Dear Commons Community,

I am in Bethesda, Maryland, for another set of meetings with colleagues from the United States Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and ABT Associates for our project for the  What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) series of publications. 

Tentatively titled, Using Instructional Technology to Support Postsecondary Learning, this project will present recommendations for educators to address challenges in using technology in their classrooms.  It will be based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the opinions of recognized experts. The crux of the publication will be a set of recommendations that inform best practice in the use of instructional technology.  

We will be spending two days together reviewing about 30 original research projects all of which are based on methods criteria that meet IES standards for evidence.  A synthesis of these studies will be drafted and available later this year.

Tony

Dear Commons Community, 

A new twist has evolved in the investigation of Russian involvement in the presidential election in 2016.  According to several sources, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has opened up the possibility of Russian funding of Donald Trump’s campaign via the National Rifle Association.  Here is a report from McClatchy:

“The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because Mueller’s investigation is confidential and mostly involves classified information.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined comment.

Disclosure of the Torshin investigation signals a new dimension in the 18-month-old FBI probe of Russia’s interference. McClatchy reported a year ago that a multi-agency U.S. law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s intervention, begun even before the start of the 2016 general election campaign, initially included a focus on whether the Kremlin secretly helped fund efforts to boost Trump, but little has been said about that possibility in recent months.

The extent to which the FBI has evidence of money flowing from Torshin to the NRA, or of the NRA’s participation in the transfer of funds, could not be learned.

However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million. The reporting gap could be explained by the fact that independent groups are not required to reveal how much they spend on Internet ads or field operations, including get-out-the-vote efforts.

During the campaign, Trump was an outspoken advocate of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, at one point drawing a hail of criticism by suggesting that, if Clinton were elected, gun rights advocates could stop her from winning confirmation of liberal Supreme Court justices who support gun control laws.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” Trump said at a rally in August 2016. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Spanish authorities tag Torshin for money laundering

Torshin, a leading figure in Putin’s party, has been implicated in money laundering by judicial authorities in Spain, as Bloomberg News first revealed in 2016. Spanish investigators alleged in an almost 500-page internal report that Torshin, who was then a senator, capitalized on his government role to assist mobsters laundering funds through Spanish properties and banks, Bloomberg reported

A summary obtained by McClatchy of the still-secret report links Torshin to Russian money laundering and describes him as a godfather in a major Russian criminal organization called Taganskaya.

Investigators for three congressional committees probing Russia’s 2016 operations also have shown interest in Torshin, a lifetime NRA member who has attended several of its annual conventions. At the group’s meeting in Kentucky in May 2016, Torshin spoke to Donald Trump Jr. during a gala event at the group’s national gathering in Kentucky in May 2016, when his father won an earlier-than-usual NRA presidential endorsement.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the investigation.

The NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Torshin could not be reached for comment, and emails to the Russian central bank seeking comment from Torshin and the bank elicited no response.

Mueller’s investigation has been edging closer to Trump’s inner circle. This week, The New York Times reported that Mueller had negotiated an agreement under which Steve Bannon, who was recently ousted from his post as a senior White House adviser, would fully respond to questions about the Trump campaign. Bannon headed the campaign over its final weeks.

Since taking over the investigation last May, Mueller has secured guilty pleas from two former Trump aides, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom agreed to cooperate with prosecutors; and criminal charges against two other top campaign figures, former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.

 A year ago, three U.S. intelligence agencies signed off on a joint assessment that was the basis for the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and other sanctions against the Kremlin. The intelligence agencies concluded that what began as a sophisticated Russian operation to undermine Americans’ faith in democracy morphed into a drive to help Trump win.

Torshin is among a phalanx of Putin proxies to draw the close attention of U.S. investigators, who also have tracked the activities of several Russian billionaires and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs that have come in contact with Trump or his surrogates.

Torshin was a senior member of the Russian Senate and in recent years helped set up a Moscow gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms. He not only spoke with Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, but he also tried unsuccessfully to broker a meeting between Putin and the presidential candidate in 2016, according to the Times. He further sought to meet privately with the candidate himself near the 2016 NRA convention.

Torshin’s ties with the NRA have flourished in recent years. In late 2015, he hosted two dinners for a high-level NRA delegation during its week-long visit to Moscow that included meetings with influential Russian government and business figures.

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

The prosecutors’ evidence included 33 audio recordings of phone conversations from mid-2012 to mid-2013 between Torshin and Romanov, who allegedly laundered funds to buy a hotel on the ritzy island of Mallorca. Torshin had an 80 percent stake in the venture, the Spanish report said.

In the phone conversations, Romanov referred to Torshin as the “godfather” or “boss.” Torshin has denied any links to organized crime and said his dealings with Romanov were purely “social.”

The Madrid-based newspaper El Pais last year reported that Spanish police were on the verge of arresting Torshin in the summer of 2013, when he had planned to attend a birthday party for Romanov, but a Russian prosecutor tipped the banker to plans to nab him if he set foot in Spain, and Torshin canceled his trip.

Congress looking at Torshin, too

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also have taken an interest in Torshin as part of their parallel inquiries into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.

In questioning Donald Trump Jr. at a closed-door hearing in mid-December, investigators for the Senate Intelligence Committee asked about his encounter with Torshin at the NRA convention, according to a source familiar with the hearing.

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., said his client and Torshin talked only briefly when they were introduced during a meal.

“It was all gun-related small talk,” Futerfas told McClatchy.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent letters in November to two senior Trump foreign policy aides, J.D. Gordon and Sam Clovis, seeking copies of any communications they had with or related to Torshin; the NRA; veteran conservative operative Paul Erickson; Maria Butina, a Torshin protege who ran the Russian pro-gun group he helped launch, and others linked to Torshin.

Erickson has raised funds for the NRA and is a friend of Butina’s. Shortly before the NRA’s May 2016 convention, he emailed Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn about the possibility of setting up a meeting between Putin and Trump during the campaign, according to the Times.

Erickson’s email to Dearborn bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, Erickson solicited advice from Dearborn and his boss, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, about the best way to connect Putin and Trump.

Both Dearborn and Butina, who has been enrolled as a graduate student at American University since mid 2016, have been asked to appear before the Judiciary Committee, but so far Erickson has not, sources familiar with the matter said.

Bridges LLC, a company that Erickson and Butina established in February 2016 in Erickson’s home state of South Dakota, also is expected to draw scrutiny. Public records don’t reveal any financial transactions involving Bridges. In a phone interview last year, Erickson said the firm was established in case Butina needed any monetary assistance for her graduate studies — an unusual way to use an LLC.

Erickson said he met Butina and Torshin when he and David Keene, a former NRA president, attended a meeting of Right to Bear Arms a few years ago in Moscow. Erickson described the links between Right to Bear Arms and the NRA as a “moral support operation both ways.”

Torshin’s contacts with the NRA and the Trump campaign last year also came to the attention of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser. When Torshin tried to arrange a personal meeting with Trump near the NRA convention site last May, Kushner scotched the idea, according to emails forwarded to Kushner.

On top of Torshin’s efforts to cozy up to the Trump campaign, the Moscow banker has forged ties with powerful conservatives, including Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Californian whom some have deemed Putin’s best friend in Washington. In a phone interview in 2016, Rohrabacher recalled meeting Torshin in Moscow a few years earlier and described him as “a mover and shaker.”

Last February when Torshin visited Washington, Rockefeller heir and conservative patron George O’Neill Jr. hosted a fancy four-hour dinner for the banker on Capitol Hill, an event that drew Rohrabacher, Erickson and other big names on the right. Rohrabacher has labeled Torshin as “conservatives’ favorite Russian,” Torshin was in Washington at the time to lead his country’s delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump spoke. The banker also was slated to see the presidentat a meet-and-greet event prior to a White House breakfast, but Torshin’s invitation was canceled after the White House learned of his alleged mob connections, Yahoo News reported.

Torshin’s involvement with the NRA may have begun in 2013 when he attended the group’s convention in Houston. Keene, the ex-NRA leader and an avid hunter, was instrumental in building a relationship with the Russian, according to multiple conservative sources.

Keene also helped lead a high-level NRA delegation to Moscow in December 2015 for a week of lavish meals and meetings with Russian business and political leaders. The week’s festivities included a visit to a Russian gun company and a meeting with a senior Kremlin official and wealthy Russians, according to a member of the delegation, Arnold Goldschlager, a California doctor who has been active in NRA programs to raise large donations.

Others on the trip included Joe Gregory, who runs the NRA’s Ring of Freedom program for elite donors who chip in checks of $1 million and upwards, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke and Pete Brownell, a chief executive of a gun company and longtime NRA board member.

In a phone interview, Goldschlager described the trip as a “people-to-people mission,” and said he was impressed with Torshin — who, he noted, hosted both a “welcoming” dinner for the NRA contingent and another one.

“They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food,” Goldschlager said. “The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels.”

If true, this will add significant fuel to the collusion inquiry.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Senate Democrats voted yesterday to reopen the government without a legislative fix on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration program, and accepted a deal that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was willing to give Democrats on Friday ― the promise of a vote on a DACA bill and a three-week government funding extension.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“The liberal base of the Democratic Party may be upset that it took less than a DACA fix in exchange for ending a shutdown, but that’s only relevant if you actually think Democrats could have gotten a DACA bill as a result of this shutdown ― and that the shutdown wasn’t hurting Democrats at all.

Republicans were happy to claim throughout this three-day government funding lapse that Democrats had made a strategic error in blocking a government funding bill.

It’s also inaccurate to say Democrats didn’t get anything over the last couple of days. McConnell made stronger statements in support of an open debate on a DACA bill on both Sunday night and Monday morning, making it more difficult for him to wriggle out of not putting forward an immigration bill that has Democratic support or controlling the amendment process so that Democrats don’t have a chance to change the bill.

If ― as progressives were happy to tweet Monday ― Democrats shouldn’t trust McConnell, forcing him to make more explicit promises on the Senate floor, promises that will surely be thrown back in his face should he fail to live up to them and there is another shutdown, that isn’t to be taken for granted. And if the Senate were able to pass a bipartisan DACA bill, while also demonstrating that a more conservative DACA bill currently making its way through the House doesn’t have the votes in the Senate, they make it much easier to argue that it’s Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) who are shutting down the government by not giving Democrats a vote in the House.

The Democratic position of not voting for a government funding bill until there’s a DACA deal seems much more reasonable if there’s actual legislation that’s passed the Senate and is being ignored in the House. You’d be certain to hear the words, “Give us a vote, Mr. Speaker!”

The reality of this shutdown standoff is that it’s hardly over. Democrats agreed to a continuing resolution that will keep the government open for 17 days. They took the Children’s Health Insurance Program off the negotiating table with a six-year extension of the program. And they gave up hardly any leverage to do so.”

Donald Trump was missing throughout the weekend’s negotiation. Maybe that was a good thing!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading the best-selling  Fire and Fury:  Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff.  This book has caused quite a sensation for its comments from White House insiders and other gossip sources that generally make Donald Trump look like someone totally unfit for office.  It is a quick read and anyone who is pre-disposed to the book’s theme will likely finish it in a matter of days.  I found it entertaining but I kept questioning the book’s accuracy and depictions.   As someone who writes non-fiction, I try to be scrupulous about citing sources.  There is not a single citation or footnote in this book so the reader has to accept everything on the author’s word.  There are many tintalizing comments, most of which have been published in the media. In preparing this post, I have looked at several reviews and commentaries about the book and below is an excerpt of a piece written by Alex Shephard for The New Republic that is a balanced account.

“Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the first year of the Trump administration, has everything we have grown to expect from a Michael Wolff joint: snappy dialogue, juicy morsels revealing what some of the most powerful people on earth really think, and a pervasive unscrupulousness. Fire and Fury is a magpie’s nest built out of gossip Wolff traded with Donald Trump’s inner circle. Thus we learn, from excerpts in New York, The Guardian, and The Hollywood Reporter, that Steve Bannon described Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with Russians at Trump Tower as “treasonous.” We learn that Trump told the White House staff not to pick up his shirts off the floor, that Trump is so out of touch that he did not know who John Boehner was, that Trump’s famous hair covers “an absolutely clean pate—a contained island after scalp-reduction ­surgery.”

What ties all of this gossipy ephemera together is a central thesis: that Trump is singularly unqualified to be president, and everyone around him knows it. It’s a classic story: The emperor has no clothes. The problem is that we already knew this from less salacious reporting extending back years. Wolff’s main contribution to what we know about Trump is a willingness to seemingly say anything, whether or not it’s strictly true—and that only bolsters the Trump administration’s case that the fake news media is out to get him.

This insouciant relationship with the truth is just as central to Wolff’s work as his commitment to access and gossip. Writing in The New Republic in 2004, Michelle Cottle skewered Wolff for proudly disregarding accuracy.

Wolff has pushed back against this characterization, telling Axios that he has tapes that back up private (and seemingly dubious) conversations between Bannon and former Fox News chief Roger Ailes. But already Wolff has been caught making very suspicious claims…

…Did the billionaire Robert Mercer give $5 million to Trump’s campaign? Campaign finance laws would bar such a contribution. Did Rupert Murdoch really call Trump a “fucking idiot”? Who knows. Are Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner plotting Ivanka’s presidential run? We’ll see.

…

This bordering-on-fabulism tendency may reflect the messiness of reality in the Trump era, but it has also driven much of the justified criticism of Fire and Fury. The White House, the Republican National Committee, and a number of journalists have used it as a cudgel over the past day. And they may be understating the problem with Wolff’s reporting in Fire and Fury.

Because the entire news media is structured on “new news”—novel reporting that is then chewed over by talking heads for hours—Wolff has been booked everywhere from TODAY to Meet the Press to discuss his scoops. But while many of Wolff’s details are new, his broader point is familiar to anyone who has spent the past year reading The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast, or watching those same cable news shows. The story that Wolff relates in Fire and Fury is the story of the Trump administration writ large: Trump is an unstable, angry, and incompetent man who is fundamentally incapable of governing. Stories of Trump locking himself in his room, raging at aides, and watching hours of cable television have become common knowledge.

There is value in publishing a larger, contextualized account of the Trump White House. There is nothing to be gained, however, from reporting information about Trump that can’t be locked down. Wolff’s recklessness fuels the Trump administration’s critique of journalists and the media. It suggests that journalists really are out to get the president—after all, in Fire and Fury, Wolff suggests that journalists will print anything, so long as it casts Trump in a bad light. The rewards are clear: His cavalier reporting has led to TV bookings, a #1 Amazon bestseller, and insane traffic for any of the outlets that agreed to publish his work.

Wolff’s main claims—that the Trump campaign didn’t expect to win, that they were unprepared to take the reins of power, that Trump himself is unfit for office, and that his advisers are powerless to control him—all track with reality. But Wolff’s seeming inability to distinguish between fact and fiction, between fluffy gossip and valuable information, ultimately undercuts his work. And ours, too.”

I tend to agree with Shephard!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Millions of women, children and male supporters turned out yesterday for the second Women’s March, a nationwide series of protests against U.S. President Donald Trump marking the end of his tumultuous first year in office.

The coordinated rallies in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and about 250 other cities featured speakers who blasted Trump for policies that many said hurt women and who urged voters to turn out for congressional elections in November. Rallies were also staged in a number of cities overseas.

It is too early to estimate the total number of  people who turned out for the rallies but last year about 5 million people participated, making it one of the largest protests in American history.  

The photos tell the story.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Much of the federal government officially shut down early this morning after Senate Democrats blocked consideration of a four-week spending measure to keep the government operating.  Exactly what this means for the various government services is not clear.  More than one million active-duty military personnel will serve with no lapse, but will not be paid until the shutdown ends. Most mandatory programs — entitlements such as Social Security that are automatically funded rather than subject to congressional appropriations — can continue without disruption.  The photo above on the Huffington Post website shows Donald Trump’s head in silhouette and implies that he owns the shutdown.  Here is a further description of the events last night courtesy of the New York Times:

“The shutdown, coming one year to the day after President Trump took office, set off a new round of partisan recriminations and posed risks for both parties. It came after a fruitless last-minute negotiating session at the White House between Mr. Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

With just 50 senators voting in favor, Senate Republican leaders fell well short of the 60 votes necessary to proceed on the spending measure, which had passed the House on Thursday. Five conservative state Democrats voted for the spending measure. Five Republicans voted against it, although one of those, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, did so for procedural reasons.

As the clock ticked toward midnight, when funding for the government was set to expire, senators huddled on the floor of the crowded Senate chamber, searching for some way forward.

Then, in the early morning hours, Mr. McConnell proposed a measure that would keep the government open for another three weeks, not four as the House measure would have done, and said the Senate would come back to into session at noon Saturday.

 “Senate Democrats own the Schumer Shutdown,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “Tonight, they put politics above our national security, military families, and our country’s ability to serve all Americans.”

Democrats, calling it the “Trump shutdown,” countered that Republicans were responsible for the management of a government in their control.

 “Every American knows the Republican Party controls the White House, the Senate, the House,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s their job to keep the government open.”

In addition to funding government operations through Feb. 16, the House-passed bill would extend funding by six years for the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, a provision intended to secure Democratic votes.

But Democrats were seeking concessions on other priorities, such as protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation, increasing domestic spending, securing disaster aid for Puerto Rico and bolstering the government’s response to the opioid epidemic.

Federal agencies had prepared for the shutdown; on Thursday night, officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agency leaders to give their employees informal notice of who would be furloughed and who would not if funding lapsed.

Formal notifications are to be given as early as Saturday morning, budget office officials said, insisting on anonymity to brief reporters about the details of what the White House called “lapse planning and shutdown operations.”

The failure of the federal government to reach an agreement on averting the shutdown falls on the shoulders of both Republicans and Democrats, however, President Trump owns a disproportionate amount of the blame based on how he has [or has not] handled negotiations the past two weeks.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As we have heard for the past several weeks, today is the deadline to avoid a shutdown of federal government services if a funding bill is not passed in the Congress and signed by the President.  The news media today will be watching every move in Washington, D.C. to determine if the shutdown can be averted.  As of this (Friday) morning, the House of Representatives passed a one-month funding package that will be sent to the Senate today. Observers are casting doubt as to whether the Senate will approve the House bill.  Even if the Senate passes the bill, it still has to be approved by the President.  Here is a recap of where the spending bill is and its chances of passage, courtesy of The Huffington Post.

“A day before a government shutdown, House Republican leaders cut a last-minute deal with conservatives to get a one-month spending bill out of their chamber and on to the Senate floor. But that legislation to extend government funding still faces challenges, particularly after conservatives won concessions that could set up a shutdown in the coming weeks and the Senate delayed a vote late Thursday night.

The House voted 230-197 for the four-week continuing resolution, with 11 Republicans voting no and six Democrats voting for it. A couple of hours later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) set up a vote to end debate on the spending bill, and then promptly delayed it.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged Republicans to hold the vote now, so Democrats could demonstrate that Republicans didn’t have the votes and lawmakers from both sides could work toward a different solution. But McConnell wasn’t having it. Now the Senate appears likely to vote Friday on ending debate, and unless something changes overnight, that vote still looks like it will fail.

All day Thursday, the stopgap spending bill has looked to be in doubt, both because of Senate Democrats and House conservatives. In the House, the conservative House Freedom Caucus confidently told any reporter who’d listen that they had enough votes in their caucus to stop the bill, assuming every Democrat opposed the measure.

The promises from Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) that he could ― and would ― sink the stopgap spending bill eventually forced House GOP leadership to cut a deal. In exchange for about 20 votes that Meadows said he had in his back pocket, Republican leaders agreed to hold a vote on a defense-only appropriations bill in the next 10 legislative days. That bill would break spending caps that lawmakers set in 2011, but it would not simultaneously raise those limits for non-defense spending. (The bill Republicans passed Thursday night would once again delay “sequestration,” the automatic spending cuts that would be triggered without an agreement.)

Conservatives also got commitments on the House voting on a conservative immigration bill that, in return for extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, would approve money for a border wall, curtail family reunification immigration and end the diversity visa lottery program ― among other right-wing immigration priorities.

President Donald Trump personally approved of the agreement Thursday afternoon when he called Meadows during a Freedom Caucus meeting. With the president’s blessing, Meadows and former HFC Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) went to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office and cut the deal.

The agreement got the bill out of the House, but it hasn’t guaranteed anything in the Senate. If anything, it may make Senate passage of the four-week continuing resolution (CR) even more difficult.

Senate Democrats have been lining up against this four-week CR for days now, even though it funds the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years. Democrats oppose the bill because it doesn’t deliver any legislative fix for Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

Without a DACA deal, Senate Democrats look poised to vote against ending debate on the four-week CR. And if Republicans can’t close debate, government funding will lapse at midnight Friday.

Democrats always could supply enough support for the Senate to get to the magic number of 60 votes to push through the CR, but Democrats instead look more apt to reject the bill and maybe agree to a shorter term for the spending measure ― or insist on assurances of their own.

When HuffPost asked Meadows Thursday night what, in effect, conservatives really got ― because the deal conservatives struck was really to just hold two votes, not necessarily enact any real legislative changes, and defense hawks appeared to already have a deal to bring up a separate spending bill for the Pentagon ― Meadows said there were “subplots” to the agreement that he wouldn’t go into now.

Those subplots look like a pact that Republicans will pass the two bills conservatives angled for ― the defense-only spending legislation and the immigration measure ― and then not cave when Congress hits the next government funding deadline.

Trump and conservatives have seemed open to a shutdown fight, and, ultimately, this deal might move Congress closer to a shutdown either this week or in the near future.

Senate Democrats don’t, at the moment, appear to be bluffing that they’ll oppose ending debate on this short-term funding bill. And without an agreement, lawmakers can’t send a bill to the president’s desk.

Senators could strike a new deal on a CR, either for that shorter-term bill that some Democrats have indicated they’d support, or they could come up with a larger deal that would address DACA and win the support of Democrats in both chambers.

But short of those possibilities, or some other last-minute option, Congress still appears to be veering toward a shutdown that no lawmaker really wanted.”

We will know more by midnight tonight!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Artificial intelligence is making inroads in various areas of human endeavor.  Major tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple have hired many of the most talented individuals in A.I. development.  To expand A.I. to others who might not have nor be able to afford to hire an A.I. staff, Google announced yesterday that it will be selling relatively easy to use A.I. development services.  As reported in the New York Times:

“Google has been using artificial intelligence to build other artificially intelligent systems for the last several months.  Now the company plans to sell this kind of “automated machine learning” technology to other businesses across the globe. On Wednesday, Google introduced a cloud-computing service that it bills as a way to build a so-called computer vision system that suits your particular needs — even if you have little or no experience with the concepts that drive it.

If you are a radiologist, for example, you can use CT scans to automatically train a computer algorithm that identifies signs of lung cancer. If you run a real estate website, you can build an algorithm that distinguishes between living rooms and kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.

At least that is the pitch. “You don’t need a Ph.D. in machine learning,” said Diane Greene, who oversees Google’s cloud computing group. “But you can still build a highly accurate machine learning model.”

Like many of the world’s largest internet companies in recent years, Google has begun relying on machine learning — computer algorithms that can learn tasks on their own by analyzing large amounts of data. These include systems that learn to recognize commands spoken into smartphones or translate one language into another. They also include algorithms that learn to build other machine learning systems.

Google uses the technique while building systems that can recognize faces, products, landmarks and other objects in photos. In some cases, these algorithms are more accurate than something that is designed solely by engineers.

The new service is part of a widespread effort to expand the power of modern A.I. to businesses that are largely unfamiliar with this rapidly evolving technology. Like Google, a New York start-up called Clarifai offers an online service that helps customers train computer vision algorithms.

At the same time, several other start-ups, like Boston’s DataRobot and Silicon Valley’s H2O.ai, offer services designed to help businesses analyze the way products, customers, markets and employees behaved in the past and predict how they will perform in the future.

“They aim to automate data science in general,” said Randy Olson, a data scientist at Life Epigenetics, a company in Portland, Ore.

Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft have hired a large portion of the people who specialize in the machine learning techniques that are rapidly accelerating the progress of A.I. — a community of only 10,000 researchers worldwide, according to one estimate. That means most businesses don’t have the talent needed to explore the latest machine learning.”

This is an interesting step forward for A.I development.  While the Google service focuses only on image recognition, it portends a future when A.I. development will be much easier than it is now and will be available to companies, organizations, and people using it for a variety of purposes.  Even colleges and schools might consider using A.I. for instruction, advisement, counseling and other educational services.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Democrat Patty Schachtner won a special election for a state Senate seat in Wisconsin yesterday scoring a huge upset victory for her party in a district that President Donald Trump handily captured just over a year ago. As reported in The Huffington Post:

“It was the latest in a string of election victories for Democrats since Trump took office, and a sign of hope for the party that the energy from the base and frustration with the president could lead to more wins in November.

With every precinct counted, The Washington Post reported that Schachtner, the chief medical examiner for St. Croix County, won by 9 percentage points.

Republican Sheila Harsdorf had held the seat since 2001, but she left in November to become Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s agriculture secretary. In 2016, Harsdorf won re-election by 26 percentage points, and Trump beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by 17 points. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the district in 2012. 

“This campaign was about investing in people and revitalizing our area, whether that is making sure that every Wisconsinite has access to affordable health care, funding our public schools, technical colleges and UW campuses, or investing in good-paying jobs right here in Western Wisconsin,” Schachtner said in a statement. “Tonight, voters showed that they share those priorities, and I am deeply grateful for their support.”

Attorney Adam Jarchow, Schachtner’s GOP opponent, conceded the race Tuesday night. 

Republicans clearly sensed that this district was vulnerable. The conservative Americans for Prosperity spent at least $50,000 on ads, and the Wisconsin Alliance for Reform and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce threw in another $80,000. 

On the Democratic side, Greater Wisconsin spent $30,000, and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee spent $10,000. 

Republicans will still control the state Legislature, with an 18-14 majority and one vacancy in the Senate. 

Democrats have fared well in other special elections since Trump became president, scoring big wins in Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma and other places around the country. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state office, said that, with the win in Wisconsin, there are 34 districts that have flipped from red to blue since Trump’s inauguration.”

This bodes well for Democrats running in congressional, state, and local elections in 2018.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Bill Miller, an American investor, fund manager, and philanthropist and former chairman and chief investment officer of Legg Mason Capital Management, has donated $75 million to the philosophy department of his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.  It is believed to be the largest gift ever to a philosophy department.  Here is an excerpt from a New York Times article on this story:

“The quants and their algorithms may have taken over Wall Street. But one investment legend is making a big bet on a more old-fashioned mode of analysis: philosophy.

Bill Miller, the value investor who famously beat the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index for 15 consecutive years has donated $75 million to the philosophy department of Johns Hopkins University.

The gift, formally announced on Tuesday, appears to the largest by far to a philosophy department anywhere in the world, the university said. It will allow the department, which will be renamed for Mr. Miller, to nearly double in size, to 22 full-time faculty members, while also supporting graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and new courses aimed at attracting undergraduates.

While a number of billionaires and business titans have created splashy million-dollar philosophy prizes, Mr. Miller — a former Ph.D. student in philosophy at Johns Hopkins — said he was pleased to be making an investment in the infrastructure of the profession.

“I wanted the gift to go to something where it would have a significant impact, and change the trajectory,” Mr. Miller, whose firm, Miller Value Partners, is based in Baltimore, said in a telephone interview.

Philosophy, he added, “has made a huge difference both to my life outside business, in terms of adding a great degree of richness and knowledge, and to the actual decisions I’ve made in investing.”

Mr. Miller gift may seem modest compared with the $1.5 billion that Michael Bloomberg has given to Johns Hopkins over his lifetime, including a $300 million gift to its School of Public Health in 2016.

But Ronald Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins, said Mr. Miller’s gift would give a much-needed boost to the beleaguered humanities, at a moment when many universities, and the governments that support them, are heavily focused on the so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math.

“This gift is so wonderfully contrarian,” Mr. Daniels said. “To have someone of Bill’s stature who is willing to lend an imprimatur to philosophy, this most ancient of disciplines, and to the idea of its continuing relevance as an end in itself, is simply spectacular.”

Mr. Miller, 67, is not the only old-guard Wall Street figure with a background in philosophy. George Soros was heavily influenced by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper. Carl Icahn was a philosophy major at Princeton, where he wrote a senior thesis titled “The Problem of Formulating an Adequate Explication of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning.” On the watchdog side of the street, Sheila Bair, the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, was also a philosophy major.”

Kudos to Mr. Miller for his faith in and generosity to the study of philosophy!

Tony