Dear Commons Community,

Somini Sengupta, a technology correspondent for The New York Times, has an essay today, reviewing the issue of free speech on the Internet.  This is ground that has been covered many times in various media but deserves another examination in light of the anti-Islam video that sparked protest throughout the Muslim world.  Sengupta reports

“The storm over an incendiary anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube has stirred fresh debate on these issues. Google, which owns YouTube, restricted access to the video in Egypt and Libya, after the killing of a United States ambassador and three other Americans. Then, it pulled the plug on the video in five other countries, where the content violated local laws.

Some countries blocked YouTube altogether, though that didn’t stop the bloodshed: in Pakistan, where elections are to be scheduled soon, riots on Friday left a death toll of 19.

The company pointed to its internal edicts to explain why it rebuffed calls to take down the video altogether. It did not meet its definition of hate speech, YouTube said, and so it allowed the video to stay up on the Web. It didn’t say very much more.

That explanation revealed not only the challenges that confront companies like Google but also how opaque they can be in explaining their verdicts on what can be said on their platforms. Google, Facebook and Twitter receive hundreds of thousands of complaints about content every week.

“We are just awakening to the need for some scrutiny or oversight or public attention to the decisions of the most powerful private speech controllers,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor who briefly advised the Obama administration on consumer protection regulations online.

Google was right, Mr. Wu believes, to selectively restrict access to the crude anti-Islam video in light of the extraordinary violence that broke out. But he said the public deserved to know more about how private firms made those decisions in the first place, every day, all over the world. After all, he added, they are setting case law, just as courts do in sovereign countries.

Mr. Wu offered some unsolicited advice: Why not set up an oversight board of regional experts or serious YouTube users from around the world to make the especially tough decisions?”

I personally have little confidence in some type of censorship committee given the many different cultures and sensitivities that exist on our precious planet.  Sengupta concludes:

“One of the challenges of the digital age, as the YouTube case shows, is that speech articulated in one part of the world can spark mayhem in another. Can the companies that run those speech platforms predict what words and images might set off carnage elsewhere? Whoever builds that algorithm may end up saving lives.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mr. Romney’s return for 2011 showed that he paid an effective federal income tax rate of 14 percent last year, or a little more than $1.9 million on adjusted gross income of about $13.7 million.

The Huffington Post provided the following details::

“At 379 pages, Romney’s 2011 tax return is nearly twice as long as his 203-page return from 2010. A full 267 pages of the latest return are devoted to listing Romney’s investments in 34 offshore corporations and partnerships, including 15 in the Cayman Islands. Of the 34 offshore companies, 30 are located in countries considered to be offshore tax havens by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Romney’s Swiss bank account, which appeared on his 2010 tax return, has disappeared. His personal Bermuda-based corporation, Sankaty, remains. Romney also shifted $111,081 offshore to a Bain Capital affiliate based in the Cayman Islands during 2011, and an additional $296,471 to a Golden Gate Capital fund, also organized in the Caymans.”

The New York Times is reporting:

“A letter from his accountants said his tax rate from 1990 through 2009 had never fallen below 13.66 percent but did not disclose the amount of tax paid. Mr. Romney’s 2010 return, which he made public in January, showed that he paid a rate of 13.9 percent.

Mr. Romney’s tax return for last year showed just how sensitive a political matter his wealth and tax rate has become. In a bit of reverse financial engineering, he and his wife, Ann, gave up $1.75 million worth of charitable deductions, raising his tax payments significantly.

Had he claimed all the deductions to which he was entitled in 2011, his effective rate could have dipped to near 10 percent, contradicting his past assurances that he had never paid below 13 percent.

But forgoing the full deductions available to him put him at odds with his own past assertions that he had never paid more taxes than he owed and his statement that if he had done so, “I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president,” as he put it to ABC News in July…

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, who had accused Mr. Romney of having paid no taxes for a decade, did not repeat his claim on Friday — but did not back down either.

“When will the American people see the returns he filed before he was running for president?” Mr. Reid said in a statement. “Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Technology giants Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co used offshore units to shield billions of dollars from U.S. taxes by taking advantage of loopholes and stretching the limits of the tax code, a U.S. Senate panel led by Senator Carl Levin said on Thursday.

Describing tax avoidance as rampant in the technology sector, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said tech companies used intellectual property, royalties and license fees in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands to skirt U.S. taxes.

NBC News reported:

“The panel subpoenaed internal documents from the companies and interviewed Microsoft and HP officials to compile its report, and uses them as case studies.

“The tax practices and gimmicks range from egregious to dubious validity,” Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the panel, said at a news conference.

Officials at HP and Microsoft strongly denied any wrongdoing.

The investigative panel’s findings came hours ahead of a hearing Thursday, at which Levin is slated to reveal further details and to take testimony.

Levin, a Democrat, has been investigating offshore tax evasion for years and often issues reports calling attention to the issue. But Senator Tom Coburn, the ranking Republican on the panel, also signed onto the report.

U.S. companies have about $1.5 trillion in profits sitting offshore, and most say they are keeping it there to avoid U.S. tax. Of the top 10 companies with the biggest offshore cash balances, five are in the technology sector.

“The high-tech industry is probably the No. 1 user of these offshore entities to transfer intellectual property,” Levin said.

The committee said that from 2009 to 2011, Microsoft shifted $21 billion offshore, almost half its U.S. retail sales revenue, saving up to $4.5 billion in taxes on goods sold in the United States.

This was accomplished, the panel report said, by aggressive transfer pricing, where companies put values on intercompany movement of assets. Units are supposed to use a fair market price to value such transfers, but critics say they are undervalued to minimize tax.

The report also said the software giant shifts royalty revenue to units in lower-tax nations such as Singapore and Ireland, avoiding billions of dollars of additional taxes in the U.S.

Sen. Carl Levin is accusing tech giants Microsoft and Hewlett Packard of using complex, legally questionable strategies to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes.

The companies say they’re not doing anything wrong – and a top committee Republican says the real problem is the tax code that Congress created.”

It is incredible that companies like Microsoft are allowed to operate this way.  Maybe the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation should start a new grant program focusing on ethics and reforming corporate America.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Paul Krugman in his New York Times column, explores the Republican Party’s “disdain” for workers.  Citing recent comments from the Party’s leaders such as Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney, he dices and slices Republican infatuation with “job creators”.  For example:

“…the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.

Am I exaggerating? Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.

Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers” never passed his lips. This was in strong contrast to President Obama’s convention speech a week later, which put a lot of emphasis on workers — especially, of course, but not only, workers who benefited from the auto bailout.

And when Mr. Romney waxed rhapsodic about the opportunities America offered to immigrants, he declared that they came in pursuit of “freedom to build a business.” What about those who came here not to found businesses, but simply to make an honest living? Not worth mentioning.”

Krugman concludes:

“… it reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.

In the eyes of those who share this vision, the wealthy deserve special treatment, and not just in the form of low taxes. They must also receive respect, indeed deference, at all times…

The point is that what people are now calling the Boca Moment wasn’t some trivial gaffe. It was a window into the true attitudes of what has become a party of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, a party that considers the rest of us unworthy of even a pretense of respect.”

Dr. Krugman is right on!!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting that following a national trend, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer in New York City.  The contrast in income levels between rich and poor is the largest in over a decade.   Here are some of the details:

“…the income gap in Manhattan, already wider than almost anywhere else in the country, rivaled disparities in sub-Saharan Africa.

While the national recession officially ended in 2009 and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has repeatedly proclaimed the city’s robust recovery, the census figures to be released on Thursday painted a decidedly sober view of how New Yorkers are faring.

“To see the poverty rate jump almost a full percentage point is not a good sign,” said David R. Jones, the president of the Community Service Society of New York, an antipoverty advocacy and research group. “We’re still seeing really high rates of unemployment, while jobs have been growing in an anemic way and the jobs that have been created are really low-wage.”

While Mr. Bloomberg has made reducing the poverty rate, now nearly 21 percent, a priority, administration officials acknowledged that the stagnant national economy had hurt the city.

“These poverty numbers reflect a national challenge: the U.S. economy has shifted and too many people are getting left behind without the skills they need to compete and succeed,” Samantha Levine, the mayor’s deputy press secretary, said on Wednesday. “As President Clinton recently said, ‘The old economy is not coming back,’ and that’s why the mayor believes we need a new national approach to job creation and education, one that gives everyone a chance to rise up the economic ladder.”

Median household income in the city last year was $49,461, just below the national median and down $821 from the year before (compared with a national decline of $642). Median earnings for workers fell sharply to $32,210 from $33,287 — much more than the national decline.)

New Yorkers at the bottom end of the income spectrum lost ground, while those at the top gained.

Median income for the lowest fifth was $8,844, down $463 from 2010. For the highest, it was $223,285, up $1,919.

In Manhattan, the disparity was even starker. The lowest fifth made $9,681, while the highest took home $391,022. The wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites made more than 40 times what the lowest fifth reported, a widening gap (it was 38 times, the year before) surpassed by only a few developing countries, including Namibia and Sierra Leone.

Only one other county in the nation, Clarke County, Ga., where nearly a third of the 117,000 residents are college students, reported a higher income gap.”

This is not good news for our City and its poor!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that Coursera, a provider of free online courses, announced 17 new college partners yesterday, nearly doubling the number that have agreed to use the company’s platform to offer MOOC’s, or massive open online courses.

The new partners come in a mix of shapes and sizes, comprising state flagships like the University of Maryland at College Park, liberal-arts colleges like Wesleyan University, specialized institutions including the Berklee College of Music, and foreign institutions like the University of Melbourne, in Australia. The speed at which colleges are joining is remarkable: The company began operations only in January.

Most partners will offer only a handful of free courses each to start out; Coursera officials recommend that each partner offer five at first. The colleges consider the efforts an experiment, with plans to review them in the near future and decide whether they want to continue to offer the free courses. The agreement between each institution and Coursera is nonexclusive, so the colleges are free to work with other MOOC providers as well.  A list of the new college partners appears below.

Tony

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Berklee College of Music
Brown University
Columbia University
Emory University
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Ohio State University
University of British Columbia
University of California at Irvine
University of Florida
University of London
University of Maryland at College Park
University of Melbourne
University of Pittsburgh
Vanderbilt University
Wesleyan University

Dear Commons Community,

The Mitt Romney campaign has had a bad couple of weeks.  First, there was the rather so-so Republican National Convention with Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair.  This was followed by the Democratic National Convention with Bill Clinton wowing the country.   Then we had Mitt Romney’s less than presidential comments after the Egyptian and Libyan protests during which four Americans were killed in Benghazi. And the latest is Mitt Romney on video dissing 47% of the American people.

The video shows Mitt Romney at a private fund-raiser where he felt free to speak candidly about his campaign and how he would conduct a presidency.  As a New York Times editorial described it:

“In that safe zone, Mr. Romney spoke with a bone-chilling cynicism and a revolting smugness. If he is elected, he said, capital will come back and “we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.” That’s the state of trickle-down economics in the 21st century.

Gone was the pretense that he will be a president of all Americans. Mr. Romney rather neatly divided the country between the people who matter and the 47 percent he does not care about.

To Mr. Romney, that 47 percent consists of people who do not make enough money to be required to pay federal income tax. They are freeloaders, he said, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” It is not his job, he said, as a candidate nor apparently as president if he is elected, “to worry about those people.”

Assuming the Democrats do not shoot themselves in the foot with some outrage of their own, Mitt Romney will have to do incredibly well in the debates in the October to revitalize his sinking campaign.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chicago Teachers Union voted Tuesday to suspend the city’s first teachers strike in 25 years, ending a now week-and-a-half-long protest that has kept the city’s 350,000 students out of school for seven days.

The decision comes after more than two hours of closed-door talks among union members, and two days after a move to continue the strike to allow more time for educators to review contract details. The extensive time without class in session also prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to seek an injunction Monday that would have forced teachers back to schools. The judge, however, delayed the ruling until Wednesday in anticipation of Tuesday’s vote, deeming the legal argument a moot point if the union were to freeze the strike.

“We feel very positive about moving forward,” CTU President Karen Lewis said in a press conference following Tuesday’s meeting. “People were actually elated to take the suspension of the strike vote…. We couldn’t solve all the problems in the world with one contract, so people voted to end the strike.”

Congratulations to President Lewis and members of the Chicago Teachers Union!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Barbara Bowen, President of the PSC has sent out the update below on the situation at Queensborough Community College and its English Department.

Tony

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Message from Barbara Bowen Sent September 18, 2012:

The response to Queensborough Community College Vice President Karen B. Steele’s announcement of sweeping reprisals against the QCC English Department following its rejection of proposed curriculum changes for Pathways has been swift, intense and national. Condemnation has come not only from the PSC, but also from CUNY’s English Discipline Council, from other English department faculty, and from the AAUP.

On September 16, Queensborough Community College president Diane B. Call responded with a shift in position and tone. In a message to the entire College faculty she wrote that Vice President’s Steele’s memo illustrated “the worst case scenario—one we are prepared to work mightily to avoid.” And one day later, on September 17, Vice President Steele herself wrote to the English Department: “I deeply regret having sent the original email, primarily because it was needlessly hurtful to members of the English Department and to other faculty as well. It was an email sent in haste, out of an over-dramatized fear of the possible impact on the department.”

On behalf of the CUNY faculty and staff, the PSC leadership thanks Vice President Steele for her public apology, and recognizes that the QCC administration has changed its position in response to the outcry the original position provoked. Faculty at Queensborough Community College are especially grateful for Vice President Steele’s willingness to apologize in public.

Given these developments, the union will hold in abeyance its filing of a legal charge of retaliation at the Public Employment Relations Board while we continue to monitor the University’s actions.

An apology, however, is not a retraction. Neither President Call’s message nor Vice President Steele’s explicitly retracts the possibility that they will implement the reprisals threatened in Steele’s initial memo. Vice President Steele writes:  “I would like to make clear that the items listed in the email were hypothetical, and there are no plans to enact them” [boldface in original].  This comment, together with the President Call’s description of the reprisals as a “worst case scenario,” leaves open the possibility that the reprisals could still be enacted in response to some undefined action. The possibility that the QCC administration will take the actions originally listed by Vice President Steele has not been removed

The Queensborough administration’s apology and withdrawal of the immediate threat of reprisals are important, but damage has already been done. Faculty at Queensborough have now heard that their reappointment is potentially connected to their vote on curriculum. That message is not easily forgotten. And the explicit threats at Queensborough echo more subtle threats that have been made at other campuses, as administrators communicate to department chairs and faculty members about the consequences of their votes on Pathways curriculum.

The atmosphere of intimidation that now surrounds faculty votes on Pathways curriculum is antithetical to a university. The way for the CUNY administration to change it is to issue an unambiguous message that it respects the faculty’s right to vote on matters of curriculum—free from intimidation—according to their judgment of the best interests of their students and the standards of their profession

The Pathways resolution was imposed on the University without participation by elected faculty governance. While QCC’s shift of position and public apology are important, the resort to threats exposes the fear that the Pathways curriculum would not be approved without them. At a minimum, it is time for a moratorium on implementation of Pathways to allow academic freedom and open deliberation at CUNY to be repaired. The PSC calls on the CUNY administration to suspend all implementation of Pathways until at least the end of the current semester so that this important curriculum change can receive the free and open consideration it deserves.

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past few days, the English Department at Queensborough Community College (QCC) has been the center of controversy over its rejection to reduce English composition courses from four hours to three as required by CUNY’s  Pathways policy.  The response from acting academic Vice President Karen Steele was an intimidating email (see letter from Barbara Bowen below) canceling faculty searches and advising students to take English composition courses at other colleges.  The New York Times is reporting today that Vice President Steele has since issued an apology to the English faculty.

Diane B. Call, Interim President of QCC,  said Dr. Steele’s original e-mail was not an ultimatum, but members of the department saw it differently. “I understood it as a threat,” Professor David T. Humphries said. “As saying you have the right to vote however way you feel as long as it’s what we tell you. Honestly, I felt a little like I was being asked to vote for Raul Castro or Ahmedinijad.”

In Dr. Steele’s follow-up e-mail Monday, she said she regretted the earlier message, “primarily because it was needlessly hurtful to members of the English department and to other faculty as well.”

“It was an e-mail sent in haste, out of an over-dramatized fear of the possible impact on the department,” she said. Dr. Steele said that the college would work to make sure faculty members had “plenty of classes to teach.”

“At the same time, as a member of CUNY, we have the responsibility to comply with the board’s policy and the guidelines issued under it,” she wrote.

The English department is scheduled to meet again Wednesday, at which time it will discuss whether to reconsider last week’s vote.

Tony

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Letter from PSC President Barbara Bowen

Dear PSC member,

Below is the PSC’s response to the outrageous reprisals Queensborough Community College Vice President Karen Steele announced after the English Department voted ‘no’ on three-hour, three-credit composition courses for Pathways. What happened at Queensborough is important for all of us.

On Wednesday the English Department at Queensborough voted overwhelmingly to reject the reduction of hours for English composition courses from four to three. The faculty’s decision was guided by a deep commitment to sustaining a quality education for students. They determined that if English composition classes were reduced to three hours from four, the integrity of the department’s standards would be profoundly compromised.  Students at Queensborough speak 120 different languages. Faculty understand that such a reduction would compromise students’ ability to learn to write at the college level.

The administration’s response, which includes eliminating all composition courses, cancelling all English Department searches, calling all full-time faculty reappointments in fall 2013 into question, and announcing that all adjunct faculty will be sent non-reappointment letters in fall 2013, was especially disturbing in its punitive dismissal of faculty judgment in matters of curriculum development. We call on Vice President Steele to rescind her message immediately. The relevant section from Vice President Karen Steele’s email is included at the end of this statement.

There is no reason for the administration to eliminate English composition courses, or any other courses, that do not comply with Pathways. They will still fulfill the college’s degree requirements. Such courses could still transfer to other colleges for credit outside the general education curriculum. The elimination of English composition courses also raises questions about compliance with NYS Education Department regulations, which mandate that colleges offer the courses required fortheir degree programs. In addition, it could put Queensborough’s accreditation in jeopardy. The vice president’s extraordinary retaliation threatens the most basic understandings of both academic freedom and faculty authority.

The PSC firmly stands with the faculty at QCC who were exercising their rights as faculty and citizens. Vice President Steele’s response signals the clear intention to undermine academic freedom and freedom of speech. If the threatened actions in Vice President Steele’s message are not rescinded immediately, PSC legal counsel will file a charge with the Public Employment Relations Board regarding this act of retaliation. The union is also exploring filing a federal lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

The department chair has scheduled another meeting for September 19 to discuss the administration’s threatened reprisals. According to Robert’s Rules, the department vote stands unless or until the faculty vote to reconsider.  We urge our colleagues in the QCC English Department to continue to exercise their professional judgment if they decide to vote again. We further urge all departments, curriculum committees, and other governance bodies throughout CUNY to vote to maintain the integrity of a CUNY education when voting on Pathways-compliant courses. The union will stand by you as you exercise your academic freedom and professional responsibility.

QCC’s department of English has taken a brave and necessary stand. They have demonstrated that we have the power to stand for the preservation of a quality curriculum that serves our students’ interests and that we need not succumb to the administration’s scare tactics. When you are confronted with a vote on Pathways, we urge you not to be intimidated into voting against your conscience. Every faculty member should know that the union is here to defend your rights.

Professional Staff Congress/CUNY

From an Email Message that Vice President Karen Steele sent to English Department Chair Linda Reesman on Thursday, September 13:

We will no longer be able to offer EN-101, 102, or 103 in their current configuration (i.e., four contact hours) as of Fall 2013. Since we don’t have in place courses that will meet the Pathways requirements for the Common Core, we can’t put forward a Fall 2013 schedule of classes that includes English Composition courses. Given that fact, and the resultant dramatic drop in enrollment, we will have to take the following actions:

• All searches for full time faculty in the English Department will be cancelled immediately;
• The existing EN 101, 102, and 103 will not be included in the common core, and therefore will not be offered in Fall 13;
• Beginning March 2013 (our Fall 13 advisement cycle), continuing and new students will be advised to take the common core requirement for I A at another CUNY institution, since the courses will not be available at Queensborough;
• Neither EN 101 or 103, nor EN 102 will be submitted to the University in the QCC list of ‘gateway’ courses for the English Major (we must submit the list of gateway major courses by October 1, 2012);
• Of necessity, all adjunct faculty in the English department will be sent letters of non-reappointment for Fall 2013;
• The reappointment of full time faculty in the English Department will be subject to ability to pay and Fall 13 enrollment in department courses.