"Hundreds of companies descend on Washington to fight Trump’s tariffs" by Mark Niquette Bloomberg News, June 17, 2019
New Balance Athletics Inc. has long advocated and benefited from tariffs, competing with Nike Inc. and other footwear companies while still making shoes in the United States. Now, it’s among the critics of President Trump’s duties testifying at public hearings starting Monday.
The Boston-based firm said while it supports Trump’s efforts to force China to address intellectual property theft in a trade deal, its US factories are supported by a global supply chain connected to China and built over decades. Duties on soles and other components would hurt the business, as do China’s retaliatory tariffs on US exports, the company said.
Trump’s proposed levies “will not just translate into higher costs, but jeopardize our ability to maintain production levels and continue investing in our domestic factories,” New Balance vice president Monica Gorman said in comments posted online.
The footwear firm is among US companies lining up for the hearing to drive home a now-common point: Trump’s proposed tariffs are bad for business, but the stakes have never been higher, with the latest wave of threatened duties set to hit essentially all remaining imports from China including mobile phones, laptops, apparel, and other consumer items.
New Balance has long pushed to supply US-made shoes to the Pentagon and argued against reducing tariffs on imported finished footwear when the United States was negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other nations earlier this decade. But Trump withdrew from the TPP in 2017, and his use of tariffs on goods and components has drawn opposition from a swath of US companies and industries.
About 320 officials from US manufacturers, retailers, and other companies and trade groups are set to appear over seven days of hearings. While some companies including Rheem Manufacturing Co. support the duties, most are arguing that Trump shouldn’t tax their products.
While Trump likes to say China is paying the tariffs, economists say it’s US importers that pay them and some of that gets passed to consumers in higher prices. Companies also say they can’t easily avoid them by moving operations outside China, as the president suggests.
It’s the fourth round of hearings, after Trump levied duties on $250 billion of products last year. As talks on a trade deal with China faltered last month, he ordered a tariff increase to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200 billion of goods and targeted an additional $300 billion in products — including consumer goods the administration tried to spare in previous rounds.
Some executives are coming to Washington to testify for the fourth time, even though many don’t have much hope of success given that Trump sees tariffs as “beautiful” and leverage for a deal — especially after he said the threat of duties on Mexico produced an immigration pact. Some firms got goods removed from previous tariff lists, only to have them put back.
Retailers including Best Buy Co. Inc., Jo-Ann Stores LLC, and Forever 21 Inc. have asked to testify against duties on goods including computer tablets, smartwatches, and artificial plants. Hallmark Cards Inc. said greeting cards and Christmas ornaments should be spared because of the impact on retailers, consumers, and even the US Postal Service.
Technology products account for more than half the value of the $300 billion, which will raise prices for consumers and could prove “catastrophic” — especially for small- and medium-size firms, the Consumer Technology Association said.
Trump is still waiting for a response from Chinese President Xi Jinping about meeting to restart trade talks, economic adviser Larry Kudlow said last week, while warning that Beijing may face consequences it if refuses. Trump has repeatedly threatened to raise tariffs if Xi doesn’t meet with him at the G-20 leaders’ meeting from June 28-29 in Osaka, Japan.
Like a MOB BO$$!
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross downplayed the prospect of a major trade deal emerging from a possible meeting between the two presidents, telling the Wall Street Journal in an interview Sunday that the most he thinks will happen is an agreement to resume talks.
Walmart Inc., Target Corp., and Macy’s Inc. were among about 660 companies and associations that made a plea last week to Trump not to impose additional tariffs on Chinese goods, and to return to the negotiating table to strike a trade deal with Beijing.....
So he can pull out of it like with Iran?
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Related:
"US stocks posted slight gains on Wall Street on Monday, adding a bit to the last two weeks of gains; however, trading remained choppy as uncertainty continued over several ongoing trade disputes and their possible effect on economic growth....."
It's all about 5G, and now there i$ no ru$h:
"5G is coming, but there’s really no need to rush in" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, June 17, 2019
Boston is supposed to get one of those ultra-fast 5G wireless networks before the year is up, courtesy of the cellular giant Verizon. So you’ve got a few months to think about signing on.
My advice: Take some more time — like maybe a couple of years.
That’s how long it will take for 5G to prove its worth for consumers. Maybe by then, 5G phones will be more affordable. The least costly one I’ve seen so far, from Motorola, goes for just under $700, while Samsung has an offering priced at $1,300, but there’s another good reason to hold off: 4G, a technology that still gets around pretty well for its age.
Besides, the real-world performance of early 5G systems is bound to disappoint. That’s happening in Chicago, one of the first cities to get the new Verizon service. For now, 5G is available only in the city’s downtown and parts of the north side. Even in those neighborhoods, the service can fail when a user enters a building or just turns the corner.
“If you step behind a glass window or a glass door, you can lose the signal,” said Wayne Lam, telecom analyst for research firm IHS Markit. “It’s very, very finicky.”
Sure enough, early reports from Chicago describe wildly inconsistent results, with gigabit-speed downloads at one location and a complete loss of signal a couple of blocks away, but who needs that much speed for one smartphone? No one — at least, not yet. One day, somebody will find a use for it — a killer app that will make 5G phones indispensable.
Till then, there’s no rush.....
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No mention of the possible health effects, probably because it is just Russian propaganda, right (that is their latest trick)?
I was thrown of balance when this did not appear under the World Section of the web version:
"China backs Hong Kong’s leader despite huge protests" by Keith Bradsher and Amy Qin New York Times, June 17, 2019
HONG KONG — The Chinese government voiced strong support for Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, Carrie Lam, on Monday, a day after yet another vast street protest against her government rattled the leadership in Beijing and the local political establishment.
The Chinese state media began praising Lam even as government censors assiduously tried to block word of the Hong Kong protests from reaching the public in mainland China, but after three huge demonstrations over eight days, and her retreat on a proposal that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be prosecuted in China’s opaque judicial system, it was unclear how long she would continue to govern.
The latest protest, on Sunday, was the largest yet, with a crowd that organizers estimated at almost 2 million in a city of 7 million people. While Lam had indefinitely suspended her push for the Beijing-backed extradition bill the day before, protesters still filled the streets, calling for her to withdraw the legislation instead of suspending it and demanding that she resign.
While Lam, a lifelong veteran of Hong Kong’s fractious politics who was appointed chief executive two years ago, has refused to bow to the protesters’ jeering calls for her to quit, democracy advocates in Hong Kong vowed to press on.
It's got all the hallmarks of a CIA-sponsored destabilization effort, and the release of Joshua Wong, a student leader who was part of a protest in 2014 during a democracy push known as the Umbrella Movement, will do little to appease them.
In addition to calling for Lam to step down and fully withdraw the bill, the protesters — emboldened and angered after her partial concession Saturday — have called for an impartial investigation into the police use of force against demonstrators and for a rescinding of the official description of clashes with police Wednesday as an illegal riot.
We could use some of that in America, no?
On Monday night, the territory’s top police official tried to address the last demand, saying that only five people had been charged with rioting and that police did not consider those who participated peacefully in the protest to be rioters, but he brushed aside accusations that officers had used excessive force.
Any resignation by Lam would prompt strong demands by democracy activists for her successor to be chosen in free and open elections, but the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, loath to allow any steps that might jeopardize one-party control on the mainland, is unlikely to let them be held.
Do they have two factions like we do?
The political sensitivities over the events in Hong Kong were evident as Chinese authorities worked around the clock to keep most of the mainland in the dark about the demonstrations.
I feel like we have so much in common.
On Monday, online censors continued to delete reports and images from the protests. Searches for the term “Hong Kong protests” returned mostly state-approved news, often portraying the demonstrations as instigated by foreign forces, while some on the mainland were able to circumvent censors by posting inverted or distorted images of the protests.
Looks like Silicon Valley!
That was when my printed paper left the protest.
Hu Jia, a prominent dissident in Beijing, said he struggled for days to find information. When he was finally able to connect and see the events in Hong Kong, he said, he was “moved to tears.” “After the Umbrella Movement was suppressed in 2014, I thought there would be no way that Hong Kong could have this kind of democratic expression again,” Hu said in a telephone interview. “But what happened in the last week was like magic,” he added. “I suddenly felt as if Hong Kong’s flower of freedom had opened again, and it was very bright.”
In Beijing, there were signs of political uncertainty. The Foreign Ministry’s English-language translation of the news conference where the government endorsed Lam omitted any reference to her, and 10 academics in Beijing who focus on Hong Kong, some of whom were eager to speak about the issue last week, turned down requests for comment Monday. Several said it was an inconvenient time.
That caution set in as the Chinese government made clear that, at least temporarily, it would come to Lam’s political rescue.
While Beijing may be reluctant to be seen as conceding to public pressure and sacrificing Lam immediately, there was intense speculation in Hong Kong about whether she would be allowed to serve out the remaining three years of her five-year term as chief executive. All three of her predecessors as chief executive since the handover of the territory by Britain in 1997 left under a cloud.
The leading candidate to succeed her is the territory’s third-ranking official, Paul Chan, who serves as financial secretary. Chan is the political protégé of Leung Chun-ying, a former Hong Kong chief executive who defeated the 2014 Umbrella Movement, and he is part of a clique of business professionals with strong ties to Beijing.....
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You know what is at the bottom of all this, right?
Related:
"Comedian wins $4.1 million in lawsuit against The Daily Stormer" by Jacey Fortin New York Times, June 17, 2019
Comedian and writer Dean Obeidallah has been awarded $4.1 million in a lawsuit he filed against The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that published a false article about him in 2017.
A federal judge ruled last week that Andrew Anglin, the website’s publisher, and his company “acted with actual malice when they published false statements, with knowledge of the falsity of those statements or with reckless disregard for the truth,” according to court documents.
The jew$papers do it every day, and no one calls them out, and I just felt a chill.
The ruling was about a June 2017 article in The Daily Stormer that claimed Obeidallah was a terrorist who had masterminded the deadly bombing in Manchester, England, after an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017. The judgment Wednesday came as a default because Anglin never appeared in court during the case, according to Obeidallah.
On Sunday, Obeidallah, who is also a SiriusXM radio host and political commentator, said the article was apparently in response to a column he had written for The Daily Beast about several killings committed by white men who had made racist statements or identified themselves as white supremacists.
“Trump refuses to call these acts what they are: white supremacist terrorism,” Obeidallah wrote. The column did not mention Anglin.
The next day, The Daily Stormer published an article by Anglin that falsely said Obeidallah had bragged about perpetrating the bombing in Manchester. The article included images of tweets that had been doctored to look like Obeidallah had written them.
“He’s still tweeting in response to trolls, if you want to go confront him,” Anglin’s article said.
Some readers of that article threatened Obeidallah via social media and in the comments under Anglin’s story. “Dean better pray that he dies of natural causes before we get there,” said one comment, according to court documents.
“It was scary,” Obeidallah said Sunday. “It really was scary, and I was worried for my friends. I was worried for my co-workers.”
The Daily Stormer has employed similar tactics against various targets including Jews and African-Americans.
Anglin could not be reached Sunday, and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer representing him.
Oh, he can be reached.
Obeidallah first landed on The Daily Stormer’s radar after he wrote a column for The Daily Beast in 2015, when Donald Trump was a candidate in the Republican presidential primary. It called on the Republican Party to denounce white nationalist individuals and organizations who were supporting Trump, including The Daily Stormer.
If you are reading this blog, you know I don't support Mr. MIGA.
Obeidallah, a Muslim who discusses his faith in his comedy, said that although Anglin’s whereabouts was unknown, he planned to pursue his assets in the United States.
“We want to collect some money because that’s a more powerful message than just a judgment on paper,” Obeidallah said. “We’re going to give it to organizations that fight white supremacy, run by the very people these guys hate, like Muslims, African-Americans, Jewish Americans, and the LGBTQ community.”
Didn't they infiltrate them overt at Northeastern?
Subodh Chandra, a lawyer for Obeidallah, said he believed it could be possible to secure funds from bank and Bitcoin accounts belonging to Anglin, possibly including money that Anglin’s supporters had donated to help him fight the lawsuit.
“It is immensely satisfying to secure judgment against people who promulgate hate and try to subvert Obeidallah’s life mission, which is to ensure that people see one another as people,” Chandra said. “What the Nazis tried to do was to undermine his very life’s mission. And they didn’t win, and they never will, because we still live under the rule of law in this country, no matter how hard they might try to undermine the rule of law.”
It's a two-tiered $y$tem of JU$TU$ with authority exempt from accountability, but never mind.
Anglin, who created The Daily Stormer in 2013, has been a key figure in stoking white nationalist sentiment in the United States. His website became a major platform for neo-Nazi news and commentary, and he has used it to target people he considers enemies and to champion a modern holocaust that would create an American white ethno-state.
You getting full up on the buzzword triggers in the agenda-pu$hing narrative?
The Daily Stormer has faced several lawsuits.
Obeidallah filed his in August 2017, alleging libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress and seeking compensatory damages. He said it was important to fight back against harassment, especially since he believed that Anglin and other white supremacists felt emboldened by the election of Trump.
If you read his articles and others at the site, they are abandoning him whole hog over the war incitement against Iran and the servile posture towards Israel.
Taylor Dumpson, the first black woman to serve as student government president at American University in Washington, filed a lawsuit in 2018 after she became an online target following a real-life incident: nooses and hateful messages were left on campus a day after her inauguration.
More cheap, self-serving, self-inflicted false flags, and this is so tiresome that it has become the default position because so many cases have turned out to be just that, just to keep the $elf-$erving narratives going.
Another lawsuit, filed in 2017, claimed that Anglin used his website to inflict emotional distress on Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Montana, because of her interactions with Sherry Spencer, mother of white supremacist leader Richard Spencer.
It's called law fare, folks.
$ee you in court!
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Looks like a conspiracy, but where is the motive?
"“We don’t know why it happened, but I can’t believe it’s something bad that he was involved with,” said Ramon Marte, another Dominican barber. “He has plenty. He doesn’t need the trouble.” A few miles away, at Tostado on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, Danilo Pimentel said he was in tears when he learned about the shooting. “He represents all Dominicans,” said Pimentel, an employee of the sandwich shop. “He’s our face to the world. An attack on him was like an attack on all of us.” He, too, worries about the rumors......"
What rumors (heard it from the sports guys, and he was pretending to be Cullen, who is somehow still fabricating? Seems like a good gig).
It's not the only time the Globe omitted something today:
"New Hampshire officials to decide whether to bill family for costs of rescuing 80-year-old hiker" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff,June 17, 2019
After saving an 80-year-old hiker who was left alone by family members on Mount Washington last week, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department officials might consider billing the family for the costs of the search and rescue operation.
Then why do they even have a budget?
Major David Walsh, the assistant chief of law enforcement for the department, said Monday a decision had not yet been made. Rescuers had found the man curled up in the fetal position, suffering from what appeared to be hypothermia.
James Clark, 80, of Dublin, Ohio, had been hiking with two family members. “Shortly after starting the hike, all members of Clark’s hiking group left him behind to hike by himself as they continued to the summit,” officials said in a statement said.
Clark’s hiking group summited without him then hiked down a different trail to the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center. When rescuers found Clark on the trail, they stripped off his wet clothes, dressed him in dry clothes, and put him in a sleeping bag to warm him up. Given his condition and the distance to the trailhead, they determined that Clark needed to be carried out in a litter, the statement said.
Rescuers with the litter reached Clark at about 1:15 a.m. Friday. They carried him approximately 1.7 miles to the Auto Road, arriving there at 5 a.m., the statement said.
Clark was driven to an ambulance and taken to Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, where he was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, officials said.....
The symptoms of hypothermia he suffered where because officials noted that earlier in the day temperatures on the summit were below freezing with sustained winds of 60 miles per hour and a wind chill of 12 degrees. There was also rain, ice, and dense fog at the top of the mountain.
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Related:
"Two hikers were stranded on Mount Washington Thursday when temperatures at the summit were below freezing and the wind chill plunged to 12 degrees. One hiker was carried off the mountain and rushed to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. The other was found in the fetal position on a trail, unable to walk or speak....."
Related: This 99-year-old man is gearing up for a road race to the top of Mount Washington this weekend
Yeah, don't die up there.
I might as well be on the moon for all the printed Globe informs me.
"Amazon.com Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., and Volvo are among more than 700 companies being targeted in a campaign backed by a large group of investors advocating for greater transparency when it comes to environmental impact. HSBC Global Asset Management, Investec Asset Management, and close to 85 other investors representing a combined $10 trillion in assets are asking companies to comply with the reporting process managed by the Carbon Disclosure Project, a British nonprofit research group that solicits and scores corporate environmental disclosures. The effort targets companies the group says have failed to disclose such information for years at a time."
It's all $pew to create a carbon credits market.
It's all $pew to create a carbon credits market.
Also see:
"The FBI is investigating the claim by a former University of Illinois doctoral student that the visiting scholar from China he’s charged with killing was his 13th victim, even though no evidence has been found to indicate whether he was telling the truth, an FBI agent testified Monday. Prosecutor Eugene Miller claimed in opening remarks last week that Brendt Christensen, who is over 6-foot, took Yingying Zhang to his apartment where he raped, choked, and stabbed her in his bedroom, as the 5-foot-4 Zhang tried to fight him off. Christensen then dragged Zhang into his bathroom, and pummeled her in the head with the bat before decapitating her, Miller said. The beginning of the second week of Christensen’s murder trial began as the first week ended — with the focus on conversations between Christensen and his girlfriend that were secretly recorded, while authorities were conducting a massive manhunt for Zhang.
Related:
"Authorities say the woman agreed to be a confidential source for law enforcement shortly after Christensen posed as an undercover officer to lure 26-year-old Zhang into his car as she headed to sign a lease off campus, and kidnapped her. On Friday, the federal jury listened to the recordings, hearing Christensen describe in gruesome detail how after he brought Zhang to his apartment, hit her in the head with a baseball bat, tried to choke her, stabbed her, and finally decapitated her. In the tape, Christensen never explicitly claimed that he killed 12 other people. However, he can be heard telling his girlfriend that she isn’t in danger of becoming his next victim, explaining that she is too big. ‘‘It’s about getting rid of 100 pounds versus 150 pounds,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s too much . . . to get rid of.’’ Christensen was married at the time of the recordings, but he had a girlfriend and his wife had a boyfriend in what the prosecutor told jurors last week was their agreement to have ‘‘an open marriage’’ where they dated others.
That is where the trouble first started.
Miller told jurors last week about Christensen’s claim regarding additional victims but didn’t offer additional details, nor did he say if authorities believed him. Miller appeared to broach the issue in order to demonstrate Christensen’s quest to be known as a serial killer. Christensen became obsessed with serial killers in the months before for he kidnapped Zhang, Miller said, adding that Christensen was engrossed by the novel ‘‘American Psycho’’ and was intent on slaying someone in order to fulfill a goal of infamy that he’d set for himself.
That's evil, and the Globe has its own obsession.
Zhang, who had only been in Illinois for two months in what was her first experience living outside China, aspired to become a professor in her home country to help her working-class parents. On Monday, another witness, FBI senior forensic examiner William O’Sullivan, talked about that fascination, telling jurors that in the weeks before Zhang disappeared, Christensen researched serial killers online. O’Sullivan testified that Christensen went online to research decomposing bodies, downloaded photographs of bound and gagged women, and read several posts about rape and kidnapping fantasies on a social media site for adults with alternative sexual interests.
Why isn't the government shutting those down?
Is it because they are running them?
O’Sullivan said Christensen even exchanged posts with someone on the site in which he detailed how he was planning a sexual encounter that would include abducting her from her home, gagging her and stuffing her into a duffel bag and into his car. O’Sullivan also told jurors that Christensen watched online videos about knife sharpening. Christensen, now 29, never revealed in the recording what he did with Zhang’s body, which has never been recovered. In one of the tapes, Christensen vowed never to tell anyone what he did with the body and said it will never be found.
A future Dateline.
Christensen is charged with first-degree murder and faces a possible death penalty in the federal trail. Last week, his attorneys, in attempt to prevent him from being executed, told jurors that Christensen had, in fact, killed Zhang. The case is being closely watched in China and by Chinese students across the United States. A federal judge moved the trial to Peoria in central Illinois after Christensen’s lawyers said pretrial publicity would have made it impossible for the 29-year-old former physics student to get a fair trial in the Champaign area, where the 45,000-student university is located. The university has more than 5,000 Chinese students, among the largest such enrollments in the nation. Also on Monday, an FBI forensic examiner testified that browsing history on Christensen’s cellphone and that no relevant location data was recovered from it......"
FLASHBACKS:
"A man has been charged with kidnapping a visiting University of Illinois scholar from China who authorities believe to be dead after she disappeared three weeks ago. Brendt Allen Christensen, 28, of Champaign, a graduate student in physics, was charged Friday and is in federal custody pending a Monday court appearance. Yingying Zhang, 26, disappeared June 9, weeks after arriving at the Urbana-Champaign campus (AP)."
That was in a day of rest.
"Hundreds of people gathered outside a federal courthouse Monday as the suspect in the kidnapping of a Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois made his first court appearance since he was arrested last week. During the nine-minute hearing, 28-year-old Brendt Christensen did not speak other than to acknowledge to the federal judge that he understood his rights. The (Champaign) News-Gazette reported that about 45 people attended the hearing Monday morning, with another crowd in the courthouse lobby and yet more people across the street, many chanting ‘‘Justice for Yingying.’’
How arrogant of them.
"A former University of Illinois graduate student is set to stand trialin the 2017 disappearance and suspected killing of a scholar from China— a case in which the death penalty is possible, though the body hasn’t been found. Jury selection in the federal trial of Brendt Christensen begins Monday in Peoria, where Yingying Zhang, 26, was studying at the university’s flagship campus and where she was last seen. Zhang went missing June 9, 2017. She had just missed a bus when Christensen tricked or forced her into his car, prosecutors say. Christensen told the FBI he dropped Zhang off after a few blocks. Christensen, who earned a master’s degree in physics at the university, was charged with kidnapping resulting in death. He has pleaded not guilty....."
"A star prosecution witness will be Christensen’s former girlfriend, who secretly recorded him for the FBI before his arrest. Complicating the task of prosecutors is that no body was found. They’ll point to Zhang’s blood in Christensen’s apartment and that a cadaver-sniffing dog indicated a dead body had been there. Zhang, described as conscientious and fun-loving by friends, got her master’s in environmental engineering in China. The daughter of a part-time truck driver later used her meager savings to buy her family a cellphone, air conditioner, and microwave oven, the family has said. Zhang’s father, mother and brother flew in from China for the trial, which they will watch remotely via closed-circuit video....."
May God help them.
Was running late this morning, too, and this will be my final stop::
"Mayor asks MBTA to postpone fare hike in wake of Red Line derailment; T board says it’s too late" by Matt Stout Globe Staff, June 17, 2019
Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s criticisms marked a sudden escalation in his rhetoric over the transit system. He expressed frustration last week about the delays the derailment caused but largely refrained from attacking the agency, but Monday, he sent Chris Osgood, the city’s chief of the streets and transportation, to the board meeting to publicly request the delay. The call followed similar ones from Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu, who has long opposed the hikes and has repeatedly said the T should lower — not raise — prices for riders.
“There is a level of empathy and sensitivity that I think we need to bring to this issue,” said Mayor Joseph Sullivan of Braintree, who sits on the state Department of Transportation board, didn’t personally call for a fare hike freeze but pressed the T on a response. “This past week was a very difficult one for residents of the South Shore. We need to be responsive to that.”
Stephanie Pollack, the state’s secretary of transportation, said officials have heard the idea of putting a City of Boston representative on the T’s governing board. The current five-member board, which lawmakers created following the 2015 winter storms that crippled the T, is slated to end in 2020.
T officials spent a large chunk of Monday’s meeting detailing their response to the derailment.
Separately, Joseph Aiello, chairman of the T board, said he wants to launch a systemwide review of the T’s safety practices and rail operations, with the hope of forming an expert panel to lead it as early as next week. The T is also conducting an audit of its entire Red Line fleet.
Yeah, a commi$$ion will fix the problems.
Steve Poftak, the MBTA’s general manager, said the T is still investigating the derailment’s cause but said investigators had shifted focus to the train car itself. He said officials ruled out any track-related issues, after last week saying operator error wasn’t to blame, and that they had disassembled the train to send parts for testing.....
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Related:
"Wanted for the T: more urgency and empathy from Baker" by Joan Vennochi Globe Columnist, June 18, 2019,
Remember that salt- and sweat-soaked fisherman who made Charlie Baker cry during a 2014 gubernatorial debate? The fisherman had pushed his two sons away from college so they could join the family business “and it ruined their lives,” Baker tearfully said.
Maybe that fisherman, if he exists, could hop aboard the Red Line and do what ordinary commuters have been unable to accomplish? Help the governor relate more to their lives, too.
If he exists?
Isn't insinuating that our -- meaning bloggers -- schtick?
Sobbing and wailing are not required. All Baker has to do is address the frustrations of people with no State Police driver and no choice but to take public transportation, with the urgency and empathy they deserve. Halting an MBTA fare increase scheduled to take place on July 1 is one way to do that.
He should also get on a train. Take it from this Orange Line commuter. After the recent Red Line derailment, Baker kept his distance — literally — from the frustrating system breakdown that inconvenienced thousands of commuters.
Meanwhile.....
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I hope China comes through with the new rail cars, and you can keep on going if you like:
"Designing a neighborhood from scratch: The stakes are high at Suffolk Downs" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, June 17, 2019
Not much is going on at Suffolk Downs these days. There’s one more weekend of racing at the 84-year-old horse track, and a trickle of gamblers still bet on out-of-town races. Otherwise, the place has cleared out — from its vast parking lots to the grandstands to the grass oval, but if things go as planned, the 161-acre site, where East Boston meets Revere, would be a whole new neighborhood, a grid of housing and office space with roughly the population of the Back Bay.
What that neighborhood would look and feel like — and, by extension who gets to call it home — is being hashed out at City Hall and in a series of community meetings. The Boston Planning & Development Agency is reviewing a zoning plan from the developer HYM Investment Group, which wants to build about 10,000 apartments and condominiums, along with office space for 25,000 workers.
The agency is getting an earful from residents who fear Suffolk Downs will wind up as East Boston’s version of the Seaport District: block after block of office towers, luxury housing, and expensive stores and restaurants with little connection to the working-class neighborhoods around it. It’s a debate that has ground on for 18 months, with many more months likely to come.
The process highlights the challenges of designing a neighborhood from scratch: It has to include all of the ingredients necessary to develop a community — such as a library, senior center, parks, and affordable housing — while still making economic sense for the people putting up the money.
At its center is HYM. One key element of HYM’s plan is a network of parks and public space laced throughout the site, covering about a quarter of its land. The Seaport, by comparison, features a collection of parks and plazas built by various developers that can feel more like a hodgepodge than a coordinated effort.
Another important aspect of the project: staying power. Managing director Tom O’Brien ran Boston’s planning authority in the 1990s and has worked for 20 years as a developer in the city.
Well, nothing lasts forever.
His financial backer for Suffolk Downs is William Bruce Harrison, a Texas oil billionaire whose investment firm cites its “hold forever philosophy.” O’Brien notes that some other large, master-planned developments have been sold and resold after receiving approval, with new owners coming in mid-project to pitch revamped plans.
“We are not going to sell this site,” he said. “We want to develop the whole thing in accordance with the principles we’re designing here.”
That makes it even more important to get Suffolk Downs right from the start, with critics pointing to elements of HYM’s long-term plan that they say are concerning.
For example, they say it’s unclear whether all that open space would be privately managed — a common arrangement in development-financed parkland — or truly public, like a city park. The same question applies to the streets, which HYM will pay to build.
Also, only 50,000 square feet of the 16 million-square-foot project would be set aside for civic space. That doesn’t leave much room for sites such as a fire station, clinic, or school.
Then there’s the mix of housing. Of the 7,100 units that would be in Boston, two-thirds would be studios and one-bedrooms, and fewer than 500 would have three bedrooms.
“It seems like the developer has an intended community of people they want living there,” said Stephen Mahood, an East Boston resident who’s been following the project. “With all these one-bedroom apartments, they’re not looking for families,” but perhaps the biggest sticking point is not the size of the units, but how much they will cost.
HYM is proposing to set 13 percent of the housing in Boston at deed-restricted affordable rents, the minimum required of large projects in the city. That would translate into 930 units, the single biggest infusion of affordable housing Boston has seen in decades, but in a part of the city where rents are rising fast — inexorably pricing out a longstanding Latino and immigrant population — some say HYM can and should do more.
“Obviously, it’s a massive increase in the city’s housing stock,” said Alex DeFronzo, an East Boston resident and a member of the planning agency’s project advisory group. “But the fact that they’re holding firm at 13 percent is concerning to a lot of people, I think.”
O’Brien said HYM has gone as far as it can on affordability. The average apartment at Suffolk Downs would cost about $500,000 to build, he estimated. Given the location at the far tip of East Boston, he said, market-rate units aren’t likely to command high enough rents to subsidize additional affordable housing. As an example, he cited a new apartment building nearby where one-bedrooms rent for about $2,400 a month. That’s pricey for Revere but far less than what new buildings in the Seaport fetch.
“This is not the East Boston waterfront,” O’Brien said. “The math just doesn’t work.”
It’s something the planning agency will study closely, said Greeley, who suggested a possible compromise that could increase Suffolk Downs’ affordable housing requirement over time, as the market establishes itself. Others have suggested the project should help finance affordable housing elsewhere in East Boston.
Given that HYM is requesting zoning changes, the planning agency has considerable leverage, said George McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge. He said the city should determine what housing and public amenities it needs there and set the terms accordingly, instead of reacting to a developer’s plan.
“This is a question of political will,” McCarthy said. “The city has the authority to command whatever they want on that site.”
The affordability issue also speaks to a broader question: Who will Suffolk Downs be for?
O’Brien said he is committed to creating a place where all feel welcome. To help achieve help that, HYM is promising 50,000 square feet of retail space for local business owners, $2 million in job-training funds for East Boston residents, and a neighborhood health center, among other benefits.
Supporters of the project — and there are many — say they appreciate those offers, as well as a design that knits the new Suffolk Downs into the old Orient Heights neighborhood to its south. That, they say, will make it more like an extension of East Boston rather than some fancy outlier.
Still, it takes more than design to make a true neighborhood, said Lydia Edwards, who represents East Boston on the City Council. Edwards is pushing the planning agency to require more affordable housing, but she also wants more room for families and more space for public streets, parks, a library, school, and senior center.
Now’s the time to lay the groundwork for that, she said, long before construction begins.
“You have to be intentional about whether you’re going to have a neighborhood,” Edwards said. “It will not happen naturally. That’s the lesson we’ve learned from the Seaport.”
I wonder what kind of tax breaks they are going to get.
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"A first for WeWork in Boston: It’s taking over all of a building’s office space" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, June 17, 2019
WeWork is continuing its rapid expansion in Boston. Now it’s nearly taking over entire buildings.
The co-working giant has signed a lease for all the office space at One Milk Street, which consists of two newly rehabbed historic properties in Downtown Crossing: The Franklin Building, also known as the Post Building, and the Transcript Building. The Franklin sits on the site of Ben Franklin’s birth in 1706.
WeWork’s 29,000-square-foot space will give it room for about 440 desks, which it rents by the month to freelancers, small companies and, increasingly, larger firms that want more flexibility than a traditional long-term office lease allows. A spokeswoman said WeWork plans to open the offices next spring.
The deal will give the co-working firm 12 locations in Boston and Cambridge, with a total of more than 1 million square feet of space. That makes WeWork one of the largest office tenants in the region, while also making it one of Boston’s larger landlords.....
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Related: "Massachusetts has never seen a hiring spree like this: roughly 5,000 employees brought on board for one location within a matter of months, but will it be enough?"
I hope that is not a vast exaggeration.
Also see: Pfizer expands in cancer with $10.6 billion deal for Array
I'm told "cancer research has become one of the hottest areas for deal activity between drug and biotechnology companies."
Need any help cleaning those gutters?
