The Somerville News Blog

Breathing new life into Somerville's squares

Part 3: Best practices William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) We usually get better results when we improve upon a wheel's design rather than reinventing the wheel itself. If we wish to breathe new life into Somerville's squares, we can learn from other communities who over the past three decades have resuscitated their own main streets.

Reservations about the Reserve Fire Force

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) I really do get tired of writing columns critical of the mayor's actions and the aldermen's inactions. I much prefer to celebrate Somerville government's triumphs, like the comprehensive planning effort or the middle-school multimedia program.

Grass roots zoning rebellion, Part 3:

A case study William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) I've often contended in this column that the essence or Somerville's political culture is cozy relationships and calculations of advantage that will accrue from performing favors. Examples that are most accessible to public observation are probably those involving zoning and real estate development. 44 Park Street serves as a case study.

Ahead of the curve

Part 3 in a series on Somerville Schools William C. Shelton and Joe Beckman (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Without much notice, Somerville is becoming one of the more innovative schools systems in the U.S. That is the subject of this series. Recent gatherings involving some of the nation's leading thinkers on the future of education provided evidence of the depth and value of Somerville Schools' innovation. Alan November was the keynote speaker at a national conference on visual literacy. "Visual literacy" means recognizing how a message is shaped by the medium that is delivering it. Alan describes a phenomenon that will transform K-12 education as we know it. With the proliferation of digital technology and media as educational tools, schools will become the equivalent of one-room schoolhouses, where everyone learns from everyone else, and the teacher is more coach and choreographer than attendance taker and grader. A diverse group of Somerville High kids were the only actual K-12 students at the conference. They deeply impressed conference goers by presenting videos that they had created. They discussed the videos' style and substance with greater sophistication than could be managed by a number of the graduate-school students in the room. In so doing, they proved November's thesis. In our last column, we discussed how Somerville Schools have reduced by 50% in one year the rate at which they hold back students in grades 1-through-8. So I (Joe) was fascinated to hear Jay Smink, director of the National Dropout Prevention Institute, when some Somerville School staff and I attended a workshop on the subject in Worcester. Jay emphasized the critical role of identifying students who are struggling, and the areas in which they are having a hard time. He says that such assessment can begin as early as the third grade. He advocates a range of interventions-projects, after-school programs, summer school, mentorships - to change a dropout pattern into higher achievement. Any of them is more effective than "retention in grade," that is, holding a kid back for more of the same thing that didn't work in the first place. In other words, he advocates the innovations that Somerville is already successfully implementing. Smink's theory and Somerville's practice are consistent with some compelling insights that emerge from exhaustive research conducted by John Hattie. Hattie was the Chairman of Educational Research Methodology at the University of North Carolina and is now based in New Zealand. He examined thousands of studies and compared the results of fifty years of evaluations and experiments in K-12 schools. He identified 138 practices used by teachers, schools, and parents, and compared their effects. Some of the practices were conscious methods, like teaching kids to assess their own work. Others were simply behaviors that had an affect on kids' ability to learn, like families moving so often that they didn't establish social networks. You can take a look at this research at http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/staff/j.hattie. On almost all points, his conclusions coincide with Smink's-retaining kids in grade is an educational disaster, with no educational justification whatsoever. Last week, I spent two days at meetings in Boston with a team from the US Department of Education (DOE) that is planning the development of Race-to-the-Top assessment methodologies. Race-to-the-Top is the new program that offers competitive grants to innovative schools and educators. It's funded by $4.3 billion in stimulus-package money, $350 million of which is for new assessment methods. Part of the conversation involved the use of "portfolios." These are collections of papers or projects that a teacher and student believe are noteworthy. They accumulate in a file, or more recently on a CD Rom, over the student's middle- and high-school years. The Massachusetts' 1993 Education Reform Act that created MCAS also authorized the use of portfolios as an alternative or supplement to MCAS. There is even a budget line item for it. If America and our children are to be successful in the world in which we now live, we must teach kids how to think, rather than what to know. What is important to know is constantly changing, so they need the capacity to think effectively about any situation in which they find themselves. The factory jobs that could pay a living wage have been vanishing for decades. Increasingly, the only economic sectors in which the U.S. can be competitive and that provide jobs with a future are those that require critical thinking, defining objectives, problem solving, and the skills needed to work well with others. Assessments like the MCAS don't measure these capacities. Instead, they measure knowledge and some fairly trivial skills. Organizations like FairTest and elected officials like Carl Sciortino have been working to get policy makers to recognize this for years. Better assessments would lead to more interesting teaching and smarter kids. That was the point made by the consultants who were at the Race-to-the-Top event. In response, the DOE officials seemed cool to the idea of portfolios. And Massachusetts has done little to develop the practice, despite its recognition in legislation. But-you guessed it-Somerville High School has been compiling portfolios for some time. That's the good news. The bad news is that the portfolios have never been used. The other good news, though, is that there is now a committee in the high school reviewing how portfolios might be made more useful.

Ball Square's Global Reach

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) A modest two-room office in Ball Square is home to a media company with a global reach. Working in 20 countries around the world, Spectrum Media has designed successful campaigns to promote democracy in Mali, nonviolent conflict resolution in Jordan, environmental conservation in Madagascar, family planning in Tunisia, and sustainable agriculture in Senegal and Malawi. The Tunisian government hired Spectrum to encourage water conservation. Its territories bordering the Sahara are sparsely dotted with troughs, fed by wells. Often the nomadic peoples who used them carelessly left the spigot open when they moved on, wasting precious water. Spectrum designed inexpensive and durable ceramic tiles, embedded in the troughs, with quotes from the Quran admonishing Muslims to conserve water. The impact was dramatic. Investors in the Jakarta stock exchange were putting only 15 percent of their funds into local companies that would build the Indonesian economy. Five years after Spectrum's media campaign, the proportion was 85 percent. Spectrum's principal, Jamil Simon, lives on Willow Street, a half block from his office. His parents were Iraqi Jews who fled Baghdad in the 1930s, first to Lebanon and then to Egypt. When Rommel's Afrika Corps was bearing down on Cairo in 1941, they took seaplanes, flying from lake, to river, to lake, to Capetown, South Africa. From there they sailed across the South Atlantic, which was free of the Nazi wolf pack, to Recife, Brazil, took a boat to Miami and a train to New York City, where Jamil was born and his father opened a branch of his bank. Jamil fell in love with film in college and began making documentaries upon graduation. In 1969, after working in Baltimore with only three days off over eleven months of filming, he came to Cambridge to visit his girl friend. A hitchhiker asked him if he was interested in a Boston-area job, and at the age of 24, he became director of Apt Associates' film department in Cambridge. He's been here ever since. Whenever possible, Spectrum works with indigenous people to develop their capacity to continue media work. In Malawi, Spectrum set up a media center that produces radio and TV programs to promote sustainable agriculture. The Malawi project offers insight into how multimedia campaigns can be effective. The company produced a package to train poor farmers in new income-generating practices such as beekeeping and fish farming Each medium has its particular strengths. Print is best for conveying factual information, but many farmers are illiterate. Video is better suited for communicating motivational themes. Radio can reach a broad audience inexpensively, but many farmers do not have radios. Face-to-face communication delivers information most effectively, but is costly. Spectrum produced booklets that, through pictures, taught farmers how to undertake beekeeping and aquaculture. Trainers' manuals explained more technical details and the reasons for conducting specific practices. Videos demonstrated them and included successful beekeepers talking about how beekeeping had improved their impoverished circumstances. Flyers, calendars, and posters promoted training and reminded farmers of important practices. The newly created media center produced 150 radio programs containing motivational and educational information. Jamil says that taking on a new assignment is like being parachuted into a completely unfamiliar world, with its own rules, culture, language, and issues. You have to decode it all to get information out to the people who need and can use it. You can't arrive with solutions. You have to constantly listen. Too often, development organizations do not provide the information needed for indigenous people to become self-sufficient. In so doing, they encourage dependency. Spectrum's current project tackles a complex and fascinating challenge. Warlords in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, the Congo, and the Ivory Coast enslave the locals to mine diamonds, which they use to finance mass murder, rape, and child armies. Legitimate diamond traders throughout the world have joined in a compact called the Kimberly Process. They hope to ensure a secure chain of custody from diamond miners to markets so they may exclude "blood diamonds." In the Central African Republic, miners excavate legitimate diamonds from riverbeds. They think of themselves as agriculturalists, but have had to give up farming in order to make a living. In turn, the mining process destroys the land's capacity to sustain agriculture. Miners hold their individual plots by traditional rights, agreed upon by their communities. The state has it own statutory ownership definitions. Claim jumpers take advantage of this difference by registering plots as their own. A Vermont-based organization is working with mining communities to map out and attach GPS coordinates to individual plots and register them with the government. The more miners that become legitimate, the more their diamonds can be traded internationally, increasing the government's tax revenue. Spectrum is developing a campaign to encourage diamond miners to register and government officials to make this easier, teach miners diamond evaluation so that predatory traders do not take advantage of them, and ultimately train them in environmental restoration and more lucrative agricultural practices. Once developed, the campaign can serve as a template in other diamond-producing countries. Spectrum is but one of many Somerville-based concerns that are quietly producing innovations with global impacts.

Innovation and Illusion

Part 1 of a series on Somerville Schools William C. Shelton and Joe Beckman (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Genuine innovation is often only recognized in hindsight. The media eventually notice the results and declare them to be innovation at work. Although not yet widely noticed, Somerville's school system is becoming one of the more innovative in the nation. But not so long ago it was producing extraordinary and widely noticed results that, in hindsight, were an illusion. And the "innovation" behind that illusion, while in plain sight, went unnoticed. Standard and Poors are the folks who placed high credit ratings on CDOs, those worthless bundles of home mortgages that tanked last year. Under contract with the Gates Foundation, they also developed a scale for evaluating schools and school systems on "gain score." That's how students' performance on standardized tests improves or worsens between grades, particularly between the seventh and tenth grades. During the Argenziano administration, Somerville Public Schools had the highest gain scores in the Commonwealth, and among the highest in the nation. Even more noteworthy, this occurred as Somerville's school population was decreasing, while the number of immigrant children for whom English was a second language was increasing. Without questioning what lay behind such a remarkable accomplishment, many city officials took pleasure in boasting about it. What lay behind it was this: a little under 100 sophomores who took the test had received an entire year of "test preparation" by having been held back in the ninth grade for a year. As the proportion of bilingual and special needs students entering the ninth grade had increased, more freshmen failed to meet the high school's standards for promotion to the tenth grade. They were required to repeat the year. So the ninth-grade population grew to be 25% more that that of the other grades. One consequence was that those tenth graders taking the test who had taken the same classes twice boosted the average gain score. There were other consequences as well. Kids held back were separated from a supportive network of peers and friends, but received no focused help from teachers, tutors, or parents. Feeling isolated, often persuaded that they were stupid, more kids dropped out. Another consequence was that putting 100 kids through an extra year of school cost about $1.5 million per year. The greatest consequence, however, was that the causes for students' learning difficulties were never identified and dealt with. When asked about the high retention rate, a former School Committee member said that, "you can't blame the schools if the kids don't test well," expressing the general attitude of many school officials. The most common explanation offered for the high retention rate was to blame the kids and their parents. Preoccupied with survival concerns, disproportionately poor, immigrant, or parents of kids with real learning disabilities, they were in scant position to argue back. The blamers didn't ask what problems the schools themselves could cure. Or how they should adjust the curriculum to more effectively educate the changing population. Or how to provide better guidance. Or which elementary schools most needed help in preparing their students for ninth grade. But why ask questions when you have the highest gain scores in the state? Grade retention was justified with arguments against "social promotion." Indeed, promoting students who have not learned the fundamentals in order to keep them with their social peers sets them up for continued failure and produces illiterate graduates. But there are alternatives other than obligating them to repeat the same experience that didn't work the first time. In Chicago, where Obama's Secretary of Education made his name, school leaders realized decades ago that retaining kids year-to-year was tantamount to giving up on those who most needed help. In the 1970s, they made principals responsible for the failure or success of their schools. Evaluating both required clear and simple grade, retention, and dropout-rate data, and those data revealed that 90% of middle school students who were held back with poor grades didn't graduate high school. If you're told you're stupid often enough, you'll begin to believe it. Back in Somerville, a new Schools administration, new high school principal, and new guidance department produced real innovation. A straightforward "redirect" program now offers timely tutoring, counseling, and instruction before vulnerable kids fail so many tests that they have to repeat an entire course. It works better for the students, their families, their schools, and the taxpayers. In the next few columns we'll look at how it's often housing, economics, law enforcement, health, and their chaotic interaction that undermine school improvement, rather than factors that can be directly controlled by schools themselves. We'll consider how teachers' unions are educationally more progressive than self-described Progressives. And we'll examine how Somerville schools are meeting challenges that confound public educators throughout the nation by creating innovations that remain invisible, unless one pays attention.

"Change" you say?

Part 10: Corporations William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Candidates in last November's presidential election all promised to bring major change. We continue to wait. In this series, I've tried to describe how promises to solve our most pressing problems run up against the economic and political institutions that are those problems' primary cause. I would hope that, having eliminated the threat of world communism, we can have an open discussion about the institutions of corporate capitalism. We are blessed with the democracy and protections provided by our Constitution. When it was written, almost all Americans were farmers, merchants, tradesmen, or slaves. Those who wrote it did not know concentrated power. They could not have anticipated the emergence of the modern corporation in the mid 19th Century. They did not know that the very capitalism that spawned democracy, individual freedom, and more prosperity for more people contained internal dynamics that, over the centuries, would threaten each of these values. One such dynamic is that at the end of every profitable transaction, investors must reinvest the profit to gain even more profit, or consume it and cease to be investors. This expand-or-die competition produces winners and losers. Over time, fewer and fewer winners remain in any industry, and they have more and more concentrated power, wealth, and capacity to influence everyone else. They are the largest corporations. Only about 20% of U.S. businesses are corporations. They make important contributions to our lives. They bring us new technologies, develop life-saving drugs, keep us entertained, and provide jobs to a lot of people. I have worked with senior managers and shareholders in large corporations, and I know them to be decent people who have no particular desire to harm others. They merely accept the institutional rules as they exist and play very hard by them. But those rules give corporations inherent characteristics that enable them, even compel them, to do harm. Corporation law separates management from ownership. It shields owners from liability for a corporation's misdeeds, except to the extent of the money that the owner has invested. It requires directors and managers to act in the "best interest of the corporation," which is interpreted as maximizing shareholders' wealth. Investment flows to those companies that can sustain the absolutely highest rate of profit, whether or not they must harm their community, employees, small businesses, future generations, and the planet to produce it. In fact, shareholders can sue management if it does not pursue such opportunities. Mainstream economists call these injuries "externalities"-other people's problems. Corporations enjoy the protections of the Constitution that its framers only intended to apply to human beings. This has been used successfully to strike down laws that limit what corporations spend to influence politics. Of the world's 100 largest economies, 53 are corporations. Exxon Mobil is larger than the economies of 180 nations. They are growing stronger as states grow weaker. They have replaced the self-organizing market with the corporate equivalent of central planning. While their own individual interests sometimes conflict, they cooperate on issues that affect their general welfare. They do not and cannot exercise absolute power, but they can and do shape the economic and political frameworks within which everyone else has to operate. Government is focused on short-term election cycles, corrupted by money, and poorly informed. It is little match for giant corporations. In 1968, there were fewer than 1,000 Washington lobbyists. Today, there are about 35,000. Of the 100 largest lobbying efforts between 1998 and 2004, corporations and their trade associations conducted 92. Corporations own and influence the media as well, shaping public policy debate. Attempts to solve at their roots such critical problems as healthcare, energy policy, military spending, financial industry regulation, and poverty, are blocked or warped by the focused power of corporations with vested interests in conditions remaining the same. Tiptoeing around this reality produces piecemeal solutions that add large costs, reward those responsible for the problems, and do not solve them. This would appear to be the fate of the current healthcare debate. For those serious about change, here are a few entirely legal actions that could begin to make a difference. Governments charter corporations. Governments could revoke the charters of corporations that do great harm to the public good. Changes in corporation law could also make officers, directors, and owners personally liable if their corporations are grossly negligent. Corporations did not acquire the same legal status as people because Congress passed a law or a court made a decision. In an 1886 Supreme Court case, the Chief Justice remarked that he thought Southern Pacific Railroad was entitled to 14th amendment protections. Somehow this became legal precedent. Congress has the authority to pass legislation that would eliminate this status. Doing so would allow placing legal limits on the money that corporations can spend on elections and lobbying. And Corporations should not be allowed to use shareholders' money to lobby without the oversight of the shareholders themselves. Sharply limiting campaign spending and publicly funding elections would encourage more serious discussion and fewer meaningless sound bites and distortions. Closing the revolving door between the highest positions in government and those in the largest corporations would make a big difference as well. To some, these measures may seem radical. They are merely reforms rooted in our nation's founding values, and they are modest in comparison to the changes that Americans must soon contemplate. The inevitable escalation of energy prices, the emergence of China and India as powerful economic competitors, the continuing disappearance of jobs, and the declining possibility of cheaply financing America with other people's money will, together, fundamentally change how Americans live. We must have a conversation about how the pain and opportunity brought by these changes will be distributed, act effectively in response to them, or become victims of them.

What's a head house?

And why does it matter? William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Few Somerville residents realize Assembly Square's scale. The distance between its North and South ends is the same as that between North and South Stations. But while the downtown area has 12 T stops, Assembly Square will have only one, so it should serve the site as well as possible. MBTA officials expect to begin construction next fall. At a recent community meeting regarding the station's design, nearly every Somerville resident who spoke asked T officials to add a second head house. A head house is not the little structure that one found behind homes before the arrival of indoor plumbing. It is a T-station entrance and exit. And building the Assembly Square station with only one head house, as is now planned, can have a significantly negative impact on East Somerville and Ten Hills residents, on Somerville drivers, and on breathers. The reasons begin with the 333,000+ autos that daily travel on the five roads surrounding Assembly Square. Most Somerville drivers are acquainted with the congestion that daily plagues Route 28 in particular for long periods. Assembly Square's planned developments will greatly increase traffic, but not by nearly as much as the 100,000 auto trips that were forecast by the developers' traffic engineers before the settlement agreement negotiated between the Mystic View Task, Federal Realty Investment Trust, and IKEA. Working together, the parties found creative ways to halve the number of required trips. By comparison 50,000 trips per day was the increase in I-93 capacity created by the $15-billion Big Dig. An essential element in this plan was finding every means possible to encourage Orange Line use. The developers pledged $15 million to build the station, and Congressman Capuano obtained a $25 million Department of Transportation commitment. At the outset of settlement discussions, IKEA negotiators promised that at Assembly Square they would create a whole new model for IKEAs in urban areas. Ultimately, they proposed, and the Planning Board approved, the same old blue box. Including its parking structure, it will be six times the size of the Home Depot. IKEA officials conservatively forecast that their Somerville store will generate 6,180 new car trips on weekdays and 10,510 on Saturdays. Readers will be familiar with the legendary traffic backups created by the Stoughton IKEA. The distance between Route 24 and the Stoughton IKEA is 2 miles on a four-lane road, while that between Somerville's I-93 Lombardi-Street exit and the IKEA site will 1050 feet on a two-lane road. And IKEA projects that half its vehicle trips will come from the North on I-93. Many of IKEA's Boston-area customers will be students and others beginning new households, and many of those could come on the Orange Line. That's where the second head house comes in. To reach IKEA from the proposed single head house, customers would have to walk a circuitous quarter mile, climb or escalate up and down the equivalent of six stories, and then return with their purchases. This will seriously discourage those who would otherwise come by train. An additional head house at the station's Southern end would allow for a level walkway between the top of the T escalator and the IKEA, substantially increasing train users and reducing car trips. The single-head-house station's price tag has now grown by almost $10 million. The Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization has agreed to cover this increase by using some of its regional highway funds. So where would the money for a second head house come from? The obvious answer for a good chunk of it is IKEA. The company is benefiting greatly from $65 million in road improvements in front of its site, financed with state and federal transportation funds. IKEA has made large contributions to local governments elsewhere to mitigate its traffic impacts. It gave $10 million for a bike-friendly highway project in College Park, Maryland, for example. It's hard to imagine that the world's largest furniture company's managers could claim that they can't afford it, although IKEA's erstwhile CEO said that worldwide sales had declined for the first time in the company's history. He thinks that consumers' spending is shifting toward electronics products. Local activist Wig Zamore has an idea for IKEA. It could recruit a high-volume computer/electronics store to share its property. That store would have more frequent visitors, from a smaller trade area. IKEA would have less-frequent visitors, but from a larger trade area. Together, they would boost each other's sales. And with a portion of this increase, plus rent from the electronics store, IKEA could help pay for a second head house. The Assembly Square T station could better serve Somerville with two more important improvements. Draw 7 park is a hidden jewel on the Mystic River. An exit from the T station directly into the park would make it less hidden and more accessible. Finally, as now designed the station will be visible from only a tiny portion of the site. It would be best to increase visibility for both head houses by putting them at the ends of Foley Street and IKEA Way. With these changes, the T station would be a much better asset for Somerville and for visitors to Assembly Square.

Planning Somerville's Future

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) If you don't know where you're going, any path will take you there. That was too often the case in the past, when city officials did not set clear goals for the city's future guided by an agreed-upon vision for the future. They approved developments that generate relatively low city revenues on land that could support higher-value uses. They approved conversions of commercial properties with high tax rates and low municipal costs, to residential uses with low tax rates and high costs. The result was a structural fiscal deficit. Now, the mayor wants to set destinations and define the paths that will take us to them, and he wants to involve as many Somerville residents as possible in doing so. Leading the effort are staff from his Strategic Office of Planning and Community Development (SOPCD). Keith Craig, who is guiding the effort, explains that a provision in Massachusetts General Law authorizes municipalities that wish to, to prepare a comprehensive plan. It's comprehensive because it includes plans for economic development, housing, open space, city services, recreation, and transportation; and because it must account for how each of those elements interacts; and because it must anticipate future trends. Imagine the nested Chinese boxes or carved Russian dolls that are sold in gift shops. You open one to find another. You open the next to find yet another, and so on through a dozen boxes. Now imagine that Somerville is the middle box. Within it are boxes that represent the elements being planned for and conditions shaping them within the city. Surrounding it, boxes range outward, from regional dynamics to global economic forces. Finally, imagine that each box is in a state of continual change, affecting and sometimes transforming the boxes around and within it. Understanding those dynamics is quite a challenge in itself. And the comprehensive plan must provide clear guidance for future decision makers while allowing sufficient flexibility for trends and events that cannot now be foreseen. Two events that can be foreseen are the arrival of the Orange and Green Lines. There is a finite amount of time in which to make plans that will maximize the opportunities they bring, while minimizing such risks as gentrification. What with conducting the comprehensive planning process at the same time, SOPCD staff are busier that a one-legged planner in an ass-kicking contest. That planning process begins, as it should, with exhaustively collecting and rigorously analyzing those data that describe Somerville's economic, housing, population, and transportation trends. Accurately understanding how they brought us to this moment, while combining this information with regional and national trends, creates a baseline for understanding where we are going. While our city faces the same challenges confronting many cities, we are only 4.2 square miles in scale. So as Keith Craig explains, "Somerville is a microcosm of all the challenges going on the in the world, but in a manageable space." SOPCD staff are conducting a series of open meetings to inform residents of their research findings and solicit insights regarding their meaning. In the next step residents will work together to set a vision for the city's future. Much of the visioning will occur in large public forums in which the price of admission is participation. SOPCD Executive Director Monica Lamboy anticipates that different participants will inevitably be passionate about different issues. She hopes to conduct a productive conversation-bounded by the finite realities defined in SOPCD's real-world data analysis-through which participants can understand how their issue fits into the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The forums' results will go to a 56-member steering committee composed of representatives appointed by the mayor, aldermen, superintendent of education, school committee, key departments, and community organizations. They will prepare drafts of what they've heard and how it has influenced their thinking. The drafts will go back to the public participants and form the basis of a dialogue between them and the steering committee, from which the committee will draft goals, policies, and action plans. Once finished, the plan will guide creation of an updated General (land use) Plan, which has not been revised since 1989. It will attract investment to the city by giving developers and commercial tenants comfort about what they can expect within the districts in which they might locate. And it will sensitize and position public and private city leaders to take advantage of future opportunities. This is a rare moment when it is possible to shape Somerville's future for generations to come. Everyone, who cares about our city should participate. You can learn more, review research produced to date, and find out about participation opportunities at the Comprehensive Plan's website. Go to www.somervillema.gov/, click on "City Departments," and then link to SOPCD. On the right side of the page will be the comprehensive plan link. You can send questions and suggestions to Mr. Craig at kcraig@somervillema.gov.

"Change" you say?

Part 9: What change? William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) I began this series before the 1998 election, when "change" was the most common word uttered in campaign speeches. Candidates from both major parties promised that if elected they would change the policies that have done so much damage to the nation and the wellbeing of its people. My thesis was fairly simple. The root cause for these disasters isn't the policies themselves, but the outdated economic and political institutions that create them. And the process by which politicians achieve and maintain their positions ensures that few will have the will or courage to challenge the institutions themselves. So let's test this thesis. Six months into a new presidential administration and Congress, what has become of the candidates' change promises? Healthcare When he was a Senator, Barack Obama declared himself a "proponent of single-payer universal health care." He said that the only reason why single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is "because first we have to take back the White House, take back the Senate, and take back the House." Now that this has happened, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) is conducting hearings on healthcare reform. On May 12, he had five doctors and nurses arrested when, from the audience, they asked why he would not allow a single proponent of a single-payer system to testify. The president and a majority of congressional Democrats are now advocating a system which would largely continue current arrangements, but individual consumers could opt for a publicly managed healthcare plan. The proposal is a costly giveaway to insurance and drug companies, and patients who opted for the public plan would probably be among the most costly to treat. Obama could successfully speak directly to the electorate, presenting unequivocal evidence that a single payer system would produce better outcomes and reduce administrative costs to 1% from their current 15-to-30%. He could mobilize the 60% of Americans and 60% of their doctors who say they would prefer such a plan. Instead, his "pragmatic" approach underestimates Americans and squanders his mandate. Over the last decade, the healthcare industry spent $2.9 billion on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions. Financial Regulation "Change" candidates took turns surfing the wave of public anger against those of the greedy whom the public perceived as responsible for the financial meltdown. Since being elected or reelected, they have done nothing to change the underlying institutions that make such disasters inevitable. Instead, Bankers and their lobbyists, shameless with regard to their role in the meltdown, persuaded lawmakers to eliminate an 18% interest-rate cap from the credit-card reform bill. They successfully opposed a measure in the Senate that would have allowed 1.7 million homeowners facing foreclosure to renegotiate their mortgages in bankruptcy court. The previous episode of public thievery (Remember Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, WorldCom?) prompted cries for reform. We got the usual window dressing and piecemeal band-aids. Treasury Secretary Geithner's current proposals don't seem much different. Here's one example. Derivatives are financial contracts whose prices derive from something else-stocks, commodities, exchange rates, interest rates, inflation, etc. They are often complex, difficult to understand, and enormously profitable for banks. Their massive debt leveraging played a significant role in the meltdown. Geithner proposes allowing customized derivatives to trade privately, outside of public view. Over the last decade the financial services industry spent $3.4 billion on lobbying. It spent $1.7 Billion on federal election contributions. Military Spending We should be spending public money to make ourselves more secure instead of enriching what President Eisenhower called the military-congressional-industrial complex. In the segment on military spending, I wrote, "If Barack Obama does not make some tough decisions about where and how to make deep cuts in military spending, he won't have money to do anything else." It seems that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates does want to eliminate costly and ineffective programs. This has been a staple in many Democratic legislators' speeches for years. But if such cuts would eliminate pork from a legislator's own district, then threatened programs become worthy necessities. Among the examples of waste that I cited in the military spending segment was the chronically troubled and strategically useless F-22 fighter. It costs $44,000 per hour to fly, and the Pentagon and President don't want it. But now, Senators Kennedy, Kerry, and a congressional majority are poised to approve it. Over the past decade, the defense industry spent $835 million on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions. Energy and Climate Change A policy that effectively controlled energy costs and fought climate change would have to do three things: end our addiction to oil and coal, accelerate our transition to cleaner and cheaper energy sources, and make polluters pay for their greenhouse gasses. The American Clean Energy and Security Act that is now in congressional committee can't do any of these. It is riddled with loopholes and larded with hundreds of billions in giveaways. Focusing on one small point, there is no safe way to remove and store CO2 produced by burning coal. By the time such technology could be developed, alternative energy sources would be much cheaper. Yet with a straight face, Obama continues to speak favorably about "clean coal." Over the past decade, the energy and natural resources industry spent $2.1 billion on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions. Economists describe our institutions' incapacity to place a proper value on a clean atmosphere and humanity's future as a "market failure." In fact, it is the inevitable evolution of the market as we know it. In the last segment of this series, I'll describe why this is so, and how we might change it.

Parking Extortion

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) At least city officials aren't pretending that increased parking extortion is about anything other than increasing City revenue. Spokesman Tom Champion traces the new parking regulations directly back to recommendations from the Financial Advisory Committee appointed by Mayor Curtatone in January. These changes extend past attempts to compensate for failed zoning and development policy by nickel and diming residents and business owners. But the damage that they do will go beyond nickels and dimes. They include doubling parking meter rates; extending meter hours to 8:00 PM and, in some business districts, 10:00; and increasing fees and fines. Particularly irritating to me is forcing residential permit requirements onto 162 blocks that do not now have them. Mine is one, and with the exception of snow emergencies, there has never been a time when we did not have ample on-street parking. This burdensome and unnecessary change exists to jack up parking violation revenues. While increased parking extortion means pain for residents, it can injure local businesses. Imagine attending a live performance at the Somerville Theater. Would you leave in the middle of it to go feed the meter? When you later found the $30 ticket on your car, would you be inclined to come back? I talk about "increased" parking extortion because the new regulations extend a little-noticed strategy to compensate for city revenue lost to bad zoning and permitting decisions. Since Joe Curtatone took office, the number of parking control officers has increased by one-quarter, and revenue from parking fines has increased by one-half, to $7.4 million annually. Minus the $1.6 million budget for parking enforcement, this is almost a $6 million "profit." Little noticed as well, is the fact that fines for many non-meter violations were already twice those of Boston and Cambridge. Noticed and widely discussed, however, are increasingly common stories from residents who believe that they were wrongly ticketed or that Traffic and Parking consciously uses tactics to promote violations. The fine for parking in front of a handicap-accessible curb cut is $200, but a number of them are not in a crosswalk or not posted and are therefore invisible. There are no street-sweeping signs on certain blocks. There is a prohibition against parking within twenty feet of a corner-a good idea for streets so narrow that parked cars could block the turning radius required by emergency vehicles. But it is applied to all street corners. And the city declines to either paint curbs or post signs that say "No parking here to the corner," while it has no problem posting signs with the mayor's name on anything that might be an amenity. I won't get into the burden that the 48-hour parked-car prohibition imposes on residents who want to take a vacation. Or the requirement that friends and relatives who are visiting residents stand in line, hand over their vehicle registration, and pay for a "special visitors permit" if they want to stay longer than two days. This short-term-gain-long-term-pain approach to increasing needed city revenues parallels the failed development policies for which it is attempting to compensate. Eight years ago in Somerville's other newspaper, I wrote that "the imbalance between commercial property taxes and increasing costs of residential services has brought us to the verge of a fiscal crisis." That crisis came a year later with sharp cuts in state aid, and it is here again. Residential property is taxed at two-thirds the rate of commercial property, but produces twice the municipal costs. The city spends about $100,000 per acre of taxable land, but not a single property in the city produces that much per-acre tax revenue. Historically, Somerville's policy, zoning, and often hiring decisions have been driven by favor-trading and political calculations more than by hard evidence and a commitment to our long-term future. So as the city's large business enterprises closed, favored developers were allowed to convert them to apartments and condos, worsening municipal finances. Our best hope to solve these fiscal woes was developing Assembly Square, Somerville's and Boston's best remaining large-scale development site, as an office-based neighborhood with supporting retail. When in 1999, developers proposed building suburban-style big box stores instead, Alderman Curtatone opposed them. Campaign finance records show that in 2003, the big-box developers mobilized campaign contributions sufficient to enable Curtatone to outspend his opponent 3-to-1, eke out a 50.8% majority, and become mayor. Three months after taking office, he pushed through legislation that gutted Assembly Square's zoning. The developers cashed out with $30 million in profit. Federal Realty Investment Trust bought the property. They have infinitely more integrity than their predecessors and have demonstrated a commitment to wise development going forward. The Curtatone administration is now diligently pursuing commercial development in Union Square and the Inner Belt. But those sites are much more problematic than was Assembly Square and have much less potential. And the economic cycle is not favoring us. So the big-box strip mall at Assembly Square produces $1.2 million in gross tax revenues, while parking extortion produces $7.4 million, with the promise of significant revenue growth. This is an infuriating injustice, but it is also a distraction. It is another product of a debased political culture and the obsolete city charter that perpetuates it.

Promoting addiction to pay the piper

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) An enterprise that requires exploiting addiction or ignorance to make money is morally bankrupt. Yet that is precisely what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is doing. Our political leaders don't have the courage to adopt a just tax policy or cut the excess costs that result from favoritism toward well-connected interest groups. Instead, they consider approving the most predatory form of legalized gambling in the United States. Although the Massachusetts Senate voted 31-to-6 against a proposal to install 2,500 slot machines at racetracks, many Senators explained that their intention was only to postpone the decision and separate it from the budget bill. House Speaker DeLeo, Senate President Murray, and Governor Patrick say that they want to reconsider the question in the fall. The Senate did agree to offer Massachusetts's residents (whose per capita expenditures on the lottery and scratch tickets together is already the highest in the country) another means of losing money. They voted to join the multi-state Power Ball lottery. Meanwhile, Treasurer Tim Cahill suggests building slot-machine-only casinos. The rationale is that slot machines would produce much-needed revenue for a beyond-broke state budget. Okay, but slots would also reduce the amount of taxable economic activity that would be produced by people spending their hard-earned money on things other than gambling. And such economic activity creates more jobs per dollar spent. Nor does the rationale account for the increases in public welfare, social service, and public safety costs that slot machines would produce. Beyond these abstract economic projections awaits profound human misery. I'm not talking about gamblers who visit a casino a few times per year as entertainment or buy the occasional scratch ticket. The casinos would go bankrupt if those were their only customers. I'm talking about the 10% of casino patrons who produce 90% of casinos' revenue-the addicts. Casino managers' aim is to entice gamblers to "play to extinction." That is a gambling industry term that means playing until you have no more money and no access to any. Scholars who study such things tell us that slot machines are the most addictive form of legalized gambling. Casino managers use every means available to encourage and exploit those addictive qualities. They use video screens and buttons instead of mechanical wheels and levers so as to increase the number of plays per hour from 300 to as much a 900. They program the results presented on the screen so that the player believes he or she "almost" hit the jackpot. They build a credit card receptacle into the machine itself. They identify addicts and potential addicts by renting lists from companies that operate ATMs in casinos and target them with direct mail and email offers. They provide free alcohol and free or reduced-price lodging to keep people playing. They design stools so that players can sit for hours without cutting off circulation to their legs. When a player seems ready to call it quits, a casino employee will offer a small cash voucher to keep him or her chasing the elusive jackpot. M.I.T. professor Natasha Schüll says that slot-machine addiction isn't about the urge to win. It's about entering a trance-like state that casino operators call "the zone," which produces the same kind of dopamine release in the brain that addictive drugs provide. This is what the Commonwealth will promote by licensing slot machines. Perhaps we can generate even more revenue by licensing crack houses. Very few crack dealers use crack, and even fewer gambling executives use slot machines. I wonder if any legislators will get into "the zone," or even understand what they have created. Some apologists for legalized gambling say that objections like mine are "elitist." Would they believe that trying to prevent one's children from becoming crack addicts is elitist? Or whether trying to spare another family the hardship and misery that comes from a gambling-addicted parent is elitist? Our political leaders would serve us much better if they took a hard look at, and exercised political leadership on a just tax policy. They wet their pants when they are accused of increasing taxes. Yet they take credit for the police and fire protection, education, roads, and services on which our wellbeing depends but that only taxes can pay for. Although Massachusetts is seventh highest among all the states in per capita personal income, we are in the bottom half in the amount of taxes that we pay as a share of that income. Our problem isn't so much that our flat income tax is too low or too high. Our problem is that our income tax is flat. We demand that the poorer that people are, the greater percentage of their income they pay in taxes. Joining the 34 other states that ask their citizens to support their government based on ability to pay would not only increase economic justice. It would increase our capacity to avoid the kind of fiscal catastrophe that we now confront. But that would require political leaders with courage, moral fiber, and a sense of justice.

Studying highway pollutant risks to make things better

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Spring has arrived, and Somerville residents living near I-93, McGrath Highway, and Mystic Avenue wake up each morning to hear the birds...coughing. Our fair city is unusually burdened by the major roadways that pass through it and their impacts on our health. Many observers have speculated that these impacts account for why we have the highest rate per square mile of excessive heart disease and lung cancer deaths among Massachusetts' 351 cities and towns. Yet, we smoke less and have no industrial air pollution sources. Now, a $2.5 million study called the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) will attempt to determine whether, and how much, roadway pollution is affecting Somerville residents. Tufts University researchers will collect air samples in neighborhoods near I-93. They will randomly select neighborhood residents, extensively interview them, collect blood samples to identify inflammatory markers, and follow them for five years. Concerns about highway pollution are not new to Somervillians, nor have we been naïve. Almost 40 years ago, East Somerville residents formed Somerville Citizens for Adequate Transportation to oppose I-93 cutting through the heart of their neighborhood, and then to persuade the Commonwealth to build below the surrounding grade. State officials refused on both counts. They did promise to build a barrier between the expressway and the neighborhood, and to plant trees along it. They did neither. At the time, Governor John Volpe's administration commissioned a study to forecast I-93's air quality impacts in Somerville. Researchers found that it would create air pollution as much as ten times higher than federally allowable limits. The study was never made public. What the researchers did not know was that tiny particles produced by vehicles are much deadlier and much more local in their impact than the pollutants that were studied. There are as many as 1.6 million fine and ultrafine particles in every cubic inch of vehicle exhaust. When inhaled, most are retained deep in the lungs or passed into the bloodstream and transmitted to the heart and brain. In the years since I-93's construction, over 2,000 scientific papers have studied particles and their health impacts. Among their findings are that people living within 100 meters (325 feet) of a major highway have a death rate from lung cancer, heart attacks, and other cardiopulmonary diseases that is 95% higher than that of the national population. Because younger kids have developing organs, a higher metabolism, and proportionately more air sacs in their lungs, they absorb twice the particles that adults do. Those who live near highways tend to develop only 80% of their lung capacity or less. The Mystic View Task Force in the late 1990s took up the work begun by Somerville Citizens for Adequate Transportation. They not only objected to squandering substantial tax- and job-creation opportunities on the development of big-box stores. They were also concerned about the impacts of the enormous traffic increases created by those stores on neighbors' health and wellbeing. Instead of protecting citizens' interests, city government violated its own laws to favor developers. Mystic View brought a series of successful lawsuits. One outcome of the resulting settlement agreement was a development plan that reduced projected vehicle trips from 100,000 to 50,000 per day, a reduction equal to the I-93 capacity increase created by the big dig. Another of the settlement's outcomes was Federal Real Estate Investment Trust's commitment to fund a $50,000 study to measure the amount and location in Somerville of the deadly particles produced by I-93. It found very high levels of ultrafines close to the expressway and especially downwind, which is usually on the Ten Hills side. The Tufts research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will now study what impacts those particle concentrations are having on neighbors' health. The Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership (STEP), along with community groups from Chinatown and South Boston, collaborated in writing and submitting the study's funding application, and they will help to oversee its execution. STEP President Ellin Reisner explains that their intent is not just to measure the amount and kind of pollutants in Somerville air, but to determine pollutants' impacts on neighbors' health. Everyone on the eastern side of the city knows someone who has suffered from asthma, emphysema, heart disease, or lung cancer. But we need to know how common this is and whether it can be explained by factors such as preexisting conditions and other sources of exposure to pollutants. The research team does not want to alarm people about conditions that have already existed for decades. Instead, they want to develop solid evidence that can be a basis for policy makers' and ordinary citizens' efforts to improve health conditions. There is little point in worrying about what we cannot control. But working together to identify and undertake actions that can really make a difference will increase the wellbeing of us all.

Transitioning Somerville

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Many foolish myths are woven through the popular culture that saturates our every waking hour: The future will be richer than the present. This ever-growing wealth will trickle down to uplift the poor. The things we buy will make us as happy as the people in television commercials seem to be, and if they don't, there must be something wrong with us. Our rugged individualism makes cooperating with neighbors and resolving our conflicts unnecessary. Yet our own history reveals these myths to be lies that serve the consumption-driven economy that has produced our deepening national distress. My parents suffered during the Great Depression. They knew that things are not always better for the next generation. Contradicting the myth of individualism, older Somervillians speak wistfully about times when people took the streetcar to local, family-supporting jobs; times when neighbors intervened swiftly to help those devastated by tragedy, rather than sending them to three different agencies for three different "services;" when they sat on their front stoops, visited with each other, and made their own entertainment rather than buying video games. Contradicting the myth of individualism, older Somervillians speak wistfully about times when neighbors intervened swiftly to help those devastated by tragedy rather than sending them to three different agencies for three different "services;" about times when people took the streetcar to local, family-supporting jobs; about when they sat on their front stoops, visited with each other, and made their own entertainment rather than buying video games The pervasiveness of today's myths causes many of us to view those who extol yesterday's modes of living as sentimentalists who romanticize practices to which we cannot realistically return and wouldn't want to. Such a view makes us brittle. It undermines our ability to recognize forces for change and respond flexibly to them. We get a sense of these forces when we pay four dollars for a gallon of gasoline. Or when our city faces a potential loss of $9-to-10 million in state aid, is forced to lay off scores of workers, and reduces municipal services. But these are the merest hints. The coincidence of peak oil and climate change will dramatically transform the way that we live. Many of us don't yet believe this, and none of us is prepared for it. Peak oil comes when half of the world's oil reserves are used up. At that point, demand continues to increase from nations with growing economies, while supply declines and prices rise suddenly and sharply. When the peak comes, we will be unable to pay for much of what we now take for granted. In 2005, the Bush administration's Department of Energy published a document commonly known as the Hirsch Report. It stated that, "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem....Without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented." Reasonable energy experts disagree about when the peak will occur. Some, like Abdullah Jum'ah, president of Saudi Aramco, believe there are sufficient world reserves to last another century. But a majority of experts believes that the peak will come in less than a decade. And the Hirsch report states that "Viable mitigation options exist...but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking." We are not now initiating them. I have written in the past about the consequences of peak oil's evil twin, climate change (http://www.thesomervillenews.com/print.asp?ArticleID=272&SectionID=3&SubSectionID=3 and http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2007/12/climate-change.html). Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed a scientific review that was ordered in a two-year-old Supreme Court decision. It concluded that greenhouse gases' impact on the climate is endangering our health and welfare. The same week, scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research concluded that cuts in CO2 of at least 70% are necessary to avert catastrophic consequences. It's hard to fully imagine the impacts of such a reduction on how we live. While governments dither, citizens are preparing for the profound and inevitable changes that these dual phenomena will bring. Among their efforts is the Transition Movement, which began in Kinsale, Ireland five years ago and is spreading through Western Europe and the U.S. Among its key concepts is the idea of resilience. Resilience is the ability of a system-economic, familial, environmental, political-to hold together and keep functioning in response to abrupt change. A second key concept is self reliance. Transitionists work at the municipal level. Their practices are as varied as getting people to support local businesses, repairing equipment rather than tossing it, implementing energy conservation policies, and growing food within cities. In the context of Somerville, the urban farming part seemed bizarre when I learned of it. Then I remembered a dear old neighbor, since passed on, who grew his own grapes and made his own wine. And another neighbor who grew so many tomatoes that with a large hammer, he could have produced a lifetime supply of catsup from one season's harvest. And the Somerville Garden Club's annual tours. Much of the environmental movement has worked to make us feel guilty for wanting comfort, or self-righteous for giving it up. Transition-Movement activists believe that life beyond peak oil can be richer and more fulfilling than it is now. They aim to inspire hope, enthusiasm, and delighted participation. Three Somerville women-Vanessa Rule, Emily Hardt, and Jennifer Mazer-are exploring the possibility of making Somerville a transition town. They will conduct an informational session this evening, 7:00 PM, at the Visiting Nurses Association's community room, 259 Lowell Street. More information on the Transition Movement can be found at Transition United States (http://transitionus.ning.com/) and Transition Culture (www.transitionculture.org).

Rules of Thumb

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Spring moves north about 13 miles per day. When trying to get somewhere in Somerville without directions, take a turn at every major intersection. On Cape Cod, always go straight and look for signs. If a knife's edge reflects light, it's time to get it sharpened. Unfortunately, Siraco's once the best blade sharpener around, is no longer in Magoun Square. You will recognize the obvious much sooner than professionals. The quality of flavor in cheese is inversely proportional to the thickness of the slice. The crossbar on a bicycle should just come to your crotch, standing flat-footed with your shoes off. When you are conversing with people who don't speak English, assume that they understand about half as much as they look like they understand. Don't enter a poker game unless you have fifty times the betting limit in your pocket. The diameter of a tree trunk in inches is the radius of the root system in feet. New arrivals to Somerville are, on average, politically inert for seven years. In half the cases, an employee calling in sick is actually sick. We tend to do to others what has been done to us. To estimate the number of calories that you consume each day, multiply your weight by 15. To gain or lose weight, increase or decrease this number by 20%. Each additional 10,000 car trips per day on Somerville's roads increases our excess cardiopulmonary deaths by 1 per year. A used tool in good condition should cost no more than half the price of a new one. The number of seconds between lightning and thunder, divided by five, is the number of miles you are away from it. Any time a mechanic begins by telling you how lucky you are that you brought your car in when you did, plan on spending at least $500. If for some reason you need to wear a tuxedo more than once every year, it is cheaper to buy than to rent. Somerville government costs $115,000 per year for every taxable acre of land. A 3/4 front view makes the best photo for selling a car. A ball hit to left field by a left-handed hitter will slice toward the left-field line, and vice versa. The third restaurant that goes into a space is usually the one that succeeds. During a job interview, don't spend more than 60 seconds answering any one question. To blow a tree stump out of the ground, use one stick of dynamite for every four inches in stump diameter. When writing an ad, keep each sentence to twelve words or less. A billboard should have not more than seven words and two things to look at. Someone speaking in passive voice is probably concealing something. Doubt anyone who seems to be speaking with strong emotion, but whose shoulders are relaxed. On government multiple-choice exams, the longest answer is usually the correct one. The most offensive people are also usually the most easily offended. When the temperature at sunset is 50 degrees or less, there will probably be a frost. A garment is probably well made if stripes and plaids are matched at the seams. If something that is not human bites you, it is probably female. If you can't see a car's rear tires at a stoplight, or if you can read its odometer, you're too close. You can always find one good reason to do anything. Find two. The speed that allows the most cars to use a road at once is 22 mph. Ten people will raise the temperature of a medium sized room 1 degree per hour. If fewer than 8 of the 11 aldermen vote for a measure, it means that the mayor doesn't care if it passes

"Change" you say?

Part 8: Healthcare William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) Every humane society in the world today with the means to do so provides healthcare to all of its citizens, except for the United States of America. And "if we had set out to design the worst system that we could imagine, we couldn't have imagined one as bad as we have," says Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world on both a per-person basis-$7-8,000-and as a percentage of the total economy-15-16%. Switzerland's, the next-most-expensive system's, per-person costs are 56% of ours. Canada's are 44%; Great Britain's, 22%. Yet 47 million U.S. residents have no health insurance, and the numbers keep growing. Back in the economy's boom days, more than half of all personal bankruptcies were the result of medical emergencies. While American healthcare is the most costly, its outcomes are shameful. The United Nations ranks U.S. life expectancy at 29th in the world and our infant mortality rate at 33rd. Our own CIA puts these rankings at 45th, and 42nd respectively. The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. 37th in health system performance, between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Our system's staffing levels are low, and it lacks safety controls, putting staff and patients at risk. Estimates of annual deaths resulting from medical errors range from 48,000 to 98,000. Virtually every analyst who studies the entire system from a perspective free of self-interest and ideological presuppositions concludes that a single-payer healthcare system is the best solution. In such a system, the government negotiates contracts with doctors and hospitals and pays their bills. Citizens pay for healthcare through the kind of payroll tax that now funds Medicare. Propagandists and fools call this "socialized medicine," but that would be a system that is owned by the government and employs the doctors. The Veterans Administration is socialized medicine. A single-payer system is not. From statistics already cited, it should be clear that single-payer systems produce better health outcomes. By covering everyone and emphasizing preventative care, many health problems never arise, while those that do can be identified at an early stage, where treatment is more effective and less expensive. Single-payer plans can also disseminate and encourage best practices. Mitchell Selzer, a leading hospital consultant studied the practice profiles of 24,000 physicians treating 1.5 million patients. He found that a subgroup of those doctors studied consistently admitted, diagnosed, and treated patients using 20-to-30% fewer resources and incurring correspondingly lower costs than the average doctor studied. Yet this group produced better care-fewer errors, shorter stays, fewer infections, fewer readmissions, fewer deaths. Preventative care and best practices are not the only reasons why single-payer is less expensive. A landmark Harvard Medical School study determined that some 30% of healthcare dollars go to administrative costs. Health insurance companies dispute this figure, citing an industry-average administrative expense of 15 percent. But they don't acknowledge that healthcare practitioners absorb the expenses required to deal with insurance companies. By comparison, Medicare's administrative costs are 1%. And insurance companies don't have the will or bargaining power to negotiate the kind of prices that send Americans to Canada to purchase their prescription drugs. Single payer is a fiscally conservative solution. Between decreased healthcare costs and increased taxes, Americans would spend less. And American businesses would be more competitive. General Motors' healthcare costs are $1,500 for every car that it manufactures. I began this series during the elections, when the word most often on presidential candidates' lips was "change." My intent was to show that in every policy area, a fundamental transformation of our economic and political institutions would be required to achieve the basic conditions that all Americans should expect. Single-payer healthcare is an excellent example in that its implementation would not require such fundamental change. But apparently, its adoption would. Instead, policy makers support piecemeal solutions that add large costs, reward those responsible for the mess, and do not solve the problem. The prescription drug benefit passed in 2003 comes to mind. A CBS News/New York Times poll published in February reported that 59% of Americans say the government should provide national health insurance. Other polls put this figure as high as 70%. Meanwhile, 59% was also the portion of doctors who told researchers for an Annals of Internal Medicine study that they support legislation to establish national health insurance. Opposing these citizens and doctors are lobbyists and publicists, well paid by the multibillion-dollar health insurance industry. In addition to broadcasting falsehoods that single-payer healthcare is a "socialized" system that would be more expensive and less effective, they say that consumers would have fewer choices. The reverse is true. Freed of restrictions imposed by their current medical plans, consumers could choose any doctor or hospital that they wanted, increasing competition. Politicians who posture as defenders of the people's interests quail in response to forces mobilized by health insurers. It's not just the huge campaign contributions that insurers can invest. Once something is considered to be politically unfeasible, it's suicidal for a politician, no matter how well established, to keep advocating it. He or she is considered to be hopelessly unrealistic and disloyal to the party. Journalists focus on politics rather than substance. They reflect opinion rather than inform it. They confuse objectivity with impartiality, uncritically quoting both sides of an issue and thereby passing along myths and lies. Forceful and consistent presidential leadership that continually points to hard evidence and poll results could defeat the health insurers, for-profit hospital chains, and right-wing ideologues. Instead, we are moving toward another piecemeal policy. In Canada, politicians had the courage and vision to say to health insurers, "you're out of business. You have a much better chance to find new work than citizens have to improve their health under the current system." In the United States, we allow an industry with 140,000 agents to kill policies that would benefit 250 million Americans.

Somerville after the fall

William C. Shelton (The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) The gales of economic adversity howling through the nation and the world will be brutal and prolonged. As the recession deepens and prolongs, it will coincide with peak oil impacts. And as baby-boomers continue to age, far fewer workers will support many more retirees. Increasing the Social Security eligibility age is inevitable, and decreasing benefits is likely. Healthcare costs, now at $8,000 for every man, woman, and child, will increase to $13,000 within a decade. When the storm ultimately subsides, Americans will live differently. If our city's leaders reform their foolish development policy, Somerville will be better positioned than many places to benefit from these changes because of the region in which we are located, our urban character, and our particular characteristics. Economic tumult has transformed modes of living in the past. At the conclusion of the Civil War, towns like Lawrence, Lowell, and Springfield were the nation's industrial centers, while most Americans lived on farms or in farming towns. A mortgage-driven banking crisis in 1873 marked the beginning of a depression that lasted over twenty years. By 1900, innovations in industrial production were concentrating economic growth in burgeoning factory cities across what we now call the rust belt. Changes in how Americans lived were both a result and a cause of this transformation. Many left the farm, drawn away by factory wages and the excitement of city life. They could not have done so without productivity improvements that lowered food and clothing costs, enabling them to afford city rents. These historic changes had a great impact on Somerville, its emigrants with French Canadian roots, and its immigrants from Italy. In 1929, another banking crisis marked the beginning of the Great Depression. It ended when World War II drove an enormous expansion in industrial capacity and wages. The War's conclusion brought suburban growth and economic demand driven by production of the automobiles required to commute to, and the appliances required to equip single-family suburban homes. Retail establishments, then production facilities, then offices followed the urban refugees. The suburbs' lure entranced many Somervillians whose departure began to unravel the fabric of the city's extraordinary community. Past crises hastened economic trends already underway. This one will accelerate the loss of manufacturing jobs that globalization and less-than-fair trade have brought us over the past several decades. Between December 2007 and November 2008, the manufacturing, construction, extraction, and transport sectors shed 1.8 million jobs, while professional-occupation jobs increased by 500,000. Future job growth will come from the energy, education, healthcare, biotech, entertainment, information, and research sectors. It will be driven by innovation, which happens most in dense urban areas where diverse professions and peoples interact. The world's 40 largest urban concentrations produce 90% of its patented innovations. Simply being urban is not enough, however. Attracting a critical mass of highly educated people is essential. There is no metropolitan area with as dense a concentration of such workers as Greater Boston. And Somerville, whose residents with college degrees grew from 16% to 40% between 1980 and 2000, now has the second-densest concentration of people with postgraduate degrees in Massachusetts. There will be population shifts within regions as well. The changing location of job opportunities will add momentum to the move back to the cities already motivated by increased fuel costs, commute times, reduced family sizes, and the excitement, freedom, and amenities of urban life. When I first came to Somerville, housing was a bargain. Now, urban residential neighborhood space across the nation and in Somerville is priced between 40%-to-200% more than is suburban space. In most metropolitan areas, only 5-to-10% of housing is located in walkable urban places like ours. But the University of Michigan's Jonathan Levine finds that one in three homeowners would now prefer to live in these places. The new economy will reduce homeownership as well. Strong and urgent requirements to lower the federal debt, fund healthcare, and invest in sectors with the greatest potential for economic growth will obligate the federal government to reduce the generous home-mortgage-interest income-tax deduction. At the personal level, the often-cited "American dream" has been about economic opportunity and home ownership. Now these two ambitions are in conflict. Americans can no longer finance their over-consuming lifestyles with easy credit. The combination of housing and transportation costs is accounting for 50% or more of many families' budgets. They are draining money away from expenditures, such as education, that are necessary to pursue economic opportunity. About two-thirds of U.S. families own their homes. This ratio will probably reverse to two-thirds of families being renters, which is already the case in Somerville. The Green Line's arrival, and a spatial pattern that is congenial to expanded public transportation, will also serve Somerville well. As Somerville suffered from the flight to the suburbs, the new economy will bring suffering to suburbs not served by rail transit. A growing number of residents will leave them, lowering their property values. Suburban property tax revenues will drop, in turn, reducing the safety and quality education that made suburbs attractive. Their low-quality postwar construction will deteriorate without continuous reinvestment. They will become the new slums, characterized by poverty, crime, and decay. So Somerville as a whole is well positioned to benefit from the coming economic transformation. The highly educated newcomers who have been arriving here since the late 1980s will benefit the most. But unless our city's political leaders change their idiotic development policies, the current trend in which people who have grown up here can no longer afford to pay Somerville rents will accelerate. And local affordable-housing advocates will be as impotent to forestall this outcome as they are to meet current housing needs. Already the densest city in New England, we do not need more housing. Every new housing unit worsens the city's structural fiscal deficit, since housing produces only two-thirds the tax revenue of commercial property, but generates twice the costs to the city. The best housing development program is a job that will pay market-rate rents. As educated workers concentrate, knowledge workers innovate, and new businesses proliferate, Somerville is positioned to greatly expand its tax base with office and research-and-development-facility construction. Some of the tax revenues thus produced could be used to prepare long-term residents for well-paying jobs in the companies that will locate here. We cannot achieve this if we keep frittering away our prime office locations and infrastructure concentrations on suburban-style big-box developments and soccer stadiums. And nonprofit housing developers are not doing their clients or the city any favors by building pockets of poverty like the developments next to the Target store and on the St. Polycarp's site. Instead, they should acquire and renovate solid, already existing housing stock as mixed-income developments. Led by a vision that is equal to the new reality, Somerville after the fall can do very well. Or, we can remain a close-in bedroom community for knowledge workers and watch history pass us by.

Community

William C. Shelton In past columns, I've written about what an extraordinarily rich community Somervillians created and enjoyed in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and how it gradually disintegrated in the second half. Yet I don't think I've ever clearly stated what I mean by "community." It's worth doing, because the word is used and misused to mean many different things. Some use it to mean "place," although where they live is often the only aspect that they share. Some refer to the "immigrant community" or the "Italian-American community." Since immigrants come from different countries speak different languages, and observe different customs, it seems odd to me to think of them as members of the same community. Presumably, this use of "community" refers to whatever interests they share by being immigrants, or Italian Americans, or whatever. Some, who feel solidarity with each other, describe themselves as a "community." In this latter sense, "community" is the third ideal of the French Revolution: Fraternity. When I have used the word in my columns, I mean a rich and interweaving network of relationships in which people know each other and understand that what they share is more important than their differences. In community, these relationships-formal and informal-proliferate until they create a place for everyone as whole individuals. Community's members are known for who they are rather than what they are. Their personal qualities are more important than their formal roles. In community, there is room for as many leaders as there are useful things to do, so there are leadership opportunities for all. In institutions, including those that provide social and human services, relations are often hierarchical. In neighborhoods without community, relationships are nonexistent. In communities, relationships are more egalitarian. Because there is not an authority that defines the "right way" and "wrong way" to do things, communities find creative solutions to problems that institutions cannot. They often do so quickly. When an individual loses a job, a loved one, or their mind, they need the immediate help and comfort that a community can provide. In its absence, they endure the weary isolation that comes with applying for food stamps, waiting for Social Security to decide, or being trapped within a mental health system from which they may never emerge. In neighborhoods with community, we deal with each other as whole people. n those without community, we deal with each other by accident. In institutions, we deal with each other as roles. In community, we are interdependent. To weaken one of us, weakens all. Community is the greatest security that a neighborhood can enjoy. When neighbors know and trust each other, residential streets are not so much anonymous public spaces belonging to no one, but familiar territory that belongs to the neighborhood. Neighbors inquire when someone whom they don't recognize is attempting to enter a neighbor's home. They intervene when someone is being harassed on their street, friend or stranger, because it is their street, and because they know that their neighbors have their back. The economic and cultural forces that destroyed community in Somerville were largely beyond the community's control. Factory closures eliminated thousands of jobs in the same town in which workers lived. Suburbs held a powerful, but ultimately illusive, lure. Steady erosion of hourly wages obligated women, who were often the weavers of relationships, to enter the workforce, whether they wanted to or not. The cars that got people to out-of-town jobs, and the televisions that they watched to recover from working and commuting, reduced opportunities for interaction. Gentrifications brought thousands of professionals whose relationships revolve around where they work rather than where they live. It is impossible for individuals or small groups to reverse the impact of such enormous forces. But we can choose to recreate community in limited contexts, like the few blocks surrounding where we live. We do this most effectively by organizing shared actions around matters that are so concerning that diverse neighbors are willing to take action, and that, in order to make a difference, require cooperation among all who participate. If we create opportunities for specific and achievable changes to make real our 80%-shared vision of a good neighborhood, our diverse neighbors' focus is not on each other's differences, but on how to accomplish shared objectives. In the process of doing so, they develop relationships of trust and cooperation. They come to see the situation through each other's eyes, understand each other's differences, and appreciate those differences as assets rather than liabilities. They create community.

Service Learning in Somerville?

William C. Shelton "Anyone can be great, because anyone can serve." "The time is always right to do the right thing." --Martin Luther King Jr. I believe that citizenship is not a passive status, but an active process. From Washington D.C. to Somerville, MA, the pathetic state of our dreary, divisive, ineffectual and money-driven politics results in large part from reduced citizen participation. When citizens do not actively engage the world, they do not understand it. They become more vulnerable to ideology and to the simple-minded nonsense pushed by spin doctors whose goal is to manage impressions rather than convey truths. The institutions that nurtured communities - extended families, neighborhoods, churches, service organizations, unions, precinct organizations, political clubs, fraternal organizations, and so on - were also venues in which people discussed current events, challenged each other's perceptions and formed opinions. As these institutions have all disintegrated, citizens have become more isolated. They have become more susceptible to the pabulum broadcast on television and the hateful and cartoonish views transmitted through talk radio. Coming together to make a difference in their communities is one of the few ways in which citizens now learn political and economic reality, one of the few contexts in which they listen to each other and test their assumptions. You can bet that Somerville citizens who organized to change real estate developments at Lincoln Park, Craigie Street, Park Street, Max Pack, Magoun Square, Assembly Square, Union Square and the Inner Belt have a much better understanding of how Somerville's politics work than do citizens who remained uninvolved. Another outcome of institutional disintegration is that schools are increasingly burdened with functions that family and community once performed. Among these are moral and civic education. As with most subjects, civics and American history are largely forgotten once the tests have been taken and the grades awarded. There is little lived experience to attach these subjects to in students' minds. A partial solution is service learning. It is based on what the ancient Greeks called "praxis," and advocated by such educators as David Kolb and Paolo Freire. Students learn concepts in their classes and learn from practicing the concepts in their communities. The concepts guide and inform the practice; the practice illuminates and tests the concepts. Service learning can involve assisting nonprofit agencies to improve people's lives. Or older students tutoring younger students in such basic skills as reading. Or students participating directly in political organizing. Lisa Grabelsky teaches at the Winter Hill Community School. Last fall she required her students to spend three hours working in the offices of the presidential candidate of their choice. Students initially resisted, but once into it, they were enthusiastic. They became more engaged in their studies. Their sense of self worth increased. This suggests some benefits that go beyond learning a subject. Students who do service learning have lower dropout rates and more positive attitudes toward school. They are better prepared for the work world. By working with each other and with people outside school, they form bonds and begin to reweave the ties of community. They discover their own capabilities by making a tangible difference in something that matters. They often bring their parents into the life of the community. On January 22nd, three Teach-for-America veterans with roots in Somerville led a community meeting to discuss possibilities for service learning in Somerville. After a terrific presentation, attendees engaged in lively and wide-ranging discussion. Many thought that service learning should be a requirement. Former aldermanic candidate Fred Berman said that we think math or reading is important enough to make it a requirement. If we believe that citizenship and community service are important, we should require them as well. He suggested that younger kids look up to older kids, and older kids can set an example of service. Others were more cautionary. They said that requiring service learning puts an additional burden on already-burdened teachers. Its quality can vary significantly based on the teacher's enthusiasm. School Committee member Mark Niedergang expressed ambivalence about requiring it. Rob Hollister, Dean of Tufts University's Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, suggested an alternative to requirements: create service learning opportunities that are compelling. He added that students who have done service learning enhance the colleges that they attend and enrich the quality of their education. He believes that colleges can support service learning in their local communities. Regarding when to begin service learning, School Committee member Mary Jo Rossetti thought that the younger that it begins, the more effective it will be. I agree. It's possible to find something meaningful for kids to do in almost every grade level. Rossetti and Niedergang believe that we should research the best practices across the U.S. and then improve on them. Local activist Alex Pirie anticipated that service-learning might suffer from a disparity in students' income levels, where the more advantaged are more able to participate. He thinks that there are solutions, however. Others said that students with little to do at home have become enthusiastic participants. An official from the Massachusetts Department of Education said that its important to "map" services performed onto the curriculum. That is, to effectively align service activities with their related subjects to yield the greatest learning. Pirie, described an unanticipated benefit of the service learning in which he was involved. Adults are better behaved when young people are watching them. And students' intolerance of tedium makes meetings go faster. By the end of the evening, my mind was alive with the possibilities and challenges of implementing service leaning. My ward's School Committee member, Adam Sweeting, praised the Teach-for-America vets for bringing together parents, teachers, union officers, School Committee members, administrators and activists. He thought it was a great first discussion of what is happening and what could happen. I think that he's right, but I wonder who is going to make it happen.

"Change" you say?

Part 7: Drug policy William C. Shelton Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. -Abraham Lincoln If you live in Somerville, you probably know of someone who has suffered from drug abuse. Coke, meth, crack, and particularly heroin and oxycontin use is ruining lives, stressing families, promoting crime, destroying young peoples' futures, and occasionally, killing them. A significant portion of assaults and murders are drug related. Somerville Cares About Prevention educates citizens regarding drug use and its consequences. Our Police Department works hard to reduce drug related crime. They do at least as well, and probably a little better, than their colleagues in other urban areas. Yet there are always more addicts to treat, more dealers to arrest, more funerals to attend, more heartache to heal. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, we've spent more on that war than in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've made 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug crimes. Prisons are our fastest growing industry, with 2.2 million Americans currently locked up. We're annually making 1.9 million arrests and spending $70 billion. Yet drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far more available. What is to be done? If you drive northwest on Mystic Avenue, not far past the Medford line you'll pass a modest office building. One of its tenants is LEAP, an organization that is influencing opinion on drug policy across North America. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition's members-current and retired law officers-propose a different way. They advocate "a system of regulation and control of production and distribution [that] will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition." LEAP member, Terry Nelson was a federal drug enforcement officer for 30 years. He "saw on a daily basis that we were making no difference....When you put a drug dealer in jail, you create a job opening." Former federal Drug Czar Lee Brown says, "When you're in that position, you see very quickly that you can't arrest your way out of this. You see the cycle of people using drugs, going to prison, getting out, and getting into drugs again." The alternative? Brown points to a study conducted fifteen years ago by the RAND Corporation. A team of mathematicians calculated the most cost effective tactics in the drug war-law enforcement, interdiction, foreign aid, treatment, and prevention. They were surprised to find that only treatment was effective. But the hard evidence has no impact on drug policies that have not just failed in their stated goals of reducing drug addiction, crime, and juvenile drug use. Instead, the drug war continues to worsen each of these. LEAP member Jim Gray describes himself as a conservative judge in a conservative jurisdiction. Prior to joining the Orange County Superior Court, he prosecuted what was then Los Angeles' largest ever drug case. He says unequivocally, "We have a more radical approach [to drug law] than any other western democracy, and we have a bigger drug problem. I'm convinced there is a connection." The plain truth is that drug laws create crime. In his book Bad Trip, conservative author Joel Miller writes, "Drug prohibition does not end drug use. It simply forces the consumer to break the law to get what he wants." Add to that addicts who steal to support their habit and drug bosses who kill to dominate their territory. Peter Christ, a LEAP member and retired Buffalo PD captain observes, "We legalized alcohol because it only took us 13 years to learn the lesson that alcohol did not create Al Capone. Prohibition created Al Capone. And everyone didn't become a drunk in 1934." He's right. With alcohol prohibition, murder went up 13% and robbery, 83%. Prohibition ended in 1933, and violent crimes returned to their pre-prohibition levels by 1937. Judge Gray estimates that 80 percent of felonies are drug related. One of the drug war's hypocrisies is that its purpose is to prevent harm to users. While drug addicts do serious damage to their lives, the drug war destroys those lives. Jay Fleming, a thoughtful LEAP member, served 15 years with multiple drug enforcement agencies: "As with all wars, you have to have an enemy. That enemy turns out to be our fellow citizens. Once you make the enemy evil, its ok to use any means to destroy them." He relates how, working undercover, he got to know drug culture people and their families. "And then you have to come back and destroy that family." The number of Americans behind bars for drug offenses, mostly nonviolent, has increased by 1,200 percent since 1980. Legendary NYPD crusader Frank Serpico describes the prison system as an industry. "They run it like real estate. They have so many rooms, they have to rent them out, and the police fill them." Former drug cop, then coroner, then mayor of Vancouver Larry Campbel says that the drug war isn't really a war, it's a business. Imprisonment and a criminal record is not the only damage prohibition does to addicts' lives. Joel Miller writes, "People who fall into a drug habit and do not want to harm others by stealing, instead harm themselves by whoring." Fleming's remorse suggests another drug war impact. Former Seattle Police Chief and LEAP member Norm Stamper says, "Narcotic enforcement puts cops in an untenable situation. They are enforcing laws that in many cases they don't believe in." Then there are lucrative temptations to corruption. The few cops who yield, damage the morale of and public respect for the many who don't. Nor is corruption limited to law enforcement officers. LEAP member Cellie Castillo was a DEA agent interdicting Latin American drug traffic. He discovered that U.S. officials were sending flights of cocaine to the U.S., buying weapons with the proceeds, and sending the weapons on return flights to Nicaraguan Contras who used them to commit atrocities. His reports were ignored. And of course the Taliban, al-Qaida, and terrorists in Colombia, Peru, and Pakistan can finance their operations through drug trafficking because drug use is criminalized in the U.S. LEAP's solution is to legalize, regulate, and heavily tax drugs. Then as Judge Gray suggests, "Hold people accountable for what they do instead of what they put in their bodies." A portion of the enormous revenues and reduced costs thus generated could be put into drug treatment. The RAND study found that 13 percent of addicts who went through treatment stopped using permanently. That seems minimal until you realize that no other tactic has produced any reduction at all. And treatment programs have become more effective since the study. This is not a matter of morality. Enforcement causes more misery than it prevents. It's not a matter of ideology. George Will, Howard Zinn, William F. Buckley, Noam Chomsky, Milton Friedman, and George Shultz have all agreed with the policies that LEAP advocates. It's a matter of hard evidence, honesty, and courage. Nixon was right to call drug abuse an epidemic, but he was wrong to make "war" on its victims. Over my lifetime, a half dozen people whom I have known died from overdoses or bad drugs. At least that many got caught in prison/addiction cycle. One was shot to death in a transaction. Judge Gray says that, "Eventually we will come to our senses." I hope so.