Dear Commons Community,

Commemorations of the 69th annniversary of D-Day are taking place all over Europe but especially in France and the United Kingdom.  The American stars-and-stripes were raised in a quiet ceremony at the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach.

Tourists, many from the U.S. and Britain, gathered  to witness the flag-raising amid the neat rows of thousands of white marble crosses and stars of David marking the graves of U.S. servicemen and women fallen in the Allied invasion of Normandy that began June 6, 1944.

A full day of ceremonies including fireworks, concerts and marches is planned across Normandy Thursday in honor of the 150,000 troops, mainly US, British and Canadian, who risked or gave their lives in the liberation of German-occupied western Europe during World War II.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As the U.S. Senate gets ready to vote to avert a sharp increase in college student loan rates scheduled to be implemented on July 1, 2013, , Samuel  L.  Stanley, Jr., the president of SUNY-Stonybrook, provides a review of the issues from the perspective of  a university administrator.  As reported in the Huffington Post:

“To begin with, we must do everything we can to keep the costs of higher education under control. Showing increasing concern about costs, Congress ordered higher education institutions to publish net price calculators on their websites. We’ve done that, but that alone is insufficient. Across the country, declining state support of public institutions has increased the difficulty of cost containment. But we continue to work on it. For example, Stony Brook University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of California, Berkeley, all took a close look at operating budgets, searching for greater efficiencies. In the following year, Stony Brook was able to cut operating costs by nearly $12 million. Predictability in tuition costs is also crucial. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the State Legislature and the State University of New York recognized that in 2011 with the adoption of a rational tuition plan that allows families to know what tuition costs will be over the next several years. Despite the trends in higher-education costs, state universities still provide high-quality education at reasonable prices.

We also need to make this reality clearer: Student loans are a serious long-term obligation, but they are also far and away the smartest debt that a young person can incur. The college degree that you help finance with those loans will increase your lifetime earnings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Economists have found that the gap between the earning power of college graduates and that of high school graduates has been growing. There is also evidence that unemployment rates among college graduates are lower than among high school graduates — even after the recession. Those results represent an excellent return on investment.

So student loans are a smart strategy, if students and parents make the right choices about them. That’s another serious obligation for university administrators: We have to provide high-quality advice by experienced financial aid officers, to steer families in the right direction as they put together the package of loans, grants and family contributions to get their young people through the college years with a manageable level of debt.

Finally, as Congress considers the current welter of proposals to avert the sharp interest rate increase that will take place July 1 without congressional action, university administrators and the organizations that represent us should make our views known.”

In all likelihood, as has been the style of the present Congress, the likeliest outcome will be a temporary solution, postponing the interest rate increase for a year or two.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Whether crossing the street, parking a car or trying to get tickets for popular events, those of us who live and work in New York probably know well that ours is a most competitive city. A new study, conducted for Citigroup by the Economist Intelligence Unit, concluded that it is and will stay that way for at least another 12 years.

The study ranked 120 cities around the globe on their competitiveness, based on their ability to attract investments, workers and tourists, among other attributes.

New York ranked third among the cities in economic strength, the category given the most weight in the analysis. It ranked second in “institutional character,” a measure of order and political stability. The accumulation of the high rankings in various categories helped propel New York to the top of the list.

“New York is at the top of the list in terms of financial sophistication,” said Leo Abruzzese, global forecasting director for the Economist Intelligence Unit. New York “still remains in many ways the financial capital of the world.”

But Mr. Abruzzese added that the city’s economy is less reliant on one or two industries than many other big cities around the world. That economic diversity has given New York a big head start on many of the cities in emerging nations, but some of them are closing the gap, he said.

Congratulations New York!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Those of us old enough to remember the uprisings in Tiananmen Square in Beijing twenty-four years ago, recall that they signaled a significant change in how China interacted with the rest of the world.  On this anniversary, I draw your attention to a colleague of mine from The College of Staten Island, Ying Zhu.   We were together a week ago on Memorial Day, and she mentioned an op-ed piece that she was invited to write for the Wall Street Journal:

Essentially she compares China in the late 1980s and the late 2000s through two Chinese film documentaries.  The first was “River Elegy,” an iconic six-part TV documentary series denouncing Chinese tradition as the cause of a repressive party orthodoxy that ran on China Central Television in 1988. The second film was “iMirror,” a less well-known but still striking 30-minute experimental video produced at the height of China’s economic boom in 2007.

As she commented in the op-ed piece which was published yesterday:

“River Elegy” captured and indeed amplified a nation in crisis, transforming an intellectual debate into a public one. Sympathetic toward the 1986 student demonstrations, it called for the party to establish a regular dialogue with the public to address concerns about corruption, inflation and government mismanagement. Amidst the rising popularity of “River,” the party hard-liners quickly rallied to denounce it as unpatriotic and counterrevolutionary. Ironically, while bashing Chinese tradition, “River” actually registered an acute sense of Chinese patriotism. Director Xia Jun considered himself foremost a patriot—to assail China’s past, he argued, was to reshape and improve its future. The film embodied a cultural utilitarianism that aimed to jolt China into becoming a powerful nation…

Appropriately, the world of “iMirror” is parasitic, hatched on the back of the computer-generated environment of Second Life, which allows users act out their social fantasies through virtual avatars. In the film, the Beijing-based young Chinese artist Cao Fei plays herself and documents the virtual world her avatar inhabits. It is a lonely world devoid of originality and imagination, filled with dollar signs and luxurious resorts juxtaposed with landfills and industrial pollution. One segment documents her encounter with the avatar of a San Francisco-based hippy leftist in his mid-60s in real life.  In “iMirror,” stock art-film tropes involving money, sex and identity are accentuated by wistful music with numb, mechanic beats. The cyber-existence affords no genuine discovery, or escape. Unlike “River Elegy,” “iMirror” captures the crisis of individuals rather than a nation. The grand narrative of nation building is replaced here with introspective musing over personal loss and alienation. Trapped in its own narcissism symptomatic of a generation adrift, the existential crisis captured in “iMirror” is not specifically Chinese. The longing for a more fulfilling and meaningful existence is undoubtedly universal, albeit predicated on material comfort.”

Ying’s insights are must reading for anyone interested in China then and now.

Well-done!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

An evaluation of the November 2012 elections from the nation’s leading voice for college Republicans offers a searing indictment of the GOP “brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters.   Later today, the College Republican National Committee will make public a 95-page report dissecting what went wrong for Republicans with young voters in the 2012 elections and how the party can improve its showing with that key demographic in the future.  As covered in Politico:

“Titled the “Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation,” the report is sharply critical of the GOP on several fronts. The study slams some Republicans’ almost singular focus on downsizing Big Government and cutting taxes; candidates’ use of offensive, polarizing rhetoric; and the party’s belly-flop efforts at messaging and outreach, even as the report presents a way forward and, at times, strikes an optimistic tone.

In the report, the young Republican activists acknowledge their party has suffered significant damage in recent years. A sampling of the critique on:

Gay marriage: “On the ‘open-minded’ issue … [w]e will face serious difficulty so long as the issue of gay marriage remains on the table.”

Hispanics: “Latino voters … tend to think the GOP couldn’t care less about them.”

Perception of the party’s economic stance: “We’ve become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it, but won’t offer you a hand to help you get there.”

Big reason for the image problem: The “outrageous statements made by errant Republican voices.”

Words that up-for-grabs voters associate with the GOP: “The responses were brutal: closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.”

The report is based largely on two national surveys of 800 registered voters each, ages 18-29, and six focus groups of young people, including Hispanics, Asian-Americans, single women, economically struggling men and aspiring entrepreneurs in Ohio, Florida and California who had voted for President Barack Obama — he cleaned up with 60 percent of the youth vote — but were considered “winnable” for the GOP.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York State education commissioner, John King, Jr., broke a long and acrimonious impasse on Saturday by imposing a new evaluation system that would rate New York City teachers in part on their students’ test scores and streamline the disciplinary process.

The new system, announced after three hectic days of meetings, testimony and arbitration that involved Mayor Michael  Bloomberg’s administration and the teachers’ union, finally brought New York City into compliance with state law — the last district in the state to do so.

“It’s time. The students have waited too long,” said the commissioner, adding that the new plan would “help improve teaching and learning and give New York City students a much better opportunity to graduate from high school with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in college and their careers.”

In something of a compromise, Mr. King’s plan would make New York City — with more than 1.1 million public school students, 75,000 teachers and 1,700 schools — the only district in the state that would leave a significant part of the implementation of the evaluations up to individual schools, with teachers perhaps having the chance to weigh in with administrators on how they are rated.

“There is the opportunity for differentiation on the school level,” Mr. King said.

Under the new system, 20 to 25 percent of each teacher’s rating score would be determined by state-approved measures of students’ growth, another 15 to 20 percent by measures established by the schools, and 55 to 60 percent would be based on in-class observations or performance assessed by video recording.

A New York Times article commented that:

“Both Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Saturday night that they were largely pleased with Mr. King’s plan, which also included a new evaluation system for principals.

In a statement, Mr. Bloomberg praised the commissioner for rejecting a so-called sunset provision that would have let the evaluation system expire after a few years. Mr. King said the system could be changed, but through collective bargaining….

In his statement, Mr. Mulgrew said, “New York City teachers will now have additional protections and opportunities to play a larger role in the development of the measures used to rate them.”

Yet he expressed skepticism that it would be implemented fully by the city. “The tough part is trying to implement anything with this Department of Education, and that’s our greatest concern,” Mr. Mulgrew said in a telephone interview.

Melissa DeRosa, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, said in a statement that the new system “will create real accountability in the classroom.” She added: “The mayor didn’t win and the union didn’t win. Today, the students won. Finally.”

I might add that any education policy in New York City that allows for some differentiation is good.  There have been too many one-size fits all approaches in the past dozen or so years.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Barbara Bowen announced earlier today that the results of the referendum of No Confidence in Pathways by CUNY instructional staff  are in: 92% voted No Confidence in Pathways. The vote is a stunning rebuke to the Pathways curriculum and the coercive measures used to impose it.   The central office as well as the college administrations will have to consider this as they make plans for the Pathways implementation.  It also presents a most complex issue for the incoming interim chancellor, Bill Kelly.  The full text of President’s Bowen’s message is below.

Tony

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Dear Commons Community,

Walmart wages are so low that many of its workers rely on food stamps and other government aid programs to fulfill their basic needs, a reality that could cost taxpayers as much as $900,000 at just one Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin, according to a study released by Congressional Democrats on Thursday.  Though the study assumes that most workers who qualify for the public assistance programs do take advantage of them, it injects a potent data point into a national debate about the minimum wage at a time when many Walmart and fast food workers are mounting strikes in pursuit of higher wages.  The study uses Medicaid data released in Wisconsin to piece together the annual cost to taxpayers for providing a host of social safety net programs, including food stamps and publicly subsidized health care, to workers at one Supercenter in the state.

According to the report, Walmart had more workers enrolled in the state’s public health care program in the last quarter of last year than any other employer, with 3,216 people enrolled. When the dependents of those workers were factored in, the number of enrollees came to 9,207.

“When low wages leave Walmart workers unable to afford the necessities of life, taxpayers pick up the tab,” the report says.

The Huffington Post commented:

“The report, entitled “The Low-Wage Drag on Our Economy,” was produced by Democrats with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is chaired by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The committee says it chose Wisconsin because the state’s data “appears to be the most recent and comprehensive.” The paper is an updated version of an earlier report by the same committee in 2004, which at the time estimated that a 200-employee Walmart store could account for $400,000 in public assistance for workers.

“The labor policies of Walmart, and those of companies that emulate its low-road approach, end up leaving taxpayers holding the bag,” Miller said in a statement.

Critics have long denounced Walmart for paying such low wages that many workers are forced to take advantage of public-assistance programs like food stamps or Medicaid. (Notably, many Democrats who lament this scenario are strong backers of such programs.)

In fact, many workers throughout the retail industry take advantage of these programs, though a 2004 study of Walmart workers in California estimated the chain’s workers availed themselves of 38 percent more non-health, public-assistance money than workers at competing stores. (That report, by the University of California, Berkeley, had findings similar to the committee’s 2004 study.)

The Congressional report’s timing is no accident. Miller, along with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), has sponsored legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10, a boost that would presumably benefit many Walmart store employees. (The federal minimum wage, which prevails in the 31 states that do not mandate a higher one, is currently $7.25, where it’s been since 2009.) Democrats have argued that boosting the minimum wage would help pull some workers off of these programs.

Following sparse but high-profile walkouts by Walmart employees late last year, the union-backed worker group OUR Walmart announced “prolonged strikes” by employees this week. As of Thursday, organizers said 80 workers had joined the walkouts — a tiny fraction, for sure, of the estimated 1.4 million Walmart workers across the country, though labor activists are hopeful the strikes will inspire other workers.”

Tony