingly, is but a ghost of its Civil War-era manufacturing zenith.
Built c1860, the Attawaugan Mill made curtains.
(Killingly Historical Society)
The mill stands, but is rented out to various tenants, and its fabric is far from original.
As was typical of the paternalistic mill owners of a century and a half ago, they provided their workers company housing. Small two-family frame cottages are found throughout the valley, but most were sold to residents decades ago, and their maintenance suggests subsistence living rather than inspired plutocratic patronage.
Church Street in Attawaugan. The houses fell victim to the vinyl-siding salesmen. The white preaching box of a church to the left lies fallow, held together by termites linking arms.
Connecticut may be one of the richest states in the country. But the towns of the Quinebaug Valley are the polar opposite of Gold Coast towns, such as Greenwich or New Canaan. Prosperity left here sometime after World War II. This area feels less like Norman Rockwell's New England and more like the Appalachian bits of upstate New York.
Abandoned house in Attawaugan; church is to the right.
Contact: Chris Powell
Office: 860-646-0500x307
Home: 860-646-7383
Cell: 860-305-4013
___________________________________________________
HIGHEST COURTS ARE ABOUT
POLITICAL POWER, NOT LAW
By CHRIS POWELL
Democrats and Republicans in the Senate did what they had to do last week with President Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Republicans had to force Gorsuch through even at the cost of repealing the Senate's rule favoring bipartisanship with important presidential nominations, and Democrats had to oppose him though he was well qualified.
It was a fight to the death because the Supreme Court has been evenly divided politically since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and because the court, the other federal appellate courts, and many state supreme courts have become super-legislatures as government has grown and as the political parties, with much encouragement from society, have sought to constitutionalize all major political issues, thereby pre-empting ordinary legislation.
So when they testify to the Senate, Democratic nominees for the Supreme Court pretend not to have any opinion on major pending controversies, and, once appointed, reliably vote the liberal line, just as Republican nominees, most recently Gorsuch, also say nothing meaningful and, once appointed, reliably vote the conservative line.
Liberal Democrats started this trend, first enlarging the government and then encouraging the court's ambition to control it. Conservative Republicans merely followed that lead. Now there may not be much left to do but start electing federal judges, as some states elect their judges. The partisan politics is often ugly and scary but at least it is more honest.
Not all is lost for liberals. Despite the conservative triumph with Gorsuch, many state supreme courts will remain bastions of liberal power, particularly Connecticut's, which, for example, in recent years has ruled that capital punishment is unconstitutional through specifically authorized by both state and federal constitutions and that the state constitution actually requires same-sex marriage though the state criminalized homosexuality long before and long after all the constitution's relevant provisions were adopted.
Constitutions were meant not just to establish governments but to limit them, since unlimited government needs no constitution. Over the centuries since Magna Carta, limiting government was considered the better part of Western political genius. But power isn't limited when courts take it for themselves, even at the encouragement of the president and Congress.
* * *
ATTACK WAS ACT OF TYRANT: What gave President Trump the authority to attack Syria last week? There was no declaration of war or other resolution by Congress, and no attack on the United States requiring immediate defeat and deterrence.
No, the president just saw an opportunity to look tough after an inaugural two months of buffoonery and incompetence and to impress the visiting Chinese premier with an implicit threat to China's increasingly troublesome ally, North Korea.
The president's pretext was another poison gas attack on civilians in Syria's civil war, an attack he laid to the regime of the Syrian dictator, Bashar Hassad. But nobody really knows who is responsible for what in Syria anymore, and even if the Assad regime is guilty of the latest atrocity, the civil war is not the particular responsibility of the United States, especially when more intervention risks confrontation with the regime's longtime sponsor, Russia.
Lobbing some cruise missiles into an air base in Syria from a safe distance in the Mediterranean isn't going to stop the war. While international negotiations haven't ended the war either, they stand a better chance. In any case, since there was no attack on this country, taking the United States into war without authorization from Congress was the act of a tyrant, no matter how odious the target.
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Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut.
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David Warsh: Standoff with Russian more perilous than you think
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
Hanging over Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week was the warning of Graham Allison’s book Destined for War, Can America and China Avoid The Thucydides’ Trap? (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). The book won’t be in stores for another month, but as long ago as 2013 Xi was talking about the metaphor, well before an early version of the Harvard government professor’s argument appeared in The Atlantic.
What has happened historically when a rising power threatens a ruling one? “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Thucydides wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War. In the 2,400 years since, Allison has found, 12 of 16 such cases have ended in war.
After boasting to the Financial Times, “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,” Trump reinforced the message by striking a Syrian airfield while Xi visited him in Florida. Do you wonder why Bashar Assad chose last week to attack a rebellious village with nerve gas? A senior White House official told The Wall Street Journal that the gesture was “bigger than Syria” – representative of how the American president wants to be seen by other leaders. “It is important that people understand this is a different administration [from that of Barack Obama].”
(Different in more ways than one, the spokesman might have added. Trump sought last week to reduce quarrelling among his most senior advisers. How must the president’s record-low favorability rankings in opinion polls complicate the way he is seen by other leaders?)
The defect in The Thucydides Trap is the faulty map it generates. The U.S. is facing not just a single rising power on the world stage, but a diminished and angry giant as well in the form of still-powerful Russia. It has become the habit of much of the U.S. media to tune out Russian President Vladimir Putin on grounds that he does not play by American rules. He murders journalists and opponents, it is said, conducts wars against his neighbors, controls the media, games elections, and has become “President for Life.” Just last week, a Russian court banned as “extremist” an image of the Russian president wearing lipstick, eye-shadow, and false eyelashes, The New York Times reported.
Why not also view Putin as a serious political leader with serious issues governing a nation seeking a new role in the world? One set of these has to do with shaping norms and rules of post-communist civil society. Another set concerns the nation’s economic prospects. Perhaps the most serious of all has to do with the maintenance of Russian’s defense policy – its nuclear deterrent force, in particular. In this respect, The Thucydides Trap misses the point pretty badly.
It’s been 30 years since I consulted an issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The magazine was familiar reading in my youth, when the minute hand on its iconic doomsday clock was set a few minutes before midnight – two, or three, or seven, depending on the circumstances.
For a few years after 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 independent states, the clock showed a comforting 17 minutes before the hour. The peril has been growing ever since. Earlier this year the editors moved the interval to two-and-a-half minutes – the most alarming warning since the high-peril year of 1984.
Last month, BAS authors Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and Theodore Postol explained, The U.S. nuclear forces modernization program underway for 20 years has routinely been explained to the public as a means to preserve the safety and reliability of missile warheads. In fact, the program has included an adjustment that makes each refurbished warhead much more likely to destroy its target.
A new device, a “super-fuze,” has been quietly incorporated since 2009 into the Navy’s submarine–based missile warheads as part of a “life-extension” program. These “burst-height compensating” detonators make it up to three times more likely that its blast will destroy its target than their old “fixed–height” triggers.
Because the innovations in the super-fuze appear, to the non-technical eye, to be minor, policymakers outside of the U.S. government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed its revolutionary impact on military capabilities and its important implications for global security.
The result, the BAS authors estimated, is that the US today possesses something close to a first-strike capability. Already US nuclear submarines probably patrol with three times the number of enhanced warheads that would be required to destroy the entire fleet of Russian land-based missiles before they could be launched. Yes, the Russians have submarine-based missiles, too. And they are understood to be developing ultra-high-speed underwater missiles that could destroy American harbors.
But the very existence of the possibility of a pre-emptive strike will surely make Russian strategists jumpy, the BAS authors say. And since Russian commanders lack the same system of space-based infrared early-warning satellites as the U.S., they could expect only half as much time as the Americans have in which to decide whether or not they are facing a false alarm – fifteen minutes as opposed to half an hour. A slim margin for error in judgement has become much thinner.
When Science magazine polled experts about the BAS story, two of the most prominent judged the report to be “solid” or “true.” Thomas Karako, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, was unpersuaded. He derided the “breathless exposé language” and dismissed the authors’ concerns about Russia’s discomfiture. You can make an early acquaintance with the March 1 BAS story here, if you like. A wider, fuller examination of the latest chapter in the story of the doomsday clock has only just begun.
David Warsh, a veteran journalist focusing on economic and political matters and an economic historian, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this piece first ran.
'Neighborhood's coming back'
''With the warmer days the shops on Elmwood
Stay open later, still busy long after sundown.
It looks like the neighborhood’s coming back.
Gone are the boarded storefronts that you interpreted,
When you lived here, as an emblem of your private recession,
Your ship of state becalmed in the doldrums,
Your guiding stars obscured by fog. Now the cut-rate drugstore
Where you stocked your arsenal against migraine
Is an Asian emporium. ...''
-- From "Spring Letter,'' by Carl Dennis
Textile industry
Top, "Wild Child'' (silk velvets, fake fur, chiffon); bottom "Red Leaf' '(crushed rayon velvet, crushed polyester stretch velvet, silk velvet, rayon velvet) by Beverly Semmes, in her show at Samson Projects, Boston through May 27.
Fighting global disease threats
The various influenza viruses in humans. Solid squares show the appearance of a new strain, causing recurring influenza pandemics. Broken lines indicate uncertain strain identifications.
To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com):
The next PCFR dinner meeting comes on Wednesday, April 19, with Dr. Rand Stoneburner, M.D., the distinguished international epidemiologist. Dr. Stoneburner, who has done extensive work with the World Health Organization, among other public health organizations, will talk about Zika, Ebola and the biggest threat – a global influenza pandemic. He’ll have some graphics.
Culling turkeys with crossbows?
By TIM FAULKNER
For ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Wild turkeys can be found just about anywhere these days. Since the 1980s, these short-distance flyers have migrated from rural western Rhode Island to urban and suburban neighborhoods, where they dine from bird feeders and on handouts from humans.
“They get used to being fed by people, and they don’t fear people and then they don’t leave,” said Josh Beuth, wildlife biologist and head of the turkey program at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM).
Many of these well-fed birds feel comfortable around humans, as they roam backyards in Barrington and parking lots on Reservoir Avenue in Cranston.
Despite regular sightings, the number of wild turkeys in Rhode Island has fallen from its peak of about 6,000 in 2001 to some 3,000 today. Beuth said the drop-off isn’t likely due to hunting or development but an influx of predators such as coyotes, foxes and hawks that eat turkey chicks, called poults.
Eastern wild turkeys were reintroduced to Exeter in the early 1980s, as part of a DEM swap with Pennsylvania for snowshoe hare rabbits. Their numbers increased steadily as they discovered new territory with few predators. Predators, though, soon followed, so turkeys migrated to eastern Rhode Island. Today, wild turkeys can be found across the state, except on Block Island and Prudence Island. Tiverton currently has the highest wild turkey population, according to surveys and public sightings.
Hunters now want to expand turkey hunting to include crossbows. Currently, seasonal hunting is allowed with a shotgun or bow and arrow. For the second year, a bill was introduced in the General Assembly to allow hunting by crossbow. The bill changes state hunting laws to allow hunting of wild birds with a crossbow. If passed, the law would amend state hunting regulations to designate wild turkeys as the only wild bird to be hunted by crossbow.
Hunting-safety instructor Jack Peters of Riverside noted that crossbows are safer than shotguns, because they require less space than a firearm requires for discharging. Crossbows also allow elderly and disabled hunters greater access to hunting, he said.
“The crossbow is the ideal device for harvesting a turkey,” Peters said.
Despite the state's reduced turkey population, Beuth said the turkey broods are healthy and could withstand a loss of 200 birds in each of the two annual hunting seasons. Currently, only mature male turkeys can be hunted. In 2016, 122 turkeys were taken by hunters in Rhode Island.
New Hampshire is the only state in New England that allows wild turkey hunting by crossbow. Peters said crossbow hunting of turkey would draw more hunters, just as it did with deer hunting. Deer hunting with crossbows was approved four years ago to cull populations and curb the transmission of Lyme disease. While turkeys feed on some insects, but research is not conclusive that they eat Lyme-carrying ticks.
Peters said proceeds from hunting licenses support buying and protecting wildlife habitat. Hunting also brings in hundreds of million of dollars to the local economy, he said.
“A lot of people have become frustrated in the last few years because they can hunt deer with a crossbow but not turkey,” Peters said.