February 11, 2005
MHC Newsmakers
Major Commitment
Local news organizations reported in recent weeks that the College
has pledged $300,000 toward the Town of South Hadley's negotiated
$1.55 million purchase of 284 acres along Hadley and Ferry streets
from Northeast Utilities, supporting efforts by the Town of South
Hadley to preserve the property for passive recreational use.
The
purchase of the land, known as the Bachelor Brook property, has
been identified as the town's top conservation priority. The property,
one of the town's last remaining large tracts of riverfront land,
abuts the Town Farm on Hadley Street and has more than a half-mile
of frontage on the Connecticut River. The town has been working
to acquire the land for the past four years.
The
College's pledged contribution is part of a financial package
assembled by town officials that was approved by a special Town
Meeting on January 18, according to the Springfield Republican.
The purchase-and-sale agreement between the town and Northeast
Utilities, negotiated with the help of the Trust for Public Land,
is valid through March 31. "Supporting the town in this effort
demonstrates the close working partnership between the College
and South Hadley," President Creighton noted. "Preserving
this land represents a major achievement for the town, the College,
and the environment."
The
Bachelor Brook property is used regularly by hunters, anglers,
recreational boaters, and others seeking passive recreational
opportunities. Bachelor Brook supports a population of brook trout,
and 13 documented rare species have been found on or near the
property by the state's Natural Heritage Program. At least six
Native American sites from the Archaic Period have been identified
on the property, making the land archeologically important.
Fixing Social Security
There are better ways of securing the future of Social
Security than privatization, John O. Fox wrote in a commentary
in the January 13 edition of the Valley Advocate. In "Saving
Social Security," Fox framed the current debate over the
future of Social Security in ideological terms, with proponents
of privatization using liberty to trump equality.
"A privatized
system would subject everyone to the whims of the marketplace.
That may serve sophisticated investors well. But stock markets
can be particularly cruel to those most vulnerable to irrational
expectations and least capable of rebounding from setbacks,"
wrote Fox, visiting associate professor of complex organizations.
"Individual accounts also would deprive lower-income workers
of Social Security's progressive benefit formula, which replaces
a much higher percentage of their wages than of the wages of higher
earners. Social Security's special disability, spousal benefit
and dependent child provisions would be lost as well." While
not "on the brink of disaster," as the White House claims,
the program will exhaust its surplus by 2042 (according to actuaries
at the Social Security Administration) or by 2052 (according to
the Congressional Budget Office), Fox wrote. What to do? Fox makes
two suggestions: Raise the wage threshold for Social Security
taxes above the current $87,900, and cancel the planned 2010 elimination
of the estate tax. "In choosing this balanced approach, Congress
would reaffirm, as the social scientist Michael Walzer has written,
that ‘liberty and equality are the two chief virtues of social
institutions, and they stand best when they stand together,'"
Fox concluded.
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