Dear Commons Community,

The Republican-controlled US Senate and House of Representatives yesterday released the final version of their revised tax proposal.  The new bill features several changes from the original House and Senate versions.  They are planning to vote on it as early as next week.  The final proposal does NOT call for a tax on students who receive tuition waivers from their schools.  It does keep a 1.4 percent excise tax on investment income at private colleges with an enrollment of at least 500 students and with assets valued at $500,000 per full-time student.  Below is an analysis of other elements of the revised bill courtesy of Business Insider. 

The Democrats, major unions, and community groups have opposed the Republican proposal because it greatly favors corporations and high earners (the one percenters).   On Tuesday, December 19, at noon, there will be protests on Wall Street and other places around the country to stop passage of the Republican proposal.

Tony

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Business Insider

December 15, 2017

Republicans released the final version of their massive tax bill on Friday, setting up a frantic stretch to pass the plan through Congress next week.

The bill is a compromise between the House and Senate versions and assembled by Republican members mostly from the committees that wrote them.

The legislation would make sweeping changes to the corporate and individual tax systems. Here are some ways the bill differs from the House and Senate versions:

• It would give corporations a slightly less generous tax cut. The corporate rate would be slashed to 21% from the current 35%. The House and Senate versions had proposed 20%.
• It would increase the refundability of the child tax credit. The bill would increase the child tax credit to $2,000 from the current $1,000, like the Senate version — but the level to which the credit would be refundable would increase to $1,400 from the Senate’s proposed $1,100. That change is aimed at Sen. Marco Rubio, who on Thursday threatened to vote against the bill if the credit were not made more generous.
• It would lower the top marginal tax rate. It would be 37% instead of the current 39.6%. That’s more generous than the 38% proposed in the Senate version.
• It would adjust the individual tax brackets.
  • 10%: $0 to $9,525 of taxable income for an individual; $0 to $19,050 for married joint filers
  • 12%: $9,526 to $38,700 individual; $19,051 to $77,400 joint
  • 22%: $38,701 to $82,500 individual; $77,401 to $165,000 joint
  • 24%: $82,501 to $157,500 individual; $165,001 to $315,000 joint
  • 32%: $157,501 to $200,000 individual; $315,001 to $400,000 joint
  • 35%: $200,001 to $500,000 individual; $400,001 to $600,000 joint
  • 37%: over $500,000 individual; over $600,000 joint6 PHOTOS
• It would allow people to count income or sales tax toward the state and local tax deduction. The House and Senate versions proposed people be able to deduct up to $10,000 in state property taxes from their federal tax bill. The compromise bill would allow people to deduct up to  $10,000 in a combination of state and local property, income, and sales tax. It’s unclear whether that figure is the same for joint and individual filers.
• It would give pass-through businesses a deduction. Pass-through businesses like limited liability corporations in which the owner books the profits as income would be allowed to deduct 20% of their earnings — like the Senate version, but down from its proposed 23% deduction. The benefit would also phase out starting at $315,000 for couples, down from $500,000 in the Senate version.
• It would double the threshold to qualify for the estate tax. It’s currently $5.6 million. But the increase would expire, along with all the individual tax changes, in 2026. Many Republicans wanted to do away with the tax entirely.
• It would not repeal the Johnson amendment. That prevents nonprofit organizations from donating directly to political campaigns, and the House and Senate versions called for repealing it. Critics had argued that would allow nonprofits to become de facto tax-exempt political organizations.
• It would lower the threshold for the medical expense deduction for two years. The House version called for repealing the deduction, which allows people with medical expenses above 10% of their income to deduct costs beyond that. The compromise bill lowers that level to 7.5%. Sen. Susan Collins requested this change.

Republican leaders have said they plan to hold a vote on the compromise bill early next week, with a goal of President Donald Trump signing it by Wednesday.

Despite concerns from some senators, it appears Republican leadership has secured enough votes to pass the bill.

Dear Commons Community,

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted yesterday  to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules for Internet traffic — a major victory for telecommunications companies.  The 3-2 party-line vote by the FCC eliminates the utility-like oversight of Internet service providers that was put in place in 2015 to try to ensure the uninhibited flow of data online.  As reported by the Los Angeles Times:

“…strict regulatory structure will largely give way to market forces. Internet service providers now will be required only to disclose their online practices, with the Federal Trade Commission policing them for anti-competitive practices.

Republicans said they are simply restoring government oversight of the internet to where it was before 2015, reestablishing the light-touch regulatory approach that allowed the online ecosystem to flourish and develop into an economic force.

“The internet is the greatest free-market innovation in history,” Ajit Pai, the Republican who took over as FCC chairman in January and pushed the repeal, said before the vote.

“Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the internet far better than the heavy hand of government ever could have,” Pai said.

Underscoring the intensity surrounding net neutrality, Pai’s comments were interrupted when FCC security officers ordered the packed meeting room cleared. The meeting was suspended for about 10 minutes while the room was swept after an apparent bomb threat.

Pai and other opponents of the net neutrality rules said they have led to reduced investment in broadband networks — a point supporters dispute.

Democrats — urged on by consumer advocates, digital rights groups and online giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook — said the tougher federal oversight is needed because the internet’s increasingly vital role in business and daily life is vulnerable to exploitation by telecom companies.

“As a result of today’s misguided action, our broadband providers will get extraordinary new powers,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, one of two Democrats on the five-member FCC who voted against the repeal.

“They will have the power to block websites, the power to throttle services and the power to censor online content,” she said. “They will have the right to discriminate and favor the internet traffic of those companies with whom they have a pay-for-play arrangement and the right to consign all others to a slow and bumpy road.”

Exactly how this change will play out in the coming years is difficult to say.  Below is one analysis provided by Mic.  This change will also be challenged in the courts by several states and private corporations delaying its implementation by months and maybe years.

Tony

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Mic

What is new neutrality.  How the FCC repeal vote will affect your wallet and internet experience? 

James Dennin

December 14, 2017

Net neutrality has been dealt a serious blow following a 3-2 FCC vote, led by chair Ajit Pai, to reduce regulation of internet service providers. Here’s how that will affect you and your wallet —and what to know about Title 2, small businesses and more. 

The internet is potentially about to get a lot less consumer friendly. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to repeal Title II restrictions that require internet service providers to meet certain standards, importantly: net neutrality.

If you’re not familiar, net neutrality prevents the service providers who build and maintain the internet’s infrastructure from unfairly restricting the flow of data to and from websites. In other words, your ISP — likely a cable company like Charter or Verizon — can’t pick and choose the activity it allows through, even if some of that traffic is more costly than others. Net neutrality advocates point out potential harm to streaming services like Netflix (and their customers), because of a pre-net neutrality dispute between the streaming company and the ISPs after Comcast refused to accommodate all of Netflix’s extra traffic.

Net neutrality became the law of the land in 2015, when the FCC voted to apply “Title II” restrictions — which normally apply to public utilities — to internet services companies as well. The Title II classification is important because it gives the FCC the authority to regulate ISPs in the same way it does the basic services Americans rely on that provide phone service, for example.

These regulations are broadly popular, with about 83% of Americans opposing the repeal, according to a University of Maryland survey. But critics of net neutrality regulations, like the current FCC chairman Ajit Pai, argue these restrictions have kept ISPs from expanding their networks. As he explained in a Wall Street Journal editorial, investment declined about 6% after the net neutrality rules were put in place.

“[This] is not going to destroy the internet, it is not going to end the internet as we know it, it is not going to kill democracy,” Pai said during the meeting, ahead of the repeal vote. Pai, a former attorney for the telecommunications giant Verizon, and his fellow GOP commissionersargue that repealing neutrality is simply a return to “normal,” a restoration of how it was before the 2015 change, when upstarts on the internet still thrived.

But advocates of net neutrality argue that these arguments are misleading. For one, for much of the internet’s history, it traveled through regular phone lines protected by Title II restrictions. They point to a 3-1 FCC vote in 2002 deciding cable modems were under the FCC’s jurisdiction, as evidence that today’s action is not a “return to normal,” but instead — as Harold Feld, an attorney and senior vice president at the advocacy group Public Knowledge, put it — a “dinner bell for every ISP who has wanted to do things consumers hate.”

Not all of the FCC commissioners agreed net neutrality should be repealed. “This decision and the process that brought us to this point is ugly,” said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel in her dissent. “It’s ugly in the cavalier disregard this agency has demonstrated to the public, the contempt it has shown for citizens who speak up, and the disdain it has for popular opinion.”

What’s the big concern? For one, by stepping back from its regulatory role, the FCC leaves cable companies and ISPs to be exclusively regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. But advocates say the FTC is not equipped to handle this role, and any intervention would end up being too little too late. “The FTC would be coming in at the back end, and only when there’s anti-competitive behavior,” said Christy Gamble of Black Women’s Health Imperative said. “You’re waiting until there’s an infraction, and then only if they rule it as anticompetitive behavior will something be done. We need this on the front end, we need preventative measures so we don’t have to worry about people not being able to reach people.”

The FCC’s net neutrality decision is very likely to be contested, but here’s what we know for sure about how losing neutrality might affect consumers.

1. The internet could get slower and less secure

Feld argues that the pre-net neutrality “golden age” never happened, and that before the rules, consumer abuses were common.

 “We are not going back to the golden age of 2014, but even if we were, the two worst abuses of ISPs occurred in 2014,” Feld said. “One was the shakedown of Netflix from the four ISPs. … They were all saying that if Netflix wanted to get through they had to pay. So they just let all the traffic congest.”

To be fair, waiting longer for your shows to buffer isn’t exactly the greatest injustice in the world, but Feld said that these disputes don’t just affect the people trying to stream. If, for example, Comcast refuses to accommodate all the extra traffic Netflix drives when people get home from work, other sites will have longer loading times during those hours as well.

But it’s not just a slower internet — Feld also says that without Title II protections, the internet could become less secure as well.

“There is a provision of Title II that includes privacy provisions specific to telecommunications,” Feld said. “These are referred to as the CPNI rules, they’re basically what protects your phone privacy right now. Once the FCC reclassified broadband as Title II, broadband became suspect to these privacy protections.”

Without that protection, the fear is that ISPs would be free to install so-called “supercookies,” which track online behavior without notifying their customers. Last year, Verizon paid a $1.35 million settlement for its use of supercookies, with the FCC citing the net neutrality rule.

Consumer advocates argue that consumer abuses like tracking online behavior without disclosing it could become more common. 

2. Costs could be higher

Advocates of the repeal, including Pai, object to the notion that repealing net neutrality will lead to higher costs. “People are scaring people,” Dan Rayburn, a media analyst and consultant, said. “You’re not going to charge people more based on a site they’re watching. It’s not how products are sold. They’re not going to say ‘it’s $100 a month for your ISP triple play, but if you want to watch Netflix, it’s $110.’”

But there is some evidence that losing net neutrality rules could lead some consumers to pay more. Critics of the repeal like Feld strongly disagree with Pai, and cite one or two examples of ISPs engaging in that type of behavior.

One of the most notorious examples was back in 2012, when Apple rolled out a version of the iPhone with FaceTime. AT&T wanted to make FaceTime exclusively available on its more expensive “shared data plans.” AT&T eventually backed out of the plan after public backlash — but customers on lower tiered plans were still blocked from using FaceTime for months.

The main concern is that if ISPs can create fast and slow lanes, and use preferential pricing schemes to increase costs on internet-based businesses, it’s likely some companies will simply pass those higher prices onto customers — especially if those consumers don’t have better options.

3. History suggests a free internet really requires tough laws

Proponents of lifting the restrictions would tell you that AT&T’s reversal on FaceTime restrictions are proof that the free market can do the work of regulating ISPs itself. And tech industry advocates argue freedom from regulation is better for business, and that the U.S. already has the FTC to protect consumers. “Our position has always been that this proceeding is really not about net neutrality, it’s first and foremost about the FCC’s authority over the internet,” said Berin Szóka, president of TechFreedom, a tech policy think tank that backs lifting the restrictions.

But the early history of the electricity industry is illustrative of why stricter regulation might be warranted for industries that resemble utilities. Utilities like electric and cable companies have enormous upfront “fixed costs” — installing all that infrastructure is expensive — but extremely variable costs. In other words, it’s expensive to get wires in the ground, but it’s fairly cheap to keep them running and collect customers’ utility bills.

In their early days, electricity companies were largely unregulated and thrived in this environment, and as a result there were lots of them. By the late 1800s, there were some 29 franchises in the Chicago area alone. But while all that competition was great for a time, eventually they bid the prices down so much that companies could only cover their variable costs. Since no one could make any money, all the “little guys” soon went out of business, and monopolies emerged that could raise costs indefinitely.

Regulators concluded that the best arrangement for delivering electricity through the free market was through a highly regulated oligopoly, one where the utilities could still make money, but with careful limits on what they could charge consumers.

4. A slower internet hurts vulnerable people

Net neutrality advocates of all stripes — from libraries to members of the public health community — have emphasized the issue is one of social justice. Gamble said she is concerned about how repeal might affect the rise of tele-medicine, whereby people use video chat to communicate with doctors.

Gamble said in a phone interview that when people rely on the internet as a public service, even temporary and brief outages can have more serious consequences than, say, falling behind on your TV shows or not being able to post your latest food pic to Instagram — as Pai recently assured viewers they would continue to be able to do in a video for the Daily Caller.

“People can quickly lose their enthusiasm and energy when it’s difficult to access something,” Gamble said. “We’re seeing this with the opioid crisis. Can you imagine someone who’s addicted, it’s difficult enough to get them to seek treatment — but when their access to online counseling is unreliable and inconsistent?” 

The same issues of access apply to low-income or underserved people who need web access to find work and more: “Access to the internet is a fundamental need,” Jim Neal, president of the American Library Association, said. “We see people using the internet for learning, accessing health information, accessing information about community services, filing their taxes, applying for jobs.”

Interest groups like the ALA and the BWHI both fear that corporate-controlled internet will put their groups at a disadvantage when seeking these kinds of services.

5. Entrepreneurship and innovation could be stifled

Another group that’s particularly concerned about net neutrality’s repeal are small business owners who worry that tiered internet plans and other anti-consumer behavior could put them at a disadvantage. Back in 2015, before the rules were introduced, more than 100 small business owners and startup CEOs including the heads of Etsy, Imgur, Kickstarter and Yelp all signed a letter to the FCC in support of the net neutrality rules.

“We believe that the [rules] encourage competition and innovation by preventing ISPs from using their gatekeeper power to distort the internet market,” the letter reads. The neutrality “plan is the best proposal we have seen to date for protecting the open Internet.”

The major fear is that if you are an entrepreneur, say, with a small ecommerce website competing with big players like Amazon, it’s important that your web pages can load as quickly as those of your peers: Mobile site visitors who have to wait more than three seconds for a page to load give up 53% of the time, according to one study by Google’s internet ad-serving subsidiary.

The cable companies and Pai also argue that relaxing the rules will actually spur innovation among the internet and network providers. But Feld said the argument about innovation is insincere. ISPs aren’t really innovators, just like electricity companies weren’t really innovators. The utility companies pumping power into your home didn’t pioneer the answering machine, he explained, just as the cable companies didn’t pioneer direct video recording — startups called PhoneMate and TiVo did.

“This discussion goes back to when the internet was born,” Feld said. “Did you want the network to be a smart network that helped decide what services went through, because that’s how we’d develop innovation, or a universe where it was end to end, where it was ‘dumb pipe,’ and people on the edge would innovate. You don’t have a lot of innovation from the large networks, it’s not what they’re good at. It’s not how they make money.”

For their parts, Feld, also an attorney, and the American Library Association’s Neal said they planned to be involved in what will likely be a long legal battle to preserve net neutrality through the courts. Feld also said that a legislative solution is possible as well, pointing to early GOP lawmaker defectors as a sign that the popular opinion to keep neutrality might prevail.

 “I have to tell you that I’m looking forward to going to court and taking this thing down,” Feld said of today’s decision, adding, “I think there’s not a member of the GOP in Congress who after [Tuesday night] is not at least a little bit worried about their seat… [they are] not looking forward to going home and saying, ‘I backed the cable companies.’”

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday morning, the counter on Tony’s Thoughts reached five million visits.  When I started this blog in November 2009, I never imagined that there would be such interest in what I had to say.  Actually I had assumed I would blog for a few months and then move on.  I still cannot fathom that in the past eight years, I have made almost 3,600 posts.  

I thank colleagues and friends who have made suggestions on topics and issues for my blog.  I thank Matt Gold and the staff at the CUNY Commons who have provided this wonderful resource for us to share our interests with one another.  I thank my wife, Elaine, who has to listen to me in the morning about what I might want to write and blog about.

In sum, thanks to all of you!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Doug Jones is the apparent winner in the special election for the US Senate for the state of Alabama.  I use the word “apparent” because as of this writing, Jones had a 1.5 percent lead over his opponent, Roy Moore, who has not conceded the election.  Just about every news outlet has determined Jones won the election.  With his victory, people from all walks of life are rejoicing.  Here is a sample.

Bernie Sanders

“Congratulations to the people of Alabama for doing what few thought they would do. This is a victory not just for Jones and Democrats.  It is a victory for justice and decency.”

Alyssa Milano

“Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity, Alabama.”

Stephen Colbert

“It’s a Christmas miracle.”

New York Times Editorial

“Roy Moore Loses, Sanity Reigns”

Patricia Arquette

“Thank you to every Republican and Independent in Alabama who stood their ground & voted against a racist, homophobic, pedophile today.”

Frank Bruni in his column this morning described his jubilation as:

“For more than a year now, virtually all Democrats, many independents and even a significant share of Republicans have looked at President Donald Trump’s conduct and governing priorities and felt that they were suddenly in a foreign land. I count myself among this stunned and despairing group.

We saw decency in retreat. We saw common sense in decline. We saw a clique of unabashed plutocrats, Trump foremost among them, brazenly treating the federal government as a branding opportunity or a trough at which they could gorge. We saw a potent strain of authoritarianism jousting with the rule of law.

And we saw many Americans, including most Republican leaders, either endorsing or quietly putting up with this, to a point where we wondered if some corner had been turned forever.

That’s still an open question. But Alabamians provided a partial answer on Tuesday, showing that there are limits to what voters will tolerate, in terms of the lies they’ll believe, the vices they’ll ignore and the distance they’ll stray from civilized norms.”

I would thank the women who came forward and made public the abuse they suffered from Mr. Moore.  It is unlikely that Jones would have won without their disclosures.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday there was a terrorist attempt in New York that inflicted minor injuries on several people walking through a transit tunnel near Times Square. Rather than bringing the Big Apple to a halt, life went on.  A New York Times editorial this morning captures the spirit of New Yorkers after the incident.

“New Yorkers are not known for collectively possessing a stiff upper lip. Complaining about life’s indignities tends to be a default position. But there is a notable exception, and it was amply displayed on Monday after an explosion in a busy transit corridor at Times Square. At such moments New York embodies the classic British slogan of World War II vintage: Keep calm and carry on.

The city barely blinked after the morning rush-hour blast, which officials described as a failed attempt at terrorism by an immigrant from Bangladesh who had strapped a pipe bomb to his body. He ended up wounding himself seriously and inflicting minor injuries on three others. No doubt, the communal reaction would have been more frantic had the toll been higher. But the normal rhythms of the city paused only briefly. New Yorkers have become quite adept at keeping their composure.

Partly that’s because they have no other choice. They know their city is destined to be in the cross hairs of assorted madmen responding to religious and political commands or simply to the demons rattling in their heads. It has long been thus.

A century ago, New York was a favored target for self-described anarchists. In 1920, a bomb planted in a horse-drawn wagon exploded outside the J. P. Morgan bank on Wall Street, killing more than 30 people. Back then, it was America’s most devastating act of terrorism. New York in the 1970s endured a series of deadly attacks by Croatian, Puerto Rican and anti-Castro Cuban nationalists. Now the concern is terrorism perpetrated primarily by Islamist radicals, like the horror on Halloween when an Uzbek immigrant drove a pickup truck along a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring 12 others.

In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, the New York Police Department has worked hard to keep the city safe. But it can’t head off every attack, especially one like Monday’s, committed apparently by a lone wolf possibly inspired by the Islamic State…

…Barring mayhem in the next three weeks, the city will end 2017 with about 280 murders for the year, the lowest total on record and a distant cry from the 1990 peak of 2,245. This was accomplished at the same time that the city sharply curtailed the intrusive stop-and-frisk practices of the past, with young black and Latino men the chief targets. It doesn’t mean the police were not allowed to do their job. Instead of stopping vast numbers of mostly innocent men, they focused on crime “hot spots,” said Eric Piza, an expert on policing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I don’t think New York City has ever de-policed,” he said.

And it has not taken its eye off the ball in regard to terrorist threats. Its citizens know that, and that is why even on an unsettling Monday morning, they kept calm and carried on.”

I would add that we are grateful that no one was seriously injured yesterday but I also agree with the message in the New York Times editorial that we will not be intimidated by terrorists or anyone else wanting to take away how we feel about our City.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the University of Wisconsin at Madison plans to close 22 libraries and create six “hubs” designed to facilitate how students and scholars work today, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.  As reported:

“The plan follows a study that found professors and students use more research material online and work more frequently in groups. That pattern, the university argues, makes hubs — with better technology and flexible space — a good approach. “The shift,” the Journal reports, “will allow library staff to focus less on space management and more on assisting students and researchers.”

Still, some professors, graduate students, and staff members worry about the consequence of losing collection space, which would be cut by nearly two-thirds under the plan, and of closing more-specialized libraries. The Journal quotes Gloria Whiting, a history professor, as saying that “there is a scholarly value to browsing,” an activity that depends on the physical presence of material that the plan would house offsite.

Similar concerns have cropped up in recent years as other research libraries have changed their focus. When the New York Public Library announced plans, in 2012, to move a chunk of its collection to remote storage, for instance, a professor worried about its becoming a “vast internet cafe.” And storing books offsite can present plenty of logistical challenges.

Even so, “pivoting away from books and toward supporting students” is widely seen as a natural progression for libraries now that so much information is readily available online. Librarians’ jobs are changing, too, with a heightened focus on teaching. One niche they’ve carved out: enhancing students’ information literacy in an age of fake news.”

It is my opinion that this trend will continue as libraries adjust to the growing wealth and convenience of online resources.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Pay packages for private college presidents have continued to rise, as the number earning more than $1 million increased in 2015 and average compensation rose 9 percent.   In 2015, the year with the most recent data available, 58 presidents earned a compensation package worth more than $1 million, up from 39 presidents in 2014, according to the annual ranking of pay at 500 private colleges compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

At the head of the list was Nathan O. Hatch, the president of Wake Forest University, whose earnings of $4 million included a lump sum of nearly $3 million that he earned upon completing 10 years in the office.

In a statement, Wake Forest said Dr. Hatch’s compensation without those earnings — a base salary of $839,944 — was in line with similar institutions. Donna Boswell, the chair of the board of trustees, said Dr. Hatch’s leadership was “exceptional.”

Colleges frequently cite competitive pressures in setting the pay of presidents, who sometimes come from, or are recruited for, the corporate executive suite. They also note increasing demands on college leaders to raise money for their schools.

By that same token, these pay packages could “serve to feed a growing political argument for cutting tax benefits and public funding for higher education,” said Charlie Eaton, a professor at the University of California, Merced, who has studied university endowment wealth.

The top 10 included some expected names, including the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Columbia University, the University of Chicago and Boston University.

Dear Commons Community,

If you are at all concerned about how our American democracy has gone awry in the past two years, I highly recommend reading A.C. Grayling’s Democracy and its Crisis.   Grayling, the British philosopher and master at the New College of the Humanities in London, knows his topic well and takes the reader on a journey of the evolution of democracy from its earliest beginnings to the present.  If you are not interested in what the likes of Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant have to say about democracy, you can skip the first half of the book.  However, the second half will make you concerned about where our democracy is heading.  Here is an excerpt from the New York Times Book Review:

“A. C. Grayling, a British philosopher and critic whose subjects range from 17th-century epistemology to 20th-century war crimes, has come to tell us what he knows: that at one time we admired and understood representative democracy, and not without reason, but that in the era of Donald Trump and Brexit, democracy has been “made to fail.” Why has this happened? Because of insufficient checks on the power of political and economic elites, a failure in the civic education required of an informed populace, and the ideological distortions created through the lobbying efforts of special interests.

Representative democracy ticks more of the boxes citizens want from their government than any other system we’ve tried to design. But when we forget this, rancorous populism and plebiscitary politics take hold, and we need to be given an old-fashioned history lesson to warn of the dangers ahead. As Grayling reminds us, democracy, understood as the rule of the majority, has never been sufficient in itself. Plato, Aristotle and Machiavelli all knew that more was needed, whether that meant enshrining constitutional rules to avoid the arbitrary exercise of power, imposing standards of behavior on elected officials or supporting a healthy ambivalence toward rulers by the ruled.

From these classical debates, increasingly complex defenses of representative democracy emerged in England, America and France. Leading thinkers in the age of revolutions tried to reconcile the need for modern republics of great size and diversity with the idea of popular sovereignty — without succumbing to traditional sources of division and faction, most notably brought about by inequalities of property and wealth. What these representative structures never resolved was the question of how much economic inequality was necessary to make the system work and how much might flip it into oligarchy, threatening its very foundations.”

After reviewing the presidential election in the United States and the Brexit vote in the UK , Grayling paraphrases George Mobiot in his conclusion that the capture of the democratic political process by a highly partisan group means that it frees itself, its supporters, and funders, from the controls of the democratic order and the interests of both minorities and the overall collective. 

Grayling’s last paragraph:

“Subverted democracy is no democracy;  a political order which is meant to translate democratic preferences into sound government, but where the preferences have been manipulated and the government is operated in the interests of only one part of the populace, is not a democratic political order.  This, as the body of this book argues, is the situation in the United States and the UK today.”

Read it!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It was announced yesterday that the City University of New York and the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) have reached an agreement to reduce the faculty teaching load by three hours to be phased in over three years. Below is a statement from PSC President Barbara Bowen.

This was long overdue.

Tony

———————————-

 Dear Colleagues,

I am delighted to announce that the PSC has achieved an agreement with CUNY to implement a permanent reduction in the full-time faculty teaching load, to be phased in starting next fall. The joint announcement is below.

This is a historic achievement for the union and a major gain for CUNY and our students. It was possible only because the union insisted that we would not sign the last contract without a conceptual agreement and because union members organized and stayed strong in support. Congratulations to the many, many people who were part of making this happen.

Details will follow next week; we are just signing the agreement today. Congratulations, PSC members!

Barbara Bowen

President, PSC 

———————————-

CUNY AND PSC REACH AGREEMENT ON TEACHING WORKLOAD

The City University of New York and Professional Staff Congress have reached agreement on a restructuring of the workload of full-time teaching faculty that will enable professors to devote more time to individual work with students, to advising, holding office hours, conducting academic research and engaging in other activities that contribute to student success.

The agreement reduces the annual contractual undergraduate teaching workload by three credit hours and will be phased in over three years, one credit hour a year, starting with the 2018-19 academic year. The agreement covers both the senior and community colleges of CUNY and all full-time classroom teaching faculty.

Chancellor Milliken said: “This agreement recognizes that faculty work encompasses critical elements in addition to classroom teaching, better positioning our faculty to address critical responsibilities such as student advising and mentoring. This important step not only aligns faculty work to achieve CUNY’s ambitious strategic goals, it reflects peer and best practice nationally and will strengthen the University’s competitiveness in attracting and retaining talented faculty.”

Dr. Bowen said: “This is a breakthrough for the University, its faculty—and above all, its students. Multiple studies show that the single most important academic factor in student success is time spent individually with faculty. The agreement will give us that time. CUNY faculty members will embrace the opportunity to provide the support students need, contribute to important research and offer an education worthy of our students’ aspirations.”

Dr. Vita Rabinowitz, the University’s Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost said: “By moving CUNY closer to a teaching workload that is in line with those in place at other quality universities and colleges, this agreement further strengthens our ability to compete in the recruitment of top-tier faculty. Just as important is the additional time faculty will now spend meeting and advising students, as well as on their research and scholarship. This time invested outside the classroom will provide critical support to CUNY’s goals of increasing graduation rates and remaining a premier research university.”

When the University and PSC settled the last collective bargaining agreement in June 2016, they agreed to convene a joint labor-management committee with the goal of addressing the faculty’s teaching workload. With the agreement announced today, the university and union will move on to negotiating a successor to the recently expired contract.

The City University of New York is the nation’s leading urban public university. Founded in 1847, CUNY counts 13 Nobel Prize and 23 MacArthur (“Genius”) grant winners among its alumni. CUNY students, alumni and faculty have garnered scores of other prestigious honors over the years in recognition of historic contributions to the advancement of the sciences, business, the arts and myriad other fields. The University comprises 24 institutions: 11 senior colleges, seven community colleges, William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY School of Law, CUNY School of Professional Studies and CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. The University serves more than 272,000 degree-seeking students. CUNY offers online baccalaureate and master’s degrees through the School of Professional Studies.

The Professional Staff Congress (NYSUT, AFT #2334) represents almost 30,000 full- and part-time faculty and staff at the City University of New York. PSC members educate hundreds of thousands of mostly low-income New Yorkers, the majority from communities of color.

Dear Commons Community,

The California wildfires continue to rage and spread destruction.  As of this morning, 21 people died and almost 300 are missing.  The photos below say it all. Our prayers are with those who have lossed loved ones and homes.

Tony