National Grid’s proposed pipeline tariff, now under an indefinite stay per the Public Utilities Commission here in Rhode Island, was rejected in New Hampshire last week. The controversial and complicated plan, which would make electricity ratepayers in New England financially responsible for the creation and profitability of a new fracked gas pipeline, involves multiple companies working together across multiple states. Here’s a description from the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission:

“Eversource is a public utility headquartered in Manchester, operating under the laws of the State of New Hampshire as an electric distribution company (EDC). Algonquin is an owner-operator of an interstate gas pipeline located in New England. Algonquin is owned by a parent company, Spectra Energy Corp (Spectra), a publicly-traded corporation headquartered in Houston, Texas. Algonquin has partnered with Eversource’s corporate parent, Eversource Energy, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, and with National Grid, the parent company of EDC subsidiaries in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, to develop the Access Northeast pipeline. In general terms, Eversource Energy’s EDC subsidiaries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire and National Grid’s EDC subsidiaries in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, are each individually seeking regulatory approval of gas capacity on the Access Northeast pipeline.”

When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against National Grid’s pipeline tariff in Massachusetts, the Conservation Law Foundation brought a motion to dismiss the proposal here in Rhode Island. Instead, the PUC issued an indefinite stay in the proceedings, with the caveat that National Grid file a progress report on January 13, 2017.

Last week the New Hampshire PUC ruled against their state’s involvement in the plan, writing,

“The proposal before us would have Eversource purchase long-term gas pipeline capacity to be used by gas-fired electric generators, and include the net costs of its purchases and sales in its electric distribution rates. That proposal, however, goes against the overriding principle of restructuring, which is to harness the power of competitive markets to reduce costs to consumers by separating unregulated generation from fully regulated distribution. It would allow Eversource to reenter the generation market for an extended period, placing the risk of that decision on its customers. We cannot approve such an arrangement under existing laws. Accordingly, we dismiss Eversource’s petition.

“We acknowledge that the increased dependence on natural gas-fueled generation plants within the region and the constraints on gas capacity during peak periods of demand have resulted in electric price volatility. Eversource’s proposal is an interesting one, with the potential to reduce that volatility; but it is an approach that, in practice, would violate New Hampshire law following the restructuring of the electric industry. If the General Court believes EDCs should be allowed to make long-term commitments to purchase gas capacity and include the costs in distribution rates, the statutes can be amended to permit such activities.”

The Maine Public Utilities commission has voted in favor of the pipeline tariff.

Jeff Grybowski didn’t set out to save the world from climate change. The CEO of Deepwater Wind, which just completed construction of the nation’s first offshore wind farm, wasn’t trying to be the first in the United States to commercially harness the offshore breeze and, in the process, potentially create a new sustainable industry for his home state.

“I freely admit that I didn’t know anything about energy before I started this,” he said, during an interview at Deepwater Wind’s downtown Providence office. “I didn’t think anything of it. I had no opinion.”

The Cumberland native and Brown grad was a corporate attorney in Providence, fresh off serving as chief of staff during conservative Republican Don Carcieri’s first term as governor, when a group from New Jersey approached him about the idea.

“It was the middle of 2008, that summer, when they called me and asked me how do we get a permit to build an offshore wind farm in Rhode Island,” he recalled. “I was doing regulatory law and we all started scratching our heads. But we were lawyers and we wanted to help answer the question.”

The process

Grybowski knew a thing or two about the regulatory process, both from his legal practice and his tenure in the executive branch at the State House, and that proved to be the name of the game.

“For offshore wind in the U.S. it’s never been about construction,” he told me. “It’s always been about the regulations and the legal structure that allows it to happen. Obviously we build things that are as big and as complex as an offshore wind farm. The offshore oil and gas, that stuff is much bigger. The question is can we as a society agree how to build these things, where to build them and what steps you need to take in order to get, let’s call it, community sign off. It was the newness of it, that was the biggest obstacle.”

The Block Island wind farm had to win approval from more than 20 federal, state and local government agencies before construction could start, he said.

“It was great that the U.S. Department of Energy says we think offshore wind is a huge resource and we should develop it,” he said, “but the reality is that really wasn’t as important to us as whether the town of New Shoreham thought it was a good idea.”

Navigating the regulatory process, Grybowski said, is Deepwater Wind’s “core competency.”

He explained, “You need to take it to not only all the agencies of the federal government and people who need to say yes, or who have a veto, and then you bring it down to the state government, all the different agencies, and then down to the local government. And all across that chain you have stakeholders who have the ability to influence the agencies. It’s a huge matrix. You’ve got to find a way to get yourself through that matrix of agencies and stakeholders, and that’s what I did.”

An energy transformation

Along the way, Grybowski also went from being the company’s legal counsel to being the company’s CEO. Eight years after the project was first conceived, Deepwater Wind just finished construction of the first offshore wind farm in the United States. The 5-unit array will produce 30 megawatts of power. Enough, Grybowski said, to power 17,000 average U.S. households.

It’s a relatively small amount of electricity, but Grybowski thinks it’s a big step in what he called an “energy transformation” away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources.

“I think offshore wind is about to become a huge component of this energy transformation,” he said. “As a native Rhode Islander I might have been quicker than others to recognize how ideally suited this state was because of our proximity to this enormous resource and because of some of the logistical advantages we have.”

It’s an obvious opportunity for the Ocean State, he thinks.

“We don’t generate a lot of resources locally,” Grybowski explained. “Coal gets shipped in. Gas gets piped in. We’re the end of the line from an energy perspective. But that’s one of the brilliant things about offshore wind for this region. We’re the beginning of the pipeline here because we control the resource. It’s right off our coast. It’s the single biggest natural resource that we have to produce energy in this region.”

The future for offshore wind

Deepwater Wind is already planning its second project. The company has leased 200 miles of ocean about 15 miles southeast of Block Island that could support 200 turbines, compared to the first farm’s five – or 1,000 megawatts compared to just 30. He thinks there is five times that much potential wind farm energy in the vicinity.

“There’s the capacity for 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind out there,” he said. “That’s just in the area that’s been identified in the near term, what could be developed in the next decade or so. That’s certainly not the limit of what we can do.”

Collectively, all the power plant in New England currently generates some 30,000 megawatts of power, Grybowski said. The northeast can expect offshore wind to meet a more substantial portion of its energy needs when it goes even farther offshore.

“That cable really isn’t that expensive,” he said. “It’s copper and plastic, so a little bit more really doesn’t matter that much. The other difference is it becomes deeper the further out you get so the steel structures that you have to use to put these on the ocean floor get taller and heavier. The equipment that you need to install it becomes bigger. Part of the science of the business is where is that sweet spot. Where is the sweet spot of the benefit of the wind versus the downside of the extra costs of getting to that wind.”

Grybowski added, “It’s a lot like the offshore oil business, forget about the resource. It’s the same kind of analysis we go through.”

Much of the offshore wind industry, he noted, is based on the offshore oil and gas industry. Deepwater Wind President Kris Van Beek relocated from the Netherlands to Providence. “He transitioned from offshore oil and gas to offshore wind and he moved to Rhode Island to do that,” Grybowski said. “He knows how to build things in the middle of the ocean.”

Rhode Island, energy exporter

It’s part of the energy transformation he spoke about.

“Unfortunately, the change from a micro-perspective seems really slow but I think the change is pretty inevitable,” Grybowski said. “It’s inevitable that, here in the Northeast, we are going to be building a lot of offshore wind in the coming decade. It’s impossible for us to meet our energy needs, and doubly impossible to address our energy needs and address climate change in a meaningful way, without building a significant amount of offshore wind.”

He was quite confident offshore wind would help us get the Ocean State to sustainability, boasting, “I think Rhode Island – for the first time in, maybe, forever – is going to be an energy exporter.”

In a July 19 , Chuck Rosenberg, the acting administrator of the DEA, wrote, “On November 30, 2011, your predecessors, The Honorable Lincoln D. Chafee and The Honorable Christine O. Gregoire, petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to initiate rulemaking proceedings under the rescheduling provisions of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA),” . “Specifically, your predecessors petitioned the DEA to have marijuana and “related items” removed from Schedule I of the CSA and rescheduled as medical cannabis in Schedule II.”

The DEA, it should be noted, disagreed, writing to Raimondo, “Based on the HHS evaluation and all other relevant data, the DEA has concluded that there is no substantial evidence that marijuana should be removed from Schedule I.” It cited three main reasons: “Marijuana has a high potential for abuse. Marijuana has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. Marijuana lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” An editorial in today’s New York Times proves false each of those three reasons. The DEA was also responding to a request from the governor of Washington and a citizen of New Mexico.

While governor of Rhode Island, Chafee signed legislation to decriminalize less than an ounce of marijuana. But he declined to push Rhode Island to become the first state on the East Coast to tax and regulate marijuana. As a presidential candidate earlier this year, there was some reason to believe Chafee was considering campaigning as a pro-pot candidate after he said his position on full federal legalization would “evolve during the campaign.”

Governor Raimondo has taken a similar tack on taxing and legalizing marijuana as Chafee did during his tenure. “I could see Rhode Island eventually getting there, but I’m not going to rush,” she said in March. On medical marijuana, she pushed legislation that added a per-plant tax to patients who don’t grow their own.

According to a spokeswoman for Raimondo, the governor doesn’t plan to pursue the matter with the DEA any further. “This petition was submitted during the prior administration, so the governor does not plan to respond to the letter,” said Marie Aberger, who did not respond to a question asking if Raimondo thinks marijuana should be considered a Schedule 1 drug.

Rhode Island has the highest per capita marijuana users in the nation and a recent poll found 55 percent of Rhode Islanders favor legalization. A different poll found 53 percent of Americans favor legalization.

What is missing in Rhode Island is a realistic assessment of the economy and what is actually possible in Rhode Island. AND a plan to increase the general prosperity in the slow to no growth system that we live in. The context is that every reputable global oriented economist has stated that the growth machine is slowing down. Global growth will now average just over 3% for the foreseeable future. Clearly there are places like China and India that are keeping the average high as they urbanize and industrialize. China has already seen its growth slow (now at 6%) as it attempts to shift towards a consumer economy rather than a production economy. They just can not afford to kill more people burning coal. The populace gets restless when they can not breathe the air. China is leading the way in solar power and speeding up its phaseout of coal. India is instituting a carbon tax.

Economic growth in the 21st Century is concentrated in 3 types of places, with nearly every other place on earth experiencing 2% or less a year growth, most of which is just sucked up by the 1%. The places with 3+% growth a year include those with natural resource exploitation expansions such as fracking booms or deforestation for soybean or palm oil. Another category of rapid growth regions is large and mega cities in the developing world where people are being drawn into the cities as the mechanization of agriculture and the creation of giant plantations is costing them their land and livelihoods. These first generation urbanites are powering growth throughout the tropics, usually by leaving devastated rural areas. Now they live in shanty towns in cities bulging at the seams and unable to provide basic services. The informal economy is how people get by, real jobs are reserved for the elites. The third category of places with above average growth are very large metropolitan areas in the developed world that are providing financial, cultural, or intellectual services to the world.

If growth is 3% globally, and above that in a specific places on the planet for reasons that are readily discernible with current knowledge, then one must realize that half of the people in the world are going to live in slower growing communities.

Rhode Island does not fit any of the categories for rapid growth, despite the constant yapping by our political and corporate elites as they pretend we fit the third category. We can argue about how well RI fits the category, but what seems to be of out of bounds for discussion is the effect the economic development strategy that is employed to further the growth of the financial, cultural, and intellectual services on everyone else in the community. Maybe if the economy of Rhode Island could grow at more then 3% a year without creating bubbles, the current strategy would have a chance of working, but when growth is about 1.8% the strategy fosters inequality and ecological destruction, which further damages the prosperity of communities.

The “intellectual” tool that the political, financial, and corporate elites use to beat us about the head is called “The Business Climate”. The entire point of the business climate, with indexes funded by the same folks who fund climate deniers and told us smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer, is to make it easier for rich folks to get richer as the global economy spirals down.

Lets be very clear. There is actually no correlation between rankings in the various business climate surveys (which often contradict each other) and the GDP growth rate or other measures of prosperity in a particular place. There is a very weak correlation between lower tax rates and growth, but no other indicators used in these very flawed indexes actually have any positive relationship with a healthy economy. Other factors are MUCH more important, including the economic history and culture of a community. Vermont ranks low on business climate indexes, NH high. The unemployment and growth rates have been neck and neck since the Great Recession. Kansas cut taxes, and crashed the state economy as well as short changing the schools. Missouri acted more conservatively (you know conserved some resources and programs that actually helped folks) and weathered the storms much more easily. Wisconsin elected a darling of the Tea P:arty, and enacted the requisite cuts in taxes and spending. Minnesota skipped the stupidity and is doing much better than its neighbor. You want the economy of California or Mississippi?

The manifestations of business climate insanity in Rhode Island are the ever louder efforts to reduce protections for the environment, lower taxes for the wealthy, further restrict the rights of communities to protect themselves from inappropriate development, and the use of real estate subsidies as the basic tool of economic development. The net result is that 90% of the people get poorer and the owners of land and those few who get jobs in the high tech or cultural global marketplace reap all the benefits. Growing inequality makes it much harder to run a consumer society, along with the ecological problems that growth and consumerism on a finite planet bring.

A simple way to tell that despite all the rhetoric and hot air, and all the stupid things the clowns on Smith hill have done, the growth rate in Rhode Island continues to hover at about 60 to 75% of the national average year after year. This is EXACTLY what one would expect given the actual conditions in Rhode Island and our not participating in the fracking boom. The 1.8% growth rate we have experienced in RI , is pretty close to the median in the US, Only half the states have rates above 1.8 the last few years even when the mean for growth in the US is hovering between 2.2 to 2.4%, So the politicians and the developers tell us, just go harder, double down on inequality, ecological destruction, and handouts to the rich. They keep telling us it will work, and it keeps not working.

One of the results of this pathetic bipartisan development scam is that the people have become wise to the scam. RI elites have a habit of looking for the next big thing so hard that they get taken for a ride regularly. Time after time the elites have offered some mega project with the intent of solving the RI economic dilemma once and for all. We have been offered the biggest and most stupendous Nuclear Power plants, Gas fired power plants, violent video game companies, ports, casinos, and baseball stadiums. The track record is that the projects they snuck through before we could stop them turned into real disasters. And in retrospect, if built, all the projects we stopped also would have been disasters. The gas infrastructure in Burrillville, Washington Park, and assorted other communities in and near Rhode Island is just the latest boondoggle being offered. You would think with such a pathetic track record they would quit already, but power corrupts and money is the root of evil, so the corporations keep coming back for more figuring the bought politicians will stay bought and not let the people ruin the game.

What may be the most galling about this whole thing is that we have an elite touting the economy of the past, dragging us backwards into the fossil fuel dependency we are trying to escape, dragging us towards back room deals for inside players while the rest of us struggle. The rich and powerful are always the last to know that the economy has changed and the old games do not work at all. We need a really new plan. One based on ecological healing, stopping climate change, building resilience to climate change, growing our own food, and creating a healthcare system that is based on prevention and is actually affordable for the entire community. Our future is not in building power plants, nor in giving huge subsidies to giant corporations so they will create 50 jobs that hardly anyone who already lives here could get.

So we keep resisting. Which brings us to the Clear River Energy plant proposed for Burrillville. The people of Burrillville are massively opposed to building the plant. They have turned out in large numbers time and again. So have activists from across the state. Reports have been written by experts pointing out how little the plant is needed, how it will not cut our energy bills, and how it will not function as anything resembling sustainable development. The community has pointed out the long term effects on health. We also know the plant will be shut down long before its expiration date as the climate crisis worsens and solar energy powers the land, Building a plant that we know will be shut early will cost the people of Rhode Island a bundle of money. It is the economy of the past, passed off as the Great White Hope.

The politicians and the corporates have this new slogan. Many states are adopting it after years of browbeating by the Koch Brother-funded anti think tanks. Your state here is open for business. Its on billboards and on the lips of governors. It Is saying we shall restrict democracy and not give the people the right to say no to big corporations. In other words the elites would like to make sure the people can not stop their boondoggles, or the giveaways, the ecological harm, or the lower taxes for the rich when the schools are starving and so are the kids. That is what open for business really means, Yes we shall let the rich rob and pillage, we shall encourage greater inequality despite how it harms communities and the economy. In other words when the politicians and business elites are saying RI is closed for business it means we are not buying any of their boondoggles any more, that we want democracy, justice and healthy communities.

When the people are able to resist really stupid projects it gives the impression that the powerful can not deliver anything the rich ask for, anything the corporations demand,. It ties their hands when the people have a say and demand the right to prevent bad things from happening in their communities to prevent the politicians from selling them down the river,. In other words the practice of precaution, the practice of democracy, listening to the wisdom of the people instead of the dollars of the lobbyists and connected law firms has to go since it means we have a hard time saying we are open for business. In other words democracy is bad for business, so it has to go.

That is the real meaning of “ Open for Business”. Cut benefits for the poor. Relax environmental standards, give lots of subsidies to big corporations who when the contracts run out will go out to bid for bribes again. Excuse me, but this strategy has failed us for 50 years, and under the conditions of slower global growth and climate change, has to be among the stupider strategies on the planet, one simply designed for the rich to get richer and the poor poorer. Is it any wonder that we have more and more people begging at intersections. We have created development for the few, not the many.

The questions one gets after a rant like this are how are you going to feed, clothe and shelter everyone if the economy is not constantly growing. First of all the reality is that since 1973 for most Americans income has barely changed after inflation is taken into account. Fewer people own homes, fewer people have retirement accounts, more people have credit card and student loan debt. And for more and more people the only economy they are in is the informal and gig. So first of all the situation is not so rosy now. Whereas for the few, for the 10% with advanced degrees or the ownership of lots of real estate, life is good. They got bailed out in 2008, and have made up for all their “losses” while for the average American net assets remain well below what they were in 2008.

While we are loathe to admit it in public forums, the medical industrial complex is bankrupting us, along with the military industrial complex and the stupid breaking of the Middle East in pursuit of tame oil producers. At the same time the food supply becomes more and more fragile as the gene pool of plants shrink and superbugs and weeds develop. Now add in the climate chaos effects on agriculture. Rhode Island, like many places in the industrial world, is going to have to reinvent its agriculture and find a way to grow 20 times as much food as it does now. We need to produce 20% because places like California are going to be unable to supply us as the water supply diminishes and our willingness to incur climate chaos from shipping food diminishes. And guess what. If RI grows 20 times as much food as it does now, that is going to create the thousands of jobs they keep promising industry will bring, despite off shoring.

You know an elite has lost touch with the community, and become un-moored from economic realities when they work harder and harder to convince us that stuff we know is stupid is the next panacea. Open for business is a scam to steal from the poor and the workers and give to the rich. It is a scam to destroy ecosystems for short term profits, not create a sustainable prosperity. Lets deal with the real climate crisis, not the manufactured crisis of the business climate. Slow growth is our future, lets create prosperity for communities, not beat them around the head to give money to the rich.

Father Daniel Berrigan, the legendary peace activist-priest who publicly burned draft cards in 1968 and subsequently eluded prison for the famous act of civil disobedience until his arrest on Block Island in 1970, died Saturday. He was 94 years old.

“We have chosen to be branded peace criminals by war criminals,” Berrigan famously said while a fugitive of justice, days before his arrest by FBI agents in a barn on Block Island.

Berrigan was a Jesuit priest who formed his own ministry in New York City. He was a committed peace activist who traveled to North Vietnam with Howard Zinn and returned with captured American pilots. He was a socialist and a committed activist who believed civil disobedience was necessary to call public attention to American imperialism.

He was also a part-time Rhode Islander, who spent many summers on Block Island years after being arrested there. The Spring Street house at which he was captured was left in a trust for him to use. “I get out there maybe a couple times a year,” Berrigan told Steven Stycos, writing for the Block Island Times, in 2001. Berrigan wrote a poetry book called “Block Island” and the house at which he was arrested in a fairly well-known tourist attraction.

His arrest there in 1970 is very well-known. Much of America surely first learned of Block Island through media reports of Berrigan’s arrest. It was covered in newspapers across the country and LIFE magazine ran a feature story detailing the incident.

“On an ominous morning in August, with a fierce nor’easter blowing up black clouds and spattering rain over the harbor, Daneil Berrigan lay asleep in a manger on Block Island, RI,” wrote Lee Lockwood in the May 21, 1971 edition of LIFE. “…Berrigan’s Block Island routine was to rise late and breakfast lightly on coffee and a piece of bread. Afterward, with books, paper and pen, and dressed ‘in some outlandish headgear,’ he would disappear below the crest of the Mohegan Bluffs until nightfall. Reappearing for then for drinks, dinner and conversation…”

On August 11, 1970, FBI agents, posing as bird watchers, descended on the Spring Street barn and arrested Berrigan.

Berrigan had first become a household name in 1968 for one of the most famous acts of civil disobedience during the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. “Nine Catholic activists, led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, entered a Knights of Columbus building in Catonsville and went up to the second floor, where the local draft board had offices. In front of astonished clerks, they seized hundreds of draft records, carried them down to the parking lot and set them on fire with homemade napalm,” wrote the New York Times in Berrigan’s obituary.

They were arrested and dubbed the “Catonsville Nine” by the media.

In 1980, he was arrested for breaking into a nuclear missile site in Pennsylvania and pouring blood on files. This was the advent of the Plowshares Movement against nuclear weapons.

In 2002, at his 80th birthday party, Berrigan promised to keep up his disruptive form of protest until even after his death. “The day after I’m embalmed, that’s when I’ll give it up,” he said.

It’s morning again in Rhode Island. At least that’s what it feels like to the progressive left the day after Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Ocean State’s presidential primary poll.

The socialist-leaning senator from Vermont all but conceded the nomination to the more conservative Clinton after losing four other states in the so-called Acela Primary. Last night even Bernie Sanders admitted he probably won’t be the next president. It was not a good night for those holding out hope he might pull closer in pledged delegates.

But by pulling off a convincing victory in Rhode Island, a state dominated by neoliberal leadership, Sanders sent a strong message that Rhode Islanders want progressive change. He won 55 to 43 percent.

He won 66,720 votes, Clinton got 52,493, Donald Trump got 39,059 and John Kasich took 14,929. The difference between Sanders and Clinton was greater than the difference between Clinton and Trump. The two Democrats got well more than twice as many votes as all three Republicans. Rhode Island seems very open to the idea of a progressive political revolution.

“I hear all the time, ‘…that is too liberal, we’ll get voted out if we do that,’” said progressive Providence Rep. Aaron Regunberg at the Sanders victory party last night. “That argument no longer holds any water.”

Sanders won 35 of 39 municipalities in Rhode Island. Clinton took Barrington and East Greenwich, the two most affluent suburbs in the state, and Central Falls and Pawtucket, very close to her campaign headquarters. Sanders took the rest rather convincingly.

Providence was close, with 51 to 47 percent for Sanders. But he won cities like Warwick, Cranston and Woonsocket by substantial margins. His key to victory was the rural vote – the Swamp Yankee Progressives. Sanders won in affluent liberal enclaves like South Kingstown (62%-37%) by similar margins that he won working class communities like Coventry (61%-36%).

Burrillville backed Sanders over Clinton 64 to 34 percent, but only 1,337 people voted in the Democratic primary compared to 2,167 in 2008. In the Republican primary, which Trump won with 73 percent of the vote, 1,261 people voted compared to 399 in 2008. More Burrillville residents voted for Clinton in 2008 than voted for a Democratic in 2016. There were three polling places open this year compared to four in 2008.

Burrillville was an important bellwether because of a controversial proposal for a fossil fuel power plant there. The Invenergy methane gas facility is backed by Governor Gina Raimondo and organized labor but opposed by residents and grassroots activists. Congressional climate champion Sheldon Whitehouse has tried to avoid taking a position.

This is a lot like the Clinton/Sanders divide in Rhode Island. Raimondo was a regular on the campaign trail for Clinton while Whitehouse called Clinton’s position on climate change “adequate” and didn’t really publicly stump for her. Whitehouse and Raimondo probably represent the range of local elected officials who backed Clinton, which also included Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner and the entire congressional delegation.

I strongly suspect there’s a high correlation between Bernie voters and Burrillville power plant opposers. For liberal Democrats like Whitehouse, Sanders big win is an invitation to tack left on issues ranging like climate, economic and social justice. For neoliberal Democrats like Raimondo, who would rather reinvent Medicare than the energy grid, it’s a cautionary tale. Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton 55 to 43 percent. Raimondo did even worse than Clinton when she ran in the 2014 Democratic primary, winning only 42 percent of the vote.

If you have a liberal cause you believe in it is in there, but the difference is that it is not a campaign stunt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qQf_bvfR6Y&feature=youtu.be
Look how Bernie was so moved by Flint and #BackLivesMatter that he is still talking about it, while Hillary just plays them as part of the campaign and is on to the next wedge issue to play the people.

Nothing is more emblematic in the difference between the challenge to the status quo than a comparison with Hillary’s visit in Central Falls where, with a full delegation of Senators, Congressmen, the Governor etc., they could barely draw 1200 people. Most telling is that they were all there as Clinton claimed “she has been standing with Latino Families in Rhode Island and across the country for her entire career.”

PolitiFact said:

Sanders has a strong record on immigration issues, Warren Gunnels, his senior policy adviser, replied. Sanders supports “comprehensive immigration reform and a path towards citizenship for 11 million people today who are living in the shadows,” the senator said in a MSNBC Democratic primary debate in New Hampshire in February.

He voted for the Dream Act in 2010, which would have legalized immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. He also supported the so-called “Gang of Eight” bill in 2013. This bipartisan legislation created a path for people already in the United States, focused on reducing visa backlogs, and improved work-visa options for low-skilled workers.

Why aren’t the political class being held accountable? The political establishment stood with Clinton giving credence to Clinton’s mischaracterization.

Contrast this with Bernie’s rally at Roger Williams Park on Sunday where actress Shailene Woodley, a guest of Students for Bernie, praised Bernie as a political movement builder in the mold of Martin Luther King and said that she has been making phone calls for Bernie herself.

Here is your choice- back the establishment who will use their office to to help politicians play political tricks,  on Latino’s in this case, to get their vote or join the political revolution and help build the better world we know is possible.

The shift away from group homes for the developmentally disabled toward care based on shared living arrangements (SLA) is a national trend driven by economic and demographic forces. While it is widely recognized that “shared living is not for everyone,” states have different views regarding when this option is and is not appropriate. I argue that SLA-based care should be recognized as inappropriate for individuals whose ability to communicate is below the level of an average six-year-old child.

Introduction

“Shared living is not for everyone” – writes Robin E. Cooper of the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services.¹ Having said that, she gives no explicit guidance regarding who shared living is not for. However, she does add that shared living must be “freely chosen.” Indeed, this follows from her definition of shared living as “an arrangement in which an individual, a couple or a family in the community and a person with a disability choose to live together and share life’s experiences” (italics in original).

So one guideline is implicit in her definition. Shared living is for people whose level of intellectual development enables them to make a free and informed choice. Conversely, it is not for people whose level of intellectual development is too low for them to be capable of making such a choice. In this paper I argue in favor of adopting this guideline explicitly.

The arrangements under discussion are named differently in different states. Most names are variants on either “adult foster care” or “shared living” (or “life-sharing”). The official term in Rhode Island is “shared living arrangements” (SLA). “Shared living” does convey an important aspect of these arrangements, but another aspect is no less important—care and support of the disabled person. It is not simply a matter of sharing accommodation. This second aspect is the focus of another definition that we find in an official report of the State of Vermont:

Shared living is a method of providing individualized home support for one or two adults and/or children in the home of a contracted home provider. Home providers typically have 24 hour a day/7 days a week responsibility for the individuals who live with them.²

This is why I have settled on the dual term “SLA-based care” (or “life-sharing care”).

A national trend

Study of the websites of various state governments confirms that the shift from group homes toward SLA-based care is a national trend. According to Robin Cooper, the trend is driven by “economic and demographic forces”—specifically, the recession, growing waiting lists, staff shortages, and the increasing cost of shift-staff residential programs. As increased pay and improved benefits would almost certainly eliminate staff shortages, what this all comes down to is money. Budget allocations are falling further and further below what would be required to sustain past levels of provision of places in group homes.

The difference in cost between the two types of provision is large. According to Charles Williams, head of the Developmental Disabilities Division in Rhode Island’s Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals (BHDDH), state aid to group housing is 50 percent higher than state aid to shared living.³ The Vermont Report gives a much wider difference in average annual cost ($29,018 for shared living, $83,372 for group homes in 2009).

Although the NASDDDS Report attributes the trend wholly to economic and demographic factors, others have given philosophical justifications of the shift toward SLA-based care. They claim that it integrates clients more closely into the community and therefore constitutes a new stage in the process of de-institutionalization. Whether such arguments would carry weight in the absence of financial pressure is another matter.

Choice?

If the trend toward SLA-based care is driven by financial pressure, then what role is played by the element of “choice” that Robin Cooper emphasizes in her definition? No source that I have yet seen cites any data on “consumer preferences” – that is, wishes expressed by clients and their families as recorded in case files or collected by means of special surveys. People with long experience of work in group homes say that residents become attached to the places where they are (they come to feel “at home” there) and are reluctant to move. Are the extent – and especially the pace – of change required by financial targets embodied in state budgets compatible with a genuine process of free and informed choice?

Choice should apply not only to the initiation of a life-sharing arrangement but also to its termination. The State of Georgia has a guidance document on SLA-based care that includes a clause entitled “Individual Choice to Terminate Relationship” and mandating interviews conducted “by a neutral party to determine that the individual’s choice is independent of coercion from any party.”⁴ This is all well and good as far as it goes (provided that the individual has the requisite ability to communicate). However, what choice does the individual have concerning where to go next if the group home from which she or he came is now closed? There may be choice between one life-sharing provider and another but little or no choice regarding the SLA option itself.

Advantages and disadvantages of SLA-based care

One useful feature of the Vermont Report is its lists of advantages and disadvantages of SLA-based care, which I reproduce as an appendix.

The advantages outnumber the disadvantages 10 to 6, but from the point of view of the welfare of the disabled person this is a little misleading. Three of the advantages accrue not to the disabled individual but to the provider (nos. 2 and 4) or the state (no. 3). The remaining advantages then only slightly outnumber the disadvantages.

Note also that most of the advantages (Nos. 5—10) are about good things that may happen in a very successful life-sharing relationship, while the disadvantages refer mainly to the consequences if for any reason the relationship does not work out well. Thus, if the relationship turns sour it is the disabled person who has to move out and lose his or her home. A similar situation in a group home may be resolved by the departure of someone else.

I attach special importance to Disadvantage 3 – the greater difficulty of effective oversight in SLA-based care. In a group home other people are always around to observe and report any instances of abuse or neglect – people who are not related and therefore less inclined to cover up for one another.

Some advantages and disadvantages “cancel out”: shared living may give the disabled person more extensive contacts than those ordinarily provided by group homes (Advantages 5, 6, and 9). However, if the host family itself is socially or physically isolated (many live in rural areas), then living with them may restrict contacts and leave the person even more isolated than in a group home (Disadvantages 2 and 5).

To sum up, SLA opens up a wider range of possible outcomes than group homes. At best it makes possible a kind of loving family care that a group home can never provide. At worst, however, it entails a greater risk of undetected neglect and abuse than in the group home setting. This suggests a general guideline: those for whom SLA-based care is inappropriate are those most at risk of such an outcome.

What if anything do SLA-based and child foster care have in common?

Child foster care has been marred by many failures and abuses and has acquired a poor public reputation. An important reason why many people avoid use of the term “adult foster care” is to prevent people from associating SLA-based care of the disabled with “disreputable” child foster care. They argue that it is unfair to associate the two because children placed in foster care tend to come from broken or abusive homes and consequently have severe emotional problems with which many foster parents fail to cope. This factor does not usually apply to the disabled.

This argument has considerable weight. However, it does not follow that SLA-based care and child foster care have nothing significant in common. People with developmental disabilities, especially of a severe kind, do resemble children in important ways, and children can be difficult to look after even when they do not come from broken or abusive homes.

Some SLA providers, like some foster parents, neglect the individuals entrusted to their care for reasons that have nothing to do with the problems of those individuals. In both cases money may play too prominent a role in the motivation for providing care, and providers may display a pattern of behavior (not necessarily conscious) that favors their natural children over the person in their care.

For example, a television program highlighted a case in Pennsylvania about a developmentally disabled young woman in SLA-based care who was being abused by the young sons of her providers. Although they were quite heavy they would “playfully” jump on her and constantly demand piggyback rides from her, which gave her backache. There was no one to come to her aid while this was going on: the boys’ father was out and their mother was locked in the study at work on the computer. She could have been similarly neglected had she been a few years younger and placed in child foster care. It would not have made much of a difference.

For whom is SLA-based care inappropriate?

Apparently no one denies the existence of certain types of disabled people for whom SLA-based care is inappropriate. It is recognized that a host family cannot provide adequate care to a disabled person with complex medical needs requiring immediate access to medical professionals and advanced equipment. Nor can members of a host family be expected to exhaust and endanger themselves by attempting to cope with the most extreme forms of dysfunctional behavior.

There are, however, divergent views over where exactly the line should be drawn. Some states consider SLA-based care appropriate across the spectrum of needs, excluding only the groups mentioned in the previous paragraph but including other people with severe developmental/intellectual and/or physical disabilities. It appears to me that Rhode Island is one of these states, although I shall be very happy to be proven wrong.

Other states also exclude people with severe disabilities. South Dakota is one state that considers “Adult Foster Care” (that is what they call it in South Dakota) appropriate only for people with relatively mild disabilities. To quote their website:

The primary function of an Adult Foster Care home is to provide general supervision and personal care services for individuals who require minimal assistance in activities of daily living (ADLs), who require supervision/monitoring with the self-administration of medications, and who require supervision/monitoring of self-treatment of physical disorder. Activities of daily living are defined as any activity normally done in daily life which includes sleeping, dressing, bathing, eating, brushing teeth, combing hair, etc. …

Individuals between the ages of 18 and 59 who are capable of self-preservation in emergency situations and need supervision or monitoring in one of the following areas: 1) the activities of daily living; 2) the self-administration of medications; or 3) the self-treatment of a physical disorder.⁵

Thus in South Dakota individuals who require more than “minimal” assistance in activities of daily living, who cannot administer their own medication or treat their own physical disorders even with supervision and monitoring, or who would be unable to save themselves in an emergency are not considered suitable for SLA-based care.

Ability to communicate as a key criterion

Without denying the relevance of the criteria used by South Dakota, I argue that a key criterion should be ability to communicate. This is because it is especially important to exclude from SLA-based care those whose disabilities make it impossible for them to report any abuse or neglect that they may suffer and also to exercise their hypothetical right to choose whether to initiate or terminate a life-sharing relationship.

Let’s revisit Georgia’s exemplary clause on “individual choice to terminate relationship” and try to apply it to a physical adult who in mental terms remains a toddler, either completely non-verbal or with a vocabulary of a dozen or so words. “When an individual indicates a desire to terminate services from a Host Home provider” (how? by running away?) “the individual will be interviewed by a neutral party” (but he or she doesn’t know how to answer questions). “The individual’s support coordinator … will interview the individual’s legal guardian (if any) and/or any representative who has been formally or informally designated by the individual” (but the individual is incapable of designating a representative, even informally).

Some may say that it suffices if the right to choose is exercised on the individual’s behalf by a guardian. Guardians who as parents or other close relatives used to care for the individual and who visit the individual frequently are indeed the best persons to detect signs of any abuse that may have occurred and to take decisions on the individual’s behalf. However, when communication deficits are very severe even parents may be unable to assess a situation reliably. For instance, it is hard even for them to judge whether unresponsiveness and withdrawal result from distressing experience or lack of interaction (a form of neglect) or whether they have some harmless cause. Moreover, when the original guardians lose the ability to perform the duties of guardianship or die the new guardian may be a relative who is unable to visit so frequently or – even worse – some court-appointed lawyer who does not know or care very much about the individual and hardly ever visits. Or there may be no guardian at all: the disabled person may become a ward of the state.

How is ability to communicate to be measured? A common measure of general intellectual ability for the developmentally disabled is mental age. Ability to communicate usually but not always corresponds to mental age. Some people’s ability to communicate is impaired solely by physical disabilities (or perhaps they could communicate adequately, but only with the aid of advanced equipment that is too expensive or not yet widely available). Autism also impairs communication. So mental age is not quite what we need. We need not the individual’s mental age but the mental age that corresponds to the individual’s ability to communicate – that is, the average age of children without disabilities whose ability to communicate is at the same level as that of the individual. We could call this the individual’s “communicative age.”

Below what limit in terms of communicative age should we recognize an individual as especially vulnerable and therefore unsuitable for SLA-based care?

According to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, the “mentally retarded” (in deference to the current demands of political correctness I shall switch that to “developmentally disabled”) are a class of individuals with IQ below 70 and mental age below 12 years. They make up about 2% of the population and are divided into four subgroups on the basis of degree of disability: mild, moderate, severe, and profound. The mildly disabled, with IQ in the range 50—69 and mental age in the range 8—11 years, account for 85% of the whole class. The moderately disabled, with IQ in the range 35—49 and mental age in the range 4—7 years, contribute another 10%. The severely and profoundly disabled, with IQ below 35 and mental age below 4, make up the remaining 5%.

I suggest that we set the limit in such a way as to recognize as unsuitable for SLA-based care all the severely and profoundly disabled and a section of the moderately disabled – that is, individuals with a mental (more precisely, communicative) age below 6 years. This would cover somewhat less than 10% of the whole class (perhaps 8%), because people with a mental age of 6—7 outnumber people with a mental age of 4—5.

Who would assess an individual’s communicative age? I suggest that the parents (or other family caregivers) and the caregivers at the day program attended by the individual (if any) be asked to estimate his or her communicative age. If both give ages below 6 years that would decide the matter in one direction; if both give ages of 6 years or above that would decide the matter in the other direction. Only if one assessment is below 6 years and the other is 6 years or above would the matter be referred for a professional assessment.⁶

Do we need formal criteria?

Some people prefer not to classify the developmentally disabled on the basis of formal criteria, especially if these criteria focus on degree of disability. They say that they prefer to treat people as individuals.

This sounds very nice. Formal rules do have their drawbacks. They often fail to make provision for exceptional cases. But in the real world they are a lesser evil. A lack of formal rules can easily result in – and help cover up – a financially driven neglect of vital needs.

People have unique individual needs. But they also have needs that they share with other members of a certain class. For example, blind children need to be taught braille and deaf children need teachers able to converse with them in sign language. If they were not classified as blind or deaf but regarded only as unique individuals with a right to be placed in “the least restricted environment” then those needs would probably go unmet.

In the same way, people with severe developmental disabilities have special needs for care and protection that they share with one another but do not fully share even with people fortunate enough to have only mild developmental disabilities. Due attention to these class-specific needs is quite compatible with efforts to meet their individual needs as well – to provide each individual with his or her favorite toys, stuffed and squeaky animals, games, foods, videos, songs, and other sensory experiences.

If decisions about which needs to meet and how to meet them were made solely by competent professionals concerned only with the welfare of their charges, then we might just leave things to them and not burden them with formal rules.

Unfortunately that is not the situation. Financial pressure is a powerful influence on decision making. In the absence of formal criteria that pressure may inflict special harm on the severely disabled because it is their care that involves the highest per capita costs. It may well seem to decision makers concerned primarily with costs that this is where the biggest savings are to be made.

To be specific, unless people with severe developmental disabilities are explicitly deemed unsuitable for SLA-based care the financial pressure to place them in such care will be even stronger than the pressure to place the mildly disabled there. As Mr. Williams informed the Warwick Beacon: “On average the annual savings for an individual in SLA over group housing is $19,400, with that number increasing depending on the severity and dependence on services” (my italics).⁷

So yes, we do need formal criteria. Compliance with formal criteria can be verified. That makes it possible for us to hold our state officials accountable. If we could have implicit trust in them we would not need formal criteria. But we cannot trust them. In fact, it is our civic duty to distrust them. The principle of organized distrust of government lies at the core of American constitutional thought. That is its main contribution to the progress of civilization.

Notes

1. In a report entitled Shared Living: A New Take on an Old Idea, prepared for the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council and issued in Spring 2013 (henceforth “the NASDDDS Report”). Available for download at the site of the NASDDDS. If you have trouble downloading it (as I did) e-mail me at sshenfield@verizon.net and I’ll send it to you.

2. Shared Living in Vermont: Individualized Home Supports for People with Developmental Disabilities 2010. State of Vermont, Division of Disability and Aging Services, Department of Disability, Aging and Independent Living (henceforth “the Vermont Report”). Accessible at www.dail.vermont.gov. The inclusion of disabled children as well as adults here confuses the distinction between shared living and foster care.

3. Daily rates of $162 versus $109. See: Kelcy Dolan, “Budget concerns shift perspective from group homes to shared living,” Warwick Beacon, January 21, 2016 (http://warwickonline.com/stories/budget-concerns-shift-perspective-from-group-homes-to-shared-living,108733).

4. Process for Enrolling, Matching, and Monitoring Host Home/Life-Sharing Sites for DBHDD Developmental Disabilities Community Service Providers, 02-704, Clause F (https://gadbhdd.policystat.com/policy/832301/latest/).

5. State of South Dakota, Department of Human Services, Division of Developmental Disabilities, page on Adult Foster Care (https://dhs.sd.gov/dd/adultfc.aspx).

6. The assessment could be carried out at the Children’s Neurodevelopment Center (formerly the Child Development Center) at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence – if they agree to count developmentally disabled adults as “children”!

7. Source as for note 3.

Appendix. Advantages and disadvantages of shared living according to the Vermont Report

Advantages

1. Shared living offers a wide variety of flexible options to meet the specific needs of individuals.

2. The “difficulty of care” payment to a home provider is exempt from federal and state income tax.

3. Shared living, on average, has a lower per diem cost than other types of twenty-four hour a day home support, such as staffed living and group homes.

4. Shared living offers an opportunity for support workers to earn income while working out of their home.

5. Home providers may support and facilitate contact with the individual’s natural family.

6. A home provider’s extended family and friends often become the “family” and friends of the individual who lives with them. The individual may have a chance to share holidays and go on vacations with the home provider.

7. Consistency in supports offered in a home setting is good for individuals who are highly medically involved or have other complex support needs. There is a high probability that individuals in shared living who are terminally ill will receive end of life care at home.

8. Shared living often leads to long-term stability and consistency in the individual’s life as many home providers become life-long companions to the individual who lives with them.

9. Home providers often provide the necessary transportation that helps an individual get to places he or she needs or wants to go.

10. Shared living offers targeted skill development that affords a safe and measured approach toward more independent living

Disadvantages

1. Individuals receiving services from agencies may become comfortable with this option. It can therefore be programmatically, emotionally and fiscally challenging for individuals to “graduate” out of shared living to more independent supervised living.

2. Shared living can limit an individual’s exposure to other people and places outside the home or to what the home provider experiences.

3. There may be fewer independent or external eyes on the individual, thus reducing opportunities for oversight.

4. Because the home must be the primary residence of the home provider, if the specific living arrangement does not work it is the individual that has to move out.

5. Given limited public transportation and the rural location of many shared living homes, an individual’s access to alternative transportation options are often limited.

6. Home providers may be challenged when, as employers, they are required to hire, train and supervise workers to provide respite, community supports and/or employment supports to the individual living with them.

The 2016 General Assembly is in full swing and lawmakers are considering hundreds of important pieces of legislation that could have serious impacts on our rights. The ACLU of Rhode Island is at the State House nearly every day to weigh in on these bills, and having civil libertarians like you behind us truly makes a difference. That’s why we want to teach you how to be a better advocate!

This Saturday, February 20, advocates and two former lawmakers will lead an ACLU Advocate Training Session at the Warwick Public Library at 2:30 PM to share their experiences and advice on how to make your voice heard in Rhode Island. After the afternoon session, you’ll be ready to follow important civil liberties legislation; reach your legislators; connect with fellow advocates; and testify before committees. If you can’t make it this Saturday, the ACLU will host another training at the Rochambeau Library on Saturday, February 27 at 1 PM.

You don’t need any prior experience to learn how you can make Rhode Island a better place for your family, friends, and neighbors!

Join ACLU advocates and volunteers on:

Saturday, February 20, 2016

2:30 to 4 PM

Warwick Public Library

600 Sandy Lane Warwick, RI 02889

OR

Saturday, February 27, 2016

1 to 2:30 PM

Rochambeau Library

708 Hope Street Providence, RI 02906

No experience necessary. All are welcome.