Glen Onoko: An Abandoned Opportunity

I used to live in North Carolina, a state similar to Pennsylvania in some ways. It’s politically a purple state with a conservative legislature that often elects democrats to statewide office. North Carolina has its problems, but it has always done two things exceedingly well: invest in its public university system, and fund its state parks and forests.

I was thinking about this last year while hiking near Glen Onoko falls, on state game lands near Lehigh Gorge State Park. I say “near” because, of course, the trail to the falls has been closed for several years due to a number of injuries and fatal falls. Despite the closing, the trail still draws visitors, and will continue to due to its scenic beauty and proximity to large population centers. Because this is one of the most popular and visited trails in the state, putting up barriers will not eliminate demand. People will continue to hike—and get hurt or even killed—along what has for many years been a poorly maintained pathway.

There are plenty of precarious spots that manage to safety cater to the public’s desire to hike in areas of great beauty. I can think of a number in neighboring states, such as Buttermilk Falls State Park in New York. Or consider North Carolina, which benefits hugely from tourism built around its well-maintained parks and forests. People travel from all over the country to hike the peaks, gorges and waterfalls of the Great Smokies and Black Mountains.

Pennsylvania may not have towering peaks like Grandfather Mountain or Mount Mitchell, but we have something NC doesn’t—close proximity to some of the largest metro areas in the country. Imagine the economic benefit the right sort of investment in our natural resources could bring for the millions of day trippers and weekend warriors if there was adequate visitor facilities, parking and infrastructure investment at all of our best-known trails.

Imagine Glen Onoko as a marquee attraction, luring people to stay and shop in this region of the Poconos. Imagine the conservation and water quality benefits of well-thought-out trail design and oversight in a sensitive natural area. From an ethical standpoint, imagine a state that does not fail to create a safe and accessible means for people to visit a regionally famous scenic area, rather than just putting up caution tape and looking the other way.

I urge Pennsylvania to make the investments needed to maximize the value of our public lands, both for our own residents and those who would love to enjoy our state as a safe and scenic getaway. 

 

Note: This was written in 2022 and sent to the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, as well as state senators and legislators, including Bob Casey and Pat Toomey. Casey replied with boilerplate email "regarding federal lands" (not the subject of this piece) that clearly was plucked from a group of pre-written responses organized by rough category. Same for Toomey, who referenced the 2021 Protecting America's Wilderness and Public Lands Act, which concerns federal lands, wilderness designations and land acquisition, none in Pennsylvania.

How Did Biden Win Pennsylvania? The Suburbs

 
It’s not getting a lot of play in the national conversation post election, but the suburbs were massively important to the Biden victory in Pennsylvania.

The Democrats’ share of the total votes cast in Philly actually decreased vs 2016, but this difference was more than made up for by the increase in blue votes in just one suburban town—Lower Merion.

All over the collar counties, turnout rose as towns shifted left. Biden widened the margin in towns Clinton won and flipped or made big inroads in affluent, predominantly white towns that Trump won in 2016.

In the end, these counties—Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Bucks—gave Biden a 293,000-vote margin over Trump in a state that Biden won by less than 81,000 votes.

It’s heartening to see how poorly Trump’s overtly racist appeals played in these counties. Biden will “destroy the suburbs” Trump said repeatedly, meaning open up affordable housing to those lower on the income scale.

There’s a lot of political dissension in the hinterlands and plenty of voters who may swing back red in future presidential contests, but at least the most nakedly demagogic appeal fell flat among its exact target audience.

It may even do fair housing advocates a favor, as his politicizing of zoning and housing issues forces the issue into people’s consciousness. Hypocrisy around affordable housing will be a tougher position to maintain; we are already seeing the effect of this in shifting attitudes in California, and local NIMBYS in my neck of the woods seem chastened, at least for the time being.

Hey, Joe—Some Thoughts to Make the Country Grow

Not as fun as Bob Dylan's advice for John Kennedy in 1963, but I do have some suggestions for Biden’s first term. Down-ballot difficulties demonstrate the importance of proactively demonstrating that centrist liberalism is America’s core, mainstream, functional politics, with the best chance to really move the nation forward.

• Do something meaningful on the southern border. Show everyone there’s an alternative to Trumpism. Beef up drug interdiction at legal border crossings and put money back into the infrastructure for processing asylum seekers. Demonstrate how to treat all humans with basic dignity.
• Make the promotion of democratic institutions, civil order and rule of law in Central America a foreign policy priority. Make clear the connections between instability in these countries and the flow of desperate people to our southern border. (Throw in a reminder of Trump’s cutting aid to those countries.)
• Pursue police reform and frame this as an effort that will benefit both police and victims. Work to set up a robust mental health aid structure spearheaded by the training of unarmed first responders who specialize in dealing with crisis situations.
• Infrastructure—yes! Do what Trump couldn’t deliver and invest in roads, rail, ports, wind, solar. This means having the balls to support pipeline projects, too—oil shipped in dangerous tanker trains & trucks is bad news. Show you are serious about realistic, phased energy transition.
• Let’s strengthen the ACA with a public option, expanded medicaid. Hammer home how Republicans try to take away basic protections (incl. preexisting conditions) in the middle of a pandemic.
• Aggressively address the plague of urban gun violence without threatening authoritarian measures. Strong federal support and targeted interdiction to staunch the cycle of gang retaliation. As Harvard’s Thomas Abt says, “to reduce violence, focus on the damn violence.”

Notes on Abortion and the Right to Privacy

The Amy Coney Barrett hearings were a lesson in the connection between the legal arguments for decriminalizing abortion and, earlier, contraception. If couples are free to choose whether or not to use contraception, based on religious or other convictions, the same could be true for abortion.

This seems like a sound legal argument and even, in a parallel legal universe, bears application of the Establishment Clause. One religious sect's view of contraception or abortion should not dictate everyone else's ability to access these things; our laws are not written to satisfy one set of beliefs over another (i.e. we do not outlaw pork or blood transfusions to satisfy Muslims or Jehovah's Witnesses).  

The Supreme Court chose instead to legalize contraception (in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965) and abortion (Roe v Wade, 1972) based on the right to privacy, which stems from an interpretation of the due process clause of the 14th amendment: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".

Privacy, being a privilege already recognized elsewhere in the Constitution and in common law, is interpreted as encompassing whether a couple decides to prevent pregnancy, or what a woman does early in a pregnancy. “In Roe, the court ruled that the state's compelling interest in preventing abortion and protecting the life of the mother outweighs a mother's personal autonomy only after viability. Before viability, the mother's right to privacy limits state interference due to the lack of a compelling state interest," explains Live Science.

Whatever one thinks of this particular application of the 14th Amendment, this interpretation of privacy seems to jive with longstanding historical precedent. In many traditional cultures, the fate of a pregnancy before the "quickening" (the movement of a fetus in the womb) is seen as more or less the business of the woman herself and her trusted confidants (usually other women such as female relatives or a local healer).1

Seen more broadly, the enshrining of a privacy doctrine in sexual and reproductive matters fits in well with an analysis of Western cultural history where, as the power of brute-force coercion diminished beginning in the 18th century, the state’s "right to observe" and insert itself into questions of sexuality through the lens of science, categorization and regulation increased. 2 Legal protections are therefore necessary to counter these modern forces that have led to specific repression and prosecution of sexual and reproductive "crimes" that in past eras were largely ignored by the state (including contraception, abortion and non-normative sexual practices such as homosexuality or S&M). 3

It is the “creep” of right-to-privacy arguments that animates some of the modern opposition to the liberalization of laws regarding sexuality and reproduction. After all, in past eras, infanticide was also largely overlooked, as was child sexual abuse. Are we to protect these activities under a privacy rubric? The difference is that while these activities were once tolerated (or even actively embraced) in some cultures, this is certainly not the case today. While there is no religious, moral, ethical or scientific consensus on abortion, there is universal consensus on infanticide. Rode v Wade covers this argument by recognizing that there does eventually come a point where the state has a compelling interest in preserving the life of a fetus, except in cases where a pregnancy becomes too dangerous for the mother or there are other strong medical reasons to intervene. 

1 In the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a faithful account of life for poor Irish in pre-WWI New York, a midwife learns a young mother with a three-month old baby is pregnant again. She produces a bottle of “evil-looking dark brown stuff” and tells the mother,” a good dose of this night and morning for three days and you’ll come around again.” Even though she is no longer able to nurse her baby, the mother refuses, saying she cannot kill anything. “It wouldn’t be killing,” the midwife replies. “It don’t count until you’ve felt life.” When the mother still refuses, the midwife leaves with some final advice: “If you keep running up and down the stairs, maybe you’ll have a miscarriage.”

2 These areas are associated with French philosopher Michel Foucault in his books Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.

3 Obstetrics and pediatric medicine are obviously a blessing for woman and children, but with modern technology always comes the threat of using technological tools for governmental overreach. With laws in some states compelling multiple doctor visits, notification of a pregnant teenager’s parents, unnecessary ultrasounds, description of a fetal image by a doctor, the viewing of an ultrasound image or the broadcast of the sound of a fetal heartbeat, it’s no wonder “keep your laws off my body” has become a rallying cry.

OK, Let's Review

On Election Day 2018, let’s review where we stand with our compatriots on the Right.

The Republican Party of November 2018:

Does not talk much about tax cuts, health care and the deficit—their thee biggest talking points during the Obama era—because their approaches have proven ineffective, unworkable and/or unpopular.

Demonizes immigrants as dangerous “invaders,” then refuses to take responsibility when an anti-semite murders Jews, inspired by this premise.

Does not condemn a GOP candidate in California for saying a Christian part-Arab running for office is attempting to “infiltrate” Congress.

Whips up anti-semitic hate aimed at a Jewish anti-Communist freedom fighter and Ronald Reagan admirer, who has worked tirelessly to fight corruption and support civil society around the world (that would be George Soros)…
 
 … while at the same time accepting PAC money from illiberal dictators like Viktor Orban and going soft on Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and Mohammed bin Salman.

Actively works to undermine good government by leaving hundreds of jobs unfilled and elevating incompetent partisan hacks (such as Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke) to key posts.

Ignores science and a mounting climate crisis (reserving words like “crisis” to describe migrating bands of poor people), refusing to consider even bipartisan, market-based mitigation strategies like carbon pricing.

Actively undermines an investigation into Russian interference in American elections that has already produced enough credible evidence to ring up 32 indictments and guilty pleas—that’s 32 more than Whitewater, Benghazi, the Valerie Plame affair, the Torture Memos, the Bush White House “Lawyergate” mass email destruction and Hillary email controversies combined.

Has given up on addressing, much less prioritizing, a workable plan of resolution and exit strategy for the now 17-year war in Afghanistan, which has claimed the lives of over 2,370 U.S. military.

Has failed utterly to follow through on highly-touted infrastructure improvements necessary to maintain America’s economic competitiveness.

Passed a tax law designed to benefit the rich, with minimal tax benefits for the middle class (most of which sunset after a few years), which has exploded the deficit while generating little to no real wage growth—all while slashing IRS funds for rooting out tax fraud and corruption.

Controls a Congress that sits idly by as the executive branch attacks the free press, independent judiciary, electoral process and separation of powers, offering only a halfhearted defense of the right of legislators to defend the letter of the Constitution, while establishing new, damaging precedents for conduct in judicial appointments and supreme court nominations (remember Merrick Garland).

Refuses to take seriously ample evidence of vote suppression around the nation, some patently racially motivated, while touting unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.