FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 The Boston Globe Opinion A
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Letters to the Editor, The Boston Globe, 1 Exchange Pl, Ste
201, Boston, MA 02109-2132; [email protected]In his op-ed on reform of funding for public schools, Gover-
nor Charlie Baker misses the point (“An education promise
we can keep,” Sept. 17). The goal of this once-in-a-genera-
tion opportunity is to ensure that all kids from all commu-
nities and backgrounds can succeed, and to address inequi-
ties in the system. It’s not about finding a perfectly moder-
ate position or avoiding the taxes necessary to pay for the
future we all want.
Our unequal public education system desperately needs
to be remedied with state dollars to help our most disad-
vantaged students succeed. Of the proposals before the
Legislature, the Promise Act is the best option.
The governor paints a misleading picture of Gateway
Cities getting unduly burdened by the Promise Act, when
the opposite would occur. Worcester is a good example: In
2026, it would have to contribute $3 million more in educa-
tion funding but would receive $74 million more in state
aid.
Our data, released in June, showed that Baker’s plan
would increase statewide school aid by $460 million per
year above the status quo when fully implemented, while
the Promise Act would add $1.41 billion per year. Each of
these figures importantly subtracts out what would occur
anyway due to typical changes, such as inflation and enroll-
ment growth.
The Promise Act’s additional investment of $946 million
per year, as compared with Governor Baker’s plan, would
allow schools most in need to better support their students
and address achievement and opportunity gaps.
Most residents of the Commonwealth understand that
we must address inequality in our schools and raise public
revenue, if necessary, to achieve this goal. This is about liv-
inguptoourvaluestodowhatisrightforallchildren.
MARIE-FRANCES RIVERA
COLIN JONES
Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center
BostonGovernor Baker misses the point
on school funding reformI was amazed to read the claim by the Department of Cor-
rection that, in Massachusetts, “solitary confinement is not
and has not been used for decades” (“Legislators targeted
solitary confinement, yet its use still high,” Page A1, Sept.
16). The hundreds of men and women confined to small
cells, devoid of human contact, day after day, year after
year, would be equally incredulous. As would the many
state legislators who are working to reverse this inhumane
policy.
Changing the term solitary confinement to “restrictive
housing” or “disciplinary detention” does not change the
brutality of the practice — the isolation remains the same.
And, while the department claims that “most” people
spend 30 days or fewer in isolation, a United Nations expert
has said that more than 15 days in solitary amounts to tor-
ture. Here in Massachusetts, we have people held in isola-
tion for up to 10 years.
Solitary is cruelty beyond imagining in a civil society.
Other states — Maine, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, and
Ohio — have reduced their use of solitary without finding
an increase in prison violence. In some states, they’ve seen
a decrease. Surely it is time that we in Massachusetts fol-
lowed suit.
CHRISTINE MCARDLE
BrooklineThe writer is a member of Massachusetts Against Soli-
tary Confinement.Solitary, isolation, ‘restrictive housing’
— by any name, it’s crueltyA woman died Tuesday after being hit by a truck, just be-
fore 7:00 a.m., in Harvard Square.
In the subsequent 12 hours, I experienced three sepa-
rate pedestrian traffic incidents in that vicinity:
At around 7:30 a.m., a rider on an electric scooter
crossed Mass. Ave. near Everett Street against the light and
nearly was hit by a large oncoming truck.
At 6:30 p.m., I was in a group waiting to cross Mass.
Ave. at Shepard Street. When the walk sign flashed, a bicy-
clist sped through the red traffic light and hit a young wom-
an in that group at full speed, knocking her to the ground.
Had she not sprung up and pursued him, he would have
continued on.
At the next cycle of lights at the same intersection, we
stepped off the curb when the walk sign flashed. An extra-
wide pickup truck sped through the red light and nearly hit
one of us, before we jumped back. The truck continued on
without stopping.
Incidents such as these are occurring daily, some with
tragic outcomes. Multiple interventions are called for, in-
cluding traffic-calming infrastructure changes, public-safe-
ty campaigns, increased enforcement of violations by oper-
ators of all vehicles, and alternate truck routes that keep
large vehicles out of the highest pedestrian-use areas.
ANN EPSTEIN
Cambridge12 hours on the treacherous streets
of CambridgeRegarding the Sept. 19 letters on the controversy over An-
tonio Brown (“Patriots winning games, losing moral stand-
ing”): Why is it that so many Americans are ready almost
reflexively to sacrifice such fundamental rights as due pro-
cess and the presumption of innocence on the altar of the
#MeToo movement? It can often lead to such travesties as
the forced resignation of Senator Al Franken.
The right to due process and the presumption of inno-
cence are absolute. If they are allowed to be eroded, it en-
dangers all Americans, including those who think they
could never be falsely accused. There is still a difference be-
tween an allegation or an accusation, on the one hand, and
a finding of fact by a disinterested adjudicator, on the other.
DAVID C. NATHANSON
TorontoA rush to judgment over Antonio Brown
O
il is once again front and center
— and reminding us just how
dangerous our addiction to it
is for our national security and
economy. A Saudi Arabian oil
field gets attacked, disrupting global oil
supplies, and President Donald Trump
declares us “locked and loaded” and ready
to respond. Later in the week, his
administration announces it will destroy
California’s ability to set strong independent
state-level vehicle greenhouse gas emissions
standards under the Clean Air Act —
standards that are projected to save nearly
2.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2030,
around as much oil as the United States
imports from OPEC countries every day. As
the coauthor of the fuel economy standards
in the 2007 Energy Independence and
Security Act, I know that this is an illegal
attack that goes against the express intent of
Congress and has only one beneficiary: Big
Oil.
Trump’s unprecedented move to revoke
fuel economy standards will result in years
of courtroom challenges, years of
uncertainty for American automakers, and
our continued dependence on foreign oil.
And it will directly affect us here in
Massachusetts. The Commonwealth is one
of the 13 states, along with the District of
Columbia and Canada, which have used
authorityundertheCleanAirActtoadopt
California’s strong state-level tailpipe
emissions standards. The Trump
administration’s attack is not just an attack
on California but on all 150 million people
in North America who currently benefit
from these stronger standards, which bring
us cleaner air, better health, lower gasolinebills, and stronger national security.
In 2011, state leaders worked together
with the Obama administration, 13
automakers, and an international auto
industry group to agree to a unified set of
standards that would increase fuel economy
and tailpipe emissions standards. This deal
meant that automakers would not have to
worry about dealing with a national
patchwork of regulations, where some
states might follow the stronger California
standards and others might use the federal
standards.
But President Trump wants to tear that
historic agreement to shreds. The result will
be years of courtroom
challenges. When the
George W. Bush
administration tried a
similar gambit, they lost
in the courts — twice.
Legal experts believe that
will happen again
because the authority of
the Clean Air Act of 1970, and congressional
intent is clear.
We know the current fuel economy
emissions standards are technically feasible,
economically achievable, and absolutely
necessary for the climate. In fact,
automakers are meeting the standards even
faster than expected. And that is saving
American consumers money at the pump.
That’s why four auto companies — Ford,
Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW — have
already made a deal with California,
pledging to continue to meet strong vehicle
fuel economy emission standards. But
President Trump would rather cut into
automakers’ sales than cut a deal with themand the states to cut pollution.
So if revoking these standards is bad for
drivers, bad for business, bad for workers,
and bad for the planet, who is it good for?
This upheaval in California is just a
vindictive, oil-soaked attack by the Trump
administration on standards that are
critical to addressing the climate crisis. It
will leave the auto industry spinning its
wheels and its domestic workers in
jeopardy. And will continue America’s
dependence on oil from the Middle East,
making it susceptible to the kinds of
volatility that comes with unrest in the
region.
The Trump
administration is now
squarely set on a
courtroom collision
course with California,
Massachusetts, and the
rest of the states that
follow these standards.
But chaos and delay is
what the oil industry wants, and President
Trump is happy to take the wheel and drive
us down this path of destruction. The big
losers will be American automakers,
consumers, and our young men and women
in uniform who could be put in harm’s way
just to protect oil coming from one of the
most dangerous places in the world. For the
sake of our people and the planet, President
Trump should put the brakes on and take us
out of reverse on these life-saving standards.Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts is
chair of the Senate Climate Change Task
Force and Senate author of the Green New
Deal resolution.Only one beneficiary from
Trump attacks: Big Oil
By Ed Markey
By Tim CockeyH
ere’s what I hope to do on
myupcomingtripoutWest:
Get lost. And not just
once, but over and over
again.
Why? Because being lost is highly
underrated.
Some years back, in the pre-GPS era, I
got (unintentionally) lost during a drive
through the Idaho panhandle. Holding
unwarranted faith in my inner gyroscope, I
found myself not where I thought I should
be, but instead rolling to a halt amid
ponderosa pines in a six-structure hamlet
going by the name of Good Grief. One of the
structures housed the so-called pizza shop,
which appeared to be open for business but
absent its proprietor. The adjacent structure
housed, as I learned, the mayor of Good
Grief, who proved to also be the proprietor
of the unmanned pizza shop. A handwritten
note on the door of the shop instructed
those with a yearning for a slice to knock
next door, thereby waking up the mayor
from his afternoon snooze and
transforming him — at least for a few
minutes — into a pizza chef. I don’t have the
space here to expound on the entertaining
nature of Hizzoner. I’m going to ask that
you trust me. Lousy pizza, but a
spectacularly rich, unplanned visit.
Get lost! We usually hear that as a curt
directive. What I’m proposing is that in our
age of global positioning technologies we
might want to recontextualize these
words as an invitation to
engage in the purposefully
unpredictable pleasures of
surprise.
I live in New York City, a
world-class destination for
getting lost. In my time I have
wandered off to Coney Island
when I’d thought I was Queens-
bound. I’ve taken the wrong left and the
erroneous right fork and stumbled onto the
Louis Armstrong House Museum. I’ve
literally been Lost in Yonkers. I once
entreated a fellow in the Bronx to turn me
around and set me straight, explaining toNatural wanders
ADOBE
A view of smog in downtown Los Angeles.It’sbadfordrivers,
business,workers,
andtheplanet.
him that I was lost, only to have him reply:
“No such thing, my friend. You are
temporarily where you didn’t expect
yourself to be. That’s all.”
He was right.
What we call being lost could as easily be
reframed as the unexpected place of
surprises. On a hike in Vermont last
summer, I aimed for a mountain lake but
crossed my wires and instead found a
waterfall. Loved it. More recently, I took the
“wrong” exit off the interstate and
discovered the world’s only museum
devoted to the history of gloves. A glove
museum? Knock me down with a mitten.
But if getting lost is an art, these days it’s
an increasingly difficult one to enjoy, as
more and more we are led by the digital
hand from Destination A to Destination B.
Safely. Clinically. With little hope of
misadventure.
Some recent studies say that our ongoing
dependence on GPS devices and apps to
steer us this way and that is shrinking our
hippocampus, the part of the brain
responsible for navigating the spatial
environment. The hippocampus
stores memory of our daily (and
nightly) neural activity andpatterns, then uses this stored info to
improve our capacity to steer ourselves
around. It enables us to navigate our world.
Apparently relying on our external guidance
devices and the like is robbing our
hippocampus of crucial opportunities to
flex and grow. One of the best ways to put
your hippocampus through its paces is to
intentionally get lost and then call on it to
show its stuff. But with Mommy and Daddy
GPS constantly walking us around, that’s
hard to do.
I do have some paper maps for my
upcoming trip. I’ve got some guide books.
There’s a basic outline of Plan A. But my
Plan B is to veer off course at a moment’s
notice and give my hippocampus a little run
for its money.
I plan to get lost.
To temporarily be where I didn’t expect
myself to be.
I can’t wait.Tim Cockey is a writer living — and getting
lost — in New York City.ADOBE