WORLD Radio Rewind

PAUL BUTLER: This is WORLD Radio Rewind: a 10-minute review of our news coverage and features from the past week on WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

Up first, calls to refund the police.

Last year, America’s 50 largest cities reduced their 2021 police budgets by about 5 percent—cutting about $870 million dollars in all. But after a spike in crime, many cities are doing a U-turn and restoring that money to law enforcement.

During Tuesday’s program, WORLD’S Sarah Schweinsberg reported on what’s behind the change.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Politicians attribute the crime uptick to either COVID-19 disruptions or police budget cuts. Regardless, many residents of large cities want more police on the streets.

And local politicians are paying attention. According to data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, city and county leaders want budget increases for nine of the 20 largest law-enforcement agencies. Those increases range from 1 percent to 6 percent.

Rafael Mangual is a policing expert with the Manhattan Institute.

MANGUAL: I think the public, you know, started to put a lot of pressure on city leaders, and rightfully so recognizing that, you know, police have to be a central part of any likely successful public safety plan.

New York City will restore a third of the $300 million dollars it cut. And Minneapolis has already restored 80 percent of its $8 million dollar police budget cuts.

Criminologists say increasing police budgets acknowledges that quality policing will cost more money. Not less. Patrick Oliver is a criminal justice professor at Cedarville University.

OLIVER: I think it's hard to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of a law enforcement agency if you reduce their resources.

Oliver believes cities learned important lessons over the last year. They need to pay for law enforcement. But that doesn’t have to come at the cost of funding additional social services that can help police.

OLIVER: I think communities are … going to find additional money for social work and mental health professionals while increasing the budgets for police.

PB: Democrats on Capitol Hill are lobbying for more power over state election laws. That’s in light of several Republican-led states that have recently passed laws to tighten up voting rules.

One of the first states to do so was the state Georgia. During Wednesday’s program, host Mary Reichard spoke with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

REICHARD: Democrats are pushing to shift more control over election law from states to Washington. What is your response to what they’re proposing?

KEMP: Well, this is their response to that failing. I mean, they couldn't get HR-1 S-1 passed through the Congress, which is an unconstitutional federal mandate of elections, which thankfully, it didn't pass and the Republicans stuck together along with some other people up there and said, we're not going to do that. And I hope that they'll hold on that. But when that failed, their next step to just appease the activist base of the party was to start suing states and they started with us, which is ridiculous when you think about, you know, we have early voting in Georgia. And Delaware—President Biden's own home state—until this last legislative session, they didn't even have it in their law. They haven't used it in their elections, and they will in the future, but they still have less days than we do. You have a lot of these other Democratic led states that you have to have an excuse to be able to vote by mail, absentee by mail. You don't have to have an excuse in Georgia. Our bill actually added days and you could vote on the weekend if you would like to and the county opts into that. So really, what they're saying is quite honestly, just a bunch of lies and a bunch of rhetoric for a political agenda.

REICHARD: Well I know that many Democrats say that what triggered these election changes were claims by former President Trump and others about election fraud. Is that a true statement or no?

KEMP: Well, I wouldn't think it is. I mean, it's certainly not to me. It's not you know, we have plenty of precedent in the state of Georgia—and I've been through this myself even long before I was governor, doing housekeeping election bills after big elections. We took recommendations from the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia, because it’s their elections office that are actually running the elections on Election Day, and we took some ideas from them and also the legislators that were hearing from constituents. So, you know, you might have some that are doing things because of what they think may happen during the elections, but the final product, a bill that actually passed that I signed, addresses the mechanical issues that we saw in the last election.

PB: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp from Wednesday’s The World and Everything in It podcast.

Last year, the Pentagon drafted a report analyzing 144 confirmed UFO sightings. The study focused on unidentified aerial phenomena that could not be explained. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown filed this report on what all the fuss is about.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Typically, UFO sightings have pretty boring explanations. People see the moon or a bird or a distant plane or an airborne plastic bag and report them as UFOs. Mark Rodeghier says 95 percent of sightings can be easily explained. But the objects in the Pentagon report were a little more slippery.

Like the Nimitz encounter. In 2004, Alex Dietrich and David Fravor were pilots based on the USS Nimitz off the coast of California.

New advanced radar on a nearby ship had detected “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles.” According to the radar, the objects descended 80,000 feet in less than a second. Dietrich and Fravor took to the skies to investigate. Here’s Fravor describing the encounter on 60 Minutes.

FRAVOR: So as we’re looking at this … I said, Do do you, do you see that thing down there?

The two pilots saw a white object, about the size of a fighter plane, shaped like a Tic Tac. Alex Dietrich says they saw no wings, no exhaust plumes, no means of propulsion. But the object was moving around erratically.

The Nimitz encounter is one of the most well-documented UFO sightings. Despite the Pentagon’s scrutiny, no one has been able to identify it for sure. In fact, out of all the encounters detailed in its report … the Pentagon was able to identify just one. It was a large, deflating balloon. The rest? No idea.

Regardless of what the objects are, the Pentagon report concluded they do pose a safety threat to pilots.

So the report calls for extra training for military personnel. And a reporting system for when pilots encounter anything they can’t explain.

PB: Finally today, a profile of a life-long love-affair with steam engines. Technological progress means improved efficiency just about everywhere, but doing something faster isn’t always better.

WORLD Intern Josh Schumacher brought this report:

JOSH SCHUMACHER, INTERN: This steam whistle isn't on a train...it's actually from a tractor—a tractor in North Central Illinois. That tractor belongs to Neal Drummer.

SCHUMACHER: So, what is this right here?

DRUMMER: Oh, it's a 1920 Port Huron steam traction engine. The word tractor comes from that expression.

SCHUMACHER: How long have you been doing this?

DRUMMER: Well, in a sense, ever since the day I was born. I was being born in the house when they were out in the yard with one of these engines threshing grain. And I got my first whiff of cold smoke through the open window...I tell people that.

When Drummer was a boy, his family farm had a steam engine just like this one.

DRUMMER: And of course the steam engine itself is just to me was a source of fascination from the time I was able to walk, scared to death of it, but I couldn't stay away from it either.

Drummer’s been refurbishing and restoring this tractor for about 50 years now. It’s hard work, and he has the scars to prove it.

DRUMMER: You get scarred up and burnt and everything else. Like when I smashed my finger, putting the grates in. Oh, that did hurt! V But that was not the fault of the engine that was my own. But right then I was gonna junk this steam engine, get rid of this thing, enough is enough. [laughter] You say lots of things.

SCHUMACHER: Yeah, like what?

DRUMMER: Well you wouldn't want to record it.

The 84 year old Drummer stays busy all summer long. He says it’s a tiring and expensive hobby, but he sees the tractor as a means to an end. It’s about connecting with our past, and with each other:

AMBI: DRUMMER TALKING WITH PEOPLE AROUND THE ENGINE

He hopes his tractor will keep steaming along, even after he’s gone. And he hopes that new generations will appreciate it the way that he has. But in the meantime, Neal Drummer and his tractor will keep on keeping each other young.

SOUND: STEAM ENGINE AND WHISTLE

PB: That’s it for this week’s WORLD Radio Rewind. If you’d like to hear the complete stories we featured today, visit our website: wng.org.

Check in each day for the latest news, features, and commentary from WORLD Newsgroup. Again that address is wng.org. For WORLD Radio, I’m Paul Butler.

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