Emergence of private high schools in rural India increases stratification by gender, income, socioeconomic status

But students who remain in public schools are unharmed academically

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

From 2004 to 2014, private high schools opened in more than 200 rural villages in one large Indian state. In a new study, researchers compared student outcomes in these villages with outcomes in several thousand villages with no private schools.

The study found evidence of stratification in academic preparation and socioeconomic status, with high-performing students and students from affluent families and privileged castes disproportionately drawn to private schools. But the researchers also found that these moves did not academically harm students who remained in public schools.

The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Mumbai Electric Supply & Transport Undertaking, is published in the Journal of Public Economics.

“Enrollment in private secondary schools has been increasing in India,” explains Dennis Epple, Professor of Economics at CMU’s Tepper School of Business, a coauthor of the study. “This will shape outcomes for the current generation of students, and will likely have profound effects for future generations, so it is important that we understand how these changes influence student outcomes.”

In many societies, students are served by both public and private schools. The private sector plays a role in shaping the educational landscape, attracting students who are relatively affluent and more prepared academically, leaving the remaining students with a weakened peer group and potentially weakening support for public schools.

In this study, the researchers analyzed the expansion of private secondary schooling in 22 rural districts in a large Indian state over a 10-year-period. In the first three years (2004-2006), the study included students from the almost 3,500 villages where there were no private high schools. From 2007 to 2009, the study focused on the appearance of new private high schools in 240 of the villages. To study longer-term effects, the researchers assessed exam pass rates through 2014.

In total, the study assessed administrative records for nearly 3 million students, including performance on a 10th-grade test required of all students. Researchers also considered students’ caste, household income, and gender. At the heart of the study was the question of how private-public competition in schooling affected student outcomes. Prior studies have examined what happens when public-school students are drawn out of the public sector via lottery-based voucher programs; in this study, researchers asked what happens when students self-select into tuition-funded private schools.

Private school entry increased student stratification by gender, income, and socioeconomic status, the study found. In particular, students from higher-income families and privileged castes, particularly males, disproportionately sorted into private schools.

This finding naturally gives rise to concerns about the students who remain in public schools when a private school option becomes available. But the study found that across castes and genders, the opening of private schools did not academically harm students who remained in public schools. Even eight years after some students entered private school, students who remained in public schools had no adverse effects.

“Our study assessed effects of private schools only for the first eight years after a private school opens,” notes Lowell Taylor, Professor of Economics at CMU’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, who co-authored the study. “Over a longer time span, the socioeconomic stratification in private-public schooling in rural India may exacerbate the high levels of inequality in education already found there and undermine political support for public schooling.”

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JOURNAL

Journal of Public Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104749 

ARTICLE TITLE

The emergence of private high schools in India: The impact of public-private competition on public school students

New grant gives Temple University unique chance to explore causes of gun violence in Philadelphia region

Grant and Award Announcement

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM

(Philadelphia, PA) – Temple University is committed to helping combat gun violence in the Philadelphia region, and now, thanks to a new grant from Fund for a Safer Future, researchers at Temple have an unprecedented opportunity to connect with individuals in at-risk communities to learn more about urban gun violence in Philadelphia. By accessing people directly involved in gun violence, the researchers hope to gain new insight into factors that contribute to urban street violence.

“The study will be carried out using a participatory action research model, involving collaboration with outreach workers in at-risk communities,” explained Peter Simonsson, PhD, MSW, LCSW, Assistant Professor of Urban Health and Population Science at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, and lead investigator on the new grant. Temple is one of nine universities to have been awarded support from Fund for a Safer Future in 2023. The grant provides $210,000 in support over a span of three years.

“We are very grateful for the funding,” Dr. Simonsson said. “It will allow us to connect with people in local communities who regularly encounter street violence but typically avoid gun violence prevention and mental health programs, making them very difficult to reach.”

Gun violence in Philadelphia is the worst that it has ever been. By August alone, the city had already reported a higher number of shooting deaths in 2022 than many larger cities had seen, including New York and Los Angeles.

“The information collected through this effort will help strengthen public health interventions,” Dr. Simonsson added. The data ultimately could benefit public health actions that are aimed specifically at reducing injuries and deaths from gun violence.

About the Lewis Katz School of Medicine

Founded in 1901, the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University attracts students and faculty committed to advancing individual and population health through culturally competent patient care, research, education, and service. The School confers the MD degree; MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Science; the MA in Urban Bioethics; the MS in Physician Assistant studies; a certificate in Narrative Medicine; a non-degree post-baccalaureate program; several dual degree programs with other Temple University schools; continuing medical education programs; and in partnership with Temple University Hospital, 40 residency and fellowship programs for physicians. The School also manages a robust portfolio of publicly and privately funded transdisciplinary studies aimed at advancing the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease -- with specialized research centers focused on heart disease, cancer, substance use disorder, metabolic disease, and other regional and national health priorities. To learn more about the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, please visit: medicine.temple.edu.

About the Fund for a Safer Future

The Fund for a Safer Future is the only national donor collaborative exclusively focused on reducing gun violence in America. Composed of 35 diverse private foundations and individual philanthropists, FSF pools expertise and financial resources to support advocacy, research, education, and community-based organizing strategies designed to reduce gun injuries and deaths. The Fund directly invests approximately $3 million a year across six priority focus areas, and its funding partners have made more than $135 million in aligned grants since 2011. Find out more at www.fundforasaferfuture.org or follow us on Twitter @fundsaferfuture.

New book about white supremacist violence aims to stop spread of hate movement

Dr. Lisa Pescara-Kovach, professor of educational psychology at The University of Toledo, is co-author of “White Supremacist Violence: Understanding the Resurgence and Stopping the Spread”

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO

 

IMAGE: DR. LISA PESCARA-KOVACH, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR EDUCATION IN MASS VIOLENCE AND SUICIDE AT UTOLEDO, AND DR. BRIAN VAN BRUNT, THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR FOR D-PREP, WROTE A BOOK, “WHITE SUPREMACIST VIOLENCE: UNDERSTANDING THE RESURGENCE AND STOPPING THE SPREAD,” RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE. view more 

CREDIT: DR. LISA PESCARA-KOVACH

An educational psychologist at The University of Toledo who has dedicated her life to protecting school children and exploring the driving forces of mass violence has co-authored a book about the resurgence of white supremacist violence to help stop the spread of the hate movement and domestic terrorism.

“We’ve seen an increase in recent years in antisemitic and racist attacks,” said Dr. Lisa Pescara-Kovach, professor of educational psychology and director of the Center for Education in Mass Violence and Suicide at UToledo. “I felt it was time to share what we know toward preventing attacks not only in schools and campuses, but around the world.”

Kovach trains school and college employees across the U.S. in ways to identify and thwart targeted violence and suicide. In Ohio, she is one of a handful of trainers approved by the state to ensure compliance with a law passed last year called the SAVE Students Act.

She expanded the scope of her work due to the similarities between people who commit acts of targeted violence in school and campus shootings, for example, and those who perpetrate domestic terror attacks.

She and Dr. Brian Van Brunt, the creative director for D-Prep, wrote a book, “White Supremacist Violence: Understanding the Resurgence and Stopping the Spread,” recently published by Routledge.

“We wrote the book to get the information into the right hands and to provide stakeholders, even concerned parents, with actual tools to assess the likelihood of an individual being recruited into domestic terrorism,” Kovach said.

Van Brunt and Kovach have worked together for years in the fight against mass violence. Van Brunt is the founder of the International Alliance for Care and Threat Teams (InterACTT), where Kovach serves as an advisory team member and content expert.

“Extremist philosophies like the Great Replacement are gaining momentum, and those youth vulnerable to terrorist recruitment share a similar mindset to others who commit mass shootings,” Kovach said. “Domestic terrorism is the greatest threat to the safety of our nation. People are dying. And we have developed a guide and assessment tool to help slow the progress of the fast-growing hate movement in the United States.”

The book gives readers useful perspectives and insights into the white supremacy movement while offering mental health clinicians, law enforcement, threat-assessment professionals and K-12 and university educators and administrators practical guidance on treatment and prevention efforts.

Chapters immerse the reader in a hybrid of research, historical reviews, current events, social media and online content, case studies and personal experiences.

The first half of the book explores the ways in which individuals become increasingly indoctrinated through the exploitation of cognitive openings, perceptions of real or imagined marginalization, and exposure to political rhetoric and manipulation, as well as an examination of social media and commerce sites that create a climate ripe for recruitment.

The second half of the book walks the reader through three case studies and offers treatment considerations to assist mental-health professionals and those developing education and prevention-based programming.

“Those vulnerable to recruitment are often looking for ‘something bigger,’” Kovach said. “They have collected perceived injustices through the years, just as do school shooters, and decide to make a statement with violence — whether it’s a statement in school against those they deemed ‘wronged’ them, or it’s a statement outside of school against a particular sex, nationality, race or religion.”

“It was an honor to pair up with Dr. Kovach and Bethany Van Brunt on this important work. Understanding how people move further down this pathway of violence to indoctrination to extremist ideology is key to prevention of future violence,” Van Brunt said.

Bethany Van Brunt, who authored the detailed case list and the White Supremacist Indoctrination Rubric (WISR), said, “As we see a rise in this type of rhetoric and violence, it is critical we study how these movements have grown in the past in order to prevent that spread in the future.”

Visit the Routledge website or Amazon to buy a copy of the book.

Dr. Lisa Pescara-Kovach, professor of educational psychology and director of the Center for Education in Mass Violence and Suicide at UToledo is co-author of “White Supremacist Violence: Understanding the Resurgence and Stopping the Spread.”

CREDIT

Dr. Lisa Pescara-Kovach

Study details impact of prairie dog plague die-off on other species

AKA GOPHERS

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS COURTNEY DUCHARDT, RIGHT, THEN A UW PH.D. STUDENT, AND DAVID AUGUSTINE, OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, EXAMINE A MOUNTAIN PLOVER IN THE THUNDER BASIN NATIONAL GRASSLAND. MOUNTAIN PLOVERS, A BIRD THAT THRIVES WHEN VEGETATION IS KEPT SHORTER BY PRAIRIE DOGS, ALMOST DISAPPEARED FROM THE STUDY AREA WHEN PLAGUE DECIMATED PRAIRIE DOG NUMBERS IN 2017. view more 

CREDIT: JACOB HENNIG

When an outbreak of sylvatic plague decimated black-tailed prairie dog numbers in the Thunder Basin National Grassland in 2017, researchers saw an opportunity for a “natural experiment” to explore the impact of the rodents’ die-off on the plants and other wildlife in that area of northeast Wyoming.

What they learned was that the decline in prairie dogs, along with abnormally high precipitation in 2018, combined to bring about dramatic ecosystem changes. The findings highlight the serious conservation challenges caused by boom-and-bust disease cycles in remaining Great Plains grasslands, the researchers say.

“We found that prairie dogs play a critical role for associated vegetation and wildlife communities in this system, creating important grassland habitat for numerous species while serving as prey for several predators,” says Courtney Duchardt, an assistant professor in Oklahoma State University’s Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management who led the research as a University of Wyoming Ph.D. student in ecology. “Our research highlights how precipitation can interact with disease-induced loss of a keystone species to induce drastic and rapid shifts in wildlife communities.”

The research is published in Ecological Applications, a journal of the Ecological Society of America that focuses on applications of ecological science to environmental problems. Others involved were Professor Jeff Beck, Associate Professor Derek Scasta and former graduate student Lauren Connell, all of UW’s Department of Ecosystem Science and Management; Ana Davidson, of Colorado State University; Jacob Hennig, of the U.S. Geological Survey; David Augustine and Lauren Porensky, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and David Pellatz, of the Thunder Basin Grasslands Prairie Ecosystem Association.

Black-tailed prairie dogs now occupy a small fraction of their historical range and are considered a nuisance in some areas because of their capacity to compete with livestock for forage. They also are highly susceptible to sylvatic plague, a nonnative pathogen introduced to North America in the early 1900s. The combined pressures of disease, habitat loss and control efforts that have reduced populations of the rodent also have resulted in declines in associated wildlife species. Those include birds such as burrowing owls, mountain plovers and raptors, as well as swift foxes, coyotes and badgers.

This study, conducted from 2015-19 in the Thunder Basin grassland, may be the first to specifically examine the multispecies impacts of a wide-scale plague outbreak, which reduced the area covered by prairie dog colonies from nearly 25,000 acres to only about 125 acres in the study area. The 2017 outbreak was followed by abnormally high precipitation in 2018, which caused vegetation to grow quickly and taller without the presence of prairie dogs.

The researchers found that the mountain plover, birds that thrive when vegetation is kept shorter by prairie dogs, almost disappeared from the study area, while migrant songbirds such as the lark bunting, which prefer taller vegetation, increased in number.

Meanwhile, species including ferruginous hawks, badgers and swift foxes declined dramatically as their prey base crashed.

The researchers say that, while plants and animals in Great Plains grasslands historically have been subject to variations in precipitation and other factors, the boom-and-bust cycles are likely to “destabilize” the ecosystems further. That could even be a challenge for livestock managers.

During the boom portion of the cycle, the capacity of prairie dogs to compete with livestock for available forage makes the rodents a nuisance. But the bust portion of the cycle isn’t ideal for producers, either.

“Although reduced prairie dog numbers yield increased vegetation biomass, the unpredictability of these cycles makes capitalizing on additional forage difficult for agricultural producers,” the researchers wrote. “Essentially, the undesirability and unpredictability of these cycles is potentially the one thing that most, if not all, stakeholders can agree on.”

The scientists suggest that further efforts to predict prairie dog boom-and-bust cycles will help support the compatibility of managing rangelands for both livestock and biodiversity conservation.

A black-tailed prairie dog is on alert in the Thunder Basin National Grassland.

CREDIT

Courtney Duchardt

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JOURNAL

Ecological Applications

DOI

10.1002/eap.2712 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Disease and weather induce rapid shifts in a rangeland ecosystem mediated by a keystone species (Cynomys ludovicianus)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Jan-2023

Fathoming the hidden heatwaves that threaten coral reefs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

VIDEO: AN ANIMATION OF THE SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURES AROUND MOOREA COMPARED DURING THE 2016 AND 2019 MARINE HEATWAVES view more 

CREDIT: HKUST

    In April to May 2019, the coral reefs near the French Polynesian island of Moorea in the central South Pacific Ocean suffered severe and prolonged thermal bleaching. The catastrophe occurred despite the absence of El Niño conditions that year, intriguing ocean scientists around the world.

    An international research team led by Prof. Alex WYATT of the Department of Ocean Science at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has investigated this surprising and paradoxical coral bleaching episode. The unexpected event was related to the passage of anti-cyclonic eddies that elevated sea levels and concentrated hot water over the reef, leading to an underwater marine heatwave that was largely hidden from view at the surface. The findings have recently been published in Nature Communications.  

    Most studies of coral bleaching patterns rely on sea-surface measures of water temperatures, which cannot capture the full picture of threats from ocean heating to marine ecosystems, including tropical coral reefs. These surface measurements conducted over broad areas with satellites are valuable, yet are unable to detect heating below the surface that influences communities living in waters deeper that the shallowest few metres of the ocean.

    Prof. Wyatt and colleagues analyzed data collected at Moorea over 15 years from 2005 to 2019, taking advantage of a rare combination of remotely sensed sea-surface temperatures and high-resolution, long-term in-situ temperatures and sea level anomalies. Results showed that the passage of anti-cyclonic eddies in the open ocean past the island raised sea levels and pushed internal waves down into deeper water. Internal waves travel along the interface between the warm surface layer of the ocean and cooler layers below, and, in a previous study also led by Prof. Wyatt, have been shown to provide frequent cooling of coral reef habitats. The present research shows that, as a result of the anti-cyclones, internal wave cooling was shut down in early 2019, as well as during some earlier heatwaves.  This led to unexpected heating over the reef, which in turn caused large-scale coral bleaching and subsequent mortality. Unfortunately for local reef biodiversity, the extensive coral death in 2019 has offset the recovery of coral communities that had been occurring around Moorea for the last decade.

    A notable observation, in contrast to the 2019 heatwave, was that the reefs in Moorea did not undergo significant bleaching mortality in 2016, despite the prevailing super El Niño that brought warm conditions and decimated many shallow reefs worldwide. The new research demonstrates the importance of collecting temperature data across the range of depths that coral reefs occupy because the capacity to predict coral bleaching can be lost with a focus only on surface conditions. Sea-surface temperature data would predict moderate bleaching in both 2016 and 2019 at Moorea. However, direct observations showed that there was only ecologically insignificant bleaching in 2016, with heating that was short in duration and restricted to shallow depths. The severe and prolonged marine heatwave in 2019 would have been overlooked if researchers only had access to sea-surface temperature data, and the resulting catastrophic coral bleaching may have been incorrectly ascribed to causes other than heating.

    “The present study highlights the need to consider environmental dynamics across depths relevant to threatened ecosystems, including those due to the passage of underwater ocean weather events.  This kind of analysis depends on long-term, in situ data measured across ocean depths, but such data is generally lacking,” Prof. Wyatt said.  

    “Our paper provides a valuable mechanistic example for assessing the future of coastal ecosystems in the context of changing ocean dynamics and climates.”

    This HKUST-led research was conducted in collaboration with a team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, the University of California Santa Barbara, California State University, Northbridge, and Florida State University. The data underlying this study were made possible by coupled long-term physical and ecological observations conducted at the Moorea Coral Reef Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. The long-term analyses conducted here, and the concurrent monitoring of physical conditions and biological dynamics across the full range of depths of island and coastal marine communities, is a model for future research that aims to protect vulnerable living resources in the ocean. 

Extensive coral bleaching occurred across depths on the north shore 

of Moorea during the 2019 marine heatwave

CREDIT

Peter J. Edmunds

An animation of the sea levels (eddy fields) around Moorea compared during the 2016 and 2019 marine heatwaves (VIDEO)

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

ARTICLE TITLE

Hidden heatwaves and severe coral bleaching linked to mesoscale eddies and thermocline dynamics

The Salton Sump and the Virtual Sea

BY BILL HATCH

 JANUARY 6, 2023
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Pumps and irrigation ditch adjacent to the Salton Sea, near Bombay Beach. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Salton Sea, its glory days long gone, is now a 35-mile- long growing hazard to public health for miles around, a mortal danger to the water fowl migrating on the Pacific Flyway, death to the fish that once inhabited it, but a boon to all who hustle public funds in the name of  positive solutions.

One of the largest hustlers, for example, the Salton Sea Management Program, consists of three state agencies, The California Natural Resources Agency, the California Department of Water Resources, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, so the funds stay among friends. The state has pledged about $400 million for its efforts at habitat rehabilitation over the next decade.

Brief review of the Reddish River

The Mexicans named the great red river flowing south from the Rockies across the Colorado Plateau and through the Grand Canyon in its way to Mexico, the Colorado, for its burden of reddish silt, which it deposited in a desert delta that became rich farmland on both sides of the border. But the first American attempt at a canal to irrigate this vast alluvial plan failed and for three years, Colorado River water flowed north into a depression, 250 feet below sea level, which formed the so-called Salton Sea. Irrigation developed all around the Sea and by 1920, California had declared its main purpose to be a drainage “sump” for agricultural runoff.

The Sump
Its real name, rather than its nautical sobriquet, should be the Salton Sump.

The Sump, from its beginning, has always contained a great deal more than pure H2O, but salts have been the most steadily increasing ingredient through the century-plus of its existence. The fish varieties planted in the 1920s flourished for several decades, forming a rich fishery for man and birds, but were killed off in the1960s by the salt concentration, higher than the Sea of Cortez, and by oxygen-robbing algae blooms caused by fertilizers washed through the farmland into the Sump. And with the loss of the fishery, the waterfowl of the Pacific Flyway have concentrated in smaller sections of the Sump near fresher-water inflows. The population density has caused diseases like Avian cholera to flourish and kill hundreds of thousands, to the point at which some species have disappeared from the region. The density has also fooled the public into thinking that the populations of migrating birds are larger than they actually are.

Yet, before the concentration of salts and other contaminants had overwhelmed the great lake of Colorado River water, the Sump was a resort destination for fishermen, birdwatchers, speedboaters, water skiers, party animals and real estate speculators, realtors, home builders, and, 50 years ago, had all the accoutrements of a swinging vacation community of Southern California Fun-in-the-Sunites, complete with rising property values and a growing tax base bringing silent joy to two county governments.

The desert was cool in ’62.

But then the Sump began to stink.

It then became one place in Southern California where you could lose money on a real estate investment, a violation of fundamental Southern California metaphysics.

The Merriman-Webster Dictionary stataes: “Metaphysics;  a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology.”

The government arrives with a first aid kit

The federal government and California had been playing ping pong with responsibility for the Salton Sump since its birth. Now, its fetid death has been dramatic enough to shake loose promises of showers of public funds for investment in plans to “Save the Sea.” In fact, millions of public funds have already been spent just on the all-important planning process. The Death of the Salton Sump obviously requires expert professional attention to propose, dispose, certify or reject all the plans and projects responsive to all the requests for proposals that might lessen or at least conceal some of the disaster, which is the Salton Sump.

The Colorado River has been hit by a 30-year drought in addition to the steady pressure of global warming, reducing its flow and therefore reducing the water available for irrigation, causing land fallowing and the use of more effective irrigation techniques in the Imperial and Coachella valleys, which reduces the agricultural runoff going to the Salton Sump. The sun is now evaporating more water from the Sump than agricultural runoff is contributing; the Sump is shrinking, shorelines are expanding to as much as half a mile in some places; strong southeasterly winds blow highly toxic dusts into downtown Palm Springs.

Public opinion is outraged.

California established the Salton Sea Management Program. Although it is difficult to get a handle on the total amount of money being spent because it depends now and in the future on state bond initiatives, hundreds of millions have been spent planning and developing projects to create wetlands, support species, and suppress the dust, which is the main danger to the health of people living near the Sump. “The approximately 650,000 people living nearby suffer from headaches, nosebleeds, asthma, and other health issues,” according to Grist in December, 2022.

Projects

An excellent guide to assessing the value of projects meant to “fix” the Sump is H.L. Mencken’s observation: “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”

A perennial project shopping for funds in this new funding cycle is conveying water from either the Sea of Cortez in Mexico or the Pacific at the Southern California coast to fill up the shrinking Sump. These are multi-billion-dollar projects, but, in the culture we are observing at work re. the Sump, the more expensive the project, the more attractive it is. The latest included a desalination plant. Reason did prevail this fall when the Sea of Cortez proposal was rejected, but that was not the first, nor do we expect it to be the last ocean-water proposal.  Creating new engineering disasters to solve the disasters of old engineering projects provides lots of jobs at public expense.
Yet, noted California field ornithologist, Guy McCaskie, told the Desert Sun recently: “We’ve got to be very close to the point where it can’t support life. And nobody’s doing anything fast enough to stop it,” McCaskie said. “I think that the cost to actually do something is so high that they’re avoiding it.”

The feds have made various pledges for both funds and water, but the immediate future of weather and politics will provide more definition. Meanwhile, although the Sump is less than 50 feet deep, it is becoming a bottomless pit for public funds. According to one published list, there are 31 federal, state, local, public, and non-profit agencies with their hands in the political economy of the Sump.

Private, for-profit-sector proposals await governmental review on mining lithium from the Sump-bed. Conspicuously absent from the public ballyhoo is discussion of the air pollution this mining would cause and where toxic byproducts would be deposited. And, in 2017, Sandia National Labs launched a project to bioengineer algae to consume toxics in the Sump. It is funded by the federal Department of Energy, but Scandia did not announce the funding amount in its press release.

Trying to keep it full as the Colorado River and the Imperial Irrigation District shrink is impossible.

Nevertheless… “Ryan Llamas, Audubon California’s Salton Sea program associate, says he is hopeful that the restoration projects will start to improve conditions at the Salton Sea. ‘It will be a good opportunity to see how humans can have a positive effect on their environment,’ he says.”

In other words, we must think positively and only positively, not about the Salton Sump, but about its virtual other, the Salton Sea of recovering real estate values, clear, unsalted waters, abundant fish and birds, happy fishermen, contented birdwatchers, bartenders, and property managers. Critical voices will not be funded.

Misery

However, the present Sump has had a demonstrably negative effect on human health for miles around, particularly for the Hispanic farmworkers, Native Americans and other low-income people who presently inhabit the shoreline communities. Yet we find this curious advertisement on the Internet:

“Affordable Housing In Niland

“Imperial County, California

“Affordable Housing programs support 294 income based apartments in Niland where households pay rent based on how much they earn.

“There are 38 affordable apartments in Niland that offer reduced rents to low-income households.””

“Salton Sea Beach, CA HUD Homes for Sale

“For a city like Salton Sea Beach, with its 655 residents, HUD homes are an increasingly viable option for those trying to move into a new home but may be feeling squeezed out of the current housing market. HUD homes are owned by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and present a greater range of financing options than traditional homebuying paths. HUD homes in Salton Sea Beach aren’t just a way to get into a housing market that is already experiencing shortages, they may just be the ideal way for you. To learn more about our current HUD homes in Salton Sea Beach, CA, register today! The perfect home could be waiting for you.”

There are a lot of dirty hands in the Sump, but they aren’t washing each other.

USC, Loma Linda University, Sierra Club, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and Comité Civico del Valle, and others recently have been investigating pulmonary damage from the growing dry shores of the Sump, laden with salts, heavy metals, selenium, and pesticide residues. Loma Linda researchers are studying the health effects of toxins from algae that become dust and are blown into nearby communities.
“Something needs to be done about this,” the Loma Linda public health researcher told High Country News in October.

Conclusions

The other day, I stood on the dusty shore near the abandoned Salton Sea North Shore Yacht Club, next to a boat ramp ending four hundred yards from the shoreline. What most impressed me was the absence of the usual sounds of a lake – from outboard motors to birds. There is a deep hush over the blue-gray Sump. and my imagination rushed to the silent death agonies of millions of creatures killed by this body of poisonous water. I also couldn’t help thinking about the silent dread in the hearts of children and elders at the onset of an asthma attack.

After admitting the total political depravity that caused the failure to fix any aspect of the Sump, authorities should relocate at public expense everyone who lives on the Salton Sump for their own safety, and for public safety take a section of the nearby Border Wall and surround the Sump and police the wall. Do the best you can to divert the birds, realizing that the losses will continue.

Bill Hatch lives in the Central Valley in California. He is a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco. He can be reached at: billhatch@hotmail.com.

China Ditched Zero Covid–Maybe It Shouldn’t Have

BY EVE OTTENBERG

 JANUARY 6, 2023
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Photograph Source: David290 – CC BY-SA 4.0

For years China beat the U.S. on covid. While millions died of the disease in the western world and over a million in the U.S., China instituted a supposedly authoritarian zero covid policy, which smacked fatalities down into the mere thousands. This was all the more remarkable, given the gigantic size of China’s population. But then, in late November, protests erupted. The Chinese – or some of them – were sick of lockdowns, constant tests, travel restrictions and quarantines. Next, in a shock to western elites salivating at the delusion that these protests would topple the government, China eliminated zero covid in early December, ending quarantine measures starting January 8. And the protesters got what they wanted. Two-hundred and fifty million Chinese were infected within weeks of ditching zero covid. Millions will now die, and the health care system is overwhelmed. Remember, even the vaccinated sicken in large numbers. It turns out that emulating the west, when it comes to public health, is a very, very bad idea.

That’s because the west, epitomized by the United States, has no public health system. It has a criminal health care racket, as befits a government that behaves similarly in its adventures all over the world. What makes you think it would conduct itself any differently here at home? It doesn’t. But that didn’t stop it from gleefully proclaiming it will now test for covid only arrivals from China. It would be far more effective from a public health perspective to require masks on planes, in airports and other enclosed public spaces. But God forbid the geniuses in Washington should do anything actually helpful. Besides, they’re too busy preening over their supposed victory over China, and vaunting it by testing those who travel there.

Here in the Exceptional Empire, covid was bad for business. Public health is, for many idiot Americans, a commie plot. This nonsense suits American businessmen, never the brightest bulbs in the box anyway, just fine. It enables our late capitalist oligarchy to lie that covid is under control and you don’t need to worry about it. Except of course when you contract it and die. But hey, that’s just the cost of our billionaire class continuing to make a buck, and indeed that class has made out like the bandits they are since covid first struck. They got richer on the blood of ordinary people who believed their prevarications that the virus was no worse than the flu, that they should show up for work feverish and that vaccines were a communist plot to insert chips into their bloodstreams.

China abandoning zero covid may well wind up ranking as one of the major catastrophes of human history. Potentially north of a billion people will now contract the virus. That many sick people mean new variants, some likely more deadly than any we’ve seen. It is cold comfort indeed that those western hypocrites who for years berated China’s sane covid policy – how dare the Chinese control covid! media elites venomously huffed – will now suffer infections from possibly more virulent permutations. It’s cold comfort, because they won’t be alone. Covid doesn’t play favorites. It kills everybody it can. Not just western liars who boomed in the pages of the New York Times that there was something wrong with Beijing for protecting its people. Those fibbers have access to vaccines and antivirals. But the victims of right-wing medical hallucinations do not. Poor whites in the south and Midwest, scared to death to get vaccinated, have little defense against the disease or the new variants surely coming. Well rather, now they have Paxlovid. Those that will take it.

Meanwhile, they’re doubtless breaking out the champagne in Washington. The protests they lusted for have wreaked havoc. Not the havoc our rulers hoped for, namely regime change, but public health chaos. The Biden team is no doubt happy to settle for that. Also, this unfortunate development banishes the problematic truths that China’s zero covid policy so blatantly caused to glare at us, namely that socialized medicine is superior to the capitalist variety. It saves more lives, as zero covid did, because it puts patients not profits first. Now the west can ignore the elephant in the room, namely, its millions of corpses compared to China’s mere thousands. Because the elephant left. Beijing showed itself flexible and responsive to its peoples’ concerns. Sadly, as a result, millions may die. Thus the wonders of so-called democracy, which is often merely capitalist propaganda in disguise.

This is not an argument for zero covid forever. Rather it’s to state the obvious, that China’s approach was successful, and it’s a shame and a tragedy to see the country pushed to forsake it hastily, before it was ready, and the many millions of deaths such abandonment will cause. Calamitously, Beijing may not have used the time bought by zero covid to promote a total vaccination program with, say, Cuba’s vaccines, or to prepare hospitals for the inevitable crush of patients, or to stock up on treatments and medical supplies. Chinese leaders may have done some of this – we’ll never know, because it would never be reported in western media – but it’s already clear that whatever backup plan they had was too scanty.

As many as 37 million people may contract covid per day in China now, according to Bloomberg December 23, citing estimates from Beijing’s health authorities. That adds up to a lot of people fast. “Several modelers predict more than a million covid deaths in China in 2023,” the Washington Post rushed to inform us December 31, before bemoaning the “little information,” wafting out of Beijing. Unstated implication: without our glorious free press, ho, ho, we’ll never know what’s really going on in China. Translation: if Beijing comes out of this somehow looking good, our corporate media will ignore this, but any catastrophe, even just a bit of bad news, will be trumpeted from the rooftops.

“China says its official Covid-19 vaccination rate is around 90 percent,” NPR reported December 9, but then went on, of course, to insinuate that that number was too high. Because heaven forfend! What would an American reader think who learned that unlike so many of his countrymen, either morons or bamboozled by rightist insanity into refusing the shot, most Chinese take a sane, rational, medically sophisticated approach to inoculation?

We can’t have that, and NPR wasn’t about to tolerate it. So it focused on undermining government claims by citing vaccine hesitancy due to…ta dum! “product quality issues.” Because of course a communist country has such issues. It must! That’s what we’ve all been indoctrinated to believe for decades, as if there had been no medical development whatsoever in the communist and socialist world since the rather backward medicine of the Soviet Union. Just, er, don’t tell that to the Cubans, who have more covid vaccines and vaccinated citizens proportionally than do U.S. residents. Oh, and not surprisingly, Cubans have better overall health outcomes too. But that’s another story. You won’t read it in U.S. media.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Hope Deferred. She can be reached at her website.