Dear Commons Community,

Barbara Underwood, the New York State attorney general, gave Donald Trump a birthday present yesterday and filed a lawsuit against him alleging that “Mr. Trump used [the Trump Foundation’s] charitable assets to pay off the legal obligations of entities he controlled, to promote Trump hotels, to purchase personal items, and to support his presidential election campaign…”    For those of us in New York who have been hearing rumblings of this for at least two years, it is surprising that Ms. Underwood’s action has taken so long.  Below is an excerpt from a New York Times editorial on the matter.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

Tony

————————————————————————

Donald Trump’s Charity Begins, and Ends, at Home

The Editorial Board

June 14, 2018

It’s long been clear that Donald Trump’s family foundation, the Trump Foundation, is not a generous and ethical charity, but just another of his grifts. He branded it the way he brands his buildings, using his name to generate income that he then has used largely for his own benefit. In 2016, The Washington Post reported that many of Mr. Trump’s boasts about his charitable giving could not be verified. Those that could be were often gifts to himself.

For instance, the largest reported donation the foundation has made — $264,631 — was used to refurbish the fountain in front of Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel in New York. He has not given any of his own supposed fortune to the foundation since 2008, relying instead on the beneficence of others, whether pro-wrestling mavens or simply Americans who thought they were supporting, say, veterans. And yet the Trump Foundation was repeatedly compared with the Clinton Foundation, which, despite justifiable concern about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s dual roles as philanthropic boosters and politicians, is a credible charitable enterprise that focuses on global health and has saved perhaps millions of lives.

A lawsuit filed by the New York State attorney general, Barbara Underwood, on Thursday morning confirms many of these facts and adds a few new ones, alleging that “the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” Ms. Underwood said in a statement.

In precise and damning detail, the suit catalogs Mr. Trump’s repeated violation of both state and federal laws by tapping the foundation’s funds for his own personal purposes, including paying out legal settlements, making political contributions and purchasing a portrait of himself to hang in one of his golf clubs.

The Trump Foundation is “an empty shell,” the suit says, with no employees and no oversight by its board of directors, which has not met for nearly 20 years. This has allowed Mr. Trump to run it “according to his whim, rather than the law.”

A couple of examples: In 2013, the foundation gave $25,000 to “And Justice for All,” a political organization supporting the re-election of Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi. But on its federal tax form, the foundation claimed that it did not contribute money to any political campaign, and that it had donated $25,000 to a Kansas-based nonprofit, Justice for All, even though it had not. The foundation later attributed the false report to an accounting error.

Days before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump held a fund-raiser on behalf of military veterans, raising about $5.6 million, half of which went directly to his foundation. The money was then managed not by philanthropists but by top Trump campaign staff members, who handed it out to veterans’ organizations across Iowa just before the caucus — converting the donations into illegal campaign contributions.

“This is not how private foundations should function,” said Ms. Underwood in her statement about the suit. That’s the understatement of the day.

Mr. Trump lashed out at the lawsuit on Twitter, attacking “sleazy New York Democrats” and, in particular, Eric Schneiderman, the former state attorney general who aggressively pursued Mr. Trump but who resigned last month following reports that he had physically abused several women. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, the suit was brought by Mr. Schneiderman’s replacement, Ms. Underwood, who is not a politician but a career prosecutor with sterling credentials. Ms. Underwood’s office has asked the court to order the Trump Foundation to pay $2.8 million in restitution and to bar Mr. Trump from serving as a director, officer or trustee of any nonprofit for 10 years. The lawsuit also seeks to bar Mr. Trump’s three eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, from the boards of nonprofits based in New York or that operate in New York for one year.

That’s a start. But Ms. Underwood only has jurisdiction to file civil lawsuits in cases involving charities like the Trump Foundation. She cannot bring criminal charges against them for, say, violating campaign finance laws. So she also sent lengthy referral letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission, detailing extensive conduct that could, and clearly should, trigger further investigation. In other words, Mr. Trump, who is already dealing with multiple federal inquiries into his campaign’s involvement with Russian efforts to swing the 2016 election as well as into possible crimes by his personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, may soon find himself in even deeper trouble.

Though they were fantasies in so many other ways, most of Donald Trump’s scams — from bankrupt casinos to phony universities — never really pretended to be in the public interest. But his foundation, like his presidency, does. And like everything else with the Trump name slapped on it, neither is remotely what it purports to be.

Dear Commons Community,

The Rockefeller Institute of Government has just released a report entitled, For Many, Is College Out of Reach?, examining how innovative state programs can be scaled and replicated to help close the nation’s growing equity gaps in higher education.  Since the Great Recession, average state aid to higher education has decreased nationwide, resulting in greater reliance on tuition and increased student loan debt. Coupled with the recent fiscal uncertainty from the threat of federal higher education budget cuts and rising income inequality, college is now out of reach for many working- and middle-class families. The report reviews two state programs that show promise for reversing this trend — in Tennessee and New York — and outlines a roadmap for policymakers.  The report was written by Rockefeller Institute President Jim Malatras.   Below is an executive summary.

Tony

————————————————-

For Many, Is College Out of Reach?

Jim Malatras

If we are to close persistent equity gaps in our society, access to a quality education is the most critical opportunity we can offer. However, there is a widening college access gap in the United States. The ever-rising cost of higher education, coupled with diminished government financial support and growing income inequality, have put college out of reach for many at a critical juncture when postsecondary education is essential for enhancing career prospects — in addition to creating well-rounded citizens. As a result of the Great Recession in the mid-aughts, financial support for higher education has been reduced by nearly all states. The drastic cuts across the nation in most states are not back up to prerecession levels and it is unlikely that many states will ever “restore” general higher education spending to prerecession levels.

The situation has been exacerbated by additional factors, including recent proposed budget cuts by the federal government and increasing fiscal stress on state and local governments. As one colleague in state government said to me recently, “we’re on our own.” In higher education alone, the president’s proposed budget would have resulted in more than $200 billion over the next ten years in cuts to higher education programs including freezing Pell Grant awards, cutting federal work study, and educational opportunity programs. Even though the Congress restored virtually all the proposed cuts, given the constant threats from the federal executive branch to propose budget cuts, uncertainty in state and local tax revenue, and the nation’s mixed view of higher education generally, higher education has a steep hill to climb in expanding access and opportunity.

In this era of fiscal uncertainty and diminished public confidence in postsecondary education, what programs and models are effectively addressing the affordability gap and gaining support from policymakers to make greater investments in higher education?

There are five elements that could capture policymakers’ attention and drive greater resources into higher education as a way to close equity gaps:

1. Provide direct benefits to the studentas opposed to block grant-like funding to the system.
2. In any program, there must be targeted support for at-risk students.
3. Open new access pointsby breaking down traditional education structures.
4. Quality and success indicators are imperativein order to demonstrate value.
5. Bend the total college cost curvefor as many students as possible.

Using comparative survey data and a comprehensive review of programs, particularly in New York and Tennessee, the paper will explore several states with replicable models to expand college access and success. New York has been on the forefront of opening the door to educational opportunity through nation-leading programs and the state’s approach could serve as a model. Likewise, Tennessee has been leading the charge on pioneering tuition programs on a statewide scale before they were largely in vogue. Given Tennessee’s longer history with programs like free tuition, the state has more data available to review what works and what does not.

The paper will examine how these states are addressing the affordability (and success) gap, how policymakers were convinced to make additional financial investment in higher education, the problems and pitfalls of the programs, and the ways other states could model similar efforts. Most importantly, the paper will explore how states are focused on quality and outcomes, not just access, in these programs.

Dear Commons Community,

The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) has just issued a new report predicting that machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence are poised to bring about massive changes to a large swath of the economy in the years ahead.  In New York State more than 1.2 million could be affected.  This report provides a comprehensive look at the automation potential of many occupations statewide and in each of New York’s ten regions.

As stated in the report:

“… sweeping not just through factory floors but office towers, hospital wards, and main streets, automation has the potential to displace workers in a growing range of occupations, as varied as bookkeepers and x-ray technicians, paralegals and food prep workers. The result is that both traditional and emerging industries will be transformed, with significant effects on New York’s workforce.

…Our study finds that New York State is less susceptible to automation than the nation as a whole. But it also reveals that more than 1.2 million jobs in the state, about 12 percent of the state’s workforce, could be largely automated using technology that exists today. (These are jobs in which 80 percent or more of their associated tasks could be done by machines.)

To be clear, automation is not expected to eliminate all, or even most, of these jobs… As with other major economic transformations—such as the Industrial Revolution, the dawn of electricity, and the Internet age—some jobs will disappear, many will be created, and in the end, most will simply change.

There is immense potential for jobs across New York to be transformed. Statewide, the equivalent of 41.2 percent of all job tasks could be performed by machines in the coming decade. On this score, New York is actually better off than the nation, where 51 percent of all job tasks could be done by machines, according to an analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute on which this report is based. (This is not to suggest that 41 percent of jobs in the state will be eliminated; that is simply the scope of job responsibilities that could change as more of today’s work—whether taking orders, entering data, or even driving—is done by machines.)

The potential for automation is spread fairly evenly across the state. Of all regions, the automation potential is highest in Western New York, where 44.5 percent of all job tasks could be done using existing technology. Other regions with high automation potential include Central New York (44.4 percent), the North Country (44.3 percent), the Mohawk Valley (43.8 percent), and Long Island (43.7). New York City has the lowest potential for automation, as detailed by the Center in a January report; just 39 percent of jobs in the five boroughs stand a high likelihood of being automated. But other regions also have a comparatively lower potential for automation, such as the Capital Region (42 percent) and the Hudson Valley (42.2 percent).”

The entire report is a sobering read.  In the post 2030 period, many jobs will have been transformed and some eliminated due to automation.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Democrat Caleb Frostman defeated state Rep. Andre Jacque (R) for the open seat in District 1 that was previously held by state Sen. Frank Lasee (R), who resigned to take a job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. Frostman will be on the ballot again in November for the regular election.

Frostman’s win is a huge victory for the Democratic Party. Not only was the seat held by a Republican, but Trump defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton there by 17 points in the 2016 presidential election.  

“Tonight is a good night for Wisconsin Democrats,” said state party chair Martha Laning. “We continued a winning streak by flipping a red seat blue and electing Caleb Frostman to the state Senate, a 21-point swing from Trump’s 2016 performance.”

Frostman’s win is especially sweet for Democrats because Walker tried to prevent Tuesday’s contests from taking place to begin with. Both the vacancies were created when Walker tapped the incumbents to join his administration in December. 

State law requires the governor to call special elections for vacancies that take place before May in an election year, but Walker had refused to do so. He planned to keep them vacant until the regular elections in November. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, sued Walker ― and won.

Walker reluctantly called these special elections in March, knowing full well that Democrats had a real shot at flipping the seats. 

In January, Democrat Patty Schachtner also had a surprise victory in a state Senate special election, succeeding in another district that had been held by Republicans and went to Trump by 17 points. At the time, Walker called the results a “wake-up call” for Republicans that there was a potential blue wave of Democratic wins coming in November. 

“Scott Walker and his Republican allies gerrymandered this district for their own partisan benefit,” said Holder on Tuesday night, “but the citizens of Wisconsin are clearly speaking out this year to demand a state government that better represents their values.”

Democrats have flipped 43 state legislative seats from red to blue since Trump became president. Republicans have flipped seven from blue to red. 

Let’s hope that the Democrats can keep this momentum through November.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Betsy Devos’ close relationship with the for-profit college industry was on display this week when she reinstated the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (Acics) even after receiving a scathing review from her own staff.  As reported:

“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos disregarded a scathing review by her own staff this spring when she reinstated the watchdog body that had accredited two scandal-scarred for-profit universities whose bankruptcies left tens of thousands of students with worthless degrees and mountains of debt, a new report has revealed.

A 244-page internal document, written by career staff and delivered to the secretary in early March but made public late Friday, found that the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or Acics, had failed to meet 57 of 93 federal quality and management compliance standards as it vied to continue operating as a gatekeeper for billions in federal financial aid dollars. The findings were released late last week after the department was sued by the National Student Legal Defense Network and the Century Foundation.

Education Department officials said that despite the March report, Ms. DeVos was obligated to reinstate Acics as an accrediting body for colleges and universities because of a federal court order that had faulted the process the Obama-era department had used to terminate its recognition. A federal judge sent the decision back to Ms. DeVos for reconsideration.

“The secretary did not make the determination to reinstate Acics,” Liz Hill, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This department can’t operate on or enforce a decision that was found invalid by the court.”

But higher-education groups said that Ms. DeVos went above and beyond the court’s order in restoring the organization’s status while she considered the new information.

“It’s no wonder that Acics and Secretary DeVos didn’t want this report to come out,” said Alex Elson, a senior counsel at the National Student Legal Defense Network. “Clearly, she was well aware that Acics was getting worse, not better, and has been working to help them anyway.”

Acics was stripped of its powers in December 2016 amid the collapse of two for-profit university chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, where students were encouraged to take on debt based on false promises, including jobs after graduation. The accrediting body was held responsible for allowing the schools to employ predatory recruitment practices.

The scandal rocked the for-profit college industry, which became a target of the Obama administration. And taxpayers are still covering the fallout as the DeVos Education Department manages more than 100,000 applications for debt relief totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. On Monday, a judge in San Francisco was set to hear arguments that the department should grant full loan relief to Corinthian students. On Wednesday, an Indianapolis court is set to approve a $1.5 billion settlement for aggrieved ITT students.

Acics applied in September to be recognized as a new agency, seeking a new start under DeVos’s leadership and saying that it had demonstrated improvements in its management.

When the Obama administration revoked Acics’s accrediting powers, the Education Department found that it had racked up nearly two dozen violations. Far from improving, the March report said that the number of violations had nearly tripled.

In April, Ms. DeVos temporarily restored recognition of Acics anyway, after a judge found the Obama administration had violated procedural rules by failing to consider more than 30,000 pages of information submitted by the council before the department revoked its recognition as an accrediting body.

That temporary restoration expires July 30, but Ms. Hill said Ms. DeVos would not consider the draft report as she deliberates Acics’s fate because the report was “rendered moot by the court’s order.”

Advocates say that Ms. DeVos is using the court order as a convenient excuse.

They note that the judge did not vacate the 2016 decision, and that Ms. DeVos was not compelled to reinstate Acics. The report provides the most up-to-date evaluation of the organization, which still oversees dozens of colleges. In March, Acics was accused by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, of accrediting “visa mills,” used by foreign students to come to the United States with minimal scrutiny.

“This report makes clear that Acics is a wholly unfit and unreliable evaluator of higher-education institutions,” said Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former Obama Education Department official. “Betsy DeVos may be content with ignoring the overwhelming outside consensus on Acics’s performance, but she cannot deny the expert opinions of her own staff.”

Among the report’s findings was that the accrediting body had failed to provide information showing that it had resolved conflicts of interest and had failed to demonstrate that it had processes in place for evaluating its institutions’ compliance with federal financial aid laws. Additionally, Education Department staff wrote that Acics did not provide documentation showing that it had ensured that measurements of student achievement rates were rigorous, or that it had a consistent standard for determining when to alert the Education Department to fraud and abuse.”

I don’t think we could have expected anything else from DeVos.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The long-awaited meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korea Leader Kim Jong-un came off yesterday without any problems and both sides agreeing to meet some more in the future. They signed an agreement (see full text below). As reported by the New York Times:

“President Trump concluded a historic meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, on Tuesday, saying that denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula would begin “very quickly.”

In a televised ceremony held in Singapore, the two leaders signed a joint statement that Mr. Trump called “comprehensive.” In the statement, Mr. Trump “committed to provide security guarantees” to North Korea, and Mr. Kim “reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

But the statement was short on details. It was not immediately released to reporters, but it was legible in a photo of Mr. Trump holding it up at the ceremony.

Asked if Mr. Kim had agreed to denuclearize, Mr. Trump said, “We’re starting that process very quickly — very, very quickly — absolutely.”

The joint statement said the two nations would hold “follow-on negotiations” led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a high-level North Korean official “at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes” of the summit meeting.

It also said the two nations would “join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime” on the divided peninsula, meaning talks to reduce military tensions that could eventually lead to a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War.

 “We had a historic meeting and decided to leave the past behind,” Mr. Kim said at the signing ceremony, adding that “the world will see a major change.”

“We’re very proud of what took place today,” Mr. Trump said. “I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean Peninsula is going to be a very much different situation than it has in the past.” He said that copies of the document would be distributed and that he would speak to reporters later about it.

The signing ceremony came after several hours of discussions between the two leaders…

Mr. Trump said he viewed North Korea’s  disarmament as a “process,” rather than something to be done all at once.”

We will see how the “process” plays out.

Tony

=============================

Full Text of the Agreement

President Donald J Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held first historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.

President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive in-depth and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new US-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Convinced that the establishment of new US-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

Having acknowledged that the US-DPRK summit — the first in history — was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulation in this joint statement fully and expeditiously. The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-on negotiations, led by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the US-DPRK summit.

President Donald J Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have committed to cooperate for the development of new US-DPRK relations and for the promotion of peace, prosperity, and security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times and other media are quoting Donald Trump’s Chief of  Staff John Kelly as saying that the White House is “a miserable place to work” and that a number of the President’s senior officials are planning to leave.   As reported:

Mr. Trump may soon be working with a thinned-out cast before the midterm elections. Several high-profile aides, including John F. Kelly, the president’s chief of staff, and Joe Hagin, a deputy of Mr. Kelly’s, are said to be thinking about how much longer they can stay. Last week, Mr. Kelly told visiting senators that the White House was “a miserable place to work,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the comment.

The turnover, which is expected to become an exodus after the November elections, does not worry the president, several people close to him said. He has grown comfortable with removing any barriers that might challenge him — including, in some cases, people who have the wrong chemistry or too frequently say no to him.

Mr. Trump, who desires a measure of chaos at all times, is reveling in the effects of his own mercurial decision-making, the people said.

Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s love of conflict had driven his approach to the presidency. “This is how he won,” Mr. Bannon said. “This is how he governs, and this is his ‘superpower.’ Drama, action, emotional power.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Craig Newmark, the Craigslist founder is giving $20 million to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.  As reported by the New York Times:

“In this time, when trustworthy news is under attack, somebody has to stand up,” Mr. Newmark said. “And the way you stand up these days is by putting your money where your mouth is, and that’s what I’ve done.”

As a result of the $20 million gift, the school will change its name this summer to the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. The donation, to be made through Craig Newmark Philanthropies, will fund an endowment for the school, which was founded in 2006.

“We’re very excited,” said Sarah Bartlett, the dean of the journalism school. She added that the money would help make up for the steady decline in state funding for the school, which receives limited donations from its students, who “are too young in their professions to be relied upon to make major donations,” Ms. Bartlett said.

Mr. Newmark, 65, said he developed a serious interest in journalism about 10 years ago, when he started attending journalism conferences. He made friends with the journalist and lecturer Jeff Jarvis, who is now a professor and the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY.

In 2016, Mr. Newmark gave $10,000 to the school’s election coverage initiative and in February 2017 tacked on $1.5 million for a research grant, a donation that helped the school raise an additional $14 million.

Mr. Newmark, a graduate of Case Western Reserve University, which he attended with the help of scholarships, said he had chosen to make CUNY the beneficiary of his largess because he admired its commitment to students from all backgrounds. He reached his decision after a meeting with Mr. Jarvis and Ms. Bartlett in the dean’s office, he said.

“You could say that they are the university for everyone,” Mr. Newmark said. “They were helping out people who, like me, really need a lot of scholarship help.”

Thank you, Mr. Newmark and congratulations to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism!

Tony

Dear Commons Community, 

Charles Krauthammer, a conservative syndicated columnist and Fox News Channel personality revealed the heartbreaking news that he is in the final stages of a losing battle with cancer.

In a letter (see below) to co-workers and friends Krauthammer disclosed that he has just weeks to live.

“I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months,” the letter began. “I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me.”

Krauthammer, who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1975 despite a first-year diving accident that left him a quadriplegic, explained that he had a malignant tumor removed from his abdomen last August. Although a series of setbacks left him in the hospital in the ensuing months, he believed until recently that he was on the road to recovery.

“However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned,” Krauthammer wrote. “There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”

Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, said Krauthammer has been a giant of journalism and a key part of the channel’s success.

“Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News,” Murdoch said. “His always principled stand on the most important issues of our time has been a guiding star in an often turbulent world, a world that has too many superficial thinkers vulnerable to the ebb and flow of fashion, and a world that, unfortunately, has only one Charles Krauthammer.

“His words, his ideas, his dignity and his integrity will resonate within our society and within me for many, many years to come,” Murdoch added. 

Krauthammer was on his way to greatness in the medical field when he veered first into policy, and then into journalism. After medical school, he became chief psychiatry resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied depression and published ground-breaking findings in top medical journals. But in 1978, he took a job in the Carter administration directing planning in psychiatric research and later served as a speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale.

It was in the nation’s capital that Krauthammer trained his mind and talents on political analysis and began penning columns for The New Republic, Time magazine and finally the Washington Post. In 1985, he won journalism’s top prize for his weekly political commentary. In his sobering farewell, Krauthammer said he is “grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.”

“I leave this life with no regrets,” Krauthammer wrote. “It was a wonderful life – full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

I rarely agreed with Krauthammer’s conservative positions but he was eloquent, clear, and well-organized in everything he said and wrote.  He also did not engage in personal attacks which have become so common in our political discourse.

Tony

P.S. Charles Krauthammer died on June 22, 2018, twelve days after this posting.

========================

Charles Krauthammer 

June 8, 2018

I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months. I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me. 

In August of last year, I underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in my abdomen. That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications which I have been fighting in hospital ever since. It was along and hard fight with many setbacks, but I was steadily, if slowly, overcoming each obstacle along the way and gradually making my way back to health.

However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned. There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.

I wish to thank my doctors and caregivers, whose efforts have been magnificent. My dear friends, who have given me a lifetime of memories and whose support has sustained me through these difficult months. And all of my partners at The Washington Post, Fox News, and Crown Publishing.

Lastly, I thank my colleagues, my readers, and my viewers, who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work. I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.

I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life full and complete with the great loves and  great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended. 

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting today that Summit, a supercomputer built for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, has taken the lead as the fastest supercomputer on the planet.  China has laid claim to the fastest for the past five years.  Summit’s speeds, announced yesterday, boggle the mind. It can do mathematical calculations at the rate of 200 quadrillion per second, or 200 petaflops. To put in human terms: A person doing one calculation a second would have to live for more than 6.3 billion years to match what the machine can do in a second.  Here is an excerpt from the Times article:

“The United States just won bragging rights in the race to build the world’s speediest supercomputer.

For five years, China had the world’s fastest computer, a symbolic achievement for a country trying to show that it is a tech powerhouse. But the United States retook the lead thanks to a machine, called Summit, built for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee…

China still has the world’s most supercomputers over all. And China, Japan and Europe are developing machines that are even faster, which could mean the American lead is short-lived.

Supercomputers like Summit, which cost $200 million in government money to build, can accelerate the development of technologies at the frontier of computing, like artificial intelligence and the ability to handle vast amounts of data.

Those skills can be used to help tackle daunting challenges in science, industry and national security — and are at the heart of an escalating rivalry between the United States and China over technology.

For years, American tech companies have accused China of stealing their intellectual property. And some Washington lawmakers say that Chinese companies like ZTE and Huawei pose a national security risk.

A multicore processor from a Chinese supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight. Until Friday, it was considered the fastest computer in the world.CreditLi Xiang/Xinhua, via Associated Press

Supercomputers now perform tasks that include simulating nuclear tests, predicting climate trends, finding oil deposits and cracking encryption codes. Scientists say that further gains and fresh discoveries in fields like medicine, new materials and energy technology will rely on the approach that Summit embodies.

“These are big data and artificial intelligence machines,” said John E. Kelly, who oversees IBM Research, which helped build Summit. “That’s where the future lies.”

The global supercomputer rankings have been compiled for more than two decades by a small team of computer scientists who put together a Top 500 list. It is led by Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee. The newest list will not be released until later this month, but Mr. Dongarra said he was certain that Summit was the fastest.

At 200 petaflops, the new machine achieves more than twice the speed of the leading supercomputer in November, when the last Top 500 list was published. That machine is at China’s National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi.

Summit is made up of rows of black, refrigerator-size units that weigh a total of 340 tons and are housed in a 9,250 square-foot room. It is powered by 9,216 central processing chips from IBM and 27,648 graphics processors from Nvidia, another American tech company, that are lashed together with 185 miles of fiber-optic cable.

Cooling Summit requires 4,000 gallons of water a minute, and the supercomputer consumes enough electricity to light up 8,100 American homes.

The global supercomputer sprint comes as Internet giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google in the United States and Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent in China take the lead in developing technologies like cloud computing and facial recognition.”

Congratulations to the engineers who built Summit.  The race for supercomputing dominance will continue well into humankind’s future.

Tony