Vox clamantis in deserto
Big public projects
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Publicly funded projects such as that in and around the Worcester Red Sox’s pending Polar Park Stadium, involving a taxpayer commitment of $132 million, up $9.4 million from the previous estimate, tend to create metastasizing tax breaks. Consider that Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus now wants additional tax breaks for private developers in the WooSox district, in this latest case for a 15-year tax break for a building near the ballpark’s left field and for a residential building, and a 10-year tax break for an office, labs and retail complex.
Maybe these projects will indirectly create long-term tax-revenue streams for the city in the form of more economic development and new property-tax revenue nearby -- and maybe not. Depends a lot on how the economic cycle goes in this new decade. In any case, taxpayers should remember that the taxes the developers aren’t paying other taxpayers will have to offset.
All this is part of the vision for a total of $125 million in private development next to Polar Park.
Stadium-construction projects usually turn out well for rich team owners and associated developers, but generally not – at least economically -- for the general taxpaying public. That isn’t to say that having a baseball team in town won’t make plenty of people feel better, at least for a while, especially if the team wins more than it loses and spawns stars that head for the Major Leagues.]
For more information, please hit these links:
https://www.wbjournal.com/article/worcester-seeking-more-tax-breaks-for-woosox-related-development
https://www.golocalprov.com/news/leading-stadium-expert-blasts-worcester-for-polar-park-cost-overruns
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Field house and pump station built by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration in Scituate, Mass., in 1938
But public projects can be immensely useful and profitable for the general public. Consider the bridges, roads, tunnels schools, post offices, parks, etc., built in the New Deal – a lot of them still serving the public. They were, in general, very well built. But America’s public infrastructure has been falling apart for decades, damaging our quality of life and making America less economically competitive. When he was running for president, Trump promised to start rebuilding our infrastructure. Instead, he pushed for big tax cuts for the rich.
A presidential candidate who can credibly promise to lead that rebuilding, with many well-paying jobs included, would have a very strong issue in this year’s election.
Tim Faulkner: Future of offshore wind hangs on agency's report
Progression of expected wind turbine evolution to deeper water
From ecoRI News
The forthcoming report from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on the cumulative environmental impacts of the Vineyard Wind project will determine the future of offshore wind development.
BOEM’s decision isn’t just the remaining hurdle for the 800-megawatt project, but also the gateway for 6 gigawatts of offshore wind facilities planned between the Gulf of Maine and Virginia. Another 19 gigawatts of Rhode Island offshore wind-energy goals are expected to bring about more projects and tens of billions of dollars in local manufacturing and port development.
Some wind-energy advocates have criticized BOEM’s 11th-hour call for the supplemental analysis as politically motivated and excessive.
Safe boat navigation and loss of fishing grounds are the main concerns among commercial fishermen, who have been the most vocal opponents of the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project and other planned wind facilities off the coast of southern New England.
Last month, Rhode Island state Sen. Susan Sosnowski, D-New Shoreham and South Kingstown, gave assurances that the Coast Guard will not be deterred from conducting search and rescue efforts around offshore wind facilities, as some fishermen have feared.
“The Coast Guard’s response will be a great relief to Rhode Island’s commercial fishermen,” Sosnowski is quoted in a recent story in The Independent. “We have many concerns regarding navigational safety near wind farms, and that was the biggest.”
The anticipated release of the BOEM report coincides with President Trump’s efforts to weaken environmental impact reviews for all energy proposals, including wind, coal, and natural gas. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews have slowed pipeline projects such as Keystone XL and, as of last summer, Vineyard Wind. Both industries praised the move to loosen environmental rules. Environmentalists, meanwhile, fear that the removal of terms such as “cumulative,” "direct," and "indirect" from NEPA’s directives will nullify future federal efforts to address the climate crisis.
Once the expanded environmental impact statement is released, BOEM will offer a comment period and hold public hearings
Stephens leaves Vineyard Wind
Barrington native and Providence resident Erich Stephens resigned at the end of 2019 from Vineyard Wind, a company he helped found in 2009 and is now co-owned by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The original wind company was called Offshore MW. Prior to Vineyard Wind, Stephens was head of development for Bluewater Wind, one of the first U.S. offshore wind companies.
Stephens has considerable roots in Rhode Island. He attended Barrington High School and received his undergraduate degree from Brown University. He was founder and executive director of People’s Power & Light, now called the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. He was also a founding partner of Solar Wrights, a residential solar company that was based in Barrington and moved to Bristol. The company was later acquired by Alteris Renewables. Stephens also worked for two of Rhode Island’s first oyster farms.
More megawatts
New York plans to add 1,000 megawatts of offshore wind power to the 1,700 megawatts it awarded last summer to offshore wind projects that will deliver electricity to Long Island and New York City.
The state also announced it’s taking bids for $200 million in port development projects that will support the offshore wind industry.
The recent notifications are part of the state’s Green New Deal, which aims for 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 and 20 large solar arrays, battery-storage facilities, and onshore wind turbines in upstate New York. The state aims for 100 percent renewable energy by 2040.
The latest offshore wind projects consist of the 880-megawatt Sunrise Wind facility, developed by Ørsted and Eversource Energy, to power Manhattan. Long Island will receive up to 816 megawatts from the Empire Wind facility, developed by Equinor of Norway.
Pricing for the projects hasn’t been made public.
Offshore leader
Based in Denmark, Ørsted is the early leader in the size and number of U.S. offshore wind projects. Ørsted was awarded the 400-megawatt Revolution Wind project for Rhode Island. It’s also developing the 1,100-megawatt Ocean Wind facility in New Jersey, a demonstrations project in Virginia, and projects in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Maryland. The company acquired Providence-based Deepwater Wind in 2018 for $510 million.
Ocean Wind, New Jersey’s first offshore wind project, and the 120-megawatt Skipjack Wind Farm off Maryland will use General Electric’s huge 12-megawatt Haliade-X turbines. The 853-foot-high turbines are the tallest in production and have twice the capacity of the 6-megawatt GE turbines now spinning off Block Island, which are 600 feet tall.
Tim Faulkner is a journalist with ecoRI News.
"A father and son's journey in paint'
(left) Tom Nicholas, “Late Autumn, Rockport Harbor’’’ (oil on canvas, private collection), by Tom Nicholas); right, “Old Harbor, Gloucester’’ (oil on canvas; private collection), by T.M. Nicholas, in the show “Tom and T.M. Nicholas: A Father and Son’s Journey in Paint,’’ through April 12 at the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester.
“Man at the Wheel,’’ Fisherman's Memorial Cenotaph, in Gloucester, a major fishing port for hundreds of years
Gritty, cold and caffeinated
In East Boston
“I guess no true Bostonian would trust a place that was sunny and pleasant all the time. But a gritty, perpetually cold and gloomy neighborhood? Throw in a couple of Dunkin’ Donuts locations, and I’m right at home.”
― Rick Riordan, in The Sword of Summer
James T. Brett: 3 programs good for New England growth
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
As 2019 drew to a close, so too did the first half of the 116th Congress. And as is often the case at year’s end, our leaders in Washington, D.C.,. ended the year with a flurry of activity. In its final week on Capitol Hill, Congress passed a $1.4-billion spending bill to fund the government through September. Included in that bill were several top priority measures for The New England Council: boosting retirement savings, re-authorizing the terrorism-risk-insurance program, and renewing the charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
Now with our national leaders back in Washington, D.C., the expectation is – like in all presidential election years – it will not be a very productive year. However, Congress could take several actions to support continued economic growth in our region:
1. Invest in infrastructure. Nearly 1,600 bridges are in “poor” condition across New England, roughly 9 percent. Last year, Washington could not reach agreement on an infrastructure package even as such investments are critically needed. This fall, a renewal of the 2015 FAST Act – America’s surface transportation law – must occur. A key Senate Committee last July approved a $287-billion replacement. Perhaps Congress can aim higher and address our region’s additional infrastructure requirements as well.
2. Promote investment in renewable energy. New England has become a leader in the development and deployment of offshore wind energy. Our region is home to the nation’s first offshore wind farm and more are in development, helping reduce our carbon footprint while creating hundreds of jobs. This tremendous growth is due in part to tax credits for the development and production offshore wind, which have unfortunately expired. Several proposals have been introduced to reinstate and extend these credits, with support from members of the New England delegation. Congress needs to extend these important incentives.
3. Ensure banking for the cannabis industry. In New England, marijuana has been legalized for medical and/or recreational use in all six states. However, because marijuana is illegal under federal law, legitimate cannabis enterprises cannot bank at any federally insured financial institution, and are forced to operate as cash businesses, at risk for theft and fraud. Fortunately, last year, the House passed the SAFE Banking Act, which would establish protections for banks to provide financial services to legal cannabis businesses. The Senate should follow suit and pass this bill.
The good news is all three of these items enjoy strong support from the New England Congressional delegation and strong bipartisan support nationally. Action on these items would no doubt result in job creation and economic growth here in New England and would show that Congress can indeed act in a bipartisan manner to advance policies benefiting the nation.
James T. Brett is president and CEO of The New England Council, an alliance of businesses and nonprofits dedicated to economic growth in the region.
Taking flight in Duxbury
“Flight ‘‘ (mixed media/printmaking), by Mandy Fariello, in the Duxbury (Mass.) Art Association’s annual “Winter Juried Show’’ in February at the Art Complex Museum, in Duxbury
View of Bluefish River inlet, in Duxbury with King Caesar House in background. Duxbury is both an upscale Boston suburb and a place with many summer homes.
The John Alden House, built in 1653
Chris Powell: Ways to help keep ex-cons out of jail
Now that the majority in the Connecticut General Assembly is more Democratic and liberal, the legislature is paying more attention to the plight of prisoners and former offenders. While the attention is welcome, it has been entirely of the bleeding-heart variety, not very thoughtful -- leading only toward a policy of erasing or concealing criminal records, since those records are impediments to former offenders as they return to society.
Of course,
there is a strong public interest in reintegrating former offenders. Society needs them to be productive and self-supporting so they don't return to crime or kill themselves in despair. But the public interest in access to criminal records is just as strong. For how can any potential employee, tenant, borrower, or romantic partner be evaluated when government aims to keep the public ignorant?
Besides, erasing or concealing criminal records won't be as helpful to former offenders as some legislators think. Any conscientious employer, landlord, or lender will notice crime-caused gaps in a former offender's employment history, and any self-respecting person will want to know a date's background before they go home together.
So former offenders should always have some explaining to do. But some state legislators and the legislature's recently created study group, the Council on the Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Conviction, seem to think otherwise.
Members of the council recently visited the state prison in Somers to research what are said to be the scores of state laws that make life harder for former offenders. According to a Connecticut Mirror report, council members interviewed 25 prisoners who will be released soon, and some prisoners said they already know they will have trouble getting jobs and housing because they have been in and out of prison before.
Legislators and council members call this "discrimination" as if discrimination is always irrational and bigoted. But "discrimination" really isn't a dirty word. It is a necessity of life. It is the recognition of differences, like the difference between good and bad, safe and unsafe, skilled and unskilled, and reliable and unreliable.
Former offenders will always be competing for jobs, housing, and romantic partners with people who have no criminal records. It cannot be otherwise. For why should people who have lived within the law not have an advantage over those who have broken the law? If there is no advantage in obeying the law, the law is pointless.
Besides, legislators pursuing erasure or concealment of criminal records don't seem to realize that society has only as much crime as it legislates, nor that much criminality arises from victimless crime -- particularly drug criminalization -- as well as from the negligent parenting facilitated by welfare policy and from public education's practice of social promotion, which produces many young adults without job and life skills. Elected officials will benefit from erasure or concealment of criminal records because it will conceal their responsibility for the awful results of government's mistaken policies.
Will state government ever care enough about former offenders to indemnify their employers, landlords and romantic partners? Of course not. But state government easily enough could give former offenders rudimentary paid jobs, medical insurance, and housing to help settle them in their first year or two out of prison.
Indeed, offenders should get much more job training in prison and it might be good at sentencing in court to condition their release on their showing they have the skills needed to make an honest living.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
David R. Evans: How is Bulgaria like New England?
Graduating seniors at the American University in Bulgaria
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
This question in the headline above probably seems like a lead-in for a funny non-sequitur, but bear with me for a moment.
The American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), in Blagoevgrad, where I currently serve as interim president, was founded in 1991, soon after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, originally as a branch campus of the University of Maine. Like several other international institutions, AUBG is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education, so we’re at least an honorary New England institution. This strategy streamlined initial accreditation and provided us with a base of institutional resources to start from scratch in a country that had no tradition of American-style undergraduate education. We have long since become completely independent, but our roots in New England remain fundamental to our institutional identity.
Our mission was, and remains, to promote democratic values and open inquiry and to provide opportunities for students to experience the freeing—liberating—benefits of the liberal arts. We strive to create engaged, effective citizens, critical thinkers and excellent communicators empowered by their education to take an active role in their professions and communities and always work to make the world better.
In this respect, AUBG embodies a modern version of the ethos that founded so many colleges in New England and spread across the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries. While unlike many such institutions, we have no history as a training ground for the clergy, the parallels remain clear: Our founders envisioned a better world and hoped, through establishing this institution, to play a definitive role in bringing that better world into being. In a country where, for nearly a half-century prior to our founding, the absolute last thing the communist government wanted was engaged, empowered democratic citizens who had learned and been encouraged to question and critique everything, our project and mission to bring the outcomes of a good liberal arts education to Bulgaria have been genuinely revolutionary.
AUBG also shares with many small New England colleges some significant challenges. Most importantly, Bulgaria, like many parts of New England, is in a serious demographic crisis. Bulgaria is a small country with a population of just under seven million people. Its population peaked at nearly nine million in about 1985, and has been declining ever since. Moreover, its fertility rate has been below replacement since about 1985 and is now at only 1.6 live births per woman, while the replacement rate is about 2.1. Because AUBG, like most private colleges, is significantly dependent on tuition revenue, and because our primary market is Bulgaria, the steady decline in our national population is something to take very seriously. We are, in short, deep into the worst nightmares that Nathan Grawe has recently articulated in his indispensable book, Demographics and Demand for Higher Education
Unlike institutions in the U.S., we face another specific enrollment challenge. When AUBG was founded, Bulgaria was not a member of the European Union, and the university quickly became an—if not the—institution of choice for Bulgarian young people seeking a top-quality education conducted in English. However, since Bulgaria joined the E.U. in 2007, such young people have a range of options throughout Europe at very favorable prices and have chosen particularly to pursue higher education in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Because of generous public support for higher education in the E.U., there are some parallels with the challenges the “free public college” movement poses to private institutions in the U.S., but the complexities of language and culture further complicate these situations.
In Bulgaria and most of our primary markets extending throughout Eastern Europe, we face another issue in that we proudly promote American-style liberal arts undergraduate education (though honestly more in philosophy and educational practice than in our majors, which are highly weighted toward careers in our service region in business, IT, journalism and communications, and politics).
Where in the U.S., comparable institutions face increasing skepticism about the “liberal arts” in general, in our area, the question is more about what a liberal arts education actually is, and how it differs and adds value to the undergraduate experience. The public universities of Bulgaria, of which there are many, tend to follow the European model of institutional specialization, with strong specific emphases rather than a deep investment in broad liberal education. (The technocratic and often applied focus of many of these universities is also surely a relic of communist practices as well.) In that context, as sadly often in the U.S. as well, our stress on general education is often seen as alien and unhelpful, a useless distraction from the actual business at hand. In many cases, our programs require an additional year to accommodate our curriculum’s required breadth, as we follow the traditional American four-year bachelor’s model, and this added time requires a real commitment on the part of our students and their families.
I bring a very particular, painful experience to my work here, because I was the president of the private Southern Vermont College when it closed last spring as a result of declining enrollment and the associated financial stress. I have seen first-hand the challenges that face private colleges in a highly competitive market, with a product not fully understood or appreciated by its clientele, and presenting a value proposition that is not always evident to the people who most need to embrace it. There, our mission was to provide a strong, broad education to a student body comprising mostly first-generation students and students from diverse and high-need backgrounds. Over time, and exacerbated by the broad declines in high school graduates across our region, it became increasingly difficult to manage institutional finances to support affordable access for them and thus to convince them to invest in our institution despite our evident success in supporting students to graduation and successful careers.
At recent professional meetings back in the U.S., in conversations with colleagues, I have been struck by how comparable, if not similar, our challenges are. Like many colleagues, I take strength from the power and importance of AUBG’s mission and from the tremendous success of our alumni, and work constantly to ensure that this mission can endure in the context of unprecedented challenges to a basic model that has, as New Englanders know, developed and supported exceptional leaders for over three centuries.
David R. Evans is interim president of the American University in Bulgaria.
RIP: Seal of Southern Vermont College, in Bennington, 1926-2019
Finally, some loyalty!
“Waiting for My Master” (encaustic, toner transfer), by Heather Douglas, who has a home in tiny Cornwall, Vt., in the Champlain Valley. She’s a member of New England Wax.
The Champlain Valley
Classic New England: The Cornwall Congregational Church
Ah, those rankings!
“Paradise,’’ by Jan Bruegel
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
WalletHub’s rankings of the “best’’ and “worst’’ states in which to retire put Rhode Island as third worst, with Kentucky the worst and New Mexico second worst, and the three “best” as Florida, New Hampshire and Colorado. (So the rankings can’t be said to be biased for warm states.) Massachusetts was put at 14th best and Connecticut at 33rd.
Such lists are fun but even the choice of metrics for establishing rankings is itself subjective. To paraphrase Tolstoy, each individual and each family is happy or unhappy in its own way.
“John Tworog,’’ in the comments section below GoLocal’s article on the rankings, had some interesting observations:
“Balderdash! Quality of life like beauty is in the eye of the beholder! RI can compete with any state in that category! RI has a four season moderate climate. It is poised to get better with global warming. It's not too cold unlike the northern states and not too hot unlike the southern states. The thing is RI is a small state. But that is just lines on a map. We are really residents of the state of Southern New England. Boston is a lot closer to us than residents in other states are to their big cities. Apples and oranges!’’
--But from “Jane Blythe’’:
“Those are the reasons I had to leave R.I. --- it could be THE best state, but because of corruption and other factors, it has sunk so low. Just could be the ideal place, in so many ways --- its small size, its friendliness, its sense of pride, the proximity to Boston --- but the leaders have ruined it. Sad....’
Of course, hating the state’s leaders (a common emotion soon after they’re elected) doesn’t address the flaws of those responsible for electing them, either through voting or failing to vote – the oh-so-put-upon citizenry.
As usual, the majority of comments on such articles are negative, with the traditional denunciations of the state for its taxes, history of corruption and other pathologies, real or imagined. I think that a lot of this negativity can be explained by the Ocean State’s history of class and ethnic animosity and how its intimacy has fueled too many insider deals. “I know a guy,’’ etc. – not that other states are unfamiliar with such things….
The names of many complainants after such stories are familiar, which reminds me that many Rhode Islanders who constantly complain about the place could easily afford to move but stay put. It’s as if they fear losing the satisfaction and indeed pleasure from complaining about the tight little place while they’re in it. The thrill would be gone if they lived year round in, say, the bland land of palmetto-shaded strip malls and gated communities (albeit with energetic alligators in the golf course water hazards).
Anyway, these are the sort of typical remarks:
-- From “Justice ONeil:” (identified on Facebook as a dog!)
“Only surprise there is it's not #50”
-- From “Scott J. Grzych’’
“The good news is that the taxes are so high, I'll never be able to retire.’’
Ah, those rankings! Forbes ranks Rhode Island 20th for “quality of life,’’ whatever that may mean.
To read the WalletHub rankings, please hit this link.
To read the GoLocal article on the report, please hit this link.\
Maybe the Ocean State would have better politics and government if more Rhode Islanders showed less fatalism and bestirred themselves to vote, or even run for office. Consider that the United States Elections Project ranked Rhode Island as having the worst voter turnout in New England in the 2016 election, at 59.7 percent. Massachusetts was at 68.3 percent; Connecticut at 64.9 percent; Vermont at 64.8 percent; New Hampshire at 72.5 percent, and Maine at 72.9 percent.
Hit this link to see United States Elections Project site.
Basav Sen: Americans overwhelmingly want to get off fossil fuels
From OtherWords.org
Late last year, The Washington Post reported a remarkable poll finding: Nearly half of American adults — 46 percent — believe the U.S. needs to “drastically reduce” fossil fuel use in the near future to address the climate crisis. Another 41 percent favor a more gradual reduction.
In short, almost 90 percent of us support transitioning off fossil fuels — including over half of Republicans, whose elected officials overwhelmingly support the industry.
This is remarkable. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer, third largest coal producer, and the only country to leave the universally adopted Paris Climate Agreement. Yet nearly all of us want off these fuels.
You’d expect a media outlet to treat this as the immensely newsworthy (and headline-worthy) finding that it is — especially if that outlet commissioned the poll!
Yet The Washington Post buried these numbers in the 14th and 15th paragraphs of the story. Their headline? “Americans like Green New Deal’s goals, but they reject paying trillions to reach them.”
This assertion, while not outright false, is misleading.
The poll had a single vaguely worded question about the price tag for a national climate action plan, which asked whether respondents supported raising federal spending by unspecified “trillions.” Two-thirds of respondents said no.
Pollsters gave respondents no specifics on the amount of “trillions” we’re talking about, or how they would compare to the overall federal budget, huge existing line items like the military and fossil fuel subsidies, or the country’s GDP.
The poll didn’t ask respondents whether they would support such a spending increase if it were paid for entirely by revenue increases. But actually, they might.
The same poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans — 68 percent — support raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for climate action. Another 60 percent support raising taxes on fossil-fuel-burning companies “even if that may lead to increased electricity and transportation prices.
The Post ignored both findings entirely in the article. A more accurate portrayal of the poll results might say that U.S. adults support paying for climate action by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, but they don’t want to raise taxes for working people (for example, by raising gas taxes).
Why did the Post bury some of the most significant findings of their own poll? I won’t speculate too much — that’s for them to answer. But in establishment media, political biases that equate government spending with waste — while evading or ignoring issues of tax fairness — run deep.
A more objective — and hopeful — reading might emphasize that the vast majority of Americans support phasing out fossil fuels. Large majorities also support reaching 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years (69 percent support) and a jobs guarantee with good wages for all workers (78 percent support).
Finally, two-thirds of respondents support increased spending on climate resilience for communities who are vulnerable to disasters. Two-thirds also support a government program for universal health care.
Polls aren’t always trustworthy. But as a snapshot, this one shows large majorities of Americans wanting serious governmental action on climate change that incorporates social justice and workers’ rights, paid for by progressive taxation. They also want more regulation of corporations, more government spending on community resilience, and public, universal health care.
This is great news for those of us who want a just transition from our extractive fossil-fuel driven economy to a safe, healthy future for all. The Washington Post may not think that’s important, but we do.
Basav Sen directs the Climate Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was adapted from one at Inequality.org to be distributed by OtherWords.org.
Creative CommonsExcept where otherwise noted, content on t
'Burned underlayer'
The gallery says she “uses the title, a mathematical term for dividing space, as a departure point for a nuanced exploration of painted surfaces that reveal, conceal, and seem to invert portions of the original understructure. While her works are technically paintings---specifically, acrylic pigment, acrylic medium, balsa wood, and pyrography---they transcend the formal preconceptions of this medium by referencing fiber art and sculpture. In fact, the experience of viewing her work is an invitation to move closer, to navigate the edges, to catch glimpses of a burned underlayer partially buried under patterns of paint. Or was that thread?’’
Paul F.M. Zahl: Heroic border agents, pastors confront trafficking of minors and other woes at Texas facilities
Unaccompanied immigrant minors in McAllen, Texas, at Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas
— Border Patrol photos
On-Site Observations,
U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities,
McAllen/Harlingen, Texas
15-16 January 2020
At the invitation of Pastor Todd Lamphere of Paula White Ministries, I was given the opportunity to visit the U.S. Border Patrol processing center at McAllen, Texas, and the ORR (i.e., Office of Refugee Resettlement) facility for unaccompanied minors, in this case boys age 13-17, at Harlingen, Texas.
{Editor’s note: Paula White is a pastor, televangelist, author and adviser to President Trump.}
The 19 in our group, who were mostly but not all pastors, were ushered right into the center of the complex issue presented by illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border. We got to see the situation there as it is on the ground.
Because this is a report of personal responses, I shall give just three broad-brush impressions of what we saw and heard:
1) The members of the Border Patrol who guided and accompanied us are of outstanding personal caliber. That includes Chief Carla Provost, who gave us an entire morning; the chief provost's deputy, Agent Scott; Agent Austin Skero, who briefed us initially; and also the agent in specific charge of the McAllen facility, whose name I forgot to write down.
These are men and women of obvious, outstanding dedication, professionalism, and self-sacrifice. Despite the sometimes negative coverage given them by the media, I did not hear one word of reactivity or animus. In fact, given the pressures that these officers are under, both from within the never-ending demands of their task itself and from the outside criticism they receive, they keep their cool in a way I found extremely impressive. Such over-burdened and under-supported representatives of the U.S. government should be treasured and not excoriated. I think I now regard them as heroes.
P.S. to point (1): At least half of the Border Patrol agents we met are Hispanic and/or people of color. Command of the Spanish language is an almost pre-requisite to serving there.
2) It was apparent, as we walked through the processing area at McAllen and the protocol was explained to us for each immigrant who is apprehended crossing illegally at the border (i.e., not crossing at a legal point of entry), that many of the cases involve fraud. Because of an expedited DNA test newly available to the Border Patrol, it is no longer anecdotal that many "family units" apprehended at the border are not what they claim to be. Or rather, large numbers of minors are being trafficked by the “coyotes’’ (individuals who smuggle people across the U.S. border, usually charging high fees) and cartels and using false identifications, taking unfair advantage of compassionate policies on the U.S. side.
It was more than sobering to hear the results of the new DNA testing, and to learn that minors are being routinely "passed back and forth" for the enriching of human traffickers. This story needs to be told.
P.S. to point (2): No one is being kept in cages. The chain-link fences we saw are what you see on any child's playground at school -- to protect and not imprison. Young people being held in the first 24 hours of their apprehension can go from fenced-in area to most other fenced-in areas, freely enter adjoining playground space, and connect with their friends. There is well founded concern about minor-on-minor sexual abuse, and that is the main reason for see-through fencing. Even so, although there are no cages, the Border Patrol is preparing to replace the chain-link fences with see-through plastic and/or glass barriers.
3) Among the true heroes of the immigration crisis at the Southern Border are the Christian churches. We stayed at a Baptist retreat center, one campus of which is the leased ORR (i.e., Office of Refugee Resettlement) facility at Harlingen. The chaplain of that campus, which has a capacity of 593 minor boys and is currently home to 160, is the Rev. Eli Lara, who has God's Spirit simply shining out from his face. Pastor Lara's ministry in recent years to the hundreds and hundreds of teenage boys who have been housed in Harlingen, almost all of whom are from the "Northern Triangle" of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, is as bright a light to young sufferers and strugglers as I have ever witnessed.
The Christian churches of the Rio Grande Valley, both Protestant and Catholic, have stepped up to the plate in a very big way. They are doing, right there, what churches in other parts of the country say that believers should be doing. Here in Harlingen is a story that merits the widest possible coverage: the Rio Grande faith communities' putting their shoulder to the wheel in service of God and neighbor.
In summary,
1) Our U.S. Border Patrol members are over-taxed, under-resourced, and came across to us as uniformed channels of efficient compassion and rough-and- ready sacrifice;
2) The on-again, off-again flood of immigration at the border has a lot to do with intentional fraud, i.e., the criminal taking-advantage of sincere aspirers for a better life by unscrupulous and greedy “coyotes’’ and cartels. Children and minors are grievously victimized in this cycle.;
(3) The Christian churches of the Rio Grande Valley are doing unheralded superb work, "works of love" in the best Kierkegaardian sense — that is, issuing in a harvest of new disciples and new hope within the battered, vulnerable population they are now serving. And I heard no one blowing their own horn.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Zahl
The Rev. Dr. Paul F.M. Zahl
Dean/President emeritus
Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry
Ambridge, Penn.
Paul F.M. Zahl, a retired Episcopal minister, is also a writer and theologian.
New England Council touts trade pact
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
New England Council President & CEO James T. Brett has released the following statement upon the U.S. Senate’s vote to approve the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA):
“ vote in the U.S. Senate to approve the USMCA will no doubt have a significant positive impact on the New England economy. With over 600,000 jobs in our region supported by trade with Canada and Mexico, and nearly $13 billion in exports in 2018 alone, the importance of this agreement for our region’s continued growth and prosperity cannot be understated. Beyond the numbers, the USMCA makes important updates to modernize our trade relationship with these key partners to take into account modern day technology and innovation. From provisions to allow for cross-border data flow, to clear guidance on data localization, to protections for intellectual property, this is truly a 21st century trade deal and hopefully a model for future free trade agreements.”
A Canadian National freight car. This railroad brings much stuff to the United States.
‘Natural Lineage’
“Charged” (oil on canvas), by Natalie Arnoldi
Heather Gaudio Fine Art, in New Canaan, Conn., is showing through March 7 "Charles and Natalie Arnoldi: Natural Lineage," recent paintings by father and daughter.
The gallery says:
“Although the visual language of these two Californian artists could not be more different -- the brightly colored geometric abstractions by Charles Arnoldi a bold contrast to Natalie's muted representational evocations of light and atmosphere -- the two share common threads in their investigative approach. Both enjoy conveying their creativity in series, encapsulating ideas and delving deep into their enquiry, painting several canvases of the same subject to fine-tune the aesthetic in question. Both are not shy to present their output in oversized scales, unabashedly captivating the viewer with patchworks of color or quotidian references, and both are equally deft at pivoting their magnitudes to smaller, more relatable sizes.’’
Small town 'third places'
Post card from 1906 of Sharon street scene
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary’’ in GoLocal24.com
I got a pang when reading in The Valley News that another small-town local store that has acted as an informal community center is being absorbed by a chain. This is the Sharon (Vt.) Trading Post, a general store and gas station. It’s been owned for 32 years by a local couple – Rob and Cathy Romeo -- but they’re selling it to a chain of 50 convenience stores/gas stations, albeit a Vermont one, called Maplefields. Maybe that means prices will fall a bit – economies of scale – but so probably will service and commitment to the community, in the White River Valley, for which the store has been a central meeting place.
There are fewer independent establishments in small towns like the Romeos’ these days, and that’s too bad. All towns need “third places’’ – not work, not homes – to get together.
To read more, please hit this link.
The American Leader: New publication focuses on problem solving, not partisan pandering
The American Leader is an important new publication.
Here’s its mission statement:
The American Leader is a nonprofit, progress-oriented news and knowledge center committed to giving the public an unrelenting view of the systemic problems that shape our lives and the progress being made to resolve them.
Rather than report on breaking news, we gather the best available data points – whether they were reported today or a year ago – and connect them so that you can stay focused on the problems that matter to you most.
Our emphasis is on results, not storytelling. Despite often excellent journalism, the headline-driven media typically lacks memory, context, and a fixation on progress towards solving our systemic problems. By eliminating the distractions, distortions and obfuscations that pollute the info sphere and keeping our spotlight on the problems, The American Leader is that place in the marketplace of truth for robust and prolonged inquiry. It is a place to come when you want to fit together the fragments of information that you get elsewhere and consider what you can do about it.
And here is its founder’s brief on voting rights
By George Linzer
In Defense of Knowledge: Developing an Intelligence Brief on Voting Rights
On Election Day in 2019, I launched (with a lot of help) The American Leader, a news and knowledge center that tackles the systemic problem of misinformation by offering a new journalistic approach to seeing the world. Using our guiding principles on bias, common purpose, problem-solving, priority setting, accountability, and the search for truth as our framework, we have set out to become a go-to resource for casual news consumers who lack the time or energy to consult multiple resources for the answers to their questions and for purpose-minded citizens who are looking for inspiration on how they can get involved in the issues that matter to them. With the help of a Misinfocon microgrant, we were able to address the corrosion of voting rights, which we published in a brief (below) shortly after launch.
In the battle against misinformation, particularly in the political sphere, knowledge seems to be swimming upstream. It is so much easier for a rumor or overt effort at disinformation to go viral than it is for evidence-based information. Whereas today’s knowledge is dependent on thousands of years of human trial and error, observation of patterns of nature and behavior, and problem-driven innovation, the disinformation that plagues our discourse today is untethered from all but contemporary fears and insecurities and partisan opportunism. It’s as if disinformation, unencumbered by the weight of what’s come before, is able to float higher and travel farther and faster than information weighted down by the burden of proof.
The incendiary tweets, denials of science and eyewitness accounts, and “alternative facts” are nothing more than word bombs tossed on the fragile trust on which knowledge depends. Sow enough doubt and confusion, and we fall into darkness.
That’s one reason why I committed to launching The American Leader. Technologies that combat the spread of misinformation are critical in today’s connected world, but, ultimately, the battle won’t be won until we restore people’s faith in knowledge and their trust in the people who develop that knowledge, and in the people who use it. Knowledge is a cornerstone of democracy — it reveals to us the challenges of managing conflicting views amidst a world of rapid change, giving us the opportunity to choose together how we can most effectively respond for maximum benefit and who should lead the way. When knowledge works, it works for this common good. When knowledge is ignored or attacked and undermined, it weakens support for the system as a whole.
The American Leader makes it easier to access the knowledge that is needed and available for understanding the systemic problems that shape the world we live in, and it brings focused attention to the people who are acting to solve them and the progress they are making. Traditional media, our window on the world, is not optimized for these tasks. Instead, despite courageous and sometimes impactful work, it remains headline-driven and diffuse and too often beholden to the newsmakers of the day, making it all too easy for those who wish to distract from, confuse, and obfuscate the systemic issues that need our attention.
Those of us at The American Leader are building a more outcomes-driven news media.
To this end, The American Leader gathers and synthesizes the best available knowledge on systemic problems like voting rights and presents the information in the form of an intelligence brief. Each brief establishes what we can learn about a particular problem from the multiple sources available to us. As importantly, we also highlight what we don’t know because humility and respect for the accumulation of knowledge and our limitations in that process are essential to regaining trust. The brief puts all this information in a context that connects it to the broader political, social, and economic landscape. The intent is to surface the deeper currents that drive the problems so that we can bring about greater understanding and more lasting solutions to them.
Connecting the Dots, Building a Broader View
For our brief on voting rights, thanks in part to the help from MisinfoCon, our first consideration was to decide whether to draft separate problem briefs on gerrymandering and voter suppression or to prepare a broader overview of the corrosion of voting rights in which we would cover several specific areas of the electoral process that are contributing to it. Given the complexities involved, it would have made a lot of sense to treat each of these problems separately, but ultimately, concluded that that approach dilutes a fuller awareness of how oppressed and impotent our votes have become.
By treating gerrymandering, voter suppression, interference, and structural components of the system as four critical elements contributing to the corrosion of voting rights, we believe we can better spotlight a problem that threatens to undermine one of our nation’s foundational principles — that every vote actually matters.
The decision proved daunting in execution, as the goal of gathering and synthesizing “best available knowledge” is challenging enough in a single narrowly defined area like gerrymandering. Doing so in all four areas offered so many rabbit holes to fall into that at times it nearly paralyzed our work. We were able to move on by remembering that our mission is not necessarily to be comprehensive but to be insightful — to present the landscape in terms of strongest, evidence-based features and to identify the features where that evidence is weak or limited.
While we published it a month later than anticipated, we are not done. These briefs are not static documents — there is always more knowledge and new discoveries to consider that bear on the problem. As our sphere of understanding expands and circumstances shift, we will update this and every problem brief accordingly.
At the top of the website on every page are the words, “work in progress." This is not a reflection of a website that is under construction, but a comment on our democracy and the problems we need to address in order for it to thrive. These are ever works in progress.
The American Leader does not stand alone. Now that we’ve launched, we are beginning to partner with organizations that can bring technical expertise to what we publish, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget did to our brief on the national debt. We are also seeking additional grants, corporate sponsorships, and individual donations to support our work. And we are looking for engagement and guidance from those purpose-minded citizens who share our interest in making progress on our long-term, systemic problems, despite the noise that strives to obscure the common goals of a diverse and inclusive and sustainable democracy.
Please take some time to explore The American Leader and consider how you can get involved.
GE looking better, but Boeing....
Carmen Miranda in a 1945 advertisement for a General Electric FM radio in The Saturday Evening Post
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
After many cheers when giant General Electric company decided to move its headquarters to Boston from Fairfield, Conn., the noise turned to boos as its stock price tanked. But last year, the stock of the venerable company surged 53 percent from 2018, its biggest jump since the 1980s, and much better than the nearly 30 percent increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, notes The Boston Globe’s estimable Jon Chesto.
Much of the turnaround has been attributed to new CEO Larry Culp’s rigorous and decisive management.
Still, there might be a big problem this year as GE waits to see if engine orders pick up for Boeing’s 737 Max jetliners, grounded last year after two crashes that killed hundreds of people. The engines were not a factor in the crashes.
In any event, the Boston area should still be happy that a company with such engineering expertise as General Electric is based in Boston – a world-renowned center for science and engineering. Synergy! And investors should always keep in mind how fast things can change even for the biggest companies.
A week is an eternity in business….
Meanwhile, haggling continues on what sort of building should go on the site of what was to have been GE’s headquarters in Boston’s Seaport District. The company had planned to put up a sort of sci-fi 12-story headquarters building but decided to settle for two rehabbed older buildings next door – a touch of New England conservatism.
To read Mr. Chesto’s piece, please hit this link.