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BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Lehigh bounced back from Saturday’s loss to Drexel to earn their second win of the season on Sunday. The Mountain Hawks defeated Hofstra 5-2 at Lewis Tennis Center.

Hofstra swept the doubles point to begin the match, leaving the Mountain Hawks down by one going into singles.

Juniors Matt Kleiman and Jeremey Learner stepped up for Lehigh, getting the Mountain Hawks on the board during singles play. At the No. 4 spot, Kleiman finished first in singles play, defeating Hofstra’s Matthew Garcia 6-2, 6-3. Learner followed suit, defeating Shawn Jackson in the third flight 6-3, 6-1.

With two singles matches finished and both teams tied at two, senior Zack Elliott put the team on his back as he went on to defeat Bo Cautaerts. At the No. 1 spot, Elliott picked up his third win of the year in singles play, by a 7-5, 6-4 score.

Senior Gary Fishkin and sophomore Jordan Paul went on to grab two more wins for Lehigh in singles play. At the No. 5 spot, Fishkin defeated Hofstra’s Vincent Turnia 6-3, 6-4. Paul defeated Josh Reynolds 6-3, 2-6, 10-5 at the No. 6 spot.

The Mountain Hawks improved to 2-2 on the season with today’s win. Lehigh will stay in Bethlehem, as the Mountain Hawks will host Siena on Saturday at 11:30 am and Saint Francis on Sunday at 10 am

doubles

1. Cautaerts / Kovalenko (Hofstra) def. Elliott-Blekhman (Lehigh) 6-2
2. Wolfe / Jackson (Hofstra) def. Fishkin v Nazaroff (Lehigh) 6-3
3. Garcia / Turnia (Hofstra) def. Kleiman/Learner (Lehigh) 6-3

Order of finish: 1, 3, 2

singles

1. Zack Elliot (Lehigh) def. Bo Cautaerts 7-5, 6-4
2. Ostap Kovalenko (Hofstra) def. Marc Blekhman (Lehigh) 6-2, 6-2
3. Jeremy Learner (Lehigh) def. Shawn Jackson (Hofstra) 6-3, 6-1
4. Matt Kleiman (Lehigh) def. Matthew Garcia (Hofstra) 6-2, 6-3
5. Gary Fishkin (Lehigh) def. Vincent Turnia (Hofstra) 6-3, 6-4
6. Jordan Paul (Lehigh) def. Josh Reynolds (Hofstra) 6-3, 2-6, 10-5

Order of finish: 4, 2, 3, 1, 5, 6

A 63-year-old Saddle Brook man was hospitalized after an hours-long SWAT team standoff at his home.

Saddle Brook police received a report of a “resident in distress” at the Saddle Brook Apartments on Finnigan Avenue at 2:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 19, said Capt. John A. Zotollo, Jr.

“The responding officers arrived and began to speak with the individual from outside,” Zotollo said. “It was apparent this person was experiencing some type of medical issue and was presenting in an altered mental state.

“Officers determined the individual was having difficulty cooperating and refused to safely exit the home,” the captain said. “Support agencies were then contacted.”

They included the Bergen County Regional SWAT Team, county Sheriff’s Office and county social services agents.

Streets were closed and residents were asked to shelter in place as the incident continued.

“After attempts to negotiate with the individual were unsuccessful, officers entered the home and were able to safely resolve the situation” shortly after 7:30 pm, said Zotollo, adding that no force was used.

“No weapons were located inside the residence,” he said.

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ALSO SEE: A Saddle Brook home appeared unstable after a sedan plowed into it, authorities at the scene said. READ MORE….

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – The Lehigh women’s tennis team fell to Drexel on Sunday at the Vidas Bubble. In their first road match of the season, the Mountain Hawks lost a tough one in Philadelphia, falling 6-1.

Lehigh had a slow start to the match, with Drexel grabbing the doubles point early. The Mountain Hawks were forced to forfeit the second flight in doubles before dropping the remaining two flights.

Trailing 1-0 going into singles, Lehigh tried its hardest to erase the deficit, as first-year Hamsa Javagal grabbed a victory over Drexel’s Tara Veluvolu 6-4, 6-1.

Against Isabel Cabrerizo, sophomore Megha Dania lost the first set before coming back to win the second set, 6-3. She was unable to hold on in the third, losing 6-0.

Lehigh will return to Bethlehem for two matches next weekend. The Mountain Hawks will host Siena at 3:30 pm on Saturday and Saint Francis on Sunday at 2 pm

doubles

1. Lemongo / Fuentes (Drexel) def. James v Javagal (Lehigh) 6-2
2. Corte Gonzalez / Veluvolu (Drexel) def. Hua / Singh (Lehigh) 2-1 (forfeit)
3. A.Dania / M.Dania (Lehigh) def. Cabrerizo-Garcia Mendez (Drexel) 6-2

singles

1. Lorie Lemongo (Drexel) def. Junmoke James (Lehigh) 6-3, 6-1
2. Hamsa Javagal (Lehigh) def. Tara Veluvolu (Drexel) 6-4, 6-1
3. Isabel Cabrerizo (Drexel) def. Megha Dania (Lehigh) 6-2, 3-6, 6-0
4. Mya Fuentes (Drexel) def. Anushka Dania (Lehigh) 6-1, 6-1
5. Aida Garcia Mendez (Drexel) def. Sarah Hua (Lehigh) 6-3, 6-3
6. Paulina Kharkover (Drexel) def. Brenda Cuadra (Lehigh) 8-2

Salewa Ogunmefun works to make sure Black communities aren’t divided into multiple electoral districts, known as “cracking” (Image via City & State Pa.).

By Justin Sweitzer

Redistricting fights have traditionally been waged over political boundary lines.

Lawmakers and voting rights advocates in Pennsylvania have often sparred over whether newly drawn state legislative and congressional districts meet constitutional requirements, or whether they’re drawn in a way that purposefully gives one party an electoral advantage – a practice known as gerrymandering.

But a redistricting fight of a different sort has emerged this year: a battle to ensure that minority communities don’t have their voting power diluted.

To the surprise of no one, the decennial redistricting cycle occurring this year has led to claims of gerrymandering and political gamesmanship from both sides of the aisle. It has also presented advocates for minorities throughout Pennsylvania with an opportunity to fight for the newest set of maps to reflect the state’s diversity – and to ensure they aren’t drawn in a way that weakens the voting power of people of color.

And that all starts with where exactly the lines are drawn.

Pennsylvania’s state legislative districts are drawn by the five-member Legislative Reapportionment Commission, made up of four lawmakers and an independent chair, while the state’s congressional districts are decided by the state Legislature and signed into law by the governor.

Pa. House Republicans ask court to toss proposed legislative maps, reuse current lines in 2022

Both processes take place after the completion of the U.S. Census – and, given that Pennsylvania’s recent population growth was driven by communities of color, advocates say that mapmakers should be taking extra care to make sure that communities of color aren’t divided during the redistricting process – both now and in the future.

“These maps ingrain power in a very particular way that a lot of folks don’t pay as much attention to as an election cycle,” said Salewa Ogunmefun, the executive director of Pennsylvania Voice, a coalition of more than 30 organizations dedicated to expanding political power in communities of color. “But really, because those elections are run in the districts that this process actually creates, we saw an opportunity to actually make sure that these districts created more opportunities for people of color to be able to run for and win office.”

That process, Ogunmefun said, starts with identifying so-called “communities of interest” – or areas that have shared social, cultural, racial, ethnic or policy interests – and making sure those communities aren’t divided into multiple electoral districts – known in redistricting parlance as “cracking,” or shoehorned into a single district – known as “packing.”

Ogunmefun said that if voting power is diluted through either of those two approaches, lawmakers are unlikely to pass policies sought by Black voters, since their voting power would be diminished. “We can’t pass policies that people want to actually see in the statehouse, and that’s what we’ve seen over the last 30 years,” she said. She pointed to two referendums in Allegheny County and Pittsburgh that ultimately led to voters restricting the use of solitary confinement and banning no-knock warrants.

“If you took that same policy, and we started having that conversation at the state House, it would never even come up for a vote. And that is something that affects Black communities disproportionately more than any other communities,” Ogunmefun added. “But instead of being able to pass policies at the state level that put these protections in place … limiting the ability for us to pass legislation that is good for communities that have historically not had that same access to power is what we see in the state House right now.”

In an attempt to rectify that, Pennsylvania Voice and a host of other organizations sought feedback directly from minority communities. They used that feedback to form their own maps that they then submitted to policymakers for consideration.

Khalif Ali, the executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said the coalition of good government groups has held “several hundred conversations in which they talk to communities of interest and had them document where they saw value in their communities.”

Members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority attend a meeting in support of a member who testified before the Legislative Reapportionment Commission (Photo by James Robinson/Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus).

Obtaining that input, for both state and congressional maps, is crucial to developing maps that reflect the state’s communities of color, Ali said.

“We don’t consider mapping just to be a mathematical exercise. It’s not just about equations. It’s about real people whose lives are invariably impacted by how these maps are drawn,” he said. “So we have to take into consideration the human factor of mapping. Yes, you need professionals who can talk about population deviation and partisan bias. You need those experts there. But you also need them to take into consideration the impact that could potentially have on traditionally marginalized populations.”

Ballot access on the docket as courts consider what’s next for Pennsylvania’s maps

As a result of conversations with Pennsylvanians in diverse communities across the state, Keystone Counts, a project of Pennsylvania Voice that includes the Amistad Law Project and Common Cause Pennsylvania, submitted a series of eight “Unity Maps” that outlined recommended state House districts for mapmakers to consider. The maps were formed from 700 individual submissions where voters outlined specific parts of their respective communities that they wanted policymakers to include in new state legislative districts.

Ogunmefun said that many of the preliminary districts proposed by the LRC have factored in the Unity Map requests, but others have expressed concerns with them.

Kris Henderson, executive director of the Amistad Law Project, said the preliminary maps approved by the LRC are an improvement from the last set of state legislative maps, which were based on 2010 U.S. Census data.

“They didn’t wholesale adopt them,” Henderson said of the Unity Maps. “But I do think that they seemed to be in coordination with each other. I think they make sense together.”

However, Henderson’s own community – Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood – would be divided under the preliminary plan approved by the LRC, which threatens to negatively impact the community’s voting power.

Kris Henderson is executive director of the Amistad Law Project, which works to end mass incarceration and abolish the death penalty (Photo by Sabrina Guyton-Wright).

“Germantown is a majority Black neighborhood,” Henderson said, noting that Germantown residents could end up having two separate state representatives in Harrisburg. “My concern is with the neighborhood being split up, our power obviously being reduced … and not being able to really say what it is that we want and need – what will be beneficial to this community.”

The LRC went on to approve final state House and Senate maps on Feb. 4, and Henderson said the final plan still leaves much to be desired in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood.

“Most of the closest friends we have are now in our district but it still splits Germantown and keeps us from being in the same community of interest as most of the rest of Germantown,” Henderson said.

House Minority Leader Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia (Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus photo).

Bishop Dwayne Royster, executive director of POWER Interfaith, an ecumenical organization focused on racial and economic justice, knows firsthand how district boundaries can hurt communities of color. Royster ran for state representative in the 70th House District in 2008 – a map that included the “very urban” Norristown and the “deepy rural” Harleysville. Royster said the two vastly different communities didn’t belong in one district, given their demographic and ideological differences.

“There was absolutely no connection between the folk in Norristown and the people in Harleysville,” Royster said. “There was no relationship; there was no reason for that district to be drawn like that other than it was gerrymandered to make sure that Republicans could continue to win.”

Royster described campaigning in the district as a “struggle,” noting how difficult it was to connect with constituents so different from those in his own community in Norristown. “In normal circumstances, I would have just stayed up in Norristown and just worked Norristown really hard, but I wanted to build relationships with the folk all across the district, but some of the more upper-middle-class areas to more rural white areas just were not as receptive to my presence in that space at the time,” he said.

Republicans have also taken issue with some of the district boundaries on state legislative maps, believing that split communities could dilute Hispanic voting power in certain parts of the state. In recent years, there has been an uptick in Latino voters voting Republican, as evidenced by the 2020 census and studies by the Pew Research Center.

Latino advocate promises lawsuit against new Pa. legislative maps

State House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, a Republican who serves on the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, said in January that municipal splits in Harrisburg, Allentown, Lancaster and Reading left him “deeply concerned,” and that those splits could “create specific problems” under the Voting Rights Act.

He doubled down on his concerns when the LRC voted to approve a final plan for state House districts in early February.

“Many minority communities, particularly Hispanics in Allentown, Reading, Lancaster and Black voters in Harrisburg will be cracked and, if anything, denied a realistic chance of electing more members of the General Assembly that have their shared experience and can represent their communities from a place of familiarity,” Benninghoff said.

With both sides of the political spectrum expressing concerns over how minority communities are drawn into state legislative districts, the question becomes whether there is a viable solution and, if so, what it would look like. According to advocates following the redistricting process, the process itself needs to undergo some major changes.

While Ogunmefun praised the number of opportunities the public had to offer input on the LRC’s preliminary maps, she added that public hearings and other opportunities need to be codified either in state law or in the state constitution. She also suggested that the LRC hire an expert in “racially polarized voting and analysis.”

Others said citizens should have a larger role in the redistricting process, which could be accomplished by either expanding or replacing the commission that draws state legislative maps. But an independent citizens commission drawing maps instead of state legislators could present its own challenges.

Justin Sweitzer is a reporter for City & State Pa., where this story first appeared. 

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site.

Originally published at www.penncapital-star.com,by Special to the Capital-Star

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ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Fifth-year senior Ann Foley ended her career on her own terms. She’s the 2022 Patriot League Champion in the 100-yard freestyle, swimming to a new school, Patriot League and meet record time of 49.05. She becomes the Mountain Hawks’ 23rd individual Patriot League Champion all-time, third in the 100-free (and first since Payton Miles in 2018), claiming both her 14th career medal and second individual title, third overall as Lehigh finished the Patriot League Championships in fifth at 258 points on Saturday evening.

In addition to her gold medal and multiple records broken in the event, Foley’s time was an NCAA B-Cut qualifying mark.

𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐎𝐍

Ann Foley becomes Lehigh’s 23rd Patriot League Champion and third in the 100-yard freestyle (first since Payton Miles in 2018) with her NCAA B-Cut and School Record time of 05/49.

Watch: https://t.co/ZHSoTjGr3u pic.twitter.com/qYHZReBXL4

— Lehigh Swimming & Diving (@LehighSwimDive) February 20, 2022 “Ann stands on top of all Patriot League 100 freestylers ever,” said head coach Rob Herb. “This is the ultimate distinction for an athlete. Ann and her swims stand as an example of what someone can accomplish in the pool and classroom at Lehigh. Her work and dedication to this team has not been surpassed by anyone. She has honored and filled the shoes of the champions before her in both Payton Miles and Kaitlyn Ruffing.”

Foley had a whale of a day for the Mountain Hawks in the pool, also smashing the 100-yard freestyle school record earlier in the day during the preliminary round at 49.79. She concludes her final Patriot League Championships with two medals, a bronze third-place finish in the 50-yard free and a gold first-place win in the 100-yard free.

To start the final night of final events, first-years Natalie Martin (17:05.94) and Maggie Mikalic (17:05.94) finished sixth and seventh, respectively in the 1,650-yard freestyle with solid efforts to begin their careers at Patriots.

First-year Willa Werwaiss competed in her first career individual A-Final, swimming to an eighth-place finish in the 200-yard back (2:01.87), while Sarah Manthorp finished in seventh in her B-Final of the 100-yard free.

Martin (2:02.21) and Stevens (2:03.35) finished in second and fourth, respectively in the B-Final of the 200-yard butterfly.

On the boards, first-year Sarah Gill scored a 234.10 in the one-meter dive, finishing in 12th place. The final event of the evening for the women was the 400-yard freestyle relay where Lehigh finished fifth at 3:23.64 with Noel Fresa (51.49), Manthorp (51.41), Werwaiss (52.08) and Foley (48.66).

“We had a bright last day with our shiniest star being Ann,” Herb said. “She’s meant a lot to Lehigh swimming and diving over the years and led a strong group of first-year women this week in Willa Werwaiss, Natalie Martin and Maggie Mikalic, who powered home for a great last day and pushed the team up a place in the standings.

“I also want to shoutout associate head coach Erin Matyus, who had a lot to juggle with a big meet this week. She kept this ship moving forward, a truly amazing job by Coach Erin.”

The women’s finishes the Patriot League Championships fifth for the first time since 2016, rounding out its first PLC meet in two years.

Like Lehigh Swimming and Diving on Facebook, follow on Twitter other Instagram for continued updates on the Mountain Hawks.

Pennridge graduate and University of Alabama senior Morgan Scott had quite a performance at the SEC Championships this past weekend.

The former Ram also teamed up with Rhyan White, Avery Wiseman and Kalia Antoniou to win the 200 medley relay in 1:33.94.

On Day Two, Scott led off the gold-medal 200 free relay, joining Cora Dupre, Antoniou and Kailyn Winter for a winning time of 1:26.93.

And then she raced to the gold in the women’s 50-yard freestyle with a time of 21.54.

On Day Three, Scott surged to fourth place in the 200 freestyle, touching in 1:44.20.

Scott and the Crimson Tide will next head to the Bulldog Invitational at Georgia next weekend.

Upper Dublin grad Aly Breslin earned a pair of medals for Tennessee at SEC’s. Submitted Photo.

Also at SEC’s, Upper Dublin graduate and University of Tennessee sophomore Aly Breslin surged to fourth place in the 1,650 freestyle.

Breslin touched the wall in 16:03.12.

Breslin also medaled in eighth in the 500 free, recording a time of 4:43.68 for the volunteers.

North Penn grad Kaelan Daly, seen at a meet in 2021, is excellent at Kentucky. Kev Hunter, Media News.

Daly double — North Penn graduate and Kentucky freshman Kaelan Daly is making an impact for the Wildcats.

Daly registered a pair of runner-up finishes in both the 50 free (01/24) and 100 free (51.98) in helping Kentucky to a win over Marshall.

The Wildcats made a push in the standings at the SEC Championships, rising up to third place going into the final day.

Connor Goodyear, seen competing for La Salle, is off to a strong start at Lehigh University. Submitted Photo.

La Salle grad and Lehigh University freshman Connor Goodyear contributed nicely to the Mountain Hawks’ performance at the Patriot League Championships over the weekend.

In the men’s 800 free relay, Lehigh placed eighth of 10 teams with a time of 6:47.98 as the team of Alex Patti, Keagan Casey, Goodyear and Nicholas Gewartowski finished four seconds ahead of Holy Cross and eight seconds ahead of Colgate.

By Robert Reich

How did we get so politically divided? Well, it’s not because both sides have gotten more extreme.

I got my start in American politics 50 years ago. My political views then — to grossly simplify them — were that I was against the Vietnam War and the military-industrial complex, strongly supportive of civil and voting rights, and against the power of big corporations. That put me here: just left of the center.

Back then, the political spectrum from left to right was short. The biggest political issue was the Vietnam War. The left was demonstrating against it, sometimes violently. Since I was committed to ending the war through peaceful political means, I volunteered for George McGovern, the anti-war presidential candidate. Even Richard Nixon on the right was starting to look for ways out of Vietnam.

Twenty-five years later, I was in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, and the left-to-right political spectrum stretched much longer. The biggest change was how much further right the right had moved. Ronald Reagan had opened the political floodgates to corporate and Wall Street money — bankrolling right-wing candidates and messages that decried “big government.”

State judges in Pa. and beyond face growing GOP pushback against rulings in election cases

Bill Clinton sought to lead from the “center,” but by then the “center” had moved so far right that Clinton gutted public assistance, enacted “tough on crime” policies that unjustly burdened the poor and people of color, and deregulated Wall Street. All of which put me further to the left of the center — although my political views had barely changed.

Today, the spectrum from left to right is the longest it’s been in my 50 years in and around politics. The left hasn’t moved much at all. We’re still against the war machine, still pushing for civil and voting rights, still fighting the power of big corporations. But the right has moved far, far rightward.

Who the Jan. 6 House committee wants to hear from in Pa. and why

>Donald Trump brought America about as close as we’ve ever come to fascism. He incited an attempted coup against the United States. He and most of the Republican Party continue to deny that he lost the 2020 election. And they’re getting ready to suppress votes and disregard election outcomes they disagree with.

So don’t believe the fear-mongering that today’s left is “radical.” What’s really radical is the right’s move toward fascism.

Robert Reich writes at robertreich.substack.com. His latest book is “THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It, How To Fix It.” He is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. This piece was originally published by the Minnesota Reformer, a sibling site of the .

Originally published at www.penncapital-star.com,by Capital-Star Guest Contributor

After more than two years of trying to block a carbon-pricing scheme for Pennsylvania, legislative Republicans have introduced a counter offer.

Earlier this month, GOP lawmakers in the House added an extra provision to a bill blocking the commonwealth from entering the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The initiative, also known as RGGI, mandates that power plant owners buy credits for every ton of carbon they release into the atmosphere. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf began the process to bring Pennsylvania into the initiative with an executive order in fall 2019.

The GOP proposal would put $250 million of unspent federal stimulus money into job retraining programs for fossil fuel workers, stormwater projects, and oil and gas well plugging.

But the biggest chunk of funding would go to research, development and construction of carbon and methane reduction technologies for power plants and manufacturers.

Buoyed by the opposition of business groups and the state’s building trade unions, legislative opponents have made several bipartisan pushes to block RGGI. But have so far failed to get the votes to override Wolf’s veto pen.

Currently, its implementation is held up in court over a procedural battle between Wolf and the GOP legislature, though the state was due to enter the interstate initiative this year.

Wolf admin used state grant funding as leverage during debate on carbon fee

“We were hopeful RGGI wouldn’t move forward,” state Rep. Jim Struzzi, R-Indiana, told the Capital-Star. “Now we’re at a point where we have to look at other options.”

Seeing the reality, Struzzi, who is sponsoring the legislation to block RGGI and the counter offer,  said carbon capture is a chance to have a “mutually inclusive” future of renewable energy with legacy fossil fuel infrastructure.

Carbon capture refers to the technology power plants or other industrial facilities use that prevents them from releasing greenhouse gasses.

Struzzi represents a western Pennsylvania county that has three of the state’s remaining coal-fired power plants within or near its borders. One of the plants, in Homer City, already has announced plans to shut down one of its two generators, citing a number of issues, including RGGI.

Studies are split on RGGI’s effect. 

Proponents hope that putting a price on carbon will incentivize power companies to reduce carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the revenue from these credits — totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars — goes to the state, which can spend them on alternative energy, utility assistance, or energy efficiency projects.

Pa. set to enter northeastern initiative limiting carbon from power plants

Opponents, however, argue RGGI will do nothing besides shut down Pennsylvania plants, costing union jobs. Those plant owners will then shift operations across state lines, leading to no total decrease in overall greenhouse gas emissions, while increasing utility prices for consumers.

“I am for a diversified portfolio,” Struzzi added. “That includes all of the above. If we can find another way to control carbon emissions without putting our electricity generation in jeopardy then we should be exploring the options.”

Wolf has, at times, seemed interested in carbon capture. He signed a bipartisan letter with other governors from fossil fuel producing states in 2021 asking Congress to approve a bill to provide federal support for a network of carbon storage sites.

But Struzzi’s plan, attached to his bill to block RGGI entirely, does not have buy-in from the Wolf administration.

In an email, Wolf spokesperson Beth Rementer said Republicans were creating a false choice “between investments to reduce emissions and regulations that would help us address the climate crisis.”

“Given the importance of this issue, we urgently need both,” she added.

Environmental advocates are split on the uses for carbon capture. Most agree that it is needed, particularly for heavy industry such as steel, cement, and fertilizer manufacturing. 

Noting the latter, Wolf’s 2022 budget called for spending $100,000 to build a strategic plan for industrial sector decarbonization, focused on using $12 billion in federal funds from the bipartisan infrastructure bill to capture and store carbon.

“Pennsylvania should leverage its energy sources, strong industrial base and workforce to lead in this area,” Rementer added.

But other environmentalists and policy analysts think using the technology to keep coal- or gas-fired power plants around longer production is a bad use of limited resources.

Sean O’Leary, of the Ohio River Valley Institute, a progressive think-tank focused on sustainable policy for Appalachia, told the Capital-Star that, barring state subsidies or other financial incentives, the per-unit cost of carbon scrubbing will equal if not exceed the price per megawatt of electricity produced.

Therefore, states hoping to reduce carbon emissions and build out sustainable energy should focus on expanding renewables or energy efficiency, which he argued are more tried-and-true solutions.

“We really do need to have people start asking the question: If we’re to implement [carbon capture], how much would it cost, and how would we pay for it?” O’Leary said. “Who would pay for it?”

Originally published at www.penncapital-star.com,by Stephen Caruso

By Victoria A. Brownworth

The media mantra is relentless: It’s time to get back to “normal.”

The surge in COVID cases wrought by the super-transmissible Omicron variant, which saw as many as a million new cases each day in January and more hospitalizations and deaths than at any point in the pandemic, is waning. In the past two weeks there are fewer new cases (about 220,000 daily) and hospitalizations are fewer in some states, though deaths continue to hover around 2,500 per day.

COVID-fatigue has swept the nation and with it the ending of mask and vaccine mandates. Pennsylvania was the first state to end its mask mandates as a result of a state Supreme Court ruling December 21. Other states followed suit with some immediacy.

While CDC guidelines continue to assert masks should be worn indoors in most settings to combat the spread of the virus, only four states and Washington D.C. still require masks for most indoor settings, though some of those mandates are set to expire. Philadelphia relaxed its mask mandates on Feb. 16, the last city in the region to do so.

Taking off the masks is, we’ve been told, the key step back into normal pre-COVID life, and who among us doesn’t long for that?

But how do we return to a life that was without acknowledging the life we have now? At the current death rate, the U.S. will hit 1 million deaths from COVID around the end of February or beginning of March. That grim milestone will coincide with the anniversary of the day everything stopped: March 13, 2020. That was when cities and states issued emergency restrictions to all aspects of “normal” life.

Workplaces closed, restaurants and bars closed to in-person dining, theaters went dark, and schools went to online learning. Only “essential services” like supermarkets and other essential retailers stayed open. Public transit slowed. Cars were off the roads.

Obsessed with individual rights, Americans rush into disastrous decisions | Opinion

And hospitals began to fill and fill and fill. All we reported on was COVID because our lives revolved around fear of catching the deadly virus.

But then, as now, there was a disconnect. While we were home feeling the terrors of the pandemic personally, the Trump administration was pretending it wasn’t that bad.

In March 2020, former President Donald Trump announced the virus would be gone by Easter. Later, we would hear tapes between journalist Bob Woodward and Trump from February and March which made clear that Trump knew that would never happen and that he was deliberately hiding the breadth of the danger from the American people.

As we approach 1 million deaths, we know how deadly COVID has been. But what have we learned from these two years?

Not much, it seems.

As people spent days, weeks and even months in the hospital recovering from their near-death experiences of COVID, we have not learned that the U.S. needs universal healthcare for everyone and that massive medical bills can only be paid by the super rich.

Playing the pandemic inflation blame-game: Healthcare edition | Ray Landis

We also haven’t learned that our healthcare system is broken and over-loaded. Nor have we learned that American healthcare is fundamentally racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic and that most women, Black people and LGBT+ people cannot get appropriate or even adequate care from anybody, much less from healthcare workers who understand and appreciate their individual needs related to race, gender and identity.

We haven’t learned that upwards of 2 to 7 million Americans of the 79 million (as of February 14, 2022) who have gotten COVID since 2020 have lasting disabling illness from the virus.

This presents as long-COVID syndrome or attacks on various organs: kidneys, lungs, heart. A massive study released in the publication Nature shows a long-term, substantial rise in risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease.

“It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, it doesn’t matter if you smoked or you didn’t,” said study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis. “The risk was there.”

And yet, in Philadelphia, firefighters are fighting the city on vaccine mandates, and nationally, the leading cause of sudden death for police officers is COVID.

We learned from the AIDS pandemic, or at least the LGBT+ community did. We learned about unequal treatment and discrimination and lack of research dollars.

So how do we return to normal when, as President JoeBiden notes, there are empty chairs at the table from those in our families and friend circles who are dead from the disease.

The landscape of my 20s was the AIDS pandemic. I don’t remember how many funerals and memorial services I attended, but I remember the one where I couldn’t stop crying for two days afterward that told me I couldn’t attend any more. I lost two of my closest male friends, the writers Assotto Saint and Darrell Yates Rist.

In those years I was angry all the time. Angry and heartbroken and fighting for the lives of my friends. Throughout the pandemic I have written well over a hundred stories on COVID for this paper and others.

We learned from the AIDS pandemic, or at least the LGBT+ community did. We learned about unequal treatment and discrimination and lack of research dollars. We learned that we would literally have to lie down in the streets in die-ins and be arrested in civil disobedience actions to get the attention of people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, a panoply of politicians, and two presidents.

What we didn’t do was pretend AIDS was over once the worst of the massive hemorrhaging of young men ceased. What we didn’t do was dishonor our dead. What we didn’t do was pretend it wasn’t really that bad. What we didn’t do was throw out all that we had learned about protecting ourselves and each other from getting sick and dying.

Let’s not do that about COVID. Let’s not dishonor our dead or ignore those still very ill and disabled from long-COVID. Let’s not pretend that we never needed masks and vaccine mandates or that we might not need them again, soon.

We are all tired of COVID. But just as we learned that safe sex was the new normal in a world with HIV where you had to assume any partner was infected, we need to learn that being vaccinated and boosted is essential to any hope for normalcy, because anyone close to you could be infected.

Maybe it is, as the CDC suggests, too soon to take off the masks, at least until we learn the lesson from one million dead of why we had to wear them in the first place.

Maybe then we can return to our new normal.

Victoria A. Brownworth is a reporter for the Philadelphia Gay News, where this column first appeared. 

Originally published at www.penncapital-star.com,by Capital-Star Guest Contributor

next game:

at Davidson

2/20/2022 | 1 p.m

Feb 20 (Sun) / 1 pm

at Davidson

History

DAVIDSON, NC – The Lehigh baseball team looked in good shape to start the day for the second consecutive game to open the 2022 season, jumping out to an early 4-0 lead, but Davidson scored 10 unanswered runs from the third to the eighth innings to run away with the 10-6 victory Saturday evening at Wilson Field. The Mountain Hawks (1-1) scored twice in the top of the ninth and loaded the bases with two outs, but couldn’t muster another charge, falling for the first time this season.

For the second consecutive night, it was a first-year putting in the work at the plate as Rafe Perich went 3-for-4 with a double and a walk to lead the offense while senior first baseman Casey Rother went 1-for-3 with two RBIs and both Andrew Nole and Andrew Kohl had an RBI hit as well.

Junior right-hander Carlos Torres made his first career start for the Mountain Hawks, going 3.1 innings, allowing two earned runs on five hits with five strikeouts and two walks. Senior lefty Matt Stamford (0-1), who was charged with the loss, threw 2.2 innings, allowing six earned runs on five hits with three strikeouts and three walks. Ryan Deom, Marcus Danchision and Najir Glenn combined to throw the final two innings of the ballgame, allowing a combined two earned runs between the three of them.

Lehigh got on the board first in the top of the first inning on a sacrifice fly from Adam Retzbach, which scored Jake Whitlinger to take an early 1-0 lead. A two-RBI single from Casey Rother in the third inning plated both Perich and Tyler Young to extend the Lehigh lead to 3-0.

The Mountain Hawks tackled on their third run of the third inning on an RBI single for Andrew Nole, which Rother scored to give Lehigh a 4-0 lead.

Davidson scored two runs in the third inning to cut the Lehigh lead in half and broke the game open in the in the sixth inning on a bases-clearing, three-run double to left field, followed by another RBI double to make it 8- 4. The Wildcats scored two more times to take a commanding 10-4 lead.

Lehigh scratched and clawed back in the ninth, when Retzbach was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded and one out to bring a run across. Kohl walked with the bases loaded and one out to make it 10-6 and then Riley Davis was retired on the 4-3 putout to end the game.

Davidson was led by a couple of three-hit performances from both John Hosmer and Jacob Hinderleider, while Ryan Kutz (1-0) earned the win after throwing five shutout innings, allowing just three hits and a walk with three strikeouts. Bennett Flynn earned the save, throwing a 2/3 inning, without allowing a hit, with one walk and a strikeout.

The Mountain Hawks take on Davidson in the rubber-match of the three-game series on Sunday at 1 pm from Wilson Field.

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