scholarly journals State Environmental Expenditures in New England and Their Relationship to Other Programmatic and Political Metrics

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Robert P. Blauvelt

State environmental agencies have developed into one of the primary mechanisms by which public health and quality of life is managed and protected within the United States. This analysis attempts to provide some understanding of what economic and political factors may be influencing funding for state environmental agencies in six New England states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The demographic makeup of New England, an area that is relatively well-off, highly educated, socially liberal, and diverse, make it the ideal place to test the relationships between state environmental agency spending and other key economic and political metrics.Financial data sets evaluated as part of this study include state spending on 11 common programmatic areas. Non-financial data sets in this analysis include the percentage of voters casting ballots by political party for Democratic presidential candidates, U.S. Senators, U.S Representatives, and Governors, as well as the composition by political party of the upper and lower houses of state legislatures. A Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient was used to compare each state’s environmental expenditures with the 17 independent variable data sets.Natural Resource spending was positively correlated with Education spending in five states. Total (state) Expenditures also correlate positively with Natural Resource spending. General Revenues, similar to Total Expenditures, positively correlate with Natural Resource spending in five states, suggesting that state environmental agencies are effective bureaucratically in lobbying for and obtaining needed funding. State environmental agencies funding correlated positively with the percent of the electorate voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. This correlation is similar to those noted by other researchers, but the remaining state-level political data sets were less useful in establishing potential relationships.

Author(s):  
Richard Archer

Except in parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut, slavery was a peripheral institution, and throughout New England during and after the Revolution there was widespread support to emancipate slaves. Some of the states enacted emancipation laws that theoretically allowed slavery to continue almost indefinitely, and slavery remained on the books as late as 1857 in New Hampshire. Although the laws gradually abolished slavery and although the pace was painfully slow for those still enslaved, the predominant dynamic for New England society was the sudden emergence of a substantial, free African American population. What developed was an even more virulent racism and a Jim Crow environment. The last part of the chapter is an analysis of where African Americans lived as of 1830 and the connection between racism and concentrations of people of African descent.


Author(s):  
Richard J. Kahn

The quest for timely medical literature was a concern for elite as well as rural physicians in the United States, as evidenced by comments from Drs. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia; Benjamin Vaughan of Hallowell, Maine; and Lyman Spalding of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was the focus of an 1800 correspondence about the new cowpox (vaccination) between Barker and John G. Coffin of Boston who, in 1823, would found and edit the Boston Medical Intelligencer, precursor to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, now the New England Journal of Medicine; smallpox inoculation is also discussed. Topics include obtaining and sharing medical books and journals, the importance of both personal correspondence and newspapers for dissemination of medical information, problems with and for booksellers, medical nationalism, and publishing by subscription.


Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 265 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Ullman ◽  
Isaac Ginis ◽  
Wenrui Huang ◽  
Catherine Nowakowski ◽  
Xuanyu Chen ◽  
...  

The southern New England coast of the United States is particularly vulnerable to land-falling hurricanes because of its east-west orientation. The impact of two major hurricanes on the city of Providence (Rhode Island, USA) during the middle decades of the 20th century spurred the construction of the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier (FPHB) to protect the city from storm surge flooding. Although the Rhode Island/Narragansett Bay area has not experienced a major hurricane for several decades, increased coastal development along with potentially increased hurricane activity associated with climate change motivates an assessment of the impacts of a major hurricane on the region. The ocean/estuary response to an extreme hurricane is simulated using a high-resolution implementation of the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model coupled to the Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS). The storm surge response in ADCIRC is first verified with a simulation of a historical hurricane that made landfall in southern New England. The storm surge and the hydrological models are then forced with winds and rainfall from a hypothetical hurricane dubbed “Rhody”, which has many of the characteristics of historical storms that have impacted the region. Rhody makes landfall just west of Narragansett Bay, and after passing north of the Bay, executes a loop to the east and the south before making a second landfall. Results are presented for three versions of Rhody, varying in the maximum wind speed at landfall. The storm surge resulting from the strongest Rhody version (weak Saffir–Simpson category five) during the first landfall exceeds 7 m in height in Providence at the north end of the Bay. This exceeds the height of the FPHB, resulting in flooding in Providence. A simulation including river inflow computed from the runoff model indicates that if the Barrier remains closed and its pumps fail (for example, because of a power outage or equipment failure), severe flooding occurs north of the FPHB due to impoundment of the river inflow. These results show that northern Narragansett Bay could be particularly vulnerable to both storm surge and rainfall-driven flooding, especially if the FPHB suffers a power outage. They also demonstrate that, for wind-driven storm surge alone under present sea level conditions, the FPHB will protect Providence for hurricanes less intense than category five.


Author(s):  
Amy Bass

This chapter examines the diasporic quality of Red Sox Nation and the effects of winning two World Series on its (formerly “angst-ridden”) citizenry. For Boston Red Sox fans, the definition of home has always been blurry. Red Sox fans have always been part of a diasporic New England community more imagined than real, but maintaining a strong identity. Even in its most parochial eras, the Red Sox have reached far beyond Fenway Park, rendering “Boston” as home for people in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, parts of Connecticut, and the rest of Massachusetts. In the 2004 championship season, the Red Sox surpassed the New York Yankees as Major League Baseball's most profitable road attraction. This chapter considers how the creation of Red Sox Nation turned the team into a national phenomenon, “enjoying a community that is rooted to whatever space it occupies at any given moment.”


1967 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Rosenberg

In 1829 Zachariah Allen, a lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island, published his book, The Science of Mechanics. Neither the title nor a casual glance at the contents of the book suggests that it contains material of major interest to economists or economic historians. Allen's book was intended as a manual for American mechanics and manufacturers. It summarized that portion of the industrial arts of its day which the author considered most useful and relevant for the edification of his American readers. The book contains elementary tables of conversion, arithmetic and geometric rules and formulas, a good deal of simple physics, and extensive descriptions of the workings of machinery—especially water wheels, steam engines, and millwork generally. In particular, Allen attempted to summarize much of what he had learned during a recent tour of the major manufacturing districts of England and France, so as to bring Americans up to date on the “latest improvements in mechanical invention in those countries.’ Unobtrusively placed in the back of this book, however, is a chapter, “Comparative View of the Relative Advantages Possessed by England, France and the United States of America as Manufacturing Nations,’ which records his more strictly economic impressions of his tour, taken in 1825. His observations in this short chapter, often trenchant and occasionally pungent, invite comparison with some of the better known European travelers to the United States. Anyone who can write, as Allen does (p. 355), that “An industrious New-England mechanic commonly appears to take pleasure in his business; but the French mechanic is rather inclined to make a business of his pleasures,’ is obviously entitled to a sympathetic hearing.


Author(s):  
Suzanne W. Nicholson ◽  
Connie L. Dicken ◽  
John D. Horton ◽  
Michael P. Foose ◽  
Julia A.L. Mueller ◽  
...  

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