NJ Spotlight, Feb. 27, 2014

By COLLEEN O’DEA

Missed deadline for new COAH quotas sets stage for legal showdown as fair-housing and environmental advocates cry foul

The Christie administration has defied the state Supreme Court’s order that new affordable-housing quotas be put in place by yesterday’s deadline, setting the stage for a battle over the rules in appellate court next week.

The inaction by the NJ Council on Affordable Housing was not completely surprising, given Gov. Chris Christie’s attempts to stop the body from doing any work throughout his first term and his animosity toward the court.

But flouting an order from the state’s highest court is nevertheless significant.

"Ignoring a court order is serious business," said Kevin Walsh, the Fair Share Housing Center attorney who has been fighting for years to get COAH back up and functioning to boost the state’s affordable housing stock. "This is a breach of the basic rules by which our government functions."

Jeff Tittle, head of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, went further, saying the lack of compliance "again shows the arrogance and abuse of power of the Christie administration."

Neither the Department of Community Affairs, in which COAH is located, nor Christie’s office returned requests for comment.

The state acknowledged the deadline in papers the attorney general filed in the Appellate Division of Superior Court in advance of next Wednesday’s hearing on Fair Share’s motion asking the court to appoint a special master to do the work the state has refused to do.

In its papers, the state does not argue with the date or the requirement, but merely states that "any claim that COAH is acting in violation of that (Feb. 26) deadline must be brought before the Supreme Court."

Last September, the Supreme Court struck down the state’s most recent affordable- housing regulations and, barring any legislative action, gave COAH five months to establish new quotas using a method similar to the one it had used in the 1980s and 1990s to ensure that municipalities provide their fair share of low- and moderate-income housing.

In its decision, the highest court affirmed a nearly three-year old appellate decision that had invalidated COAH’s third-round rules, which were based on future municipal growth.

Despite the order, COAH has not met once since that decision was handed down. In fact, it has only met once in the last several years — despite another Supreme Court ruling that Christie had no right to dismantle the council — and that was last May, when the administration was seeking to take some $160 million in municipal affordable housing funds to help balance the state budget.

Anticipating that the administration would not act by the deadline, Fair Share filed a motion in the appellate division two months ago, seeking enforcement of the Supreme Court order.

Walsh noted that state agency rules must be proposed, published for public comment, and then adopted by a state agency, a process that takes at minimum three months. COAH has not taken even the first step in that process. He said the agency’s attorney told the Supreme Court at oral argument that it would take 30 days to prepare regulations.

"The Christie Administration is blocking thousands of new homes from moving forward — which is especially critical after Hurricane Sandy destroyed so many houses and made housing even more expensive in New Jersey," Walsh said

Tittle expressed concern that since there are currently no valid rules governing affordable housing in the state, builders could go to court to seek permission to build high-density complexes that include lower-cost units and higher-priced ones to help offset the builders’ costs.

“The failure of the Christie administration to adopt appropriate and legal third round rules for COAH puts every town in New Jersey in jeopardy," he said. "This is a cynical game where he on one hand attacks COAH, but at the same time wants to open New Jersey to developer lawsuits … Since there are no rules in place, the courts could strike down every COAH plan that has been adopted or just allow for builder remedy lawsuits for every town in the state. Developers can declare open season in every town in New Jersey.”

Grist, Feb. 26, 2014

By Sarah Laskow

Oh COME ON, New Jersey! I want to be able to defend you against haters — really, I do. But you gotta help me out here. For starters, maybe you could NOT do the thing where you clean up a toxic waste site and then decide to dump more toxic waste in the same place, because it’ll be profitable for people with political connections.

Would that be so hard?

Apparently so. As Michael Powell reports in the New York Times, Jersey is allowing a company called Soil Safe to build 29-foot mound of petroleum-contaminated dirt on a site that was once a dumping ground for cyanide-contaminated sludge. This is happening against the advice of environmental experts, who are worried that this mound could wash away into the Rahway River.

Why is it happening? Powell offers this explanation:

The county political boss here is a Democrat, State Senator Bob Smith. He holds two day jobs: He is chairman of the Senate environment committee, and he oversees a politically connected private law practice. He represented Soil Safe at a hearing before an elected county board, which he more or less dominates through careful oiling of well-financed political action committees.

Then there is Paul Weiner, one of the three owners of this contaminated plot of swampland. He is the law partner of State Senator Ray Lesniak, a Democrat, who more or less runs politics in neighboring Union County. Soil Safe now pays the owners of this land $75,000 a month in rent; if the deal goes through, it promises the owners many millions of dollars in tipping fees.

Soil Safe also, Powell reports, has connections to the president of New Jersey’s state senate.

To be fair, it’s probably better to dump contaminated soil on a remediated site than a pristine one. (Which, yes, haters, there are pristine places in New Jersey.) And it’s not like we’re going to find a GOOD place for oil-soaked dirt. But it’s hard to trust that this outcome was the best one, given the amount of politicking it seemed to involve.

====

Source: In Plan to Dump Contaminated Soil, Classic New Jersey Politics Emerge, The New York Times.
Sarah Laskow is a reporter based in New York City who covers environment, energy, and sustainability issues, among other things.

Alternet, Feb. 27, 2014

by Monique W. Morris, The New Press

The numbers illustrate the unfinished business in our efforts to establish justice for all.

The following is an adapted excerpt from Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century. Copyright © 2014 by Monique W. Morris. Reprinted with permission of The New Press, New York, NY.

Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century is intended to serve as a resource for those looking to better understand contemporary issues in Black America. The texture of Black America’s lived experiences is complex, and therefore reflects a story that cannot be told by quantitative data alone. However, the numbers help us to situate our discussions. They help us ground and focus our conversations such that we can generate informed responses to the conditions of Black America.

The statistics below represent a small snapshot of what is included in the book. While there are also stats in the book that demonstrate significant progress over the past few decades, the numbers below reflect that there is still unfinished business in our efforts to establish a foundation of dignity, liberty and justice for all.

EDUCATION

1) 42 percent of Black children are educated in all high-poverty schools (both elementary and secondary). By comparison: 38 percent of Latino children are educated in high-poverty schools, 31 percent of Native American children are educated in high-poverty schools, 15 percent of Pacific Islander and Asian children are educated in high-poverty schools, and 6 percent of White children are educated in high-poverty schools.

2) Black youth make up 16 percent of public school students and 9 percent of private school students in grades K–12 nationwide but account for: 35 percent of in-school suspensions, 35 percent of those who experience one out-of school suspension, 46 percent of those who experience multiple out-of-school suspensions, and 39 percent of those who are expelled.

3) The unemployment rate for Black high school dropouts is 47 percent. By comparison, the unemployment rate for White high school dropouts is 26 percent.

ENVIRONMENT

4) 78 percent of Black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared with 56 percent of White Americans.

5) African Americans are 20 percent more likely than Whites to have asthma, a condition that is exacerbated by air pollution.

6) Black Americans cause one-eighth the amount of global warming pollution caused by White Americans.

7) Hurricane Katrina shrank the Black population in New Orleans by 57 percent.

ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

8) Black writers are underrepresented as television writers by a factor of 2 to 1, compared with the percentage of Black people in the U.S. general population.

9) Black actors have received only 4 percent of the Oscars for best acting since 1929.

10) Although African Americans make up just 67 percent of the players in the NFL, Black players received 92 percent of the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties during the 2010–11 season—a statistic that sociologists believe may be linked to a negative reaction to “cockiness” or “self-promotion” when demonstrated by a Black player.

HEALTH

11) Black mothers are more than twice as likely as White mothers to experience the death of a baby within the first 28 days of the infant’s life.

12) African Americans make up 4 percent of all adults reporting serious psychological distress, but that percentage doubles for African Americans below the poverty line.

13) Most of the nation’s worst food deserts are disproportionately located in cities with a high percentage of Black Americans. The nine worst food deserts are located in the following cities (percent African American): New Orleans (60 percent), Chicago (33 percent, Atlanta (54 percent), Memphis (63 percent), Minneapolis (19 percent), San Francisco, in the historically Black communities Bayview, Hunters Point, and Visitacion Valley (33 percent and 13, respectively), Detroit (83 percent),New York City (26 percent), Camden, New Jersey (48 percent)

JUSTICE

14) Only 14 percent of Black Americans have a great deal of confidence in local police officers to treat Black and White Americans equally, compared with 38 percent of Whites.

15) Nationwide, 16 percent of persons under the age of 18 are Black, and 32 percent of total juvenile arrests are of Black youth.

16) 55 percent of Black Americans report avoiding certain places or neighborhoods because of a concern over crime, compared with 46 percent of White Americans.

17) Wages grow at a 21 percent slower rate for Black formerly incarcerated people than for White formerly incarcerated people.

18) The rate of drug use among Black people ages 12 and older is 10 percent, yet Black people account for 32 percent of those arrested for “drug abuse violations” in the United States.

MONEY & JOBS

19) The unemployment rate for African Americans with a four-year college degree is 8 percent, almost double the unemployment rate for similarly educated Whites (4.5 percent).

20) The current Black real median household income is 16.8 percent lower than its pre-2001 recession peak.

21) Although Black (including multiracial Black) people make up just 14 percent of the U.S. population, 37 percent of people who are homeless are Black.

22) African Americans are nearly twice as likely as all Americans to have been affected by the mortgage lending crisis; up to one-quarter of all African Americans who purchased a home in the years leading up to the 2008 recession may ultimately lose it.

POLITICS, VOTING, CIVIL ENGAGEMENT

23) African Americans compose 8 percent of state legislators nationwide, a figure almost unchanged since 1992, when 7 percent of state legislators were Black.

24) 25 percent of elderly African American voters (compared with 8 percent of elderly Whites) do not possess the identification that would be required under new photo-ID laws introduced in 40 states before the 2012 election.

25) One in every 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised because of a felony conviction, a rate more than four times greater than the rate for the rest of the U.S. population.

NY Times, Feb. 20, 2014

By MICHAEL BARBARO

PORT MONMOUTH, N.J. — When Chris Christie started to talk over a complaining questioner, a signature tactic of the bellicose, pre-scandal governor, the audience here briefly turned on him.

“Answer the question,” some shouted.

When he took a microphone from a long-winded speaker, the man startled Mr. Christie by snatching it right back.

And when he singled out a young woman as his inspiration for repairing the Hurricane Sandy-battered coastline, he failed to grasp that the girl’s mother — sitting just a few feet from Mr. Christie — was angry with him for not doing enough.

“He’s full of it,” she said.

For the embattled Mr. Christie, bogged down by scandal and dogged by investigations, Thursday was supposed to represent a defiant, maybe even triumphant, return to the town-hall-style meeting, an intimate and comfortable setting in which he could bathe in the adulation of his fans and unleash harsh denunciations of anyone foolhardy enough to challenge him.

Over the course of four years, and 110 of the cozy sessions — all recorded by aides and quickly uploaded for consumption by his fast-expanding audience — Mr. Christie transformed himself from a little-known former prosecutor into the public face of New Jersey, a national emblem of straight-talking government, and the most forceful presence in the national Republican Party.

But the two-hour forum here near the Jersey Shore on Thursday, his first since controversy enveloped his administration, demonstrated just how difficult it will be for Mr. Christie to quickly recreate the political magic that once seemed certain to put him in contention for the White House.

The man who once commanded these rooms just by walking into them seemed unmistakably mortal.

The event, which was delayed several times by snowstorms, took place in Monmouth County, a location carefully selected to highlight Mr. Christie’s leadership in recovering from Hurricane Sandy. The county was hard-hit by the hurricane, but the governor carried it overwhelmingly in his re-election last fall.

Yet Mr. Christie arrived amid a flurry of protesters, who waved placards mocking his administration’s role in lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, demanding his resignation over the imbroglio and reminding him that even his musical idol was angry about the issue.

“Hey Gov,” read one, “Bruce Springsteen hates you.”

Once inside, amid the brown folding chairs and white linoleum floors of a local V.F.W. hall, Mr. Christie encountered fury on an entirely different, but no less intense front: from homeowners inflamed by the pace of recovery from the hurricane.

With homemade T-shirts and handwritten signs, they complained that his administration had let them down: Subsidies that allowed them to rent a temporary home had run out; reimbursements for emergency repairs never arrived; and, above all, the distribution of federal aid was painfully slow.

It was a jarring tableau for a governor who, just six months ago, was heralded as a hero for consoling devastated families up and down the state’s shattered shores, and for berating Congress until it increased recovery funding for the state.

One man asked Mr. Christie why he had put so much recovery money into the hands of outside contractors, sarcastically noting, as Mr. Christie did at the start of the bridge scandal, that the governor oversees a staff of 60,000 employees. Why not use state workers, as New York had?

Mr. Christie leapt in — defending his decision, casting doubt on New York’s performance, and challenging the man’s grasp of the facts.

In past moments like this, when Mr. Christie seized on the slightest provocation, he invariably earned applause and turned the rest of his audience against whoever had confronted him.

But this time, the crowd directed its frustrations at the governor. Several people began to loudly clear their throats; a few of them demanded that he answer the question.

“I am answering it,” Mr. Christie replied coldly.

Mr. Christie forcefully defended his administration, saying that it had delivered funds to hundreds of thousands of homeowners and assigning blame to the federal government for most of the problems.

“FEMA,” he said mischievously, “is the new ‘F Word.’ ”

There were moments when Mr. Christie struck an empathetic tone, telling homeowners that their woes consumed him and acknowledging his own frustration at the slow pace of the recovery.

“I wish I could wave a magic wand and make this better for everyone,” he said.

Despite rules he outlined at the start of the event, he allowed several speakers to vent at length, uninterrupted.

But at times, it seemed as if the crowd had lost its patience with Mr. Christie’s instinctive playbook — doling out inconvenient truths and administering tough love.

Mr. Christie — who explained that for now, funding went to those with the greatest need — chafed when a woman asked why she had not received help, despite severe damage to her home.

“I’m there,” she said, explaining her poor finances.

Mr. Christie replied, “You must not be quite as there as you think you are.”

At that, a few men and women in the audience gasped. “Nice,” one of them shouted to Mr. Christie.

Mr. Christie seemed relieved to be grappling with questions from constituents about urgent housing needs, not about a traffic tie-up from five months ago. The bridge scandal was not broached by the crowd; when an out-of-town reporter shouted a question about it, Mr. Christie glared at him and said, “People care about real problems.”

And many in attendance still seemed to revere him. A woman who recounted the pain of watching her mother die in a rented apartment, because her house was still damaged from the storm, paused to tell Mr. Christie that “she really liked you.”

Another woman called Mr. Christie “the real governator — not Schwarzenegger.”

“Because of your shoot-from-the-hip style,” she explained. “It’s no nonsense.”

A military veteran, displeased by those who have ganged up on Mr. Christie, said that he could not understand why the governor did not destroy all of his Springsteen CDs.

Mr. Christie made clear that, after 132 Springsteen concerts, the idea was anathema to him, even after Mr. Springsteen had performed a parody of Mr. Christie to the tune of “Born to Run.”

“We get attached to certain people as youngsters,” Mr. Christie said.

But for once, it was the anger of Mr. Christie’s detractors, not his own, that most colored the event.

Gail Doherty, 44, said she had seethed as Mr. Christie highlighted her young daughter Ginger’s role in making it clear how much pain Hurricane Sandy had inflicted, especially on children, a story he has told across the state.

Ms. Doherty said she resented Mr. Christie for invoking their experience, since she and Ginger remained homeless.

“I don’t think he’s kept his word,” she said. “It’s beyond frustrating.”

Ginger, she added, “just wants to go home.”

Christie Watch, Feb. 20, 2014

Surprisingly — no, actually, shockingly is the right word — Chris Christie got through an entire town hall meeting with several hundred New Jersey residents on Thursday morning without once being asked to say a single word about Bridgegate, the allegations about withholding Superstorm Sandy aid from Hoboken, and other scandals swirling around the governor. Held in at a VFW hall in the Port Monmouth section of Middletown, in the middle of areas devastated by Sandy in 2012 and still not rebuilt, Christie put on a masterful display, taking question after question from residents who came to beseech the governor and his cabinet, many of whom came in tow, about a wide range of problems, from Sandy aid to family law to treatment of disabilities. But no one — not a single questioner — even mentioned the ongoing investigations.

Meanwhile, the governor used part of his performance in Port Monmouth to blame New Jersey’s troubles after Sandy on President Obama, Congress, the Federal Emergency Management Agency — Christie referred to the agency as “the new F-word, FEMA” — and, most surprisingly, the National Flood Insurance Program. He blamed, in short, everyone but himself.

How is it even possible that the lane closing scandal at the George Washington Bridge and the allegations that Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno threatened to cut off Sandy aid to Hoboken unless the mayor of that city backed a development project that Christie wanted weren’t even mentioned? And all this in front of perhaps two dozen cameras from national and local television stations and reporters from throughout New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia, plus not a few national outlets?

First, as usual in Christie’s town hall events — and this one, he said, was his 110th — reporters don’t get to ask questions.

Second, Christie held the event, his first town hall meeting since last spring and his first public appearance in weeks, on friendly territory, in precincts known to support Christie and the Republican party. And as evidenced by interviews conducted by two Christie Watch reporters with participants, there was indeed a strong reservoir of support for Christie in the room.

Third, according to several participants in the event — which was, to be sure, open to any and all comers — Christie aides and staff both outside and inside the hall told attendees that no signs, posters or placards would be allowed. Gert Sofman of Highlands, New Jersey, whose home and business were both flooded by up to six feet of ocean water and who still hasn’t recovered damages, said that the event’s organizers strictly disallowed any sign of activism inside the building. “They’re shutting down any kind of demonstration,” said Sofman. “I’m so absolutely angry at this point.” And Isabel Newson of Keansburg, a lone activist who pulled out a small sign reading “Christie Resign” toward the end of the event, said that two other, similar signs had been confiscated by the staff.

Fourth, Christie himself, in laying out the ground rules for the event at its start, warned that he wouldn’t be passive if anyone challenged him. If anyone, he said, had it mind, with all the cameras present, to “take the governor out for a walk,” well, he said, “We’re all from New Jersey.… If you give it, you’re going to get it back.” Anyone familiar with Christie’s bullying, hectoring YouTube videos in which he lays into critics with abandon knew exactly what they were in for.

And finally — and this is most puzzling — there was no sign at the event of any presence by teachers and trade unions who’ve clashed with Christie, of activist groups such as Citizen Action who’ve opposed him, or from groups such as the Fair Share Housing Center, which has emerged as a key critic of how Christie’s administration has handled the distribution of Sandy-related aid.

In a bit, we’ll get to how Christie unleashed a barrage of anti-government, anti-Washington and pro-privatization rhetoric in response to questions about Sandy assistance. But for most of the attendees at the town hall, it was a chance to listen and ask questions of a very personal nature, hoping against hope that the governor and his aides would promise to help. Before the event got underway, your Christie Watch reporters talked to quite a few audience members, and all had tales of woe, of heartbreak and discouragement, even desperation. Joe Wernock, an out-of-work construction and demolition man from Keansburg, lost nearly everything and recovered only $20,000 from insurance. “I want to find out what’s going on,” he said. “The insurance company said that they can’t insure me now unless I lift the house, and I can’t afford to lift the house. They’re fighting with everybody, the people across the street, the guy down the street.” Ron and Jessica Sickler, of Fort Monmouth, said that their house is gutted. “We pay the mortgage in Fort Monmouth and we pay rent in Tinton Falls,” said Jessica. “I think the funds could have been handled better.”

Richard Isaksen, representing the Belford Seafood Cooperative, said the several hundred fishermen in his coop were “barely working” because the creek they have to get through to reach the ocean hasn’t been dredged since the hurricane and is barely passable. And although there was supposed to be several million dollars set aside for the fishing industry, he said, “we haven’t seen a nickel” of the money his group needs to repair the ice machines and other machinery they use for the fish. “We just need some help.”

But none of these people, nor most of the other folks lined up outside to enter the event knew exactly whom to blame, they said. “We’re here to get information,” said Ron Sickler.

And, at the event, Christie did his best to shift the blame for post-Sandy problems away from his office, and his administration, and onto the federal government. Perhaps most outrageously, Christie went ballistic about the National Flood Insurance Program. “The entire flood insurance business in this country has been taken over by the federal government,” said Christie, just getting warmed up. “There’s not much I can do. We’re stuck in dealing with the federal government.… Why they think they’re the best people to deal with flood insurance is beyond me. They don’t have the first idea of what they’re doing.”

There’s so much wrong with Christie’s attack on FEMA and the NFIP that’s it’s hard to know where to start. For decades it’s been obvious that private insurers don’t have the wherewithal to be able to cover flood damage at prices that would be affordable, and so the federal government has come to the rescue. The truth is that the federal government is the only place people can buy flood insurance, because private insurers don’t want to touch it. “Because of the catastrophic nature of flooding, the difficulty of adequately predicting flood risks and uncertainty surrounding the possibility of charging actuarially sound premium rates, private insurance companies have historically been largely unwilling to underwrite flood insurance,” concluded a recent study by the Government Accountability Office.

Responding to Christie, Representative John Pascrell (D-NJ) said:

“When Hurricane Sandy bore down on the Northeast, I fought alongside my colleagues to ensure the federal government delivered the resources New Jersey families desperately needed to rebuild their lives. Instead of playing partisan politics and passing the buck, the Governor should focus on correcting the botched rollout of the state-run RREM [Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation] program that has left scores of New Jersey families out in the cold.

“The federal government cannot be blamed for the state’s lack of transparency, lost applications and the mysterious firings of Sandy contractors. More than a year after the storm, there are still folks not back in their homes that deserve answers. It’s time for Governor Christie to take responsibility for his administration’s mismanagement and do what’s right by the people of New Jersey.”

And the Fair Share Housing Center, which has studied the issue in depth, has issued a series of reports and statements indicating that it was Governor Christie’s private contractor, HGI, which was assigned to manage the distribution of Sandy aid, that bears most of the responsibility for recent problems.

One member of the audience did indeed try to raise the issue of the problems with HGI with the governor. “All I hear from you is privatize, privatize, privatize,” he said. “Why was HGI fired?” And, indeed, so far the Christie administration has refused to disclose the problem with HGI, hired in 2013 and then dismissed in December without explanation. At today’s town hall event, Christie once again refused to say why HGI was fired, but he had to speak over loud protests from some in the audience, including one man who shouted, “Answer the question!” Still, Christie provided no answers.

Steve Sweeney, the Democrat who is president of the state Senate — a sometimes collaborator, sometimes rival of the governor — issued a statement following the town hall meeting, saying in part:

“The administration has twice fired a contractor handling aid in secret and given no reason. They’ve denied people aid, nearly 80% according to Fair Share Housing, who should have received it. They’ve failed to properly inform people what documentation they need to receive aid. They provided the wrong information on deadlines and appeals on the Spanish language website, and shut out the people who were misinformed from applying. They rejected African-Americans at rates 2.5 times higher than Caucasians. Millions of dollars that should have been going to homeowners and businesses have been withheld.

“These problems were not caused by the federal government. They were caused by his administration’s failed policies.”

Christie, who’s well known to be a fanatical Bruce Springsteen fan, brought the Boss into the town hall event, at least indirectly. At the start of the event, as people were filtering in — and again at the close, as the governor made his exit through a curtain at the back of the room — the hall echoed to the strains of “We Take Care of Our Own,” from Bruce’s 2012 album, Wrecking Ball. It’s hard to imagine a less appropriate song to be played at a Chris Christie event. Its lyrics are a strong denunciation of Republican go-it-alone policies and a bitter denunciation of the fact that in today’s America many people can’t make it on their own. Bruce sings:

I’ve been knockin’ on the door that holds the throne.
I’ve been lookin’ for the map that leads me home.
I’ve been stumblin’ on good hearts turned to stone.
The road of good intentions has gone dry as bone.

Recently, Springsteen and Jimmy Fallon rocked a hilarious parody of “Born to Run” criticizing the governor’s lane-closing fiasco that [youtube http://youtube.com/w/?v=VKHV0LLvhXM]. And at the Port Monmouth event, one audience member, who identified himself as with the VFW, said he and some friends had discussed what to ask the governor. Here’s what they came up with: “When you go home, will you please destroy all your Bruce Springsteen CDs?” The governor said, in response, that he hopes that the Boss will come around as he gets older.

NY Times, Feb. 19, 2014

By CHARLES M. BLOW

The Michael Dunn case has caused us to look once again at the American culture and criminal justice system, and many don’t like what they see.

But we shouldn’t look at this case narrowly and see its particular circumstances as the epitome of the problem. They are not. The scope of the problem is far more expansive, ingrained and elusive.

This is simply one more example of the bias against — and in fact violence, both psychological and physical, against — the black body, particularly black men, that extends across society and across their lifetimes. And this violence is both interracial and intra-racial.

A 2011 study found that black parents were the most likely to spank their children. After the study was released, Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who advocates against corporal punishment, and who also happens to be black, told CNN: “We have such damage in the black community. When you add to that parents beating their kids, it’s sending the message that violence is an O.K. way to solve problems.” Poussaint added later, “violence begets violence, anger begets anger, and the loss of control makes it all worse.”

Charles M. Blow

DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES

And for many black children, when they go to school things don’t get much better. According to the Center for Effective Discipline, corporal punishment and paddling in school is allowed in 19 states; these include all the states except Virginia in the Black Belt, which stretches across the South. The center found that African-American students make up “17 percent of all public school students in the U.S., but are 36 percent of those who have corporal punishment inflicted on them, more than twice the rate of white students.”

This inequitable treatment in schools is also exerted in other ways. As USAToday reported in May:

“The average American secondary student has an 11 percent chance of being suspended in a single school year, according to the study from the University of California-Los Angeles Civil Rights project. However, if that student is black, the odds of suspension jump to 24 percent.”

It continued:

“Previous studies have shown that even a single suspension can double a student’s odds of dropping out, said Daniel Losen, a former Boston-area teacher and one of the authors of ‘Out of School and Off Track: The Overuse of Suspensions in American Middle and High Schools,’ released in April.”

Even on the streets, they can’t escape it.

In New York City, from 2002 to 2011, the Police Department stopped and frisked millions of citizens, but nearly 90 percent of those were black and Hispanic, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Eighty-eight percent of those stopped were innocent.

And, according to a 2011 report from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, although black, white and Hispanic drivers were stopped by the police at roughly similar rates, “black drivers were about three times as likely as white drivers and about twice as likely as Hispanic drivers to be searched during a traffic stop.” It doesn’t take a leap of logic to understand that if you search for contraband, you’re more likely to find it.

The inequity continues into the justice system, even for juveniles. As “Frontline” pointed out:

“A number of recent surveys have shown that there are profound racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, that African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to be tried as adults. They are more likely to receive longer sentences, they’re more likely to be in locked facilities, and on and on and on, even when charged with the same offense as whites.”

In fact, a January study in the journal Crime & Delinquency found that by age 23 nearly half of all black men will have been arrested at least once. This compares to 44 percent of Hispanics and 38 percent of whites.

This disparity continues into the adult prison population. While blacks are only 13 percent of the population, they make up 38 percent of the state prison population nationwide.

Part of this last problem abides in the jury box.

A 2010 report from the Equal Justice Initiative found that “people of color continue to be excluded from jury service because of their race, especially in serious criminal trials and death penalty cases.” And among the people who do make it onto juries, a 2001 study published in Psychology, Public Policy and Law found, white jurors demonstrate bias more often when race isn’t a prominent feature of a case than when it is. So, much of this bias would likely slip by, away from the glare of media attention.

It is no surprise then that many of these young black men, having endured a life of violence and suspicion and inequitable treatment, would have a vastly altered relationship to authority and even the basic concepts of fairness and hopefulness. A small number of these young people, having been baptized in brutality, can internalize it and then act it out, being destructive to themselves and their communities. And pop culture — whether music, television or movies — can amplify the problem by either normalizing violence or glorifying it.

In that context, the repercussion of poor decisions is amplified, and the tiny minority of people who exist within any demographic group who are intent on committing themselves to wrongdoing and disruption could prosper.

That is the conundrum of the current African-American experience: How to unwind all the hurt and damage? How to rescue folks from a system and culture that threatens to drown them?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. There is no one place to start.

I often advocate that blacks fight this bias on two flanks. First, work every day to eliminate the structural and systematic biases. This is actually easier said than done, particularly since many of the people who, wittingly or not, become instruments of the bias, and in some cases are beneficiaries of that bias, deny that bias.

The second flank is to recognize that the bias is present and not make choices that would make it worse, and in fact try to countervail it. The latter is always the more delicate argument, because it calls on people to redouble efforts to behave nobly in an ignoble — and unjust — context. There is an issue of basic fairness that goes unaddressed in the discussion.

But, sadly, those seem to be the options that exist at the moment. Moving in two directions at once, fighting the system and fighting despair.

Climate Progress, Feb. 19, 2014

[This post is pretty technical, but it makes an important point: the Hess plant being built in Newark is a disaster for the climate.]

The evidence is mounting that natural gas has no net climate benefit in any timescale that matters to humanity. In the real world, natural gas is not a “bridge” fuel to a carbon-free economy for two key reasons.

First, natural gas is mostly methane, (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. So even small leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system can have a large climate impact — enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas.

Sadly as a comprehensive new Stanford study reconfirms, “America’s natural gas system is leaky.” The news release explains:

A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates. Leaks from the nation’s natural gas system are an important part of the problem.

Second, natural gas doesn’t just displace coal — it also displaces carbon-free sources of power such as renewable energy, nuclear power, and energy efficiency. A recent analysis finds that effect has been large enough recently to wipe out almost the entire climate benefit from increasing natural gas use in the utility sector if the leakage rate is only 1.2 percent (comparable to the EPA’s now discredited new lowball estimate).

In fact, as a major paper we reported on in November found, “The US EPA recently decreased its CH4 emission factors for fossil fuel extraction and processing by 25–30% (for 1990–2011), but we find that CH4 data from across North America instead indicate the need for a larger adjustment of the opposite sign.”

The new study in Science “Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems” (subs. req’d) is even more problematic for natural gas as a so-called bridge fuel.

Because the study is a consensus paper from a variety of authors and because the data on leakage rates is not high quality, the paper itself does not suggest a revised natural gas (NG) leakage rate. But the Supplementary Materials do. Deep on page 29 is a section titled, “Calculating leakage percentages associated with possible NG leakage,” where the authors explain that they “can put bounds on the possible leakage rates from the NG system.” Their analysis finds:

“… an excess percentage leakage of 1.8% to 5.4% of end use gas. Coupled with the current estimate of 1.8% leakage of end use gas consumed, this generates a high-end estimate of 7.1% gas leakage.”

As an aside, this range is quite similar to that estimated in the much-maligned (but apparently correct) 2012 Cornell study led by Prof. Bob Howarth.

The authors try mightily to defuse this bombshell by immediately arguing that 7.1 percent leakage is extremely unlikely and pointing out that, according to one 2012 paper (Alvarez et al.) on replacing coal power with gas, “benefits are seen over a 100 year period if leakage is below 7.6%.”

Woo-hoo! By the time you, dear reader, are dead and the climate is destroyed, that new gas plant may be better than that old coal plant. (And yes, to get a net climate benefit from NG, you still must assume that natural gas displaces only coal and nothing else — an assumption with no basis in reality.)

But let’s take a closer look at NG leakage numbers, which I’ll rewrite as 5.4% +/- 1.8%. I asked the lead author, Stanford’s Adam Brandt, if they had calculated whether there was a uniform distribution from 3.6% to 7.1%, or was there in fact a “most likely” estimate. He said the data wasn’t good enough to determine that, but a “uniform distribution is probably not the best guess.”

Given the risks to humanity from climate change — and the vast sums of money being spent (or squandered) on the NG boom — it seems conservative to take the middle of the range, 5.4%. That’s particularly conservative given that 3 separate studies by NOAA found leakage rates just from NG production of 4%,17%, and 6-12%!

So let’s go back to Alvarez et al. and see what 5.4% leakage means. Here is the key figure from the 2012 study:

Figure: Maximum life-cycle natural gas leak rate as a function of the number of years needed to achieve net climate benefits after switching from coal power to natural gas. The three curves represent: single emissions pulses (dotted lines); the service life of a power plant, 50 years (dashed lines); and a permanent fleet conversion (solid lines).

At a leakage rate of 5.4%, replacing a fleet of of coal plants with NG plants would have no climate benefit for 50 years! That is, replacing coal plants with gas plants would be worse for the climate for nearly 5 decades.

As an aside, a 5.4% leakage rate means that converting a fleet of either cars or trucks to NG would be worse for the climate for 140 years. Brant explained to the NY Times, “Switching from diesel to natural gas, that’s not a good policy from a climate perspective.”

But it’s even worse than that since Alvarez et al. used what are now out-of-date figures for the global warming potential (GWP) of methane. As I reported in October, the IPCC determined that the 100-year GWP of methane is 40% higher that previously estimated. Correcting for the change means that replacing coal plants with gas plants would be worse for the climate for more than 6 decades.

And again, in the real world, NG doesn’t just displace coal, it also displaces nuclear power, renewable energy, and energy efficiency. So it appears quite safe to say that natural gas simply has no net climate benefit whatsoever in any timescale that matters to humanity.

Perhaps it is time to stop squandering tens of billions of dollars — and rendering billions of gallons of water unfit for human consumption — on a fossil fuel source that probably has no meaningful net climate benefit in the real world and may well do considerable harm.

The post By The Time Natural Gas Has A Net Climate Benefit You’ll Likely Be Dead And The Climate Ruined appeared first onThinkProgress.

In an effort to bring the thousands of victims of Superstorm Sandy the answers, assistance and results they deserve, Senate President Steve Sweeney will be conducting a "Sandy Bill of Rights" tour.

Residents who believe they have wrongly been denied Sandy aid and/or have failed to get answers from the administration as to why they were denied are encouraged to attend and share their stories with the media and Senate President Sweeney. For more information, please contact Arnold Cohen at acohen. Everyone is invited to attend these events.

Wednesday, February 19
11:00 a.m.
Perth Amboy City Hall; 260 High Street in Perth Amboy
Press conference with the Senate President, Mayor and other officials to discuss Sandy aid problems

Friday, February 21
11:00 a.m.
Toms River Elks Lodge #1875; 600 Washington Street in Toms River
A town hall style meeting where residents will be able to share their stories on the difficulties of getting Sandy aid

Saturday, February 22
12:30 p.m.
Moonachie Borough Hall; 70 Moonachie Road, Moonachie
Press conference with the Senate President, Mayor and other officials to discuss Sandy aid problems

NY Times, Feb. 17, 2014

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Gov. Chris Christie and his political allies have done the near-impossible. Their notorious traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge, engineered by Mr. Christie’s colleagues, has succeeded in getting people to pay attention to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the sprawling and secretive agency that runs not only that bridge but three other major bridges, two tunnels, five airports and port operations in the region. And, like many of those huge structures, the authority itself desperately needs fixing.

The authority is overseen jointly by Governor Christie and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York. It has an annual budget of $8.2 billion, and there are plans to spend another $27.6 billion in capital improvements over the next decade, making the authority the one of the most important government agencies in both states.

Over the years, the Port Authority has often served as a political candy jar, providing patronage jobs for political allies. Mr. Christie has been particularly skillful at doling out well-paid jobs at the authority to his supporters. By most counts, there are at least 50 agency employees who owe their jobs to the New Jersey governor.

The traffic scandal that has resulted in numerous investigations and two resignations of Christie appointees is just the latest example of how governance of the Port Authority is tainted by personal politics. And because two states share executive control, and thus responsibility, there is no meaningful oversight.

Major structural reforms would require legislative approval in Albany and Trenton, which would be hard but definitely worth a try. New Jersey, for instance, could help matters by enacting the equivalent of a reform law approved in New York that, among other things, required board members to pledge to uphold their fiduciary duties to their agency’s mission, not to their patron in the governor’s mansion. Short of that, the two governors should make changes that could make the authority less political and more professional.

The Port Authority’s 12-member board of commissioners is appointed by the governors, six by each. They should be appointed on the basis of their professional qualifications, not political connections, as so often happens, and held to six-year term limits. Some holdovers have been there for more than 10 years.

Each commissioner should also publicly disclose potential conflicts of interest well before the authority makes its decisions. These potential conflicts should be regularly displayed on the Port Authority’s website. Commissioners have routinely been allowed to lobby for contracts that could affect personal businesses and, only later after the decision is made, would they formally recuse themselves in the official minutes. Their recusal in each case should be announced at the public board meeting.

Under the traditional power-sharing arrangement, New Jersey appoints the chairman of the board, New York the executive director. That worked well until 1995, when Gov. George Pataki of New York chose an incompetent executive. The move so angered New Jersey’s governor at the time, Christine Todd Whitman, that she demanded the right to appoint a deputy executive director as well. That change gives New Jersey more power over day-to-day decisions. It’s time to allow the executive to pick his or her own deputy after consulting with the board.

The authority is notoriously secretive, despite some recent efforts to provide more information on its website. It is time to require more transparency, including clear public announcements of all items approved by the board while in public session. The authority should also have to answer to rigorous freedom of information laws in both states. There must be stronger protections for whistle-blowers, and the two state legislatures should not approve commissioners until they have been carefully vetted for conflicts of interest as well as professional qualifications.

Mr. Christie should want to make these changes, if only to show he’s aware of the damage his people have done. Mr. Cuomo should embrace them as an expression of his interest in sound government.

One interesting aspect of the current mess is that the authority was created more than 90 years ago not only to address the shared needs of both states but also to wring out as much local patronage and politics as possible. Mr. Christie has shown how easy it is to turn back the clock.

Science Daily, Feb. 17, 2014

Racism as a social and scientific concept is reshaped and reborn periodically through the ages, and according to a Penn State anthropologist, both medical and scientific researchers need to be careful that the growth of genomics does not bring about another resurgence of scientific racism.

"What we are facing is a time when genomic knowledge widens and gene engineering will be possible and widespread," said Nina Jablonski, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. "We must constantly monitor how this information on human gene diversity is used and interpreted. Any belief system that seeks to separate people on the basis of genetic endowment or different physical or intellectual features is simply inadmissible in human society."

What worries Jablonski and the sociologists, psychologists and evolutionary biologists in her session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, on February 14 in Chicago, are people who believe that they can use genetic traits to describe races and to develop race-specific interventions for each group. One particularly disturbing approach, although currently suggested as beneficial, is application of genetics to create special approaches to education. The idea that certain individuals and groups learn differently due to their genetic makeup, and so need specialized educational programs could be the first step in a slippery slope to recreating a new brand of "separate but equal."

Similar approaches in medicine that are based not on personal genetics but on racial generalizations can be just as incorrect and troubling, especially because human genetic admixture is so prevalent.

"Our species is defined by regular admixture of peoples and ideas over millennia," said Jablonski. "To come up with new reasons for segregating people is hideous."

Classification of humans began innocently enough with Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who simply classified humans into races in the same way they classified dogs or cats — by their physical characteristics. These were scientists classifying the world around them and realizing that the classifications were not immutable but had a great deal of diversity and overlap. However, in the last quarter of the 18th century, philosophers, especially Immanuel Kant, looked to classify people by behavior and culture as well as genetics. Kant suggested that there were four groups of people, three of which because they existed under conditions not conducive to great intellect or achievement were inferior. Only the European race was capable of self-improvement and highest level of civilization.

Kant’s ideas, widely accepted during his lifetime, set up the idea of European superiority in the future. Coupled with the great rise and profitability of slavery at the time, his views were adopted and morphed to legitimize the slave trade.

In the late 19th century, after Darwin’s ideas became accepted, many applied his principles to the cultural, political and social spheres, developing the concept of Social Darwinism. Darwin’s nephew, Francis Galton, suggested that in parts of the world there were still "pure races" and that these needed to be preserved. This line of thought led to the eugenics movement and eugenic engineering ideas of the early 20th century. Included in this were the rise of European superiority and the trappings of eugenics and racial purity.

"The most odious of all was the rise of Nazism and biological justification of Nordic supremacy," said Jablonski. "Emphasis was placed on the need to maintain the purity of all races, but especially the Nordic race and to improve the races."

The reasoning given was that the quality of a race could be improved by preventing reproduction of those deemed physically or mentally undesirable either by sterilization or extermination.

"This included the Jewish race, which was considered to be biologically and socially destitute representing a lower form of civilization than others and preying upon higher civilizations of Europe," said Jablonski. "This was a worse consequence than justification of the slave trade, being killed and subjugated by those using pseudo science as justification for scientific racism."

According to Jablonski, it is not surprising that scientific racism is experiencing a rebirth, but not because people are malicious or necessarily have a racist belief systems. She believes that the scientific neoracists often are well intentioned, but that the application of genomic-based interventions, while potentially beneficial, cannot be done on a racial basis.

"We know that it is more likely for people in certain parts of Northern Europe to develop cystic fibrosis," said Jablonski. "But it is wrong to say that this is a potential trait only of the European race, especially because of admixture.

"From a clinical medical perspective, people are more complexly admixed than ever. The best approach is to get people to talk about their levels of admixture, rather than label them or their diseases by race."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Penn State. The original article was written by A’ndrea Elyse Messer. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.