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The texting shorthand term “smh” (“shakes my head”) didn’t exist in 1955 because texting didn’t exist in 1955.
But surely “smh” was invented for things like this: Today in 1955, CBS talent scout Arthur Godfrey made a signing decision between Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.
Godfrey chose Boone.
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Dan O’Donnell wrote this before Monday’s news that Milwaukee will host the 2020 Democratic National Convention:
The only city in America to elect three socialist mayors, Milwaukee would represent a chance for Democrats to embrace what Chairman Tom Perez called “the future of the party” by highlighting its past.
And what a past it’s been! Milwaukee hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1908 and its Common Council has been dominated by liberals for nearly as long, meaning that Democrats can showcase a city that they have totally controlled for more than a century. Their policies and their policies alone are responsible for making Milwaukee the city that it is today…the tenth worst city in America in which to live.
Each year, the news and commentary website 24/7 Wall Street measures cities on a wide-ranging index of socioeconomic conditions, including crime rates, economics, education levels, environmental conditions, public health, housing, infrastructure, and recreation and leisure. This year, Milwaukee ranked tenth-worst.
“More than one in every four Milwaukee residents live in poverty, more than double the 11.8% state poverty rate,” researchers Samuel Stebbins and Evan Comen wrote. “Poor cities often have higher crime rates than more affluent cities, and Milwaukee is no exception. There were 1,546 violent crimes for every 100,000 Milwaukee residents, more than five times the statewide violent crime rate of 306 per 100,000.”
Yes, by holding their convention in Milwaukee, Democrats can show the nation how their crime prevention policies have led Milwaukee…to the 15th-highest homicide rate in the nation in 2016 (the most recent year for which complete data is available).
“Milwaukee remains one of the most dangerous places in the country,” Comen noted. “Overall there were 1,533 violent crimes — which also includes rape, robbery, and aggravated assault — per 100,000 residents in 2016, nearly four times the national rate of 386 incidents per 100,000 residents and the eighth most of any city.”
Holding the 2020 convention in Milwaukee would also allow the Democratic Party to make further inroads into its all-important African-American voter base. As University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers concluded in 2012, “no metro area has witnessed more precipitous erosion in the labor market for black males over the past 40 years than has Milwaukee.” Even more illuminating, after 108 years of Democratic rule Milwaukee is the single most segregated city in the country for renters and third most segregated overall.
Wait, how can this be? How can a place governed by Democratic policies not be the utopia that Democratic promises indicate that it should be? This disconnect is the very heart of why Milwaukee is so perfect a city to host the Democratic National Convention, as the city would stand as perhaps the most concrete example of liberal policy failures at a time when the 2020 presidential nominee would be making even more utopian promises.
As the Democratic nominee would invariably promise to incarcerate fewer criminals, overhaul America’s education system, and end the nation’s “school-to-prison pipeline,” voters would see a century of Democratic leadership resulting in Milwaukee’s sky-high violent crime rate and a public school system so dysfunctional that it boasts just a 59.7% graduation rate and includes “one of the lowest performing comprehensive public high schools in America.”
As the Democratic nominee would invariably promise to better America’s economy by “spreading the wealth around” and “making things fairer,” voters would see a century of Democratic leadership resulting in Milwaukee’s 28.4% poverty rate more than doubling the national rate of 12.7% and Milwaukee’s median household income of $36,801 totaling at just a little more than half of the national median household income $59,039.
As the Democratic nominee would invariably promise to improve race relations and make America a better, more tolerant place, voters would see a century of Democratic leadership resulting in a place that is, “by many measures,” the “toughest U.S. city for blacks.”
Why is Milwaukee so perfect for the Democratic National Convention? Because Milwaukee is the inevitable result of Democratic leadership; Milwaukee is what happens when Democrats govern with unchecked and unbroken control for more than a century.
And it’s about time the rest of the country saw it.
James Wigderson adds:
Because Hillary Clinton didn’t campaign in Wisconsin in 2016 and lost, Democrats have decided not to take the state for granted in 2020. They’re sending the Democratic National Convention road show to Milwaukee.
Conveniently the Democrats will be in Milwaukee for Bastille Days. We’ll hope they won’t be inspired to bring back the guillotine.
Ironically, if you like to drive for Uber or Lyft, or rent your house out with AirBnB, it will be a great time for individual capitalists when the new Democratic socialists come to town.
We’re looking forward to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) staying in a modest Oak Creek home and then complaining about the cost of capitalist rent exploitation before leading a march down Wisconsin Avenue with a rock star entourage to protest climate change and cow farts in the dairy state before flying home on a private airplane.
But how good of a deal is it for everyone else?
The budget for the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia was $84 million, not including additional security costs that were subsidized by the federal government. The local host city will be expected to find most of that money through private fundraising. The host committee in Philadelphia raised more than $85 million after having a more modest goal of $60 million, according to Philadelphia Magazine.
Some of that money came from taxpayers. The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development gave $10 million, according to Philadelphia Magazine. Conventions typically try to get the host city to guarantee covering the cost of the convention, although Charlotte, NC, refused in 2012. San Antonio took itself out of the runningfor the Republican National Convention in part because of that request by the Republican Party. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has already announced the city has acquired a line of credit for the convention.
The expected economic impact of the Philadelphia convention was $300 million, but the real economic impact was closer to $180 million. Even that number, however, does not take into account the lost productivity to private industry as a side effect of hosting the convention. Also, high end restaurants may not benefit nearly as much as they hope.
But there could be donkeys. “The host committee also paid $200,000 for 57 local artist-decorated fiberglass donkeys that have been installed across the city, complete with a Pokémon Go-style scavenger hunt,” Yahoo News reported in 2016. If the donkeys come back, truth-in-advertising requires that they wear Che Guevara t-shirts.
Donkeys were not the only expenditure, according to Yahoo News: “The City of Philadelphia plans to spend $695,700 on preparations for and work during the convention, including cleaning, employee overtime, patriotic decorations and ‘homeless outreach.’”
So good news, DNC organizers. If there is one thing Milwaukee has, it does have homeless people downtown.
Then there will be the miscellaneous costs which will add up. Milwaukee’s streetcar does not currently reach the Fiserv Forum where the convention will be held. Don’t be surprised if the mayor and Governor Tony Evers try to insert into the budget later a request to fund that leg of the streetcar using state funds or increased local tax revenue, perhaps as part of some deal to allow local governments to raise taxes for transportation costs. Then look for delays in the state budget to be used to attack Republicans because those delays could hurt Milwaukee’s preparedness for the Democratic National Convention.
Meanwhile, while the federal government does cover security costs for the convention, there will be costs to the city in police overtime as officers are required to do more traffic diversions and handle other police calls related to the convention. As more police resources are diverted downtown, how much will local neighborhoods suffer?
Not everything will go smoothly when the convention finally arrives. We can expect the city’s freeways to be jammed with convention goers driving further and further out desperate to look for a place to sleep as the city simply will not have the hotel space to accommodate everyone. There are only so many A-list celebrities that you can jam into the Pfister Hotel downtown before Katy Perry comes knocking on your door in the suburbs hoping you have a fold-out couch. But we wouldn’t expect them to ride Amtrak to Chicago looking for a hotel. That would be barbaric.
Then there will be the protesters. Between the hard left’s desire to protest everything, and the sheer number of Democratic candidates running for president, Milwaukee could be ground zero for the biggest riots in years. But even if the federal government’s $50 million to fun security helps keep a lid on most of the problem children of the left, there will still be some protesters that aren’t going to behave.
Normally a Starbucks close to the convention site would be the ideal franchise but the Starbucks on Red Arrow Park, given its history and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz running for president, should probably up their fire insurance coverage now.
The Democrats may regret choosing Milwaukee for the site of their National Convention. As the longtime home of the most successful Socialist Party in America, Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Mark Jefferson says it will be a homecoming for many of the new socialists in the Democratic Party.
“No city in America has stronger ties to socialism than Milwaukee,” Jefferson said. “And with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American left has come full circle. It’s only fitting the Democrats would come to Milwaukee.”
However, a quick drive just a few minutes north of the convention site and Democrats will get to see what Democratic and Socialist control of Milwaukee in 1910 has meant for the residents of Milwaukee’s North Side: crime, poverty, unemployment, failing schools, high property taxes.
As for the Democratic hope that the convention will be enough to bring Wisconsin voters back, they should remember the old saying that “familiarity breeds contempt.”
Perhaps the Democrats should listen to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).
“I’m glad Milwaukee will enjoy the economic boost from hosting the 2020 Democrat National Convention. As voters in a key battleground state, Wisconsinites will also get a first-hand look at Democrats’ extreme policies that would reverse the economic progress made under the Trump administration,” Johnson said Monday. “Understanding the risk of Democrat socialistic tendencies should provide motivation to re-elect Republicans up and down the ballot in November 2020.”
The Democrats are coming. Let ’em in. The most harm they will do is to themselves.
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The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1960:
Today in 1965, Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds because he wanted to continue playing the blues, while the other members wanted to sell records, as in …
The number one single today in 1965:
Today in 1967, the Beatles hired Sounds, Inc. for horn work:
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The Associated Press goes to Waynesboro, Mo.:
Five minutes late, Darrell Todd Maurina sweeps into a meeting room and plugs in his laptop computer. He places a Wi-Fi hotspot on the table and turns on a digital recorder. The earplug in his left ear is attached to a police scanner in his pants pocket.
Maurina, who posts his work to Facebook, represents the press — in its entirety.
He is the only person who has come to the Pulaski County courthouse to tell residents what their commissioners are up to, the only one who will report on their deliberations about how to satisfy the Federal Emergency Management Agency so it will pay to repair a road inundated during a 2013 flood.
Last September, this community in central Missouri’s Ozark hills became a statistic. With the shutdown of its newspaper, the Daily Guide, it joined more than 1,400 other cities and towns across the U.S. to lose a newspaper over the past 15 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by the University of North Carolina.
The reasons for the closures vary. But the result is that many Americans no longer have someone watching the city council for them, chronicling the soccer exploits of their children or reporting on the kindly neighbor who died.
In many places, local journalism is dying in plain sight.
The Daily Guide, which traces to 1962, served the twin towns of Waynesville and St. Robert near the Army’s sprawling Fort Leonard Wood. It was a family owned paper into the 1980s before it was sold to a series of corporate owners that culminated with GateHouse Media Inc., the nation’s largest newspaper company.
As recently as 2010, the Daily Guide had four full-time news people, along with a page designer and three ad salespeople.
But people left and weren’t replaced. Last spring, the Daily Guide was cut from five to three days a week. In June, the last newsroom staffer, editor Natalie Sanders, quit — she was burned out, she said. The last edition was published three months later, on Sept. 7.
“It felt like an old friend died,” Sanders said. “I sat and I cried, I really did.”
The death of the Daily Guide raises questions not easily answered, the same ones asked at newspapers big and small across the country.
Did GateHouse stop investing because people were less interested in reading the paper? Or did people lose interest because the lack of investment made it a less satisfying read?
GateHouse said the Daily Guide, like many smaller newspapers across the country, was hurt by a dwindling advertising market among national retailers. It faces the same financial pressures as virtually every other newspaper company: Circulation in the U.S. has declined every year for three decades, while advertising revenue across the industry has nosedived since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center.
The challenges are especially difficult in smaller communities.
“They’re getting eaten away at every level,” said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst at Harvard’s Nieman Lab.
The Daily Guide supplemented its income through outside printing jobs, but those dried up, too, said Bernie Szachara, president of U.S. newspaper operations for GateHouse. Given an unforgiving marketplace, there’s no guarantee additional investment in the paper would have paid off, he said.
Szachara said the decision was made to include some news about Waynesville in a weekly advertising circular distributed around Pulaski County.
“We were trying not to create a ghost town,” he said.
To residents of Waynesville, the loss of their newspaper left a hole in the community. Many are still coming to grips with what is missing in their lives.
“Losing a newspaper,” said Keith Pritchard, 63, chairman of the board at the Security Bank of Pulaski County and a lifelong resident, “is like losing the heartbeat of a town.”
Pritchard has scrapbooks of news clippings about his three daughters. He wonders: How will young families collect such memories?
Other residents talk with dismay about church picnics or school plays they might have attended but only learn of through Facebook postings after the fact.
“I miss the newspaper, the chance to sit down over a cup of coffee and a bagel or a doughnut … and find out what’s going on in the community,” said Bill Slabaugh, a retiree. Now he talks to friends and “candidly, for the most part, I’m ignorant.”
Beyond the emotions are practical concerns about the loss of an information source.
Like many communities, Waynesville is struggling with a drug problem. The four murders last year were the most in memory, and all were drug-related.
Without a newspaper’s reporting, Waynesville Police Chief Dan Cordova said many in the community are unaware of the extent of the problem. Social media is a resource, but Cordova is concerned about not reaching everyone.
It isn’t just local residents who notice the absence of community-based journalism. As the newspaper industry has struggled, a host of philanthropic efforts have begun to fill at least some of the gaps.
Whether any of those efforts ever help Waynesville and small towns like it remains to be seen.
After the Daily Guide folded, Waynesville briefly had an alternative. A local businessman, Louie Keen, bankrolled a newspaper, the Uranus Examiner, that was delivered for free. It was shunned by local advertisers and lasted just five issues.
I have a copy. It’s pretty hysterical. I think Keen, owner of Uranus Missouri (think of a somewhat tasteless Wisconsin Dells attraction), may be a bit too cutting-edge.
So Waynesville is left with local radio and Maurina’s Facebook site. He says that for journalism to survive, reporters need to get back to the basics of being at every event and “telling everyone what the sirens were about last night.”
As “small newspapers wither and die, that’s going to cause major problems in communities,” he said. “Somebody needs to pick up the slack and, at least in this community, I’m able to do that.”
Part of the problem with reporting like this is its lack of attention to bad business decisions of the now-closed newspapers’ owners. It’s ironic the first time I saw this was on STLToday.com, the website of the St. Louis Post–Dispatch, owned by Lee Newspapers, which has cut back its Wisconsin State Journal severely because Lee purchased more newspapers than it should have purchased. Like every other media outlet, newspapers are businesses first and foremost, and if they’re not bringing in more (advertising and subscription and single-copy sales revenue) than is going out, they’re not going to survive indefinitely. This cynical writer wonders how many people who bemoaned the departure of their local newspaper actually paid to read it or advertise in it.
It’s not as if the news goes away if the local newspaper goes away. Maurina is trying to do something about that, and it may well be that newspapers need to think about alternative forms of delivering their news. (Particularly since the U.S. Postal Service decided earlier this year that delivery of the mail was optional in bad weather.) My prediction, though, is that unless Maurina comes up with a revenue source, he’s not going to be Waynesboro’s journalist for very long.
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Today, just about every Democrat is denouncing Howard Schultz, the Starbucks billionaire, who is publicly contemplating an independent run for the White House. The fear of course, is that Schultz could draw votes away from the Democrats’ 2020 nominee and thereby help re-elect Donald Trump.
Today, that’s the Dems’ doomsday scenario. And yet as we shall see, with a little tweaking, the Schultz campaign could well end up being an asset to the Democrats.
In the meantime, of course, Schultz is being pounded, blasted, clobbered—you name it.
For instance, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg ripped into Schultz’s possible candidacy as “reckless idiocy” and “megalomania.” And at a New York City appearance, an unknown heckler shouted at Schultz, “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire asshole!” The tweet of that moment, at last count, has been retweeted more than 13,000 times and liked more than 56,000 times.
For his part, Schultz says he is running because he has things to say—things not in keeping with today’s leftward Democratic Party. His focus on reducing the national debt, for example, is way out of kilter with current progressive thinking. And so while he has always been regarded as a Democrat, he now says he can no longer defend the party’s new beliefs:
If I ran as a Democrat, I would have to say things that I know in my heart I do not believe, and I would have to be disingenuous.
In other words, Schultz has a critique of the current Democrats, and he is willing to self-fund a platform from which to express himself; indeed, he is, literally, willing to put his money where his mouth is.
Yet Democrats are having none of it. And Hollywood types, too, have hurled their anti-Schulz anathemas, including Bill Maher, Rob Reiner, and Ken Olin. And for her part, Chernot only trashed Schultz, but went further, declaring herself eager to boycott his company, Starbucks.
For his part, Schultz says he is running because he has things to say—things not in keeping with today’s leftward Democratic Party. His focus on reducing the national debt, for example, is way out of kilter with current progressive thinking. And so while he has always been regarded as a Democrat, he now says he can no longer defend the party’s new beliefs:
If I ran as a Democrat, I would have to say things that I know in my heart I do not believe, and I would have to be disingenuous.
In other words, Schultz has a critique of the current Democrats, and he is willing to self-fund a platform from which to express himself; indeed, he is, literally, willing to put his money where his mouth is.
Yet Democrats are having none of it. And Hollywood types, too, have hurled their anti-Schulz anathemas, including Bill Maher, Rob Reiner, and Ken Olin. And for her part, Chernot only trashed Schultz, but went further, declaring herself eager to boycott his company, Starbucks. …
It’s worth remembering that Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992 with just 43 percent of the vote, because Ross Perot took 19 percent—and most of Perot’s vote came out of George H.W. Bush’s hide. Other candidates, too, have won the White House with even lower popular-vote percentages, thanks to multi-candidate fields; back in 1860, Abraham Lincoln won with less than 40 percent. So right now, Trump might be thinking, yeah, the more the merrier.
Howard, Meet Evan
Having been hit so hard in the days since he teased his candidacy on 60 Minutes, Schultz already seems to be reassessing. Bill Burton, the Obama-turned-Schultz flack, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday that Schultz would not decide until “summer or fall.”
Then Burton went further about Schultz’s thinking: “He 100 percent will only run if he sees a viable path. There’s no chance he gets in this race if there isn’t a path.” If we can translate this Beltway-speak, it seems that Team Schultz is signaling that their man will not run if he’s destined to be just a spoiler. So relax, Democrats, and ease up!
And yet as we have seen, Schultz does have things to get off his chest; having made coffee all his life, he now wants to make policy. As Burton put it, Schultz plans to travel the country and pitch himself as a moderate alternative to Trump and left-wing Democrats: “The far left and the far right are controlling the conversation when people actually mostly agree in the middle.” So maybe Schultz wants to keep having that conversation—he seems like the chatty type.
Of course, his centrist sentiments will hardly endear Schultz to lefty Democrats. And yet if he is just talking, as opposed to actually running—and threatening the Democratic nominee’s ‘20 victory chances—most Dems won’t much care.
Indeed, there’s a way for Schultz to have his cake and eat it, too. How so? He can run for president only in certain states—that is, in states where he can’t affect the outcome, at least to the detriment of the Democrats. That way, he can talk about the issues near and dear to him, without getting in the way of what’s near and dear to most Democrats, namely, winning.
We might consider: As an independent candidate, without the benefit of an existing party line, Schultz has no automatic ballot access; he will have to go through the difficult process of getting on the ballot in each state, one by one. His money will help, of course, but it’s still a complex process.
So what if Schultz, guided by helpful Democratic politicos—you know, such as, maybe, Bill Burton—decides to pick and choose his states, choosing to get on the ballot only in states where his presence would hurt Trump?
Trump supporters needn’t worry that I’m divulging some secret; there’s plenty of precedent for this sort of selective targeting. It even has a name, “tactical voting,” boasting its own extensive Wikipedia page.
Indeed, tactical voting has already been attempted against Trump. In 2016, the Never Trump independent ticket of Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn came into existence for one reason, and one reason only: Beat Trump.
The McMullin-Finn ticket managed to get itself on the ballot in 10 states, most of them Republican-leaning states. And almost the entire focus of the McMullin-Finn ticket was on just one state, Utah, where McMullin is from. It was hoped that as a native, he might draw enough votes from his fellow Mormons to deprive Trump of the Beehive State’s six electoral votes—and give them to Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, if the 2016 election had been closer, those six electoral votes could have made the difference. As it happened, McMullin got 21 percent of the vote in Utah, while Trump won the state with 45 percent and went on to win the electoral college by a comfortable margin. Not every plan works, but we can see the model: Use independent candidates to nibble away at Trump’s vote.
So in 2020, if Schultz follows a McMullin-ish approach, he’ll buy his way onto the ballot in red states, and not blue states—and of course, he’ll also stay the heck away from purple states. If so, then the Democrats who have been trashing Schultz will start cheering him. Indeed, all the tweeters and hecklers will gain the proverbial strange new respect for Schultz as he “speaks truth to power.”
So sure, right now, things look rough, even catastrophic, for Schultz, and maybe even for his company. And yet if he chooses to spend his money in 2020 on campaign ads in, say, Utah, well, the Democrats will be pleased. Why, in gratitude, they might even buy more $4 lattes. If so, then the Starbucks tycoon would see his $3.1 billion fortune get a nice bump up.
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The number one single today in 1966 (which means that it predated the movie by two years):
The Beatles had an interesting day today in 1969. Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman …
… while George Harrison and wife Patti Boyd were arrested on charges of possessing 120 marijuana joints.
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An intriguing idea comes from Purdue University:
Instead of a wall, build a first-of-its-kind energy park that spans the 1,954 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico to bring energy, water, jobs and border security to the region.
That’s the audacious plan put forward by a consortium of 28 prestigious engineers and scientists from across the nation who propose that the two nations work together on an enormous infrastructure project: a complex train of solar energy panels, wind turbines, natural gas pipelines, desalination facilities that together would create an industrial park along the border unlike anything found anywhere else in the world.
The facilities would provide the desired border security, the researchers say, because utility facilities and infrastructure must be well-protected. The connected energy parks would also be an economic driver, both in the construction of the facilities themselves and in the businesses that would be attracted to the region by cheap electricity and plentiful water resources. Comments from co-authors of the proposal to build an energy-water-security corridor are available here.
Luciano Castillo, Purdue University’s Kenninger Professor of Renewable Energy and Power Systems, and lead of the consortium, says if enacted, the mega infrastructure project would have a historic positive effect for both nations.
“Just like the transcontinental railroad transformed the United States in the 19th century, or the Interstate system transformed the 20th century, this would be a national infrastructure project for the 21st century,” Castillo says. “It would do for the Southwest what the Tennessee Valley Authority has done for the Southeast over the last several decades.”
Ronald Adrian, Regent’s Professor at Arizona State University and a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, says this proposal, although a huge undertaking, is worth serious study.
“At first blush the idea seems too big, too aggressive, but consider the Roman aqueducts or the transcontinental railroads — enormous undertakings that gave enormous benefits. The cost of providing basic, essential infrastructure to the border lands is tiny compared to the opportunities it creates,” he says. “I view this project as a means of creating wealth by turning unused land of little value along the border into valuable land that has power, water access and ultimately agriculture, industry, jobs, workers and communities. With only a wall, you still have unused land of little value.”
Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Regent’s Professor at Arizona State University, says a cooperative effort between the United States and Mexico to address the issues of the border region would reinforce the cultural ties that have existed for hundreds of years.
“The USA-Mexico border is home to families with common bonds, large Spanglish-proficient communities, talented creative large pools of young people, intersecting cultural ties and more. These communities have faced day and night similar ecological, health, education, energy, water and security challenges,” Castillo-Chavez says. “They know that solutions must address these challenges across both nations. There are no effective single-territory solutions.”
The plan was first reported by Scientific American; the full proposal is available online.
Contributing to border security
The first question often raised about the proposal is about border security and, Castillo says, the energy parks would provide ample security.
“All utility plants, pipelines and other energy production facilities have security — as any infrastructure will have under any conditions,” he says. “In addition to physical security features, such as multiple levels of fencing, these pipelines and facilities would also have electronic sensors and drone surveillance. This would allow areas for wildlife to continue to migrate while alerting officials to anyone crossing the border illegally.”
Adrian agrees: “The measures being undertaken to control the U.S.-Mexican border with a barrier ( the ‘wall’) are entirely compatible with a long bank of solar panels backed by a super pipe line — same land, similar construction issues, and the fact that each of these systems is a barrier to some degree.”
The idea of combining the border security wall or fence with solar energy panels isn’t original — in fact, President Trump himself has floated the idea as one of many possibilities.
“This is a different kind of initiative that will solve many existing challenges while bringing people together,” Castillo says. “It will bring energy, water and education to create more opportunities for the USA and Mexico on both sides.”
Providing water resources
The southwestern United States is dry and prone to drought — two of the world’s worst droughts in in the past 30 years have taken place there. Droughts, of course, limit or damage economic development and agriculture wherever they occur, and the chances of droughts in this region are expected to increase significantly in coming decades due to climate change.
California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona are currently in a drought categorized as severe to exceptional and are using up groundwater resources, according to research conducted at the University of Saskatchewan.
“Water conservation efforts are laudable, but they won’t be enough to bring this area out of its crisis,” Castillo says. “And they fall far short of a blueprint for growth and prosperity.”
The proposal offers a plan to increase water resources in the region in two ways.
First, in the United States, nearly half of the water is used by fossil fuel and nuclear power plants used for cooling, and increasing the amount of wind and solar production of electricity would allow billions of gallons of water available for other resources.
Second, the proposed plan includes wind-powered desalination plants at each coast, which would then pump fresh water into the interior region.
“Now, once you have water, you can have agriculture and manufacturing at levels this region has not seen before,” Castillo says. “Without this, over the next few decades the American Southwest is going to begin running out of water, and then you’re going to see another border crisis — but this one will be at the Canadian border where people will be rushing across to find water.”
Wealth of energy resources
Although the region has a scarcity of water, it’s quite the opposite for energy-producing resources.
Oil and natural gas: Some of the largest deposits of oil and shale gas are located in Texas, New Mexico and Southern California. In fact, a U.S. Geological Survey assessment of untapped resources in southwest New Mexico and west Texas found just these resources alone represent an increase of 100 percent in oil reserves and a 65 percent in natural gas reserves.
Wind energy: Research conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the strong winds at the Texas Gulf Coast and the Baja California regions are ideal for wind farms.
The proposal suggests that these wind farms be used to power desalination plants, and previous work done at Purdue University found this this could provide 2.3 million acre-feet of water per year, an amount equivalent, the proposal says, to satisfy the water needs for all of the manufacturing, mining and livestock needs of the state of Texas.
Solar energy: The sun is so intense in the border region that the Mexican state of Chihuahua has one of the highest solar radiation potentials in the world. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire and the Imperial College of London found that a line five solar panels wide along the border would produce as much energy as the hydroelectric power production along the border of the U.S. and Canada (which, of course, includes Niagara Falls).
The proposal notes that the energy corridor would enable load-shifting, in which electricity generated could be sent to the eastern half of the United States when demand is high and then to the western United States later in the day when the highest demand shifts to that region.
Private investment, environmental impact studies needed
The authors of the proposal note two final components would be needed to bring this plan to fruition: private funding and an educated work force, says Jay Gore, Purdue’s Vincent P. Reilly Professor in Mechanical Engineering and director of the Energy Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park.
“A project of this magnitude must be a private-public venture driven by free-market forces. It would require assuring border security first, industrial-scale infrastructure second, and an educated workforce, third. The private capital will flow to secure, infrastructure-ready and educated areas with great priority,” Gore says. “Over the years, I have learned from some of the most distinguished experts, including Nobel laureates, that for an entrepreneurial economic boom to happen it requires the availability of secure land, energy, water and an educated workforce.”
The proposal plans for at least three “energy security institute” campuses to be developed along the border where people from both nations can come to learn the skills needed to work in the wind energy, solar energy and natural gas industries.
“Universities within the four states, California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, should be convinced to establish partnerships with their Mexican counterparts across the border to establish curricula for workforce development at all levels to attract private investment by corporations and venture firms from around the world,” Gore says.
Castillo says the vision of the energy and water park would be to attract many businesses on both sides of the border in a broad and lucrative economic zone.
“Instead of being a region of conflict, the border area could become the largest industrial park of its kind in the world,” he says.
As someone skeptical of alternative energy, it seems logical to me to have wind and solar in a part of the country where the sun shines much more often than here. Unlike the border wall (of which I am also a skeptic), something positive would be produced here, possibly something to pay for its cost and possibly reduce illegal immigration by increasing economic opportunities south of the border.
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The number one British single today in 1965:
The number one single today in 1967:
Today in 1968, this song went gold after its singer died in a plane crash in Lake Monona in Madison:
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Today in 1956, RCA records purchased a half-page ad in that week’s Billboard magazine claiming that Elvis Presley was …
Ordinarily, if you have to tell someone something like that, the ad probably doesn’t measure up to the standards of accuracy. This one time, the hype was accurate.
Today in 1960, Britain’s Record Retailer printed the country’s first Extended Play and LP chart. Number one on the EP chart:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 