It's a heaping helpful on the front page:
"Recycling is becoming so expensive that some towns don’t know what to do" by David Abel Globe Staff, January 11, 2020
WESTFIELD — On a recent afternoon here, with urgency in the air, local officials huddled to consider what until recently was unthinkable. Should they abandon their popular curbside recycling program? Or spend millions to build a plant to process plastic and paper on their own?
With the recycling market across the country mired in crisis, a growing number of cities and towns are facing a painful reckoning: whether they can still afford to collect bottles, cans, plastics, and paper, which have so plummeted in value that in some cases they have become effectively worthless.
“We’re looking at going from paying nothing to paying $500,000 a year,” said Dave Billips, the director of public works in Westfield, referring to the city’s recycling costs. “That’s going to have a major impact.”
It’s a reckoning hitting home across Massachusetts. Boston, for example, is now paying nearly $5 million to have recycling collections carted away, up from just $200,000 in 2017. City officials said they do not plan to end the program.
The crisis began two years ago when China announced it would no longer accept large amounts of paper and plastic from the United States, which for years had exported huge collections of material there and elsewhere in Asia, because much was contaminated and unusable.
Just one more reason to make war on them.
That decision has sent tremors through the recycling industry, leading to steep declines in the value of paper, plastic, and other recyclables. Waste Management, the nation’s largest recycling company, used to earn as much as $80 a ton for paper it collected; today, it gets nothing, officials said. The value of cardboard has plunged 70 percent, and it now costs more to recycle glass than the company can make selling it.
They were felt as far away as Puerto Rico and Haiti.
“There are once-in-100-year floods; this has been the equivalent to a once-in-500-year flood,” said Steve Changaris, northeast region vice president of the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade group for waste companies. “We saw a loss of 40 percent of the market that consumed these materials.”
Related: Storms sweep across southern US; death toll rises to 11
Icy highways from Texas to Iowa, but the short-term forecast here is for a hint of spring so head on over to the park.
That collapse has reverberated widely. Until this year, Westfield and most other communities in Western Massachusetts paid nothing for recycling. Some even earned revenue from the region’s largest recycling plant, which turned their discarded paper and bottles into profits, but the equation has changed, and by the end of January 74 communities across Western Massachusetts must decide whether to sign a new and much more expensive contract with a state-owned recycling facility in Springfield, whose contractor has said it was forced to raise its prices drastically.
“With current commodity prices at historic lows, the sale of those commodities does not cover the cost of processing,” said Garrett Trierweiler, a spokesman for Waste Management, which operates the Springfield plant for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. “As a result, new contracts for processing recyclables are typically written to cover the cost.”
As China has retreated from the international recycling business, other markets had taken some of America’s refuse, but now some of those countries have introduced policies similar to China’s to limit contaminated materials, drastically reducing US exports. Recyclables are often considered contaminated when they aren’t properly cleaned.
For example, Indonesia announced last year it would accept only minimal contamination in mixed paper — everything from newspaper to corrugated cardboard — sparking a drop in US waste exports to that nation by 95 percent, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association.
Just this month, India announced a similarly strict policy, halting all imports of mixed paper. After China changed its policy, India had become the dominant importer of mixed paper, taking in 40 percent of North American exports.
So Asia is tired of being America's garbage dump, huh?
Much like much of the world is sick of our garbage in one way or another, and one can't help but notice the arrogance that goes along with the attitude regarding taking the garbage.
I also started wonder what effect sending all the refuse to Asia had on climate change and the like, even if Chinese manufacturers needed the cardboard.
In Massachusetts, Michael Camara, chief executive of ABC Disposal Service, said the crisis shows no signs of relenting. State environmental officials, who last year spent $7 million to help municipalities maintain and promote recycling programs, said they have sought to offset the financial impact on communities in Western Massachusetts by shortening the length of their contracts and opening up the plant in Springfield to 27 other towns in the region, but little else can be done, they said.....
“It’s a horrific situation,” and the “whole thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
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"The story behind the Mass. native and ex-soldier who purportedly helped former Nissan CEO escape" by Dugan Arnett and Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff, January 12, 2020
In his 20s during the Cold War, Michael Taylor was part of a secretive military team tasked with stopping a Soviet invasion of Europe with hand-carried “suitcase nukes.”
Later in the Middle East, while running his own security company, Taylor stopped “armed criminals who sought to take us hostage,” one grateful client said.
At home in Harvard, he’s a father of three, the neighbor who plows your driveway, but work acquaintances describe the square-jawed Taylor as a real-life action hero, a fearless patriot who decorates his office in American flags and considers the national anthem his favorite song. Tales of his exploits — culled from interviews and court documents — seem ripped from a Tom Clancy novel.
He has carried out overseas rescues and undercover drug-trafficking work. In the world of international security, he has established himself as a fix-it man with a Rolodex of high-level foreign contacts, and now, in what may be his most daring — or brazen — escapade yet, Taylor is reportedly the man behind the audacious flight of former Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn out of Japan to escape financial charges.
“I frankly wasn’t surprised to hear of his involvement,” said Paul Kelly, a former federal prosecutor who has known Taylor since the early 1990s. “That’s the kind of work Michael does.”
Throughout Taylor’s daring career, however, there have been hints that he was not always the clean-cut hero described by friends, but rather a man whose exploits brought him close to the margins of the rules — and on some occasions far enough beyond to face legal consequences.
Whether he is a hero or an opportunist — that depends who you ask.
Oh.
Even in the adrenaline-soaked world of the US Special Forces, Michael Taylor stood out.
Taylor, handsome and athletic, grew up in Ayer, a well-liked student who cocaptained the high school football team. After high school, he joined the Army, following in the footsteps of his stepfather, and quickly established himself as a rising star.
He qualified for elite forces at a young age, and took hair-raising assignments, according to court papers. He was part of a special unit trained to jump from high-altitude aircraft and free-fall up to 5 miles before releasing his parachute just 2,000 feet from the target. For the Army’s super-secret Special Atomic Demolition Munition program, according to court records, he was to parachute into to what was then the East German border, using a portable nuclear device to “destroy, irradiate, or otherwise compromise” the path of an invading Soviet Army.
In 1982, after the assassination of Lebanon’s president-elect, Taylor was on the first US Special Forces team deployed to Beirut, a city besieged by the carnage of Lebanon’s civil war.
“It was the most dangerous place on earth at the time,” Taylor said in interviews conducted by e-mail last week.
Honorably discharged in November 1983, he returned to Massachusetts. In 1984, he was accused of a sexual assault on a female soldier stationed at Fort Devens, according to a 1996 story in the Boston Phoenix. Taylor vehemently denied the charge to the Globe, saying a “crooked” female police officer invented the story and that he was out of the country at the time. According to the Phoenix story, Taylor was arrested, but the case was later dismissed.
By then, Lebanon was calling him back.
Taylor said in an e-mail that he had been troubled during his time there in the Army by the religious divide that fueled the violence. Now, he returned as a private contractor to train Lebanese Christian forces. He began learning Arabic, met a Lebanese woman who would become his wife, and established contacts, according to court papers, with a “variety of individuals from all manner of backgrounds.”
In 1985, Taylor returned to Massachusetts, buying a house in Harvard, but Lebanon — and the intrigue he seemed drawn to — would stay at the center of his life and work. In the years that followed, he traveled repeatedly to the Middle East, commanding big money for daring missions and operating in the shadowy world of domestic and international security.
The US government tapped him in 1988 to go undercover and infiltrate a Lebanese organized crime ring that spanned from the Middle East to Massachusetts. He got close to powerful figures in the organization, according to prosecutors and court documents, and ultimately worked his way to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where he filmed Syrian-controlled drug fields. Authorities later seized $100 million in hashish from a boat and credited Taylor as a key.
A company Taylor started, American International Security Corp., provided protection for corporations, including oil companies and airlines. On various occasions, he was hired to extract individuals from high-risk situations, including a young girl whose father had abducted her to Lebanon, according to court papers.
Between overseas missions, he led the fairly ordinary life of a suburban dad. He played pick-up basketball and patrolled the outfield for a local softball team. In testimonial letters filed in a court case, neighbors and other residents in Harvard and nearby communities wrote effusively of his dedication to the community. He plowed people’s driveways, spent time with local youth.
In most ways, Taylor said in e-mails to the Globe, his was no different from a typical family. “It’s just that when I was working I had a longer commute than most,” but even in this life, Taylor appeared to tend toward extremes.
In 2008, he became head football coach at Lawrence Academy in Groton, and quickly built a winning team. It was so good it raised eyebrows.
He developed a reputation for racking up lopsided victories, and questions circulated about the team’s plethora of talented and physically large players. In one year alone, Taylor fielded a team with seven players who went on to sign with Division I colleges, unheard of in New England’s Independent School League. And in 2010, the team made national headlines after St. George’s School in Rhode Island refused to take the field against Lawrence Academy, citing concerns for player safety.
“To put it in context, they were bigger across the [offensive] line than the starting line at the University of Michigan that year,” said a former Independent School League coach who spoke on the condition his name not be published. “They were clearly talented kids, you can’t argue with that. But . . . I think people were scratching their heads for the most part, saying, ‘What the heck?’ ”
Taylor coached for three seasons at the school before resigning in 2011 amid a swirl of controversy. Shortly after his departure, the league handed down several sanctions, stripping Lawrence Academy of two league titles won under Taylor and banning it from postseason play for three years. Officials at Lawrence Academy eventually acknowledged that, among other infractions, several student-athletes had been funded “beyond their demonstrated need.”
By e-mail, Taylor said that he did nothing wrong.
“The facts are I did not run admissions, I did not have anything to do with what students got financial aid. Nor did I or any of the athletic staff break rules.”
He said his resignation stemmed from a rule implemented by the school’s then-headmaster that the team couldn’t score more than 34 points in a game.
One way or another, trouble seemed to follow Taylor at various stages of his career. While Taylor was working undercover on the federal drug trafficking investigation, a Massachusetts state trooper named Robert Monahan began investigating Taylor, according to a complaint the trooper later filed against the State Police.
Monahan believed that Taylor — who in addition to working in his undercover capacity was a licensed private investigator — was also engaging in criminal activity outside the scope of the trafficking investigation, according to the complaint.
Monahan claimed that his investigation had determined that Taylor — identified in the suit as “John Doe” — had employed members of the Massachusetts State Police to carry out illegal wiretaps. Additionally, he alleged, Taylor paid a State Police trooper to make a traffic stop on a person in a divorce case after Taylor had used an “illegal wiretap” to learn that person would be in possession of marijuana.
The corruption never ends over there, does it?
According to a 2001 story in the Boston Herald, he eventually pleaded guilty in 1999 to planting marijuana in the car of a client’s estranged wife and persuading an officer to arrest her. The other charges were continued without a finding.....
Police frame people?
Surely you jest!
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I wonder how much overtime they paid out investigating him:
"State Police overtime spending surges to nearly $58 million in 2019" by Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff, January 9, 2020
Overtime spending at the Massachusetts State Police surged by about 9.3 percent to $57.8 million in 2019, according to new data from the state comptroller’s office.
That helped drive an increase in the number of high-paid troopers at the agency, which has been under scrutiny for nearly two years in the wake of a wide-ranging scandal over overtime fraud and other allegations of pay theft that ensnared dozens of sworn officers.
Last year, some 325 troopers took home $200,000 or more, representing about 15 percent of the department’s 2,200-member force.
Former state inspector general Gregory Sullivan, now a research director at the Pioneer Institute, said the figures show that “overtime at the State Police is a problem that still has to be addressed beyond the [fraud] scandal.”
Various rules and contract provisions at the agency “make it very easy for people to make large amounts of overtime,” Sullivan said. “The State Police make great efforts to allow their officers and ranking officers to earn overtime. The State Police in some ways operates to provide overtime."
The whole government is basically a $y$tem of political patronage here in Ma$$achu$etts, and has been a lot longer than I have been doing this blog.
As in previous years, the department spent more money on overtime in 2019 than any other state agency, except for the MBTA, which employs more than twice as many people. Last year, 23 troopers made more than $100,000 just from overtime pay.
That's another reason the MBTA is in such disrepair despite the millions and billions that have been spent on it.
The State Police have the highest average pay per employee of any state agency by a wide margin — $126,929. The next closest agency pay average is more than $25,000 lower.
Department spokesman David Procopio attributed the overtime spending hike to an increased workload for the agency coupled with reduced staffing levels due to a surge in troopers retiring over the past two years.....
The surge in retirements came after the pay fraud scandal was exposed, like rats getting out of Dodge.
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I guess you now know why the state payroll has grown to $7.4 billion.
That's about 1/6 of the entire budget as schools, roads, bridges, and sidewalks crumble and transportation woes increase.
Related: Father and son slain in Framingham shooting ‘were more like brothers,’ mother says
Also see:
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Elizabeth Warren faces persistent ‘electability’ concerns in Iowa
The road has been cleared for Bernie despite the support for Patrick and the debates that have not been worth watching.
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 79, a California Democrat, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, 77, a Kentucky Republican, are throwbacks to a different era when powerful figures in Congress could dictate outcomes. Washington may go many years before two such powerful figures run either end of the Capitol, let alone at the same time. She is the most powerful House speaker in at least 25 years and, some historians have argued, possibly since Sam Rayburn, a Texas Democrat, ran the House in the 1940s and ’50s. He is the most powerful majority leader in at least 30 years and, some have argued, possibly since Lyndon Johnson, another Texas Democrat, ran the Senate in the 1950s. Their personalities are night and day, but they have had similar goals....."
Look at the Washington ComPost wax nostalgic for "a different era when powerful figures in Congress could dictate outcomes" in our beloved democracy that we are bringing to the world via war. The comparisons to segregationist Southern Democrats shows you how little things have actually changed and tip the hand of the mouthpiece media regarding their true feelings and allegiances when it comes to "democracy."
So Pelosi and McConnell have similar goals, huh?
Bye-bye, Trump (struck down by lightning in the day).
Related:
A CIA chemist, mind control — and the return of psychedelic drugs
He claims it will help you see the future, but that was then and this is now.
