New England in Florida

A complex at Disney World meant to evoke Martha’s Vineyard

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

A couple of months ago I was visiting some relatives in a large gated community in Port St. Lucie, Fla., where live lots of people liking Florida’s weather (or at least its winters) and disliking Northeast taxes. What most struck me, besides the cat-consuming alligators, was how much the nearby village center was constructed to look like a New England small town instead of the “there’s no there, there’’ appearance of much of Florida, with its innumerable strip malls and shoddy houses and condo developments. People still long for something evoking a longer history than you’re usually reminded of in Florida, if only a Disneyfied version such as in Port St. Lucie.

Genocidal general

Lord Jeffrey Amherst, by Joshua Reynolds

….”Neither General Jeffrey Amherst

nor Colonel Henry Bouquet
could stomach our willow-tobacco.

As for the unusual
scent when the Colonel shook out his hand-

kerchief: C’est la lavande,
une fleur mauve comme le ciel.

They gave us six fishhooks
and two blankets embroidered with smallpox.’’

— From “Meeting the British,’’ by Paul Muldoon. The poem is about Gen. (and later Lord) Jeffrey Amherst’s biological warfare against some Native Americans during the French and Indian Wars. Amherst, Mass., is named after him, though some propose changing the name.

Chris Powell: Civil rights in conflict

With Connecticut’s state government stumbling along with its usual insolvency and tax hunger, establishing a civil rights division in the attorney general's office does not rank high among Connecticut's needs, despite Atty. Gen. William Tong's advocacy of it.

After all, the era of the systemic violation of basic civil rights of broad classes of people -- racial, ethnic, and religious -- is long gone, even if there always will be individual cases of illegal conduct by employers, landlords, and businesses. The state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities already has jurisdiction over such cases and many lawyers in private practice are always ready to represent the truly oppressed on a contingency basis in lawsuits for financial damages.

Tong seems to be seeking the authorization of statute to apply the weight of state government to the increasing number of controversies where civil rights are in conflict. He already has expressed support for an ordinance in Hartford and proposed legislation to regulate what anti-abortion "pregnancy centers" can tell potential clients, though such facilities are not licensed medical providers but instead mainly exercise freedom of speech, if sometimes advocates of abortion consider them deceptive.

Of course, advocates of abortion have free-speech rights too, but with such ordinances and legislation they seek to silence their adversaries. This silencing is considered politically correct.

Similar controversies are raging in academia, where disagreeable opinion is labeled "hate speech" so it might be obstructed or prohibited. In such controversies at public colleges would Tong's civil rights division intervene to maintain the principle that the First Amendment protects even hateful expression, or would it favor the censors and validate the purported right not to be offended in "safe spaces"?

How about the controversies over transsexuality? Would a civil rights division favor the right of men who want to be women to use women's restrooms, or would it favor the longstanding right of sexual privacy? Would a civil rights division favor the right of men who want to be women to compete in women's athletic events at public schools? Or would it favor the longstanding right of women to have their own events, recognizing the natural athletic advantages of men?

Where would a civil rights division stand on gun rights? It is not generally noticed, but the Declaration of Rights in Connecticut's Constitution is more explicit than the Bill of Rights in the national Constitution in declaring the right to bear arms to be an individual right: "Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Nothing there requiring membership in a militia.) Yet the attorney general advocates more restrictions on gun ownership.

The primary task of the attorney general's office is to provide advice and representation to state agencies, but state government often is accused of violating the civil rights of its own employees. In such disputes should the attorney general's office really be representing both sides? Of course the internal operations of state government already provide precious little management and defense of the public interest, and Tong long has been allied with the state employee unions, which pretty much control the government workplace.

It's not hard to guess where a civil rights division under Tong would stand in these controversies. Indeed, such a division might be a great mechanism for politically correct posturing by an attorney general pursuing higher office through the Democratic Party.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

A near-century of Harlem art

“Art Is…(Girlfriends Times Two) 1983/2009’’ (c-print), by Lorraine O’Grady, courtesy of her and Alexander Gray Associates, New York. It is in the show “Harlem: In Situ,’’ at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., through July 31. The gallery says the show displays nearly 100 years of art created in Harlem, with the aim of exploring “the impact that Harlem has had on American culture and art, along with its periods of growth, new styles and redevelopment and gentrification.’’

 Harlem: In Situ is an exhibition showing nearly 100 years of art created in Harlem, New York. It aims to explore the impact that Harlem has had on American culture and art, along with its periods of growth, new styles and redevelopment and gentrification. "One of the great centers of cultural production in the United States, Harlem's incredible past and present make this neighborhood a wonderful subject for the Addison's ongoing engagement with the theme of place," says Judith F. Dolkart, The Mar

New England in the Arctic

Via The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

“The University of New England (UNE) and New England law firm of Verrill Dana LLC are partnering to host the first Arctic Investment Conference in New England. This day-long event will give participants an overview of the North Atlantic and Arctic investment landscapes. The conference will be held Tuesday, May 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Innovation Hall, University of New England, Stevens Avenue, in Portland, Maine.

“The conference will explore how technologies developed to solve problems and promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in the North Atlantic and Arctic are creating potential investment opportunities in New England. Additionally, participants will learn about key actors and how they work across sectors, models for cross sector collaboration, and the proper scale for investment.

“The NEC congratulates UNE and Verill Dana for its success in organizing the first Arctic Investment Conference in New England, and for promoting partnerships between private enterprise and the stakeholders who are working to address climate change.’’

Frank Carini: Dogfish is as tasty as cod

Dogfish

— Photo by Doug Costa of NOAA

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Dogfish doesn’t have an appetizing ring to it. The name for this member of the shark family has kept it off dinner plates, at least in the United States. In Britain, dogfish is often the key ingredient in fish and chips.

A few years ago, in an attempt to make the fish sound more appealing, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, New England fishermen, and conservationists tried to rebrand it as “Cape shark.” The effort to create local demand for this plentiful regional species, which grew in number with the collapse of the cod fishery, hasn’t yet taken hold.

Kate Masury, program director of Eating with the Ecosystem, said that, with its mild white boneless flesh, dogfish is less flaky than cod but just as delicious.

Eating with the Ecosystem, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit that promotes a place-based approach to sustaining New England’s wild seafood, is working with consumers, chefs, suppliers, processors, and fishermen to build a market for dogfish and the many other lower-valued species swimming off New England’s coast.

“It’s about increasing consumer awareness about what is out there and creating a demand,” Masury said.

More than 100 edible wild seafood species thrive in the region’s salty waters. But finding most of them, such as dogfish, ocean perch, scup, periwinkles, sea robin, or sea urchin, at a local market or on a restaurant menu is a challenge.

A new Eating with the Ecosystem study that used citizen scientists to track the availability of these under-appreciated species documented some interesting observations about local fish and shellfish in the New England marketplace.

Unsurprisingly, the region’s seafood counters are heavily dominated by five classic New England species: lobster, sea scallops, soft-shell clams, cod, and haddock.

At the other end of the market spectrum, however, half of the 52 local species included in the recent study were found less than 10 percent of the time. Many of these species, including dogfish, whiting, skate and Atlantic butterfish, which is often caught as bycatch in the squid fishery and shouldn’t be confused with its West Coast version, are among the most abundant species in the ocean ecosystem off the New England coast.

But despite their prevalence in local waters, these four species were found even less often, only 3 percent of the time. Dogfish was only found twice out of 198 searches, and skate 14 times (252). Both butterfish (268) and whiting (198) were found eight times.

The Eat Like a Fish citizen science project studied wildlife in a human habitat: the markets, kitchens, and tables that form the final links of the supply chains that connect ocean to plate. (Eating with the Ecosystem)

The report’s findings are based on a research effort called the Eat Like a Fish citizen science project. The project’s 86 participants hailed from all walks of life and resided in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire.

For 26 weeks, from May to October of last year, the 86 volunteers, including 19 from Rhode Island, visited seafood markets, grocery stores, farmers markets, and seaside fishing piers in search of the 52 New England seafood species. Each participant received a weekly list of four randomly chosen local species and searched for them in up to three local markets. Upon encountering one of their species, they took it home and made a meal out of it.

“Citizen scientists found a stark mismatch between what’s swimming in local waters and what’s available on local seafood counters,” said Masury, who coordinated the research project. “This imbalance can strain the resilience of New England’s underwater ecosystems and undermine the well-being of the people who depend on them. Moving forward, we hope to see the New England marketplace do a better job of reflecting the full diversity of what our waters have to offer.”

The study’s goals were to understand how well New England’s retail marketplace reflects the diversity of local seafood and to draw on the volunteers’ lived experiences to help explain why these mismatches exist and what can be done to correct them.

As ecosystems change more rapidly because of climate change, Masury said diversity must become a cornerstone of the way we eat and market seafood. She also noted that understanding the assimilation of local species by the regional seafood supply chains is an important first step in achieving greater symmetry between ecosystems and markets, reducing impacts on ocean food webs, and positioning local fishing economies to be resilient in the face of change.

Citizen scientists who took part in the project say it was informative, challenging, and frustrating.

“At the inception of the project, I had no doubt that I would find, prepare, and marvel at my brilliance with new, exotic, local species of seafood each week,” said Sherri Darocha, a participating citizen scientist from Rhode Island. “I never dreamed that most weeks it would be so challenging to find even one fish on my list. After twenty-six weeks, I have plenty of pent-up fish envy that will only be soothed by finding species that have eluded me, like cunner and red hake.”

To assist consumers in finding these largely ignored species and help reduce the strain on the region’s ocean ecosystem, Eating with the Ecosystem offers several tips for consumers interested in expanding their local seafood options:

Seek out local species you haven’t tried before. Many citizen scientists discovered new favorite seafood species by going outside their comfort zone.

Don’t shy away from whole fish. Using every part of the fish reduces waste. The more mess you make in the kitchen, the more you will enjoy the meal that follows.

If you don’t see a particular local species available at the seafood counter, ask for it. Letting your fishmonger know you would like to buy it will help build demand.

Many fishmongers can locate hard-to-find local seafood species if you notify them in advance. Special ordering these species helps show fishmongers that there is interest in purchasing them, without requiring them to assume any risk.

When experimenting with new species, make it a social event. Team up with friends and family members who share your commitment. Citizen scientists relished the long-distance camaraderie that developed through the Eat Like a Fish project.

To help seafood lovers diversify their diets, Eating with the Ecosystem recently produced a cookbook called Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries. Populated with whimsical ecological tales, imaginative artwork, and simple yet elegant recipes, the 100-page book celebrates 40 under-appreciated fish and shellfish that populate the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News, where this article first appeared.

Some of the region's Yankee stereotype lives on

“"Samuel Adams’s name sells beer, ‘Minute Man’ remains vital as a popular appellation, and ‘John Hancock’ is still a major insurance company. But these are part of myth, part of New England’s past, and as such are nostalgic symbols….

“A dominant culture no longer presides, but only an overarching myth of what New England is, still based on the Yankee stereotype.’’

— From The Encyclopedia of New England, edited by Burt Feintuch and David H. Watters

Making art out of the mess we've made

From Rhonda Smith’s June 5-30 show “Oh That Beautiful Planet. What Have We Done?”’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston.

William Cullen Bryant: 'An image of that calm life'

Green River Park along the river of the same name, in Greenfield, Mass.



The Green River is a tributary of the Deerfield River, in southern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), a romantic poet, journalist and long-time editor of The New York Post, grew up in nearby Cummington.

Green River

When breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.

Yet pure its waters--its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light,
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone.
Oh, loveliest there the spring days come,
With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' hum;
The flowers of summer are fairest there,
And freshest the breath of the summer air;
And sweetest the golden autumn day
In silence and sunshine glides away.

Yet fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide,
Beautiful stream! by the village side;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen;
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still.
Lonely--save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides;
Or the simpler comes with basket and book,
For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee.
Still--save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur and fairy shout,
From dawn to the blush of another day,
Like traveller singing along his way.

That fairy music I never hear,
Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,
And mark them winding away from sight,
Darkened with shade or flashing with light,
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings,
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings,
But I wish that fate had left me free
To wander these quiet haunts with thee,
Till the eating cares of earth should depart,
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart;
And I envy thy stream, as it glides along,
Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song.

Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud--
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years.

Jim Hightower: CEOs are eager to kill your jobs via AI

Talus, an ancient mythical automaton with artificial intelligence

Via OtherWords.org

Corporate bosses don’t talk about it in public, but among themselves — psssst — they whisper excitedly about implementing a transformative “AI agenda” across our economy.

AI stands for artificial intelligence, the rapidly advancing digital technology of creating thinking robots that program themselves, act on their own, and even reproduce themselves. These automatons are coming soon to a workplace near you.

Not wanting to stir a preemptive rebellion by human workers, corporate chieftains avoid terms like automation of jobs, instead substituting euphemisms like “digital transformation” of work.  

Privately, however, top executives see AI as their path to windfall profits and personal enrichment by replacing whole swaths of their workforce with an automated army of cheap machines that don’t demand raises, take time off, or form unions.

As tech exec Kai-Fu Lee confided to The New York Times, he expects AI to “eliminate 40 percent of the world’s jobs within 15 years.”

Some CEOs are so giddy about AI’s profiteering potential that they openly admit their intentions.

Take Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics giant hailed as a job creating savior last year by Donald Trump. It was given $3 billion in public subsidies to open a huge manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, but it’s now reneging and declaring that it intends to replace 80 percent of its global workforce with robots within 10 years.

Corporate apologists say displaced humans can be “reskilled” to do something else. But what? Where? When? No response.

Executives try to skate by the human toll by saying that the machine takeover is the inevitable march of technological progress. Hogwash! There’s nothing “natural” about the AI agenda — it’s a choice being made by an elite group of corporate and political powers trying to impose their selfish interests over us.

Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, write and public speaker.

We're always in them

“Brambles’’ (pen and ink on paper), by Joel Howe, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.

But still spring

— Photo by Victor Estrada Diaz

Nothing is so beautiful as spring. -{Gerard Manley} Hopkins

“A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.’’

— From “A Cold Spring,’’ by Elizabeth Bishop, often a New Englander

Don Pesci: On the trail of the Connecticut toll campaign

Tolling in Connecticut is what the advertising men would call a tough sell, and it helps in circumstances such as these to bring in some political spin doctors to assist in the delivery.

Many people in Connecticut, almost certainly a majority, do not want tolls. On May 9, No Tolls Connecticut delivered to the governor’s office a “No Tolls” petition signed by 100,000 people.

Candidate for governor Ned Lamont said during his campaign he would favor tolls only if people outside the state, truck drivers mostly, would be depositing their mites in Connecticut’s revenue collection basket. He said this several times while the TV cameras were rolling.

Later Lamont changed his mind, always the prerogative of pretty women and ambitious politicians. But Lamont’s reversal – which came shortly after he had won his gubernatorial campaign – could not be justified as a “misspeak.” He could have used the services of a good narrative builder right there, but Roy Occhiogrosso, former Gov. Dan Malloy’s flack catcher and narrative builder, perhaps was busy hauling in the dollars from his other clients.

According to Occhiogrosso’s Global Strategy Group bio, “Roy returned to GSG – where he was a partner from 2003 to 2010 – in 2013, after serving for two years as senior adviser and chief strategist to Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy. Roy believes that, at some level, everything is about communications. And that if you communicate proactively and properly – using traditional and new media, and social media, internally and externally – you can win your fights and avoid problems.”

Some elements of Occhiogrosso’s strategy on tolls have been activated by Lamont, and no doubt Occhiogrosso will be able to spin some profit from the toll contretemps. He is not alone in supposing that a well-constructed narrative – the bulk of American politics these days is narration, story building – can overcome not only populist opposition but reality itself.

Joining the tolls-are-good-for-you effort are, according to Jon Lender’s piece in The Hartford Courant, a number of Global Strategy Group strategists. The group has produced a “23-page document, entitled ‘Connecticut Campaign for Transportation, 2019 Legislative session,’” that fell into Lender’s hands, and he publicized the private communique; it’s what good investigative reporters do.

Part of the difficulty with tolling is that nearly everyone in Connecticut understands a toll to be a consumer tax. And, to put it in blunt non-narrative, populist terms, people in the state have had it up to their ears with taxes.

First there was the income tax -- necessary, people were told by political narrators, to bring backward Connecticut into the 21st Century. Prior to the income tax, the state relied on consumption taxes, which were, said the political narrators, regressive.

Then Malloy – and Occhiogrosso – came ambling down the road and increased both income taxes and consumption taxes to pay off debts incurred by General Assembly politicians, mostly Democrats, who had invested not a penny into the state employees’ seriously under-financed pension fund for about 30 years after the fund had been created. Numerous “lockbox” funds then were raided by the same cowardly politicians, the appropriated loot dumped into the General Fund. Naturally, Malloy and company were forced to raise taxes to pay off mounting debt. Malloy was followed by Lamont, a protégé of former Gov. Lowell Weicker, who called Weicker to ask himj how he had managed to get an income tax through a then moderate- Democrat opposition in the General Assembly.

The 24-page secret communique suggests remedies to overcome mounting and entirely predictable opposition to tolls, and there is reason to believe that Lamont already has adopted some suggestions: “To overcome resistance, a strategy would be developed ‘to drive legislative support for a tolling concept that will maximize revenue while holding CT citizens as harmless as possible (example: resident discount)… Convincing the legislature to vote for a comprehensive tolling bill — one that includes trucks and cars, albeit with a substantial discount for CT drivers, won’t be easy.

‘‘Opponents have already framed this in simple terms: ‘it’s another huge tax increase.’ In order to win this fight we’re going to have to first reframe the debate — so that’s about ‘jobs and economic development,’ and not just another tax increase… ‘ Government Relations Tactics’ would include: showing legislators ‘how money earned via tolls can significantly improve their specific districts — driving the correlation between tolls and local improvements to infrastructure; highlighting the ‘vs.’ factor by using ‘polling data to share statewide how CT residents feel when you compare tolls to an increase in gas taxes, property taxes, car taxes, etc.’ and providing ‘legislative leadership the necessary political data to ‘whip’ their caucuses’ into support for tolling.”

Getting an unpopular measure passed through the legislature requires an almost religious faith in the power of deconstructing and reconstructing emotion-based “narratives.” The palpable, ruinous consequences of further tax increases can always be buried in a coffin of fanciful – and costly – propaganda.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.

A quick read

“Point of Departure’ (mixed media box book), by Laurie Alpert, in the show “Obsessions on View,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston all this month.

A 'well-regulated Militia'?

The Lexington Minuteman monument (1900), representing Massachusetts militia Captain John Parker in the Revolutionary War.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

‘In an increasingly divided America there’s been an unfortunate increase in the number of officials in a few localities refusing to enforce federal and state laws that they publicly oppose, in some cases as part of trying to curry favor with certain powerful constituencies. Thus, mayors of “sanctuary cities,’’ such as Providence, with large illegal-immigrant populations have taken it upon themselves not to cooperate, in some cases, with federal immigration officials. The Feds, not the states or cities, have final jurisdiction over immigration matters!

And then we have some officials in such towns as semi-rural Glocester and Burrillville, R.I., seeking to make their communities “Second Amendment Sanctuary Towns’’ in which the local police departments are, it is implied, not to enforce state gun-control laws that they don’t like. Such towns could exercise, in the words of the Burrillville Town Council, “sound discretion when enforcing laws impacting the rights of citizens under the Second Amendment.’’ In other words, they’ll enforce what they want.

Reminder: The towns and cities are legal children of the state, and their officials are required to follow state law.

Burrillville’s Town Council has already acted, promising, among other things, not to fund storage space in the town for firearms seized should the legislature enact a law that “unconstitutionally infringes upon the right of the people of the Town of Burrillville to keep and bear arms.’’ Glocester may soon follow. So the towns will determine what is “constitutional’’?

In other words, such towns would break state laws in order to have as little regulation as possible of guns. For some people these days, the Second Amendment is the only constitutional amendment they’re interested in.

Speaking of regulation, the Second Amendment reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’’ (Italics mine.)=

For many years, the “regulated bit’’ was taken by both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington to imply that careful gun control was both constitutional and necessary. But with the GOP’s rightward ideological march and the southward and westward direction of its votes, and Republican presidents’ selection of hard-right federal judges, amidst the growing lobbying power of the NRA and the gun-making trade, that changed.

Anyway, America’s federal system of laws will be gravely damaged if many more localities decide to only help enforce the state and federal laws they like. It’s not supposed to work that way.

David Warsh: Repudiation, not impeachment, should be the goal

SOMERVILLE, Mass.

A couple of weeks after the 2016 election, I argued that Donald Trump had become a president by accident. He hadn’t chosen his cabinet yet, and I was prepared to give him the benefit of at least some doubts. He was certainly smart enough to be president, I wrote, “but in one respect he is especially ill-equipped for the job’s most important requirement – that of narrator-in-chief.”

At best I was half right. The match-up was indeed an accident. The failure of either party to produce a suitable candidate in timely fashion permitted Trump to slip in. But once he gained the GOP nomination, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton on his own,.

Trump is a bully, a thug, a draft dodger, a tax cheat, a finagler. He is corrupt to his core. But one thing he’s not is stupid. His campaign positions – postures, really, like his television career – were sufficient to the win the states he needed. Any Democratic candidate who wants to be president is going to have to build on them – secure borders, more cautious with foreign wars, tougher on China, softer on Russia, more explicit concern for those left behind, and plenty of infrastructure spending.

I may have been mistaken, too, when a year later I wondered if Trump wouldn’t run again. It’s too soon to tell; it is still possible he’ll declare that he has done what he came to do and pull out. He could do that as late as the first quarter of next year. But today he seems more like a gambler who can’t quit while he’s ahead. “Jobless rate hits 50-year low!” Why not chance it again?

There’s been a lot of talk recently about impeachment – and the impossibility of gaining a conviction from the current Senate. (Never mind as-yet insufficient grounds.) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is right. Impeachment is a red herring, at least for now. What is needed is something more than just beating him in an election. What’s required is repudiation, Something like this is what former Vice President Joe Biden has in mind when in his stump speech he refers repeatedly to Trump as an “aberration” And that’s just the beginning.

What would repudiation involve? It would be necessary to retake the Senate, for one thing. The traditionalist wing of the Republican Party would have to re-emerge, for another. A lengthy examination of the claims of Trump’s cheerleaders in the media would be required. And Trump himself would either have to be defeated at the polls in 2020, or impeached and convicted in the course of a second term. Something along these lines is what former Vice President Joe Biden has in mind when he refers in his stump speech to Trump an an “aberration.” And that is just the beginning of the path.

The alternative? Donald Trump joins Ronald Reagan in Valhalla, at least in the minds of his base, while America sinks deeper in discord.

A story in The New York Times the other day made clear how hard it will be for the Democratic Party to retake the Senate. Three strong potential candidates opted out last week: Stacey Abrams, in Georgia; Rep. Cindy Axne, in Iowa; and Rep. Joaquin Castro, in Texas. Four other potential candidates had previously decided not to contest competitive seats: John Hickenlooper, former governor of Colorado; Gov. Steve Bullock, of Montana; former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, of Texas; and Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa. Each had her or his reasons. Other candidates and other competitive races exist. But it may take a “wave” election before the Democratic Party controls the upper house again.

Then, too, the Democratic primaries have a great deal of sorting out to do. And primaries have a lot of sorting out to do before the often-fractious party nominates a candidate next year.

Meanwhile, there is much more reporting to be done, beginning with Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s much-anticipated report of the underpinnings of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation in the summer of 2016 – the role of the so-called Steele Dossier in particular. But that is only the beginning. There is also the FBI’s ongoing investigation of the Clinton Foundation, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, apparently predicated on a book bankrolled by Trump campaign adviser Steve Bannon. Unattended so far, too, is the story of a threatened mutiny by dissident FBI agents that forced Director James Comey to briefly reopen the Hillary Clinton email investigation a week before the election, only to close it again. Comey ordered an internal probe before he was fired.

The Mueller Report is a blueprint for repudiation – scrupulous and dispassionate. House committees could follow its example, inquiring carefully into matters of stewardship of various departments of government by the Trump administration, instead of badgering the President for his tax returns.

And as for the narrator-in-chief of the Trump presidency? There’s a good chance that it will turn out to be former FBI Director Comey. His book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership (Flatiron Books, 2018), was blunt: “The president is unethical, and untethered to the truth or institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven, and about personal loyalty.”

The other week Comey was at it again, in an op-ed piece in the Times, “How Trump Co-opts Leaders like Barr.” How was it that that Attorney General William Barr, “a bright and accomplished lawyer,” found himself “channeling the president in using phrases like “no collusion” and “FBI spying?” Why did the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein feel it necessary to thank Trump for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations” when the president had spent two years assailing the department that Rosenstein had helped lead?

“I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others,” wrote Comey. “He’s the president and he rarely stops talking…. Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator in his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it – this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room…. The web-building never stops.”

Comey, of course, spent the first part of his career prosecuting mob bosses in New York. He may yet have the satisfaction of leading a chorus of repudiation of the accidental president.

David Warsh, an economic historian and veteran economics, media and political columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this column first ran. He’s based in Somerville.

Llewellyn King: The Internet of Things will let cities reimagine infrastructure

The new World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan

Why no jubilation?

You’d have thought the agreement between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and President Trump to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure would cause wild celebration.

Why, then, didn’t the church bells ring out, the fire boats send arcs of water into the air and the stock of the construction companies, steel producers, asphalt purveyors and paint makers soar? It’s because nobody believed that we have the political coordination -- sometimes expressed as political will -- to do the deed and find the money.

Some money will be found eventually -- after some disaster like the collapse of a bridge on an essential highway, or the failure of one of the critical tunnels under the Hudson River, which carry people and goods up and down the East Coast.

It’s the equivalent of “I’ll mind what I eat after my heart attack” kind of thinking.

The infrastructure from airports to ports, roads to bridges is in parlous shape. We are a first-world nation, with third-world ways of moving ourselves and our goods.

Even if Congress found the money through acceptable taxes (an oxymoron) or acceptable program cuts (another oxymoron), years of squabbling will ensue between the states, between their congressional sponsors, with every locality on bended knee with its begging bowl raised high.

Yet the national infrastructure is due to get a powerful boost not from Washington, but rather from the Internet of Things.

Forces are amassing remake cities, and in so doing to reimagine the infrastructure.

These forces are the companies, academics and visionaries who see a future city where drones will deliver packages, automobiles will connect with each other and eventually will be driverless, as they speed down highways that’ve been modified for them.

WiFi will be available everywhere and traffic will flow better not because of new highways, but because its management will be outsourced to computers which will adjust traffic flows, change lights and direct interconnected cars to take the least-congested route. Think GPS navigation that can control the journey automatically.

Vehicles might suggest a route for you, warn you that the car, two spaces ahead, is weaving or that there’s an impending thunderstorm. This ability of cars and other vehicles to “talk” to each other is known as connectivity. Many of the features of this future conversation between vehicles and their environment are already being built into new cars.

It isn’t in use yet: Your car has a brain waiting to be engaged.

Potholes won’t vanish, but they’ll be identified as soon as they appear and near-automated machines will be dispatched to fill them.

The future of infrastructure is that it’ll be digitally managed to make it more efficient and to predict failures accurately. It won’t build bridges, tunnels, seaports or clear blocked canals. What it may do is move the needle in subtle ways.

More important will be the political impact of the big-company lobbies that will be unleashed across the political spectrum from the White House, to Congress, to the state capitals and the city halls. Big lobbies tend to get their way -- and they will when companies like Amazon, Google, IBM, Verizon, AT&T, Cisco, Uber and Lime are demanding upgrades to the infrastructure to accommodate their digitized world.

At present, infrastructure rejuvenation is a political wish list. Soon it will get teeth, tech teeth.

Most important for the future of cities -- from better lights and first responder systems to automated buses and ride-share vehicles -- will be the sense that things are moving.

History shows us that the public is hungry for the new, less so for repairs. Look at the history of Apple and how product after product, from tablets to phones to watches, has been snatched up. Now think of that hunger applied to a smart city which will have exciting new technology, making them more livable and, hopefully, more lovable.

Think of the coming infrastructure surge as the technological gentrification of cities.

It’s the tech giants and their lobbyists, abetted by public demand, who’ll redirect White House and congressional thinking about infrastructure in a world in which the invisible highways of the Internet will be controlling the old visible and familiar ones.

The Internet controls the vertical and the horizontal, so to speak.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com.

Boost for New England 'bluetech'

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The New England Aquarium, a major research institution as well as a big aquarium, and SeaAhead Inc., both based in Boston, have announced that they’re partnering to support the creation and growth of start-ups that “enhance sustainability and ocean conservation. The two groups believe that significant global impact can now be achieved by supporting new bluetech ventures.’’

The two organizations say they seek “to catalyze new business creation by providing … ‘first capital’ to entrepreneurs with a new ocean-related innovation that will have a strong impact on sustainability.’’

Sea-Ahead, which has strong ties with Rhode Island, says of itself: “Our ecosystem includes technologists, scientists, startups, corporations, governments and other ocean stakeholders that are coming together to create impact in areas including greener shipping and ports, aquaculture and fishery processes, offshore alternative energy and smart cities.’’

Sea-Ahead’s Web site

and The New England Aquarium’s.

Todd McLeish: Rare Northeast turtles under threat

Diamondback terrapin

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Diamondback terrapins are among the rarest turtles in the Northeast, and the only ones that spend most of their lives in salt marshes and other quiet brackish waters. While populations are holding their own in many locations, nest predators are an increasingly serious threat.

Three researchers speaking at last month’s Northeast Natural History Conference in Springfield, Mass., said that in almost every year the eggs in most of the terrapin nests they monitor are consumed by predators.

“Raccoons are the most important predator,” said Russell Burke, a Hofstra University biology professor who has studied diamondback terrapins at the Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge in New York City for 20 years. “Everyone who works on terrapins has had the experience of watching a terrapin put a nest in the ground, and you come back the next day and find a collapsed nest hole and broken eggs.”

Danielle Marston, a volunteer terrapin monitor with the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, said raccoons destroy most of the nests she has observed in Buzzard’s Bay, Mass. George Bancroft, who monitors terrapins in the lower Taunton River watershed, also indicated that nest predation rates are very high.

Burke worried that the tiny survey flags he placed to mark the locations of the nests he monitored could be a roadmap for raccoons to follow to terrapin nests, so he conducted a study to learn what method the raccoons use to find the nests. He placed survey flags of various colors where there were no nests, applied a human scent to other sites, dug artificial nests, and experimented with numerous other factors.

The raccoons ignored most of the sites.

“They seemed to be cued more into a disturbance of the sand than the flags,” he said. “Wherever we dug a hole, the raccoons were interested. If you dig any kind of hole in the nesting area, the raccoons were likely to dig it up.”

Burke believes that microbes in the sand become active and release a detectable odor when the sand becomes aerated by digging a hole. But the smell dissipates within about a day or two.

“We get essentially no predation after the second day after nesting,” he said. “If the nests make it through 48 hours, they make it all the way to hatching, and that’s probably due to olfaction.”

Burke noted that there is often increased nesting activity and decreased nest predation when it rains, perhaps because the rain hides the microbe odor.

“It seems to be one of the strategies that terrapins have evolved to minimize raccoon predation,” he said.

Those who monitor diamondback terrapin nests in Rhode Island have also found high rates of nest predation, but some are succeeding in combatting it.

At Hundred Acre Cove in Barrington, where Charlotte Sornborger has been monitoring the terrapins for nearly 30 years, between 200 and 300 nests were destroyed by predators each year during the first 15 years of her studies. In addition to raccoons, Sornborger confirmed that foxes, skunks, and coyotes also predated the nests. But when she began using wire mesh “excluders,” which prohibit scavengers from digging below the surface to reach the eggs, predation rates declined significantly.

Predation at a recently discovered terrapin nesting site at the mouth of the Hunt River in Warwick was very high during the first year of monitoring in 2015 — just three of 87 nests survived to hatch — with dogs being among the chief culprits. But recent surveys have indicated that predation may not be as high as originally thought, according to University of Rhode Island professor Laura Meyerson.

Two surprising new predators, however, have been added to the list of threats to diamondback terrapins: bald eagles and osprey. Neither disturbs the terrapin nests, but the birds have been found to prey on juvenile terrapins in Buzzard’s Bay and in the Palmer River near the Barrington population. According to Sornborger, a hunter reported empty terrapin shells under an osprey platform used by bald eagles along the Palmer River, and two nearby homeowners also observed empty terrapin shells on their lawns.

Another new threat to diamondback terrapin populations is also emerging: rising sea levels.

“For Rhode Island’s terrapins, sea-level rise is really worrisome,” said Scott Buchanan, a herpetologist for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. “They live right at the margins of the coastal zone, and their habitat type is going to experience dramatic alterations and impacts from sea-level rise. We don’t know what that’s going to mean for terrapins.”

“The biggest issue for us in Buzzard’s Bay,” Marston said, “is that we’re losing ground to the big surge in tidal action at our nesting locations. The nesting area is going to disappear with the projected sea-level rise. Already we’re seeing that the nests that don’t fail from predation fail from an intrusion of water into the nests. The terrapins keep trying to nest where they used to, and the nests keep getting flooded.”

With little nesting habitat available inland of their present nesting sites, the combination of predators and rising seas makes the long-term outlook for the species uncertain.

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.

Jill Richardson: Just because you're religious doesn't mean you can discriminate

An African-American child at a segregated drinking fountain on a courthouse lawn in North Carolina, in 1938.

Via OtherWords.org

A bill in Texas would allow professionals of all kinds — doctors, pharmacists, electricians — to deny services to LGBTQ customers on religious grounds.

This comes alongside the Trump administration’s rollout of a rule that would allow health-care providers to actually deny service to LGBTQ people on religious grounds.

I’m sorry, but I don’t care if you have a strongly held religious conviction that says I’m going to hell, or I’m not worthy of being treated like a human being, because I’m gay.

If that’s the case, you can go ahead and stay far away from me, and you can hate me all you want. Or you can love me and hate my “sin” of being myself and loving who I love, and then you have the right to tell yourself that’s not hateful.

But you don’t have a right to legally discriminate against me or anyone like me. At least, not outside of your own church — though even there, is it really necessary?

First off, several sources say the passages in the Bible that condemn homosexuality have been mistranslated and misinterpreted. A more accurate reading, they argue, finds that homosexuality isn’t an “abomination” after all.

Even if the Bible is the literal word of God, God didn’t give that word to humans in English. Humans translated it into English. Humans are fallible.

Second, even the most devout Jews and Christians don’t literally follow every single word in the Bible. They pick and choose. If one followed every commandment in the Leviticus to the letter, the result would be gruesome murders (a theme the book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo explored in grisly detail).

For instance, Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says that children who disrespect their parents should be stoned to death. If anyone actually followed that, few children would live long enough to get their driver’s licenses.

But you know what? Nobody follows that. Because they shouldn’t.

And although our Constitution protects religious liberty, if someone stoned their disrespectful child to death out of sincerely held religious conviction, they would still go to prison for murder — rightfully.

I support religious freedom. But when religious people pick and choose which (possibly mistranslated) commandments they want to follow — and they choose the ones that discriminate against a group of people for the “sin” of loving — I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that their right to discriminate is more important than an LGBTQ person’s civil rights.

Go ahead and do what you want inside your own church. You have that right.

LGBTQ support groups are filled with the fallout of anti-gay church teachings — people who’ve lost their entire families, their friends, and their faith. Plenty believe they’re going to hell for being LGBTQ, while others even entered into doomed heterosexual marriages that fell apart when they couldn’t hide their true selves any longer.

Our community has a lot of trauma in it, but I suppose you have the religious freedom to keep heaping more of that trauma on us — within your own home and your own church.

I support religious freedom, which I guess means I support the right of any faith to exclude LGBTQ people based on a cherry-picked misinterpretation of scripture if they wish. But that right does not extend to discriminate in a non-religious workplace, emergency room, or anywhere else.

Half a century ago, some people claimed they had a deeply held religious conviction supporting racial segregation. Our government passed civil-rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race anyway,

Jill Richardson, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is an OtherWords.org columnist. She lives in San Diego.