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Source: 2012 ECAC Tournament Semi-Final Harvard crushed Cornell 6-1 (Photo: Bill Wolfe)

[Update: Correction! I was wrong! Cornell won an NCAA tournament slot!:

• #10 Men’s Hockey Headed to Manchester, Will Face #3 Denver

We’ve been following Cornell Big Red Hockey even before I went to graduate school there in the early 1980’s.

When I was in 8th grade, I was the water-boy for my high school hockey team (later to  be named a Westchester-Rockland High School All-County defenseman in 1973-74 and 1974-75). That year, we took a roadtrip to Ithaca High School in 1970. We were trounced in a weekend series with Ithaca HS, but were treated to an incredible Cornell – Boston University game at Lynah rink, the year Cornell went undefeated and won the national championship.

Before we were Cornell fans, we hated the Cornell Big Red when I was an undergraduate at Clarkson in 1975, and skated on weekends with, served as road trip designated driver for, and roomed with and hung out with the hockey team and future NHL star Dave Taylor. (Hint to college administrators: never assign a freshman to room with varsity hockey players!)

Over the last 40+ years, we’ve attended many years at ECAC Championship tournaments, at Lake Placid and then Boston Garden (my X-wife was a varsity letter winner on Cornell women’s hockey team and we brought our son to Boston Garden in 1989 at 2 months of age). The tournament then moved to Albany and then Atlantic City and then back again to Lake Placid.

I’ve been consistently disappointed in their tournament play. I blame head coach Mike Schafer (who I saw play defense in graduate school in 1983-85).

Last night was the same old same old choke as Harvard won a 0-0 tie in overtime, after just 4:38 of overtime play.

As usual, the Cornell offense was anemic (I think they had just 15 shots on goal and 2 or 3 legitimate scoring chances) and little offensive zone puck possession, but the defense was strong.

In the typical fashion of Mike Schafer’s defensive approach, at least three times, when the Cornell offense had rare puck control deep in the offensive zone, they changed up lines and voluntarily surrendered the puck. WTF!

Ironically, on Harvard’s winning goal, the offensive line was trapped out of position deep in the offensive zone and a sophomore defenseman (#27) was caught way out of position on a 3-2 break. Harvard scored in an open net as the goal tender also overplayed the situation and was way out of position.

I doubt that Cornell, ranked #10 nationally before this game, will secure an NCAA tournament bid. So, it looks like their season is over.

Once again, there’s always next year (but at least the Big Red band again played an awesome rendition of Oh Canada! before the start of the game).

2012 ECAC semi-final (Photo: Bill Wolfe)

for photos, see

Tough Night for Cornell Hockey

Pentagon Ordered DEP To Maintain Secrecy 

DEP Lied To The Pinelands Commission, The Media, And The Public

Part One: The Maps Set The Stage

Source: NJDEP.
Note the date: April 2020

After weeks of delay, the DEP has finally responded to my Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request for government documents on military funding of DEP forestry projects in the Pinelands.

Today, I will begin the series describing the deeply troubling  information I obtained from these documents. Among other things:

• The documents tell a story of how the US military has a cozy relationship with and behind the scenes exerts a huge and hidden influence over DEP public lands management and conservation policies and practices, not only in the Pinelands but along the NJ coast as well;

• The documents show that the military funding drives DEP priorities and land management practices – including the location of projects – far more than any public preferences and/or the policies stated in official DEP plans and regulations;

• The documents show that the military ordered DEP to keep the military funding, military objectives, and project scope secret, and that DEP acceded to the military’s secrecy request;

• The documents show that, in order to comply with the military secrecy demand, that DEP misled the Pinelands Commission, and submitted intentionally misleading and materially false regulatory documents to the Pinelands Commission, including a highly unusual letter from DEP Commissioner LaTourette that threatened a lawsuit if the Commission failed to quickly approve the DEP plan;

• The documents show that DEP lied to the media and the public about the military objectives and funding of their Forest Management Plan and that DEP provided a false rationale to support the project to mask these military objectives;

• The documents show that DEP falsely claimed in the military REPI grant application that their Pinelands Forestry plan had received “all permits”, long BEFORE the Pinelands Commission approved the DEP plan on October 14, 2022;

• The documents show – similar to how inappropriate military equipment is provided to local police forces – that DEP used military money to buy industrial commercial logging equipment;

• The documents show that DEP defined the “project” to include 1.2 million acres, thereby setting the stage for dramatic future expansion and ongoing military funding; and

• The documents strongly suggest that conservation groups who actively supported and publicly promoted the DEP forestry plan – one of whom is identified as a “partner” by the military in the REPI program – were either duped by the military or also knowingly lied to the Pinelands Commission, media, and public about the military funding and objectives.

It’s all bad: for forestry, its log and burn to protect the military bases.

On “climate resilience” (flooding, shore protection, etc), the DEP protects military assets more than people and public infrastructure, in terms of where they conduct projects and the projects they pursue.

[Only after the military allowed them to, on February 22, 2023, DEP issued a highly spun press release, long after the fact, that obscures the actual project (which even had different names) and the timing on REPI funding and Pinelands Commission approval. This is more a a self disclosed coverup than an honest press statement. I sense that DEP did this to try to get out front of my disclosures, as I previously had written about the military angle in November. ]

We will break all this down in this series, as I disclose the contents of the military and DEP documents.

To begin Part One today, before I discuss the text of the documents, I will first post  just a few maps of the program, which are extremely revealing. These are all DEP maps submitted as part of the military REPI grant applications. The full DEP OPRA response is available upon request.

Readers should closely examine how land is described and classified (e.g. “military influence area”), the names of the projects, and the dates on the maps:

Note that this map has no date.

Note date: July 2022

Note date: November 2022 (conflicts with prior REPI grant application and other maps

Despite Staff Shortfall, Commission Has More Staff Assigned To “Business Services” Than To Science – And NONE With Climate Expertise

More Evidence That Gov. Murphy’s Climate Program Is All Spin, No Substance

I’ve long urged the Pinelands Commission to take serious actions to amend the Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) to address climate science and implement enforceable energy, climate, wildfire, and forestry policies.

The lack of climate policies and enforceable CMP requirements again was exposed recently during the Commission’s review and approval of a DEP Forestry Plan.

That DEP Forestry plan, among other things, purported to justify logging 1,400 acres of forest as part of a “carbon defense” climate policy.

During the Commission’s review of the DEP plan, regulatory staff manager Chuck Horner openly admitted on the public record that the Commission lacked staff expertise in critical areas (forestry, wildfire, climate) and therefore deferred to DEP’s expertise.

It is absurd for a regulatory agency to defer to the expertise of an applicant seeking their regulatory approval.

So, given these self acknowledged staff deficits, I was appalled to read the Commission’s most recent February Monthly Management Report, where they again openly admit crucial staff deficits on climate related issues:

• Interagency Council on Climate Change (IAC): Staff attended two meetings in February for IAC action, one on February 8, and the second on February 14, 2023. At the February 8 meeting, the Executive Director and a member of the Planning Office staff met with the NJ Deputy Climate Resilience Officer (DCRO). Staff confirmed the IAC’s receipt of the revised Pinelands Commission “Agency at a Glance” summary, advised the DCRO of upcoming staff shortages at the Commission that may inhibit the Commission’s ability to meet all IAC deliverable deadlines, and reviewed the timeline for completion of agency Extreme Heat Resilience Action Plans.

Governor Murphy’s Interagency Council on Climate Change (IAC) is not an aggressive policy initiative, so the Pinelands Commission can’t even clear a very low bar.

The IAC is really about consolidating, centralizing, and assuring top down policy and political control of climate policy by the Governor’s Office.

It is designed to keep all State agencies from getting out in front of the Governor or DEP on climate policy. The Governor wants unilateral control and a free hand to issue self serving and highly spun press releases and Executive Orders on climate.

As a result, the IAC is an unwieldy and unaccountable group of bureaucrats that are doing nothing more than slow walking climate policy and politically protecting Gov. Murphy.

The fact that an independent planning and regulatory agency like the Pinelands Commission can not act on climate without a Green Light from the Governor’s Office and his IAC should outrage all climate activists and advocates of good government.

Worse, after I had received and read the Commission’s Monthly Management Report, today I received a “Pinelands Job Opportunities!” announcement from the Commission. They are seeking 2 new professional staff, but not in any climate science or planning related field.

Despite just admitting that they lacked adequate staff to implement the Governor’s climate goals and policy initiatives, they are hiring a traditional civil engineer and another information specialist!

WTF!

The Commission’s Organization Chart exposes the fact that they have more staff in “Business Services” (5) and “Information Systems” (5) than in Science (4) – and none in climate science.

That does not reflect a serious response to the climate emergency, by both the Pinelands Commission and Governor Murphy’s office and IAC.

So, I fired off this note to the Pinelands Commission (and a similar note to the Highlands Council that I will write about in future). I don’t expect a reply:

Dear Pinelands Commission and Executive Director Grogan:

According to the Commission’s February Monthly Management Report: (emphasis mine)

“Staff confirmed the IAC’s receipt of the revised Pinelands Commission “Agency at a Glance” summary, advised the DCRO of upcoming staff shortages at the Commission that may inhibit the Commission’s ability to meet all IAC deliverable deadlines, and reviewed the timeline for completion of agency Extreme Heat Resilience Action Plans.”

https://www.nj.gov/pinelands/infor/online/Feb_2023_Mgt_Rpt_%20FINAL.pdf

According the the Commission’s Organizational chart, there are more staff (5 in each) in “Information Systems” and “Business Services” than in Science (4):

https://www.nj.gov/pinelands/images/pdf%20files/chart.pdf.

During the recent debate on DEP’s Wildfire Plan, Chuck Horner stated on the public record that the Commission lacked stafff expertise in forestry, wildfire, and climate science. Those deficits forced the Commission to defer to the DEP expertise (deference to the expertise on an applicant seeking regulatory approval is, at best, mismanagement.)

For years, I’ve been urging the Commission to beef up its climate science and planning staff and functions to respond to the climate crisis, yet the Commission still has NO STAFF with climate expertise and experience.

So, given these critical staff deficits, why is the Commission using scarce budget resources to hire another Information Systems staffer and a traditional civil engineer?

Executive Director Grogan, I request that you distribute this email to the full Commission.

I look forward to your timely response.

Bill Wolfe

But A Bank Blows Up And Biden Can’t Bail Out The Rich Fast Enough

Always Trillions For Banks, Wall Street, And War

There is no better contrast to expose the current economic and political reality in the United States today than to compare the response of President Biden to the East Palestine toxic train catastrophe versus his response to the Silicon Valley Bank.

The backdrop being $113 billion to wage a proxy war in Ukraine and a record near trillion dollar Pentagon budget to prepare for another war with China.

Biden flew thousands of miles to Ukraine to promise even more.

Trillions for banks, billionaires, speculators, and war – including even paying the pensions of Ukrainian civil servants – but didley squat for the people of East Palestine.

Old “AMTRAK Joe” couldn’t hop a train to Ohio (but Bi-partisan Joe and his corporate Dems moved almost as quickly to crush the railroad workers union).

Deregulation for the banks and the railroads!

Subsidies and investment for the high tech suburban Silicon Valleys, deindustrialization and disinvestment for manufacturing and the rural Rust Belt.

(take a look at what Neoliberal policies (e.g. deregulation, privatization, globalization – free-trade agreements, austerity, et al) and corporate finance capitalism have done to northeastern Ohio rust belt towns, look:

• “Infrastructure” Scenes From Main Street In Northeast Ohio That Biden And Media Didn’t Depict

What the hell is going on here?

An entire generation of self described “progressives”, “activists”, Movement for Black Lives, and other social and economic justice advocates seem to have missed the US history class when the works of Dr. King were presented.

What else could explain not only the total invisibility of an anti-war movement, but actual SUPPORT for the war?

And it’s Not only SUPPORT for the war, but ugly scenes where so called “progressives” actually SHOUT DOWN war protesters who are attempting to hold Congresspersons accountable for their votes in support of the war.

Down Orwell’s Memory Hole is the history of how Dr. King excoriated war, and not only for the immoral and evil murder and destruction it caused but for the diversion of billions from LBJ’s “Great Society” to the Pentagon war budget.

In his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech – exactly one year before and the likely cause of his murder – King said:

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. […]

We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. […]

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

All while real journalists – i.e. Sy Hersh, the man who broke the My Lai massacre story among many others – are forced to publish anti-war war crime stories on Substack.

What the hell is going on here?

Vehicle Fleet Turnover Is Very Slow, Unless More Aggressive Mandates Are Adopted

Basic Math Ignored

Intro Note:

The fake corporate funded EV cheerleaders won’t say anything about this corporate investment, which exposes the fact that absolutely nothing is changing under the “green” economy. Bloomberg reports:

• Tesla Mexico Plant Means $10 Billion Investment

The news reports and cheerleading of climate activists are not telling the full story on the challenges of electric vehicles (EV) as a technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And I don’t mean merely the totally unrealistic goals and timetables for EV sales and bans on sales of new gas/diesel vehicles; or the lack of charging infrastructure; opposition by car dealers; or lack of consumer confidence.

By failing to tell the full story, they propagate and allow false notions and unrealistic expectations to persist.

They fail to even talk about the other side of the electric vehicle fleet coin: the retirement of existing internal combustion vehicles ( we joked about that 15 years ago, see:

• Corzine applauds New Carbon Control Corporation – Cash for Clunkers at Home – Major Benefits for NJ

This neglect of the other side of the coin means that necessary more comprehensive and stronger policy tools are not even on the table.

One example: why not mandate at least a 1:1 buyback and retirement of an internal combustion vehicle for every EV sold, and do so as part of the EV sale?

That kind of mandate could also address the extremely regressive nature of the entire EV program and its subsidies, which benefit upper income drivers at the expense of lower income groups. 

The fact of the matter is that, even if the unrealistic EV sales goals are met and sales of new internal combustion (gas and diesel fueled) vehicles are banned, that does not mean that that the vehicle fleet will even come close to being 100% electric. Similarly unrealistic expectations are stoked by false assumptions that there will be significant reductions in total vehicle GHG emissions.

That’s because the lifespan of an internal combustion vehicle is long (20-30 years) and increasing, so the fleet turnover is very slow.

The NY Times reports:

Around the world, governments and automakers are focused on selling newer, cleaner electric vehicles as a key solution to climate change. Yet it could take years, if not decades, before the technology has a drastic effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

One reason for that? It will take a long time for all the existing gasoline-powered vehicles on the road to reach the end of their life spans.

This “fleet turnover” can be slow, analysts said, because conventional gasoline-powered cars and trucks are becoming more reliable, breaking down less often and lasting longer on the road. The average light-duty vehicle operating in the United States today is 12 years old, according to IHS Markit, an economic forecasting firm. That’s up from 9.6 years old in 2002.

Those facts mean that far more comprehensive and aggressive policies are required (unless the goal is just to pretend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). 

What kind of policies?

Why is the corporate mainstream NY Times outlining a more intelligent and aggressive policy agenda than the so called climate activists:

policymakers may need to consider additional strategies to clean up transportation, experts said. That could include policies to buy back and scrap older, less efficient cars already in use. It could also include strategies to reduce Americans’ dependence on car travel, such as expanding public transit or encouraging biking and walking, so that existing vehicles are driven less often.

“There’s an enormous amount of inertia in the system to overcome,” said Abdullah Alarfaj, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University who led a recent study that examined how slow vehicle turnover could be a barrier to quickly cutting emissions from passenger vehicles.

It is amazing that these “additional strategies” are presented as novel. The legal and policy framework to implement them has been in place for over 40 years.

Back in the day, environmentalists used to think more broadly and focus on the integration of land use, transportation, and clean air planning and regulatory strategies. (and I don’t mean merely seeking to stop diversions of Clean Energy Funds to NJ Transit!)

In fact, the Clean Air Act mandates exactly that and the NJ DEP is required to develop and enforce a State Implementation Plan (SIP) that has regulatory teeth to attain these integrated clean air and transportation goals.

But environmentalists, climate activists, and the media have largely abandoned work on those planning and regulatory programs – particularly land use – in favor of a narrow and blatantly commercial focus on the EV program.

It is likely that industry funding of the EV cheerleaders has had a huge impact on that narrowing focus (that means you, Doug O’Malley:

ChargEVC, made up of car manufacturers, technology companies, utilities, consumer advocates and non-government organizations, serves as the singular voice of a compelling message. …

The diversity of CHARGEVC is what makes the organization so valuable. Our members represent the key players that are crucial to shaping electric vehicle growth in a sound and sustainable manner. (my emphasis)

As a result, DEP is given a pass and gets completely captured by regulated industries and adoption and enforcement of SIP standards are neutered.

Like I’ve written many times, this another example of how we are actually going backwards on the policy frontier.