WolfeNotes.com

The Three Legged Stool Has Collapsed

Toothless NJ State Plan And A Passive – Even Pro-Development – DEP Get Another Pass

Adding insult to injury, this NJCF Report was released on the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Highlands Act. That’s a milestone they should have used to launch the “final land use battle” to preserve 100% of the remaining farms and forests.

Conservationists used to advocate that the practice of conservation relied on a “three legged stool”: preservation, planning & regulation, and private land stewardship.

They long ago abandoned work on the planning and regulation leg, and as a result, just like a muscle that goes unused, it atrophied and the stool was destabilized and weakened.

The NJ State Plan, the DEP land use and water resource planning programs, and the State’s leading policy, planning and regulatory role all eroded like the NJ shore after a nor’easter.

But, while conservationists abandoned work on the planning and regulatory leg, they at least remained rhetorically committed to it.

That rhetorical commitment tethered the conservation organizations to the issue, and forced them to remain engaged in the regulatory battles at DEP and land use campaigns that other more aggressive environmental groups mounted. That’s how we got the Highlands Act – a planning and regulatory model that the conservation community initially OPPOSED and only reluctantly joined after the initial hard political work was done by other groups and Governor McGreevey and his DEP Commissioner publicly backed the campaign. (I even had to shame them into opposing DEP’s proposed clearcut of that magnificent sycamore forest on Bulls Island!)

But no more.

Now, going beyond neglect, they’ve abandoned it completely and actively work to undermine planning and regulation, with bullshit like this from a NJ Conservation Foundation Report released yesterday:

Preservation priorities must also include wetlands, wetland buffers, floodplains, and flood hazard areas. Although environmental regulations protect these lands, many are privately owned and vulnerable to encroachments and violations. Permanent preservation through public ownership and strong, enforceable deed restrictions are required to fully preserve these lands.

(notice that there is no demand to strengthen regulations, pressure DEP to more aggressively enforce, or criticize DEP for these regulatory failures).

In addition to undermining regulation, the NJCF Report totally ignores critical issues. Those “preservation priorities” are far too narrow in scope and ignore forests and impacts of climate change. Similarly omitted, the environmental regulations also include the Highlands RMP and Pinelands CMP.

Adding insult to injury, this NJCF Report was released on the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Highlands Act. That’s a milestone they should have used to launch the “final land use battle” to preserve 100% of the remaining farms and forests.

And, as I’ve written here scores of times, the NJCF Report ignores the current policy context.

Specifically, it ignores the “deregulatory ratchet” I’ve recently written about.

It ignores a passive and sometimes explicitly pro-development Murphy administration and DEP. This DEP Commissioner has made outrageous policy statements (e.g. DEP role not to block development, reliance on buyer beware over regulation, et al) that should have been condemned. DEP has issued development approvals that should have been condemned (e.g. millions of square feet of warehouse development, etc). DEP has undermined the Pinelands Commission, the CMP, and promoted off road vehicle destruction and the logging of Pinelands forests. DEP has undermined the Highlands Council and blocked them from adopting more protective forests regulations. DEP has approved Natural Resource Damage settlements with corporate polluters that not only fail to recover money and restore tremendous ecological damage, but promote development! (e.g. BASF and American Cyanamid). DEP has approved a massive development along a C1 reservoir tributary that relies on a harebrained wastewater plan. DEP has delayed and failed to propose effective regulations and has done nothing but issue a series of process oriented nothing-burgers, see:

• Murphy DEP Playing A Perpetual Bureaucratic Shell Game On Climate Emergency

None of that has been criticized by NJCF and their fellow conservationists.

It ignores DEP’s failure to adopt real climate regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate emergency.

It ignores Gov. Murphy’s failure to lead – he is the first Democratic Governor I am aware of that has no environmental legacy commitments or accomplishments (his climate and energy programs are largely rhetorical and his multiple self congratulatory Executive Orders, which read like press releases, are toothless).

Again, the conservationists have abandoned not only planning and regulation, but the necessary hard work of political accountability. They prefer playing nice, cozying up to political power, working the behind the scenes inside game with DEP and “stakeholder process” – a failed approach that even their own Report documents in terms of environmentally sensitive lands lost to development.

Complete reliance on voluntary approaches, e.g. willing sellers and friendly politicians and DEP Commissioners – as the NJCF approach does – is a fatally flawed fools errand.

That approach not only resulted in devastating losses of environmentally sensitive lands, it gave us the “Keep It Green” campaign that produced the compromised small bore current program, which slashed historical Green Acres funding and defunded parks maintenance and other DEP water and toxic site cleanup programs.

As a result of the Keep It Green campaign, not only has funding been slashed, but there is now a $720 million deficit in State Parks maintenance and capital projects, see:

• Murphy DEP Commissioner Dropped A Bombshell Today In Budget Hearing: NJ State Parks Face A $720 Million Maintenance Deficit (almost double prior $400 million)

But you’d never know about any of that by reading the NJCF Report – or the coverage of it by NJ Spotlight.

Will NJ Governor Murphy Defend The First Amendment and Free Speech?

Or Will He Continue To Support A Genocide In Gaza?

The National Police Crackdown Is Well Underway

As University campuses explode across the country in support of Palestinians and in opposition to Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the official crackdown has begun.

Almost exactly like the national police crackdown that crushed the Occupy Wall Street movement – coordinated by the Obama administration – a series of heavily armed and sometimes violent police crackdowns is underway at Universities across the country, where police are arresting students and violently dismantling tents in occupied college squares.

I would not be surprised if the Biden Administration put out the word, like Obama did to crush Occupy.

Thus far, students are standing their ground and the movement appears to be expanding to additional universities. Let’s hope the courage continues and the movement expands! Chicago ’24!

The protests follow closely on a McCarthyite spectacle in Washington last week, where House Republicans were seeking the scalp of another elite University President of Columbia University. They’ve already driven out Presidents at Harvard and Penn, with the MIT President still hanging in there.

Academic freedom has been virtually terminated, and the Israeli lobby, billionaire bullies withdraw funding, and now even Netanyahu himself is calling student protesters Nazi’s and seeking to kill their political freedoms, like free speech, assembly, and protest rights.

So, I was not surprised to learn that Princeton University has just written to students to threaten to expel protesters there.

Which poses a political challenge to “liberal” NJ Governor Phil Murphy.

Will he speak out to defend the First Amendment and push back against Princeton’s threats?

Or will he continue the cowardly complicity of silence, as not only US rights and academic integrity are destroyed, but the US funded and supplied Israeli genocide continues?

Hey Phil – I even Googled mapped the route for you – why don’t you and Tammy wife take a stroll from the Governor’s Mansion at Drumthwacket – a 1 mile, 23 minute walk – to Princeton and have a chat with the University President about so called liberal values?

Then issue a Press Release statement?

The whole world is watching. Silence is complicity.

Real Estate Interests And NJ Builders Assc. Praise Private “Regulation”

This is all brought to you by a “liberal” Democratic Governor and Legislature

My email brought me another stellar report from Gov. Murphy’s Business Action Center (BAC):

New Rules Adopted for Private Construction Inspections

Qualified developers now have access to streamlined inspection processes with the option for supplemental on-site private inspection agencies if local inspection officials are delayed. The Uniform Construction Code (UCC) Subchapter 4 defines the parameters of private inspection agencies to ensure compliance with the law.

The new rules were effective April 1 – a real April Fools Day message!

Not one public interest organization, environmental group, or private citizen participated in the regulatory process (no comments submitted). But the rules were strongly praised by business groups, including the NJ [Fossil] Fuel Merchants Assc. So, that ought to tell you something.

8. COMMENT: The New Jersey Builders Association (NJBA) strongly supports the Department’s proposed amendments to the Uniform Construction Code and are appreciative for the significant work and support on this initiative from Governor Phil Murphy, the late Lieutenant Governor Sheila Oliver, legislative leadership, and Department staff.

RESPONSE: The Department thanks the commenter for their appreciation.

The Murphy BAC is a secret corporate lobbying group inside State government and by its own words works on behalf of private interests to undermine protective regulation:

We can connect you with government agencies, direct you to appropriate officials, facilitate meetings and follow-ups with regulatory agencies and so much more, all at no cost and strictly confidential.

Did you get that?

For example, the BAC provides secret meetings at DEP to pressure DEP regulators to relax rules, and all that is done in secret and is not subject to OPRA.

This is government promotion of corporate interests that goes well beyond Gov. Whitman’s Business Ombudsman and Gov. Christie’s Red Tape Commission. 

Privatization, deregulation, subsidies, and secrecy – all in one bundle.

Gee, what could go wrong?

NJ’s construction industry has a long history of corruption and dangerous practices – from shoddy construction, to sinkholes caused by burying construction debris on site, to illegal disposal of toxic fill (AKA “dirty dirt”), to building schools on hazardous waste sites – to name just a notorious few off the top of my head.

Now, builders and developers can hire their own private inspection crews to cover all that up.

We are now witnessing the effects of decades of privatization and deregulation, as Boeing planes crash, toxic bomb trains derail and burn, oil and gas wells blowout, and cargo ships take out bridges.

The coming years are likely to add various building failures to that list.

And this is all brought to you by a “liberal” Democratic Governor and Legislature.

Jail And Concentration Camps For People Who Can’t Afford The Rent

I Know Obscene Deliberations When I See Them

JUSTICE KAGAN: [sleeping] is a biological necessity. It’s sort of like breathing. I mean, you could say breathing is conduct too, but, presumably, you would not think that it’s okay to criminalize breathing in public.

And for a homeless person who has no place to go, sleeping in public is kind of like breathing in public. ~~~ Oral argument, transcript at page 20)

[Update below – check out the Biden administration’s “enlightened” legal position.]

I felt a deep sense of shame and disgust in just now reading the transcript of the oral argument before the US Supreme Court in a case that involves a local ordinance in Grants Pass, Oregon that bans camping by homeless people. Scores of homeless people have been harassed by police, heavily fined, and/or jailed for violating the ordinance by sleeping in public places.

I’ve recently been in Grants Pass and was disgusted by the enforcement mentality there. Watch this superb documentary video to get an understanding of the local situation:

• Illegal to Sleep: Grants Pass’ Cruel War on Homelessness

Last year, I wrote about my personal experience with police enforcement of a similar local ordinance in Port Townsend, Washington. Based on the existing US 9th Circuit judicial precedent, I convinced city officials to back off and cease their enforcement crackdown, see:

• A Labor Day Weekend In America

But let’s get back to the current case before the US Supreme Court.

The context of this case is extremely troubling – not only is the homeless problem huge and growing, there is a massive crackdown by State and local governments to criminalize poverty and homelessness.

And that disgraceful crackdown is about to get much, much worse. Watch this Trump statement to see what’s on the horizon: concentration camps:

We will ban urban camping…. Violators of these bans will be arrested….

We will open up large parcels of inexpensive land …. and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated.

(Chief Justice Roberts’ line of questions and hypothetical about “accessibility” to homeless shelters actually explored the concept of relocation to “tent cities” (see p. 80).

We’ve actually come to a point where lack of money is now a crime. Next stop: the poor house.

Where politicians openly attack the least among us and even propose jail and concentration camps for the poor and homeless.

It was sickening to read that transcript and follow the demented legal gymnastics of the radical right wing judges, as they attempted to uphold this local ordinance and authorize the criminalization of homelessness.

To hide behind absurd legal distinctions about whether homelessness was a “status” or a “conduct”, or whether a blanket or a tent defined “camping” is a cruel, perverse and twisted form of “thought”.

To find it a “very difficult policy problem” to determine if it is cruel and unusual punishment to jail desperate homeless people is shameful.

To question whether there’re is a “deeply entrenched liberty interest” in sleeping is absurd.

To posit the existence of a “necessity defense” – which seemed to satisfy Justice Gorsuch – is sickening. Period.

For a Justice of the US Supreme Court [Jackson] to have to make these kinds of observations is degrading to even have to read.

Justice Jackson had to say that sleeping is a “basic human need” and then posed a hypothetical about whether eating in public could be banned or criminalized. (see the transcript at page 22 and 29)

You know, it seems both cruel and unusual to punish people for acts that constitute basic human needs. […]

So is it your argument that the Eighth Amendment has nothing to say about how the City responds to such problems? I mean, suppose the City decided that it was going to execute homeless people.

But Justice Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts had no shame. They pressed on.

Barrett wanted to explore the blanket – “bedding materials” – camping – fires – tents – sleeping issues.

Justice Sotomayor had to squash that bullshit: (page 32):

… you’re not precluded from prohibiting fires. You’re not precluded from prohibiting tents. What’s at issue is are you prohibited from keeping — having someone wear a blanket anywhere in the city.

Your intent was to remove — stated by your mayor, intent is to remove every homeless person and give them no public space to sit down with a blanket or lay down with a blanket and fall asleep. …

Where do we put them [the homeless] if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to this? Where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves, not sleeping?

Still, they would not back down.

Chief Justice Roberts intervened and just changed the subject with this disgusting quip:

Is being a bank robber a status?

(Roberts later posed a hypothetical about a hungry person breaking into a food store. There were multiple comparisons to drug addicts. WTF is the matter with these people?)

I had to stop reading at this point, just 35 pages into a 168 page transcript.

So, let me reframe the issue:

Is being a twisted, heartless, right wing black robed fascist a death penalty eligible offense?

My sense is that the Court will uphold this ordinance which will precipitate a massive mad rush by State and local governments to further attack and criminalize the homeless.

In the increasingly likely event that Trump is elected in November – heckofajob Joe Biden! – we will see concentration camps for the homeless, migrants, drug addicts, mentally ill, and other “socialists” and ANTIFA and protesters Trump and his fascist followers hate.

Don’t say you didn’t know and you weren’t warned.

[End notes: There is no doubt that the intent of this law is the same as the US immigration policy of “deterrence”:, i.e. to make conditions so intolerable that people just leave town (disappear).

In terms of criminalization: I met men who were facing felony sexual misconduct charges for peeing outdoors.

Finally, again stating the obvious, the Justices are trying to make homelessness an individual failure, not a social problem.

Do we actually need to amend the Constitution to clarify that human beings have a fundamental right to dignity and that humiliation and punishment for social failures is cruel?

[Update – check out the Biden administration’s “enlightened” legal position: local solutions, poor laws, and charity. (p. 83-84)

And the — the problem of eating is addressed at the local level as the, you know, history and the poor law shows is that the community takes care of its own residents. And it’s common now as it was at the founding for churches and individuals and whatnot to offer their help, to charity in the community. And that’s what happens in Grants Pass. Various organizations feed — feed the — the homeless people. And there are social services to help the homeless people.

OMG and they don’t recognize the relationship with a dog: fuck these people:

JUSTICE ALITO: What if the person says I — I — yeah, I know there’s a bed available at the Gospel Rescue Mission but they won’t take my dog.

MR. KNEEDLER: I don’t think –– I don’t think the inability to take your dog to a shelter is — is a sufficient reason. There are shelters in some larger cities that may well
take pets, but —

Republican Rollbacks Never Restored 

Over Time, The Policy Of Continuity Goes In One Deregulatory Direction

On this Earth Day, instead of issuing the standard warning to get the hip boots on because the bullshit will be deep, I thought I’d reflect on a disturbing trend in the historical direction of environmental policy.

Let’s call it the “deregulatory ratchet” (TM).

In politics and media, there is a similar dynamic called the Overton Window. Over time, the corporate right have shifted the Overton Window sharply to the right, such that what was unthinkable just a few years ago is now considered a viable and reasonable policy agenda (which we have called fascism, see:

• The Right Wing’s New Long Game Plan – “Project 2025″

The deregulatory ratchet operates in a similar fashion, to wit: Republican administrations roll back regulatory protections and the succeeding Democratic administrations never restore them and just move on to other issues.

The deregulatory ratchet has multiple policy features: deregulation, privatization, budget cuts, revolving doors, corporate capture, and co-optation of environmental groups are the primary mechanisms.

Some call this “Neoliberalism”, but we prefer our term “deregulatory ratchet” because that term is historical, dynamic, and provides a framework to drill down on the concrete substantive policy and program agenda that constitutes the “deregulatory ratchet”.

This term can promote transparency, media coverage, and accountability. In contrast, the term “Neoliberalism” is far too theoretical, abstract, and inaccessible. To some, the term even sounds good, i.e. a form of “liberalism”.

There are several factors that promote or enable the deregulatory ratchet to operate with impunity and without accountability.

These factors include a depleted media that lacks institutional memory, co-opted environmental groups led by mediocrities or incompetents (that’s you Doug O’Malley, Ed Potosnak, and Anjuli Ramos), and public officials who have corporate backgrounds and are increasingly willing to gaslight, manipulate, and even lie to the press and public (that’s you, Shawn LaTourette).

The Murphy administration and DEP Commissioner LaTourette provide a case study that perfectly illustrates the deregulatory ratchet. They have yet to restore Republican rollbacks going back 30 years to the Whitman administration and more recently 8 years of the Christie administration.

As a result, regulatory protections continue to erode; DEP budget, staff and science are increasingly inadequate to respond effectively; environmental groups are totally co-opted sycophants and cheerleaders; and as a result environmental quality and public health protections worsen across the board while corporate power increases.

So, with those thoughts in mind, here is my letter to DEP Commissioner LaTourette that provides the evidence to support my “deregulatory ratchet” theory. I think the current term for this letter is “the receipts”:

———- Original Message ———-

From: Bill WOLFE <b>

To: “shawn.latourette@dep.nj.gov” <shawn.latourette@dep.nj.gov>, “Sean.Moriarty@dep.nj.gov” <Sean.Moriarty@dep.nj.gov>

Cc: “keith.cooper@rutgers.edu” <keith.cooper@rutgers.edu>, “O’Neill, James” <ONeillJ@northjersey.com>, “tmoran@starledger.com” <tmoran@starledger.com>, “fkummer@inquirer.com” <fkummer@inquirer.com>, “wparry@ap.org” <wparry@ap.org>, “ferencem@njspotlightnews.org” <ferencem@njspotlightnews.org>, “jonhurdle@gmail.com” <jonhurdle@gmail.com>, Robert Hennelly <rhennelly55@gmail.com>, “david@njglobe.com” <david@njglobe.com>, domalley <domalley@environmentnewjersey.org>, Anjuli Ramos <anjuli.ramos@sierraclub.org>, “Taylor McFarland, NJ Sierra Club” <taylor.mcfarland@sierraclub.org>, “zoe.kelman@gmail.com” <zoe.kelman@gmail.com>

Date: 04/20/2024 6:36 AM EDT

Subject: NJ Leadership & Voluntary compliance – chromium in drinking water

Dear Commissioner LaTourette:

California and NJ have long been national leaders in the adoption of science based stringent standards to protect public health and the environment for air, water, toxic site cleanup, chemical safety, energy, and climate.

In the nation’s most densely populated State with a legacy of industrial pollution, under federal and New Jersey State laws, NJ DEP has long adopted environmental standards that were broader in scope and more stringent than federal minimums. This reflects the federalism framework under federal environmental law, which allows States to adopt more stringent standards, based on local conditions and policy priorities.

However, NJ’s national leadership and policy of adoption of more stringent State standards were reversed by Governor Whitman’s 1994 Executive Order #27, as part of her “Open For Business” policy initiative.That Executive Order was never revoked.

Making things worse, on his first day in Office in 2010, Gov. Christie issued a package of “regulatory relief” Executive Orders: Executive Orders #1 (regulatory moratorium) Executive Order # 2 (regulatory relief), Executive Order #3 (Red Tape review), and Executive Order #4 (abdication of State role to local government).

As you know, those Christie Orders were revoked by Gov. Murphy’s EO #63, but that Order did not restore the policy of State leadership and more stringent State DEP standards that existed prior to the Whitman Order #27.

While there have been exceptions, since the Whitman administration, DEP has relied primarily on federal EPA standards. Whitman and Christie era regulations have been readopted without change. In fact, the Murphy DEP has readopted 51 regulations without change (see the DEP Rule Re-adoption Without Change page.)

With this context in mind, I am writing to followup on my recent email that requested the status of the DEP’s consideration of a State drinking water MCL for hexavalent chromium.

The State of California just adopted the first drinking water standard for hexavalent chromium.

The NJ DEP does not have a drinking water standards for hexavalent chromium.

As you know, in September 2010, DEP scientists assigned to the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute recommended a health based MCL for hexavalent chromium of 0.07 parts per billion: (see the Drinking Water Quality Institute’s meeting minutes for September 10, 2010:

3. Subcommittee Summaries—Subcommittee Chairpersons Health Effects—L. McGeorge: She noted first that the Subcommittee had adjusted its workplan, delaying action on radium and tertiary butyl alcohol to the first quarter of 2011; they would consider adding nitrates to their workload at a future meeting. Second, after A. Stern’s presentation at the previous Health Effects Subcommittee (HE) meeting on the slope factor developed by the NJDEP Chromium Workgroup for oral exposure to hexavalent chromium, the HE had accepted this slope factor as the basis for a Health-based MCL recommendation for hexavalent chromium at its September meeting. L. McGeorge distributed copies of a memorandum to the Testing and Treatment Subcommittees, recommending a health-based maximum contaminant level (HBMCL) of 0.07 μg/L for hexavalent chromium based on this slope factor.

Thus, hexavalent chromium is an unregulated chemical similar to the regulatory status  of the family of “forever chemicals PFAS prior to recent DEP regulation.

Upon adoption of drinking water standards for PFAS in 2020, the DEP issued a press release that touted national leadership – and also made a statement that even without that State regulatory standard, that there was “voluntary” compliance upon “detection” (DEP Press Release):

“Safe drinking water is a top priority for the Murphy Administration,” said Commissioner Catherine R. McCabe. “With the adoption of these standards, New Jersey continues to lead the nation in protecting public health and the environment from these chemicals, which have been detected at varying levels across the state. New Jersey’s water systems have worked voluntarily and productively with us over the years, taking steps to protect the public when these chemicals have been detected. By adopting formal standards, we are putting in place a clear regulatory framework that will ensure consistency in monitoring, public notification and treatment across the state.”

https://www.nj.gov/dep/newsrel/2020/20_0025.htm

Has there been similar voluntary protections for hexavalent chromium, i.e.”New Jersey’s water systems have worked voluntarily and productively with us over the years, taking steps to protect the public when these chemicals have been detected.”

Have NJ water systems sampled for, detected, and treated hexavalent chromium to at least 0.07 ppb?

Accordingly, I strongly urge you to adopt the drinking water standards of 0.07 ppb recommended by DEP scientists back in 2010.

Thank you:

Bill Wolfe