Dear Commons Community,

Attendees at the EDUCAUSE Conference this week were given a preview of the organization’s “2018’s Top 10 IT Issues. ” Here is the list.

The Top 10 IT issues for 2018

1. Information security: Developing a risk-based security strategy that keeps pace with security threats and challenges.
2. Student success: Managing the system implementations and integrations that support multiple student success initiatives.
3. Institution-wide IT strategy: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner of institutional leadership in achieving institutions missions.
4. Data-enabled institutional culture: Using BI and analytics to inform the broad conversation and answer big questions.
5. Student-centered institution: Understanding and advancing technology’s role in defining the student experience on campus (from applicants to alumni).
6. Higher education affordability: Balancing and rightsizing IT priorities and budget to support IT-enabled institutional efficiencies and innovations in the context if institutional funding realities.
7. IT staffing and organizational models: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention in the face of retirements, new sourcing models, growing external competition, rising salaries, and the demands of technology initiatives on both IT and non-IT staff.
8. (tie) Data management and governance: Implementing effective institutional data governance practices.
9. (tie) Digital integrations: Ensuring system interoperability, scalability, and extensibility, as well as data integrity, standards, and governance, across multiple applications and platforms.
10. Change leadership: Helping institutional constituents (including the IT staff) adapt to the increasing pace of technology change.

The two top issues for 2018 (Information Security and Student Success) were the same as in 2017.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning describing the way American universities are using offshore strategies “to swell their coffers, skirt taxes and obscure investments that could spark campus protests.”  Entitled, Endowments Boom as Colleges Bury Earnings Overseas, here is an excerpt:

“A trove of millions of leaked documents from a Bermuda-based law firm, Appleby, reflects some of the tax wizardry used by American colleges and universities. Schools have increasingly turned to secretive offshore investments, the files show, which let them swell their endowments with blocker corporations, and avoid scrutiny of ventures involving fossil fuels or other issues that could set off campus controversy.

Buoyed by lucrative tax breaks, college endowments have amassed more than $500 billion nationwide. The wealth is concentrated in a small group of schools, tilting toward private institutions like those in the Ivy League and other highly selective colleges.

About 11 percent of higher-education institutions in the United States hold 74 percent of the money, according to an analysis in 2015 by the Congressional Research Service.

 “It’s overwhelmingly weighted towards the 1 percent,” said Dean Zerbe, former tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee. “Most of the schools are the most elites in the country.”

The House Republican tax plan includes a 1.4 percent tax on the investment income of private colleges and universities with endowment assets of $250,000 or more per student. It would not apply to public schools. If passed, the new tax would affect about 70 elite private colleges, though it would not touch the type of offshore benefits the Texan partnership pursued.”

The article gave a number of examples of the investment practices.

“The Appleby records show that investment funds of Columbia and Duke, both ranked in the top 20 endowments, held shares as recently as 2015 in Ferrous Resources, registered in the Isle of Man. Its primary business is iron mining in Brazil.

The company drew criticism there with a planned 480 kilometer pipeline to transport iron slurry from a mine in Minas Gerais to a port.

“Major demonstrations took place against this project, which culminated in the creation of a campaign,’” researchers wrote in a 2015 paper published in the journal Society & Nature.

A 2010 environmental study of the pipeline revealed that more than 110,000 people might be affected by noise, dust, soil degradation and water quality issues. The project was postponed in 2012 after a downturn in iron prices.

The company, Ferrous Resouces, declined to comment, except to say that the project had been discontinued.

Columbia, which owned more than eight million shares in Ferrous Recources, or 1.1 percent of the company, declined to comment. Various investment funds connected to Duke, which also declined to comment, held more than two million shares in the company.

While some schools have announced shifts away from controversial investments, others have pointed out that divesting from fossil fuels would probably lead to a significant drop in operating funds.

Underscoring endowments’ reliance on hydrocarbon holdings, 10 schools invested in a Cayman Islands partnership in 2012 known as EnCap Energy Capital Fund IX-C, part of EnCap Investments, a private equity firm known for the acquisition and development of North American oil and gas properties.

Among the investors were the University of Alabama, DePauw, Northeastern, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Reed College, Rutgers, Syracuse, Texas Tech and Washington State.”

Endowment managers are supposed to maximize earnings but it seems that they should have exercised some judgment as to the appropriateness of these activities.

Tony

Dear Commons Communty,

It was a good election for Democrats yesterday as they were able to win several important statewide races.  Here is a quick recap.

Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, a physician and Army veteran, won a commanding victory for governor, overcoming a racially charged campaign by his Republican opponent and cementing Virginia’s transformation into a reliably Democratic state largely immune to Trump-style appeals.  Mr. Northam was propelled to victory over Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee, by liberal and moderate voters who were eager to send a message to Mr. Trump in a state that rejected him in 2016. Mr. Northam led Mr. Gillespie by nearly nine percentage points with 99 percent of precincts reporting, the widest victory in decades for a Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia.

In New Jersey, Philip D. Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, won the governorship, according to The Associated Press, by a vast margin that brought an unceremonious end to Gov. Chris Christie’s tumultuous tenure.  The Democratic ticket established a decisive advantage early in the campaign season, and that lead never flagged. Mr. Murphy, a wealthy Democratic donor who served as ambassador to Germany under Mr. Obama, ran on a message of rejecting both Mr. Trump and Mr. Christie, who is a politically toxic figure in the state. National Republicans virtually ignored the race, viewing their nominee, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, as doomed by a deeply hostile political environment and her association with Mr. Christie. 

Voters in Maine approved a ballot measure on Tuesday to allow many more low-income residents to qualify for Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, The Associated Press said. The vote was a rebuke of Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican who has repeatedly vetoed legislation to expand Medicaid.

In Washington State, early ballot returns show Democrat Manka Dhingra with a sizable lead over her Republican opponent Jinyoung Lee Englund in a State Senate race that will decide the balance of power in the Legislature.  Last night, Dhingra had roughly 55.4 percent of the vote to Englund’s 44.5 percent.  That margin puts Dhingra on track to win the election in Seattle’s Eastside suburbs, despite thousands of votes that still need to be counted over the next few days due to Washington’s mail-in system. Democrats hailed the lead as a sure sign Democrats would control both chambers of Washington’s Legislature for the first time since 2012.

In a local election in Northern Virginia, Democrat Danica Roem, 33, defeated a Republican who had served in the state’s House of Delegates for a quarter of a century — and, in doing so, Ms. Roem became the first transgender person to be elected to the Virginia legislature.

And last but not least, Bill de Blasio was re-elected on Tuesday as the mayor of New York City, overwhelming his Republican challenger, Nicole Malliotakis, and a handful of independent candidates in what he declared a persuasive affirmation of his progressive agenda.

Congratulations to the winners!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

College and university endowments are coming under scrutiny again as the media focuses on the Republican tax plan which among other things calls for a 1.4 percent tax on college investment earnings.  The New York Times today reviews the issue.  Here is an excerpt:

“For years, lawmakers in Washington have made swelling university endowments a focus of the populist backlash against high tuition and the concentration of rich students in elite universities.

Now they are harnessing that anger with a proposed tax on private colleges and universities that have the wealthiest endowments.

“The House Republican tax plan released last week includes a 1.4 percent tax on the investment income of private colleges and universities with at least 500 students and assets of $100,000 or more per full-time student. It would not apply to public colleges.

The endowments are currently untaxed, as they are considered part of the nonprofit mission of the colleges. The new tax, if it passed, would bring in an estimated $3 billion from 2018 to 2027, one of many new revenue sources Congress is considering to pay for broad tax cuts.

Universities criticized the proposed tax Friday as a blunt instrument that would curb their autonomy and reduce support for poor and moderate-income students.

“There is a difference between directing institutions to make sure they’re using their resources toward their stated mission — missions of education, missions of access — versus directing institutions toward filling gaps in Washington, and this seems to be the latter,” Sean Decatur, president of Kenyon College, said Friday.

Supporters of the proposed tax said it was an acknowledgment that universities increasingly were being run like businesses, with tuition continuing to rise and administrative ranks growing, especially at the wealthiest institutions.

Representative Tom Reed, a New York Republican whose district includes Cornell University, supports the proposed tax, though his main wish is to force schools with large endowments to spend more of them on tuition assistance. Like other proponents of an endowment tax, he noted that private foundations, which also are nonprofits under the tax code, already pay a tax of 1 to 2 percent on their investment income.

“Rather than fight for special treatment, universities should join me in recognizing that young adults are facing a college debt crisis as a result of the uncontrolled escalating costs,” Mr. Reed said in an email. “We should work together to solve this runaway price issue once and for all.”

The tax would affect about 140 colleges and universities, according to a list compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education.”

This issue will continue to attract attention but I am not sure it will survive the House and Senate bill revision process.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Don’t forget to vote today.  Below are recommendations from Michael Fabricant, Vice President of the Professional Staff Congress.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Reuters and other news media are reporting that at 11:30 yesterday morning, a gunman killed at least 26 worshipers and wounded 20 others in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, about 40 miles east of San Antonio.  The gunman, Devin P. Kelley,  a white man, was found dead in his car a little while later.  As reported by Reuters.

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SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas, Nov 5 (Reuters) – A gunman massacred at least 26 worshipers and wounded 20 others at a white-steepled church in southeast Texas on Sunday, carrying out the latest in a series of mass shootings that have plagued the United States, authorities said.

The lone suspect, wearing black tactical gear and a ballistic vest and carrying an assault rifle, opened fire after entering the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs in Wilson County, about 40 miles (65 km) east of San Antonio.

The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72 years old, law enforcement officials said at a news conference.

After the shooting, the gunman, described as a white man in his 20s, was fired on by a local resident. He fled in his vehicle and was later found dead in neighboring Guadalupe County.

It was not immediately clear if the suspect killed himself or he was hit by gunfire by the resident, authorities said.

“We are dealing with the largest mass shooting in our state’s history,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at the news conference. “The tragedy of course is worsened by the fact that it occurred in a church, a place of worship where these people were innocently gunned down.”

Neither the suspect’s identity nor motive were disclosed by authorities.

But law enforcement officials who were not identified have said the gunman was Devin P. Kelley, describe as a white, 26-year-old man, the New York Times and other media reported.

The 14-year-old daughter of pastor Frank Pomeroy was killed, the family told several television stations.

Jeff Forrest, a 36-year-old military veteran who lives a block away from the church, said what sounded like high-caliber, semi-automatic gunfire triggered memories of his four combat deployments with the Marine Corps.

“I was on the porch, I heard 10 rounds go off and then my ears just started ringing,” Forrest said. “I hit the deck and I just lay there.”

The massacre comes just weeks after a sniper killed 58 people at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The shootings have stirred a years-long national debate over whether easy access to firearms was contributing to the trend.

President Donald Trump said he was monitoring the situation while in Japan on a 12-day Asian trip.

“May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene,” he said on Twitter.

According to the witnesses, about 20 shots rang out at 11:30 a.m. (1730 GMT) during the church services, according to media reports. It was unclear how many worshippers were inside at the time.

After the shooting, the suspect sped away in a car and was soon cornered by sheriff’s deputies just outside of Wilson County in Guadalupe County, Wiley told Reuters. He did not know if the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot or was killed by deputies.

Connally Memorial Medical Center in Floresville received eight patients, the hospital said in a statement, while Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston received another eight.

At Connally, three people were treated and released, one is in critical condition and four were transferred to the University Hospital in San Antonio for a higher level of care.

The First Baptist Church is one of two houses of worship in Sutherland Springs, an area that is home to fewer than 900 residents, according to the 2010 Census. There are also two gas stations and a Dollar General store in town.

The white-painted, one-story structure features a small steeple and a single front door. On Sunday, the Lone Star flag of Texas was flying alongside the U.S. flag and a third, unidentified banner.

Inside there is a small raised platform on which members sang worship songs to guitar music and the pastor delivered a weekly sermon, according to videos posted on YouTube. In one of the clips, a few dozen people, including young children, can be seen sitting in the wooden pews.

The shooting occurred on the eighth anniversary of the Nov. 5, 2009, massacre of 13 people at the Fort Hood Army base in central Texas. A U.S. Army Medical Corps psychiatrist convicted of the killings is now awaiting execution.”

This is all so sad.  We grieve with the family and friends of the victims!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

This is an off-year election but here in New York we have Bill de Blasio running for re-election as mayor.  It is my opinion that he has done an excellent job for the City.  He is progressive without being aloof.  He knows the city well and can relate to the diverse spectrum of people who live here.  Crime is down, the economy is fine, and public education has improved significantly under his watch.  His universal pre-K initiative was a Godsend for young children and their families.  He is also articulate and can led during a crisis as was evident last week when eight people were killed in a terrorist attack in Manhattan.  Below is the New York Times endorsement that was published on Friday.

Please vote on Tuesday!

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————-

Mayor de Blasio Has Earned a Second Term

New York Times

November 2, 2017

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Unless the pollsters have all taken leave of their senses, Bill de Blasio is about to win re-election as New York’s mayor, probably by a wide margin. So it is not too soon for New Yorkers to focus on what they expect for his second term, the last one he is allowed under the city’s term-limits law.

While they’re at it, they may want to think hard about their own commitment to civic life. Democracy functions only if its citizens make it work. They do that by showing up on Election Day. But far too many of the city’s nearly 4.5 million registered voters are AWOL. Only 26 percent of them went to the polls in the 2013 mayoral election, and that turnout was spectacular compared with the dismal 14 percent in this year’s primaries. Even allowing that this campaign has hardly been rousing, the apathy is troublesome.

We supported Mr. de Blasio for the Democratic nomination in the September primaries because the city in the main has been well run on his watch. Nothing on that score has changed. Obviously, serious problems remain, with unrelenting homelessness and tottering mass transit high on the list. But, over all, Mr. de Blasio has been an able mayor who can point to an impressively low crime rate, sound municipal finances and progress on revivifying schools and on creating reasonably priced apartments.

And so we give him our endorsement in the general election on Tuesday.

His principal opponent is Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican who represents slices of Staten Island and Brooklyn. An unfamiliar figure in wide swaths of the five boroughs, Ms. Malliotakis has run a spirited campaign and deserves credit for it. But her ambition seems to outpace her vision for the city. And her resolute conservatism puts her out of sync with most New Yorkers — and us — on pivotal matters like raising the state minimum wage (she opposed it), legalizing same-sex marriage (she voted no on that, too, though she later expressed regret) and immigration policy (she is tepid on the “sanctuary city” concept).

Catching up to the mayor is not Ms. Malliotakis’s only Election Day concern. Bo Dietl, the showboating former police detective who’s running as an independent, could take center-right votes from her. Sal Albanese, a respected former city councilman who has the Reform Party line, lives on Staten Island and might cut into her support there.

The bedeviling crisis of homelessness, many years in the making, mocks principles of social equality that the mayor holds dear. Building or restoring tens of thousands of units of affordable housing, a signature de Blasio program, is one response, but it’s not enough. Another mayoral goal, to scatter 90 new homeless shelters across the city, has produced predictable neighborhood backlashes. And as ever, there are no easy solutions for taking care of the thousands of mentally ill people sleeping on the streets and in the subways.

New Yorkers need to hear more from the mayor on a range of vital matters: how he intends to narrow the racial gap in educational achievement, push crime still lower, build the borough-based jails he has advocated, foster new public health initiatives and ease the epidemic of small-store closings. He also must do a better job than he has thus far to make sure campaign donors are kept at arm’s length — even two arms’ length. There are quality-of-life issues as well. Why not, for instance, take on building owners who leave sidewalk sheds in place long past their expiration date, blighting miles upon miles of urban landscape? Or crack down on noise pollution, a dominant complaint in the city that says it doesn’t sleep — but would like to.

Then we have the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, neither notably friendly to big cities. A bad moon could be rising for New York, with federal dollars for mass transit, hospitals, housing and schools at risk. Mr. de Blasio knows it, and he has wisely built up cash reserves as a buffer.

But having lots of money on hand puts pressure on him to peel off a few hundred million, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo insists, to help repair the subways. Relations between these two men are toxic. The governor plainly delights in making the mayor’s life unpleasant; he needs to knock it off. But he’s not going away, and so it falls in good measure on Mr. de Blasio to figure out how to make the relationship work. Their united stand after the terrorist attack Tuesday in Lower Manhattan showed it can be done.

There’s another aspect to his job: The best mayors have been brazen civic cheerleaders, and too often Mr. de Blasio seems aloof. For starters, he should step up his game: ride the subways more, hold news conferences on the subject — in short, pound the table for a mass-transit system worthy of a great city. Mayors are also called on to be consolers in chief. Mr. de Blasio ought to appreciate that there are times when his constituents need their collective hand held. One such moment came in July when a police officer, Miosotis Familia, was gunned down. The next day, with the city in pain, Mr. de Blasio flew off to Germany. That was a mistake.

Maybe he has since learned the importance of sticking around. His impulse is to travel the land as an agent of progressivism. But he can do best for himself by doing best for his city — staying close to home, building upon past successes and working on those areas of the report card marked “needs improvement.”

Dear Commons Community

The media has widely been reporting on how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) struck a deal with Hillary Clinton in 2015 that gave her campaign input on some party hiring and spending decisions.  NBC News has obtained a memo between Clinton and the DNC outlining the conditions of the deal.  As reported by NBC:

“The document provides context to the explosive claims made by former DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile in a forthcoming book, an excerpt of which was published this week.

The August 26, 2015, memorandum of understanding from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook to DNC CEO Amy Dacey details the relationship between Clinton’s campaign and the DNC long before she won her party’s nomination.

In exchange for Hillary for America’s (HFA) helping the cash-strapped DNC raise money, the party committee agreed “that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research.”

Specifically, the DNC agreed to hire a communications director from “one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA.” And while the DNC maintained “the authority to make the final decision” on senior staff in the communications, technology and research departments, the party organization said it would choose “between candidates acceptable to HFA.”

The memo stipulates the DNC had to hire a communications director by September 11, 2015, months before the first nominating contests in early 2016.

However, the memo also made clear that the arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates.

Still, it clearly allowed the Clinton campaign to influence DNC decisions made during an active primary, even if intended for preparations later.

“Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC’s obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary,” the memo states.

“Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates,” it continues.

The Clinton campaign agreed to make an initial payment of $1.2 million to DNC, which was crippled by debt at the time, as well as providing a monthly allowance and other funds. The agreement appears intended to give the campaign oversight over how its money was spent.

The agreement supplemented a separate Clinton-DNC standard joint fundraising agreement, which was first reported over a year and a half ago, but gained new attention this week with Brazile’s book.

In an excerpt of her book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House,” published this week in Politico, Brazile wrote she was stunned to find out about the agreement, which she called a “cancer” on the party and claimed led the DNC to treat Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., unfairly during the primaries.

The Sanders’ campaign later signed its own joint fundraising agreement with the DNC, but did not utilize it.”

It is incredible that the Democratic Party can be so unaware of the consequences of its actions.  This gives so much credence to those who are thoroughly disillusioned with the state of our political systems. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning describing the growing aquisition of  laptop computers and related software in the nation’s schools. The main purpose of the article is demonstrate how much headway technology has made since the 1990s  and the manner in which technology companies curry favor with school officials and policymakers.  Here is an excerpt:

“Administrators at Baltimore County Public Schools, the 25th-largest public school system in the United States, have embraced the laptops as well, as part of one of the nation’s most ambitious classroom technology makeovers. In 2014, the district committed more than $200 million for HP laptops, and it is spending millions of dollars on math, science and language software. Its vendors visit classrooms. Some schoolchildren have been featured in tech-company promotional videos.

And Silicon Valley has embraced the school district right back.

HP has promoted the district as a model to follow in places as diverse as New York City and Rwanda. Daly Computers, which supplied the HP laptops, donated $30,000 this year to the district’s education foundation. Baltimore County schools’ top officials have traveled widely to industry-funded education events, with travel sometimes paid for by industry-sponsored groups.

Silicon Valley is going all out to own America’s school computer-and-software market, projected to reach $21 billion in sales by 2020. An industry has grown up around courting public-school decision makers, and tech companies are using a sophisticated playbook to reach them, the New York Times has found in a review of thousands of pages of Baltimore County school documents and in interviews with dozens of school officials, researchers, teachers, tech executives and parents.

School leaders have become so central to sales that a few private firms will now, for fees that can climb into the tens of thousands of dollars, arrange meetings for vendors with school officials, on some occasions paying superintendents as consultants. Tech-backed organizations have also flown superintendents to conferences at resorts. And school leaders have evangelized company products to other districts.

These marketing approaches are legal. But there is little rigorous evidence so far to indicate that using computers in class improves educational results. Even so, schools nationwide are convinced enough to have adopted them in hopes of preparing students for the new economy.

In some significant ways, the industry’s efforts to push laptops and apps in schools resemble influence techniques pioneered by drug makers. The pharmaceutical industry has long cultivated physicians as experts and financed organizations, like patient advocacy groups, to promote its products.”

In 1994, I used the term “education-industrial complex” to refer to the networks and alliances that were forming to promote the use of technology and related services in American K-12 education (Picciano, 1994).   In this article, I described the education-industrial complex as in its infancy but contended that within the next ten or more years, a major new thrust would occur that would become “very visible”.   In 2013, I published a book with Joel Spring on The Great-American Education-Industrial Complex:  Ideology, Technology, and Profit (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) that followed up on the issues of some of the issues raised in this article.  In sum, the great American education-industrial complex is alive and well.  One caveat is that instructional technology has gotten better and better and increasingly is providing beneficial experiences for students and teachers.  However, it is a reach to assume that it is a silver bullet that will spark widespread improvement in student achievement.

Tony

Picciano, A.G. (1994). Technology and the evolving education-industrial complex,  Computers in  the Schools, 11(2), pp. 85‑101.

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said “yes,” she believes the 2016 Democratic nomination for president was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton, and that the party faces “a real problem” in dealing with the fallout from the revelation that Clinton’s campaign secretly took over control of the Democratic National Committee in 2015.

Responding to the disclosure by Donna Brazile, who became interim chairwoman of the DNC as last year’s election approached, Warren told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that Democratic leaders must restore faith in the party’s operations.

“What we’ve got to do as Democrats now is hold this party accountable,” Warren said, adding that the current DNC chairman, former Labor Department Secretary Tom Perez is “being tested.”

She said that when Perez won the party post early this year, “the very first conversation I had with him [was] to say, you have got to put together a Democratic Party in which everybody can have confidence that the party is working for Democrats, rather than Democrats are working for the party.”

Brazile wrote in her new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, that shortly after she took the DNC job in late July 2016, she discovered the Clinton campaign had signed an agreement to help keep the DNC financially alfoat, a deal in “which [Clinton] expected to wield control of its operations.”

This is a sad situation for the Democrats and will getter sadder before it gets better because right now there is no clear leader of the party.

Tony