The evil that men do

By Steve Janoski

"Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." – Alfred Pennyworth, "The Dark Knight"



I finally left the office just after midnight. Ever the night owl, I’ve always found it much easier to get work done when the world is quiet. As I walked to my car, for some reason I recalled how frightened of the dark I was as a child, undoubtedly the product of too many late-night horror movies and an imagination to match.

Foolish now, I thought. After this long, I knew that the real monsters are in this world, not the next, and that the actions of men can be far more unnerving than those of some conjured villain.

Later I would learn that during my brief internal monologue, a lone murderer 1,800 miles away was in the process of gunning down a dozen innocents and wounding scores of others in a Colorado movie theater. The timing is still chilling for me.

Be ready, because what happened in Aurora on Thursday night will be analyzed and reanalyzed ad nauseam for the next few months, and discussions on gun rights, mental healthcare, and the safety and security of society in general will steal to the forefront of every Facebook wall and newspaper website’s comment section.

And shocked citizens will ask that naïve, stupid question — and I have already heard it at least a dozen times — that they always ask whenever something awful happens.

"What is this world coming to?"

Well, let me save you the trouble on this: the world is not coming to anything. It’s not changing, and people were no different when you grew up than they were when Euripides did.

And nobody asked, "What is this world coming to?" when the globe was regularly consumed in titanic wars between first-world superpowers, or when the threat of Indians kicking down the door of your frontier homestead to kill your family was both recognized and real.

But, as this nation and others become ever more civilized, we become more and more appalled by the idea of violence. That, in itself, is a good thing.

But as our aversion to bloodshed becomes increasingly powerful, we forget that there are people out there who do not share that feeling with us, and that many of them would end your life and not give a second thought or feel a minute’s worth of remorse about it.

And it’s either very ironic — but more likely, very planned — that the soulless coward now identified as 24-year-old James Holmes launched his assault as people sat down to watch the finale of a movie series that has wrestled with the issue of human morality and where it stands in the dichotomy of good and evil in an attempt to act as an "agent of chaos" worthy of the Joker’s mantle.

But he’s failed, and failed miserably.

Holmes is no philosophically driven antagonist, no character study on the underside of man. He is merely another brutal psychopath whose blackened husk of a heart is enveloped with a festering darkness that would have found a better home in the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein.

We liberals like to think that all men — and we often stand steadfastly on this — if given the right reasons, can change. We like to think that as long as one draws breath, there is both time and cause for redemption.

But I’ve always known that there are those out there for whom redemption is impossible. They are Judases to the human race, the venomous few whom God has turned away from, and within them lies the same demons that danced in the flames of Troy, pulled the guillotine’s rope in Robespierre’s Paris and herded the Jews into the gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

And, with 7 billion people living on this earth, some are bound to be wired wrong. It’s just a numbers game as to how many James Holmeses are out there among us. When acts like this occur, no one thing can be blamed, other than the fact that evil men commit evil deeds, regardless of time or place.

But never, never ask, "What is this world coming to?"

It’s always been the same. We’ve just forgotten that horrors like this are not only possible, but inevitable. The only thing we can control is how we deal with it once it occurs.

I, for one, suggest we show Mr. Holmes the same level of mercy that he gave his victims.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

US Army Corps presents new flood study plan to Pequannock public

By Steve Janoski

One year. Just one.

That's the deadline set by US Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) New York District Commander Colonel John Boule last Wednesday evening for completing the first phase of a $15 million study of the Passaic River Basin that officials believe might finally end with a solution to mitigate flooding.
Colonel John R. Boule, the New York District commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Eugene Brickman, Corps of Engineers deputy chief, speak to the large crowd that gathered at PTHS to hear the ACE's plan on river flooding.

But this won't be the same old review, Boule told a collection of area mayors and media members just before an ACE-hosted public outreach program was set to begin at Pequannock Township High School.

This one, he said, is going to take all of the information already accrued about the 983-square-mile basin by well over a dozen studies in the past century (especially the research done in 1987) and build off it.

And, he said, it's going to be done quick.

"If you look at how long it took us to get a recommended solution in the 1980s, we want to do it much faster," said Boule. Finishing work like this inside a year, he said, is "light speed" for the ACE.

Officials see six possible plans on the table as options to alleviate the flooding that has cost more than $3.5 billion in 22 years.

In one calendar year, the ACE wants it narrowed down to one or two realistic options.

Two of the plans involve different configurations of levees and floodwalls along the Passaic and its tributaries, coupled with either bridge and dam modifications or channel modification. Depending on which was selected, this would cost between $840 million and $961 million.

Another plan is a "non-structural alternative" that more or less relies on buyouts and home elevations to move residents out of harm's way. Moving those residents out of the floodway itself would cost an estimated $294 million. Moving them out of the 100-year floodplain would cost $7.3 billion.

Another plan is to improve both Beatties Dam in Little Falls and the Two Bridges area along the PassaicRiver (no cost estimate was offered), while a fifth would be to take no action and let things continue as they will.

The final option would be to bring back the much maligned idea of building a $2.7 billion, 21-mile flood tunnel that would funnel water from the flood basin down to Newark Bay. This plan is unlikely to be resurrected and is only included, Boule said, because it was the 1987 plan's approved solution.

"The Christie Administration has made it crystal clear that that is not an option," Boule said of the tunnel.

No stopping water

The colonel admitted that there has been a move away from what he called "monstrous structural projects," and he attributed that to a combination of the environmental movement and a new view on flooding — it's no longer about controlling the water.

"You can't do that. You've got to change your mindset," he said. "It's about reducing the residual risk to the public to the lowest level that's affordable."

David Rosenblatt, the Department of Environmental Protection's director of construction, agreed and noted that economics has also had a heavy impact on the shift toward policies that rely more on buyouts and elevations than on brick-and-mortar projects.

"There's not enough money out there to do a lot of the structural work that would normally be designed," he said. "(That) would require appropriations from Congress over a large number of years, and those appropriations are rather uncertain… at the federal and state levels."

Once the first phase is complete and the choices whittled down, Boule said, the ACE would take a more detailed, intensive look at the remaining options. The state would have to agree to a final plan before the ACE could have it brought to Washington for congressional approval.

Boule said he understood the frustration on the part of both local officials and residents about the issue and said that the public outreach meetings were meant to offer citizens a chance to voice their concerns and ideas. Shortly afterward, Boule found a packed PTHS auditorium brimming with those looking to share ideas.

The crowd, which likely numbered around 100, appeared willing to listen to the ACE plan, but clearly remained skeptical that any work would ever be done.

Some, like Pequannock resident Al Fabrizio, immediately looked past the ACE's outlined options and asked why other, more immediate fixes such as reservoir management, weren't being investigated.

"If you control the reservoirs, and I don't know why no one has brought this up, we can live with at least one eye closed at night. It's that simple," he said.

Rosenblatt would later comment that the DEP had discussed the regulation of reservoirs "extensively," but the department was not ready to go public with a decision.

"It's not really a workable solution as we see it right now," he said, declining to go into further detail.

Others, like Pequannock resident Nate Glinbizzi, said that the ACE should stick to its deadline as tightly as possible.

"We've had Army Corps of Engineers people retire studying the flood plain. I really want action," he said. "We are waiting. I may not be around in two or three years, but I hope I will be, and I'd like to see this done."

Hans Prell, a Little Falls resident and president of that town's Flood Board, said that he'd spent 60 years in the river basin and had heard "lots of talk" from governors and ACE officials alike but had yet to see any flood prevention work.

He dismissed the idea of a timeline and said that he thought it would be at least 10 years before any kind of groundbreaking occurred.

"I don't care what you say. We're going to have to wait 10 years, and that's government. I know it is, and I see it all the time," he said. "I'll see something happen when I'm 73 years old on that Beatties Dam when I've been fighting for it for God knows how many years."

A number of other residents spoke as well, some just to share their experiences while others, like Lincoln Park Councilman Gary Gemian, decried the lack of government action.

Boule admitted that he could not guarantee that anything would be built as a result of the 2012 study, but said that if there was enough political will and consensus, something could happen in the Passaic River Basin similar to what is occurring in Bound Brook, where $400 million worth of flood-protection measures are under construction.

"There's solutions going on down on the ground. Can they happen here in the Passaic River Basin? Yes they can," said Boule. "If we push the elected officials…to make it happen, it can happen, and you have to believe that. If you don't believe it, then nothing, obviously, is going to happen."

"Since 1903, nothing has gotten done," someone in the crowd yelled after Boule's statement concluded. "That's why we don't believe you."

"I hear you," Boule replied. "I hear you."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/162547556_Army_Corps_wants_one_more_year_for_flood_relief_studies.html?page=all

Old wounds remain unhealed

By Steve Janoski

It was but a single item among the scores of pieces on loan from dozens of museums and private collections that, brought together inside Morristown's stately Macculloch Hall, formed what was probably the finest exhibit ever assembled in regards to New Jersey soldiers in the Civil War.

Named "Gone for a Soldier – Jerseymen in the Civil War," the display featured everything from swords and firearms to devil-adorned playing cards and a blood-soaked prayer book.

Small placards next to each piece strove to tell the story behind the piece and bring the war home on a personal level, and no attempt was made to hide that the man who wore this specific jacket or carried that stag-handled bowie drew his last breath just inches from Virginia's green grass or mud-soaked trenches.

One piece in particular drew my eye: a gorgeous .58 caliber Springfield Model 1861 rifle that, sitting behind the thick glass of a display case, featured a muzzle that was once the pinnacle of man's innovative killing power, now silenced for the ages.

This, however, was more than just another old gun. Into its dark wooden stock, the iron cross-like emblem of the Army of the Potomac's Sixth Corps was carved, and down the side of the barrel, its owners name — New Jersey's own Corporal James Taylor of Co. B of the 14th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry – was engraved (no doubt a product of the hours upon hours of intense boredom that bookended the moments of terror that formed the soldier's life).

But those simple markings lent a human touch to the murderous tool and spurred the viewer to the sobering realization that, yes, this gun belonged to a man, a man not unlike any of us, who used it to end lives in some of history's most savage battles.

Later that day, at a Masonic lodge just a few blocks from Maccullough Hall, the museum hosted a talk by world-famous historian James McPherson, who may be the finest Civil War scholar that the nation has ever produced.

McPherson, who looks decades younger than his 76 years, was the picture of class in both speech and manner, and his remarkable talk, which outlined the numerous breakdowns in the peace negotiations between North and South, kept his audience of armchair historians intrigued.

The peace process, after all, is something that is oft-overlooked in the thousands of books written about the war, and maybe for good reason; the two sides were so impossibly far from any common ideal of what "peace" could even look like that some might consider it wholly irrelevant.

That's not to say that during the war there weren't plenty of people on both sides actively lobbying for an armistice, especially during the later years when bullet-swept battlefields produced mammoth casualty lists.

McPherson said that the opening of peace negotiations, Northern "Peace Democrats" claimed, would be the first steps towards the "brotherly reunion of North and South," and although "it might take a long time," it would be have to be done one step at a time.

But as his talk continued, and he discussed the stubborn reluctance on the part of both sides to settle for anything less than what history might consider a total victory, I began to see his words mold themselves into the current political landscape.

With each passing election, and especially in the light of the recent Supreme Court decisions on healthcare, immigration, and the role of the federal government in the life of its citizens and its states, it becomes abundantly clear that the Civil War never really ended.

The way we fight it may have changed, and although our politicians today skip the apocalyptic rhetoric their nineteenth century forebears used to such great effect, the arguments are essentially the same.

But now, instead of grabbing a rifle, we grab the keyboard. Instead of taking to the field, we take to Facebook and Twitter, venting our frustrations and backing up our assertions with Wikipedia crash courses on constitutional law and quotes from men long since dead.

And I cannot help but wonder where our "brotherly reunion" between North and South, liberal and conservative, went, and if at the end of the great crucible, Corporal Taylor and his compatriots thought that the issues that had ignited the "mighty scourge of war" had finally, and forever, been settled, and that America might one day heal the conflagration's crimson wounds.

I wonder how shocked he would be to see that even 150 years later the voting map regularly reflects the old boundaries of the old Confederacy, or to read our internet postings and see that we are every bit as divided today as we were on the day that he carved that cross into the stock of his rifle.

I wonder if he would think his sacrifice, their sacrifice, was all worth it.

Alas, I cannot ask him. And all we have left of him, of those troops, of that Grand Army of the Republic that freed the slaves and ended the insurrection, is that cold, murderous accoutrement that serves as a constant reminder of a country that once tore itself apart, only to rebuild stronger in some places… but just as vulnerable in others.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

For more information on the Macculloch Hall summer programs, go to maccullochhall.org.


http://www.northjersey.com/community/history/more_history_news/162165635_War_s_wounds_remain_unhealed.html?page=all

Not my "American Dream" for the Meadowlands

By Steve Janoski

Every time I see the heaping monstrosity rising from the flank of Route 3, I can’t help but shake my head.

That massive, gaudy orange-and-blue ulcer of a mall has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the Garden State, from the officials who allowed the hugely inappropriate project to be recklessly built on environmentally sensitive land to the budget woes and overruns in time and money that have subsequently occurred.

It will look hideous once it’s done, just another manmade eyesore climbing out of the swampy Meadowlands, desperately being dragged to "completion" by its newest developer, the Triple Five Group.


Always having been much more of a naturalist than a shopper, I’ve had nothing but disdain for the project since it was announced back in 2003. I do realize what state I live in, though, and I knew there was little hope of trying to stop such a thing from being built.

But it just keeps getting worse and more bizarre, as the The Record reported on June 14 that the developer has asked for permission to strip yet another five acres of wetlands to construct a new indoor amusement and (ironically) water park on the site.

As that request is processed and reviewed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the article states, Triple Five is trying to finalize the $2 billion in financing necessary to complete the $3.7 billion mall.

With so much of Xanadu — or, as it’s called for the time being, the "American Dream Meadowlands Project" — already built, another five acres might not seem like much. And truthfully, it isn’t.

But by now, it’s just out of spite that I’m hoping that the environmental permits are rejected and that maybe the developer will be told to try and open the mall for a day or two before planning an expansion on a project that should have never been allowed in the first place.

As a reporter, I’m acutely aware of the constant battle between environmentalists and developers and the need for both open space and ratables. And, even though I tend to lean toward the green side (as in trees, not money), I understand that a balance must be struck.

But the Meadowlands has seen enough damage on our account.

It took us centuries to realize that the swamp was a little bit more than an expendable wasteland, a brackish tidal estuary where garbage and bodies and toxic waste could be dumped with little effect on the ecosystem.

And everything has been dumped there over the years. Even pieces of London rubble ended up in our marshy plain when, after the Battle of Britain reduced much of that city, sections of concrete were used as ballast in ships coming back to America and then thrown into the meadows by the military.

But even with the apocalyptic assault leveled at it by humans, decades of more stringent regulation, combined with the rise of conservation groups and a general change of attitude in regards to the wetlands, has started the entire region crawling towards recuperation.

Many species of animals not regularly seen in years, such as grey seals, fluke, and striped bass, have made their way back into the streams winding their way through the golden plain. Even the HackensackRiver, which was once so polluted that it could only support the hardiest of fish, has staged a modest comeback.

And that five acres, while it’s but a small sliver of the Meadowlands’ 8,500, should be preserved as well. The area’s wildlife has hung on with a white-knuckle grip, and the state should be trying to nurse it back, not allowing developers to further ravage it, even in the smallest amount.

I know that this argument has been made many times over in New Jersey, and I don’t expect anything other than more development to occur. And, being as the rusty-walled fool’s paradise has already been built, there’s nothing more that can really be done except hope that it somehow works out.

But in the future, I can also hope that the state pays attention to the cascade of mistakes that have left both the Meadowlands and the mall in such dire straits – and the next time developers promise the world a mall the size of Rhode Island, New Jersey tells them to find somewhere else.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/159828175_Not_my__American_Dream__for_the_Meadowlands.html?page=all

First volley in the war on obesity

BY STEVE JANOSKI

I've got to give New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg credit: the man's got…nerve.

I'm sure he knew the firestorm was coming last week when he announced his plan to combat obesity by banning the selling of sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces at places like restaurants, movie theaters, and fast food places, and he went ahead with it anyway.

And, as was expected, the naysayers have sprung from the woodwork with a glut of "reasons" why this is an awful idea. It won't help, they claim, because people will buy the same amount of soda, just in smaller containers.

They say it's "Nanny Bloomberg" once again overstepping his bounds, and call it a restriction on personal choice, on freedom itself!

Relax. It's nothing of the sort.

Make no mistake about it: Bloomberg is doing nothing that's going keep you freedom-loving Americans from guzzling gallons of soda, thereby retaining that inalienable right to die slowly and painfully as a result of diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and all the other illnesses associated with obesity.

What it is, however, is a public health initiative that's going to accomplish the same goal that his ban on smoking in bars, restaurants, and public parks has done over the past 10 years: make it exceedingly hard to ingest a thing that is truly, truly awful for you.

According to a recent New York Times report, a spokesman for the New York City Beverage Association — an arm of the soda industry's national trade group — criticized the city proposal, calling it a product of the NYC health department's "unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks."

"It's time for serious health professionals to move on and seek solutions that are going to actually curb obesity," said spokesman Stefan Friedman in the piece.

Right. Serious health professionals…you know, unlike the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, who blames sweetened drinks for up to half of the increase in obesity rates over the last three decades.

According to the article, the city reports that obesity rates are higher in neighborhoods where soda consumption is more common; this must be simply a coincidence, eh Mr. Friedman?

The brutal reality — which is a place where industry lobbyists for things like Big Tobacco and now Big Soda don't operate — is that over half of the adults in the Big Apple are either overweight or obese already.

But if you were a spokesman for an industry that sells sugary poison, why would you give any credence to that?

Let us be real about this: obesity is the greatest problem facing this country right now. You can live without a job, you can live without being able to read, you can live without knowing algebra, but you cannot live without your health.

This has nothing to do with vanity, and nothing to do with self-esteem: as one writer once put it, "Diabetes doesn't give a (expletive) about your self-esteem."

The health problems that fat people have (I often refuse to use that softening sobriquet "overweight") are amongst the most vicious, and when they come to fruition, they toss their weight onto the already-strained healthcare system, costing untold millions every year.

Obesity reduces life expectancy, and is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. Yes, you read that right: eating too much and moving too little is a major, major problem for the entire world, and it's every bit as serious as addictions to tobacco, alcohol, or heroin.

And what do good governments do when citizens are massively addicted to such things? They take steps to curb that addiction. If half the population of NYC were out-of-control drinkers, there would be an outcry followed by proposals on how to fix it.

Back in 1965, the smoking rate in the U.S. was about 42 percent. As the decades went by, however, many governments (especially New York City's) began placing heavy taxes and restrictions on cigarettes and smoking. Miraculously, the rate began to drop.

Now, the smoking rate in New York is just 14 percent, 6 percent lower than the national average. In West Virginia, where few limits are placed on the habit, the rate is 26 percent. Clearly, America needs that same kind of societal shift in the way it views obesity, and needs to be aggressive in fighting it.

So don't think of this proposal as a case of the government overstepping its bounds… think of it as the government trying to be something of a good shepherd.

A shepherd that watches large cows instead of sheep… and is watching them eat, and eat, and eat until they vomit, only to keep eating after that, to the detriment of themselves and everything around them, until they literally drop dead.

And whether you agree with the exact tenet of the law or not, credit must be given to Bloomberg for moving on it. He is one of the few politicians willing to take a tough, unpopular stance on an issue that is affecting more and more Americans every day.

Maybe, when this law succeeds and eventually spreads to the rest of the country (as so many NYC health initiatives have), you can write him a letter and thank him because you were able to watch a whole movie without needing an insulin shot.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/157690925_First_volley_in_the_war_on_obesity_.html?page=all