Dear Commons Community,
On this day, we share time with family and friends and give thanks for all we have.
We give thanks that Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire yesterday.
We give thanks that our economy has gotten better and more people are working.
We give thanks that New York, New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast are slowly but surely bouncing back from the blows that Hurricane Sandy dealt!
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Quinnipiac University’s latest poll examined the public’s reaction to how elected officials responded to Hurricane Sandy. The New York Times is reporting:
“…when it comes to assessing the response of elected officials to Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers are giving the biggest thumbs-up to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.
That was one revelation in a poll released on Tuesday, the first survey to gauge the public’s reaction to the storm. While most government entities got high marks, Mr. Christie was the brightest star, with 89 percent of city voters saying he did a good or excellent job.
When asked which one of four officials had performed the best, 36 percent told Quinnipiac University that it was Mr. Christie, a Republican. The Democrat whom he engaged in a high-profile hug — President Obama — was selected by 22 percent, while the two who actually represent the respondents — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, an independent — trailed with 15 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
“That love fest” between Mr. Christie and the president “seems to have moved voters especially,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “While all four leaders get very high marks, it seems a hug or two never hurts.”
The survey of 1,165 New York City voters was conducted by phone between Nov. 14 and 18 with a margin of sampling error of three percentage points. It is unclear how many people in the hardest-hit areas who are still without power, or have been dislodged from their homes, were captured by the survey.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
The British prosecution system keeps coming after Rupert Murdoch’s associates at the News Corporation. The New York Times is reporting:
“In a new turn in the scandals swirling around Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper outpost, prosecutors said on Tuesday that two former top executives would be charged with paying bribes of up to $160,000 to public officials, in addition to several earlier charges against them.
The Crown Prosecution Service identified the onetime aides as Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, both of whom have had close personal or professional ties to Prime Minister David Cameron. Mr. Cameron hired Mr. Coulson as his director of communications while in opposition and kept him on after coming to power in the 2010 elections.
On Tuesday, Mr. Coulson, 44, a former editor of a Murdoch tabloid, The News of the World, denied two charges relating to periods before he joined Mr. Cameron’s staff in 2007 and said he would fight them in court.
Ms. Brooks, 44, who is accused of conspiring with another journalist to pay $160,000 over seven years to a Defense Ministry official, was a neighbor and personal friend of Mr. Cameron.
In one of several inquiries into the hacking scandal, she testified in May that she and Mr. Cameron kept in touch by telephone, text message and e-mail, meeting at lunches and dinners and socializing at parties, summer outings and Christmas celebrations.
The charge of bribing a Defense Ministry official is potentially the most serious of all those drawn up by prosecutors so far in the scandal that has enveloped the Murdoch media empire in Britain.”
For anyone who has followed the hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s news conglomerate, there is little sympathy for the individuals involved.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Chris Christie has had to explain himself to Republicans ever since he thank President Obama for his assistance during Hurricane Sandy. His praise for Mr. Obama delivered in the last days of the presidential race, represented the most dramatic development in the campaign’s final stretch. Right or wrong, conventional wisdom in the Republican Party holds that it influenced the outcome. The New York Times reviews Christie’s position with party leaders, most of whom were and still are critical of his actions. For example:
“On Nov. 3, Mr. Christie called Rupert Murdoch, the influential News Corporation chief and would-be kingmaker, who had warned in a biting post on Twitter that the governor might be responsible for Mr. Obama’s re-election.
Mr. Christie told Mr. Murdoch that amid the devastation, New Jersey needed friends, no matter their political party, according to people briefed on the discussion. But Mr. Murdoch was blunt: Mr. Christie risked looking like a spoiler unless he publicly affirmed his support for Mitt Romney, something the governor did the next day.”
and:
“The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.
“I will not apologize for doing my job,” he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort.
His willingness to work closely with the president has cast a shadow over Mr. Christie’s prospects as a national candidate, prompting a number of Republicans to wonder aloud whether he is a reliable party leader.
“It hurt him a lot,” said Douglas E. Gross, a longtime Republican operative in Iowa who has overseen several presidential campaigns in the state. “The presumption is that Republicans can’t count on him.”
and:
“Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire founder of Home Depot, who told Mr. Christie to ignore carping party activists who he predicted would soon plead with him to seek higher office.
“I said, ‘Governor, if you lead a miraculous recovery of the state of New Jersey, that is all that is going to matter,’ ” Mr. Langone recalled. “They are going to be begging you to run, just like they begged Eisenhower.”
Langone has it right. The Republicans are going to have to get over the fact that they lost the election because of Mitt Romney and his campaign. Chris Christie was doing his job as the governor of a state that was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. He thanked the President for being there to help him and for that he is admonish by his party. Republicans just don’t get it that elected officials should serve their country and people first and the party second.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
In light of the recent presidential election results, Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times entitled: Is Rush Limbaugh’s Country Gone? He introduces the piece by quoting Limbaugh who told his listeners:
“I went to bed last night thinking we’re outnumbered. I went to bed last night thinking all this discussion we’d had about this election being the election that will tell us whether or not we’ve lost the country. I went to bed last night thinking we’ve lost the country. I don’t know how else you look at this.”
Edsall then goes to cite other elements of the extreme right including William Bennett and the Heritage Foundation that echo the same sentiments.
Edsall’s main point, however, is that they may have reason to be concerned because the attitudes of some Americans especially young voters are tilting away from traditional values. For instance:
In a Pew Research Center Poll:
“Not only does a plurality (49-46) of young people hold a favorable view of socialism — and, by a tiny margin (47-46), a negative view of capitalism — so do liberal Democrats, who view socialism positively by a solid 59-33; and African Americans, 55-36. Hispanics are modestly opposed, 49-44, to socialism, but they hold decisively negative attitudes toward capitalism, 55-32.”
Another poll by the Public Religion Research Institute reveals the decisively liberal views of many segments of the American electorate and its support for government activism, especially measures to help the disadvantaged.
“When voters were asked whether cutting taxes or investing in education and infrastructure is the better policy to promote economic growth, the constituencies of the new liberal electorate consistently chose education and infrastructure by margins ranging from 2-1 to 3-2 — African Americans by 62-33, Hispanics by 61-37, never-married men by 56-38, never-married women by 64-30, voters under 30 by 63-34, and those with post-graduate education by 60-33.”
Edsalls’ conclusion draws attention to the looming fiscal cliff that President Obama and the US Congress are presently negotiating:
“In broader terms, the political confrontation pits taxpayers, who now form the core of the center-right coalition, against tax consumers who form the core of the center-left…There are clear exceptions to this dichotomy, as many Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries (tax recipients) vote Republican, and many college-educated upper-income citizens of all races and ethnicities (tax payers) vote Democratic. Nonetheless, the overarching division remains, and the battle lines are drawn over how to distribute the costs of the looming fiscal crisis. The outcome of this policy fight will determine whether Limbaugh is correct to fear that his side has “lost the country.”
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger professor of history here at the CUNY Graduate Center, has just published a new biography of Joseph Kennedy entitled, The Patriarch. The New York Times has a review by Christopher Buckley. Here are several excerpts:
“Joseph Patrick Kennedy, was born in 1888 in a neighborhood now known as unfashionable East Boston. The rest, as they say, is history. In the hands of his biographer David Nasaw, it is riveting history. “The Patriarch” is a book hard to put down, a garland not lightly bestowed on a cinder block numbering 787 pages of text…
Nasaw credibly avers that he has taken forensic pains to excise anything that could not be confirmed by primary sources. I am no historian, but the evidence appears to support his claim. His research is Robert Caro-esque; barely a paragraph is not footnoted. And he is unsparing about his subject’s shortcomings, which are numerous…
As his son [John F. Kennedy] indelibly put it some months before his father was struck down: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” One wonders what was going through the mind of the patriarch, sitting a few feet away listening to that soaring sentiment as a fourth-generation Kennedy became president of the United States. After coming to know him over the course of this brilliant, compelling book, the reader might suspect that he was thinking he had done more than enough for his country. But the gods would demand even more.”
Great review and congratulations to David Nasaw!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
By now, you should be aware that Mitt Romney in a call to major donors earlier this week stated that he lost the election because President Obama had given “gifts” to various groups of people (minorities, young people, women). However, what was not covered was the fact that he also blamed the media, the Republican primary process, and the debates. Here is an excerpt from The Huffington Post:
“Mitt Romney slammed the Republican primary debates, and the media, in the same call to donors in which he made his infamous “gifts” comments.
Romney’s criticism of the debate process was obscured by his statements that President Obama beat him by giving “gifts” to key constituencies. But, as ABC News noted on Thursday, Romney said that the debates had hampered the GOP from the beginning of the campaign.
“We had 20 Republican debates, that was absolutely nuts,” he said. “It opened us up to gaffes and to material that could be used against us in the general, and we were fighting these debates for a year, and the incumbent president just sat back and laughed.”
Romney benefited from the primary debates more than, say, Rick Perry, but the forums became more well-known for elevating the Herman Cains of the party, as well as highlighting primary crowds that booed gay soldiers and applauded executions.
Romney also said that the networks that hosted the debates were working against the party. He said that next time, the GOP should “agree that we’re gonna do, you know, I don’t know, eight debates, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna do one a month, and we’re gonna pick stations that are reasonable, it’s not all gonna be done by CNN and NBC, alright, I mean we’re gonna try and guide this process so that it’s designed to showcase the best of our people as opposed to showcasing liberals beating the heck out of us.”
When one engages in any competition, there will be a winner and loser. The person who wins or loses graciously is respected and goes on. Mitt Romney with his post-election comments is coming across as a sore loser and one who did not deserve to be president. The bottom line is that Romney did not run a solid campaign. He had many gaffes, flip-flopped on positions, and rarely went into any depth on issues. He lost because of himself and his campaign managers.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Hostess Brands Inc., the makers of Twinkies and Ding Dongs, says it’s going out of business. The stunning announcement is the result of a bankruptcy and labor dispute. Unfortunately, more than 18,000 jobs would be lost if the bankruptcy goes through.
According to the Huffington Post, some grocery stores are now getting calls from buyers asking if they still have Twinkies on their shelves, as some consumers who grew up with the brand prepare to stock up on treats including Ho Ho’s and the Hostess Fruit Pie, among many others.
The Texas-based company wants to hold a liquidation hearing on Monday, The Star-Ledger reports. However, already baked products will be delivered to stores, so there’s still a few more days to hoard the cakes.
If another company does not step in and pick up the products, a world-wide Twinkie withdrawal epidemic will likely develop.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Starting next fall, 10 prominent universities, including Brandeis University, Duke University, Emory University, Northwestern University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University and Washington University in St. Louis will form a consortium called Semester Online, offering about 30 online courses to both their students — for whom the classes will be covered by their regular tuition — and to students elsewhere who would have to apply and be accepted and pay tuition of more than $4,000 a course.
“Semester Online will be operated through the educational platform 2U, formerly known as 2tor, and will simulate many aspects of a classroom: Students will be able to raise their hands virtually, break into smaller discussion groups and arrange and hold online study sessions.
Unlike the increasingly popular massive open online courses, or MOOCs, free classes offered by universities like Harvard, M.I.T. and Stanford, Semester Online classes will be small — and will offer credit.”
In online education, I tend to support the approach that small is good.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
School reformers and others around the country are praising the Newark Teachers Union for approving a new contract that includes a collectively-bargained merit pay system. A New York Times editorial commented:
“Newark and its teachers’ union deserve praise for the groundbreaking contract that the two sides have hammered out. The relatively calm negotiations that led up to the union’s ratification vote this week stood in sharp contrast to the vitriol that surrounded a similar agreement earlier this year in Chicago that led to a polarizing strike.
The need to improve teacher performance has long been evident in Newark, whose perennially troubled schools do a particularly poor job of preparing its 37,000 students for higher education. According to the district, for example, the graduation rate is nearly 62 percent. But almost 90 percent of Newark Public School students who enter Essex County College, a community college, need remedial help in English and nearly all need remedial help in math.
Despite this grim picture, school officials say, the current teacher evaluation system — based on haphazard observations by administrators — rates 95 percent of the district’s teachers as “effective.” The new contract, which raises starting and midlevel salaries, includes a rigorous evaluation process that takes student achievement into account.
The new system will enable the district to reward and retain high-performing teachers and furnish extra help for those who are struggling to master what is clearly a difficult profession.
A pay-for-performance component of the new contract allows teachers who are rated highly effective to earn annual bonuses of up $12,500 if they work in low-performing schools and teach in subject areas that are difficult to staff.
Raises will be withheld from ineffective teachers until they improve. Those who do not improve can be removed under a state law passed earlier this year. The improvements under the new contract are estimated to cost $100 million over five years..”
Congratulations to Newark teachers and their union leadership.
Tony
