Dear Commons Community, 

The  government shutdown is now in its second month during which 800,000 federal workers have not been paid.   While there have been hosts of stories of everyday people doing something kind to ease the financial burden of the workers, members of President Trump’s inner circle appear to be “callous” in their remarks about the shutdown.  New York Times op-ed columnist, Michelle Goldberg comments on the latest lack of understanding (see video above) or what she terms “callous elitism” in her column this morning.  The full column is below.  Here is a sample.

“On Thursday morning, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross  appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk about the government shutdown. He expressed bafflement at the idea of unpaid federal workers suffering financial hardship, wondering why they don’t just take out loans.

“There really is not a good excuse why there really should be a liquidity crisis,” he said. “True, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest, but the idea that it’s paycheck or zero is not a really valid idea.” Told that some workers have been relying on food banks, he said, “I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why.”

… On Monday, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and the host of an online pseudo-newscast funded by his re-election campaign, said that the sacrifices of unpaid federal workers are a small price to pay for a border wall. “It’s not fair to you and we all get that,” she said in an interview. “But this is so much bigger than any one person.”

… Trump himself has been unable to feign empathy for the 800,000 federal employees who haven’t been paid in more than a month, or the hundreds of thousands of government contractors who likely won’t be paid at all. Earlier this month he retweeted a Daily Caller piece, ostensibly by an anonymous member of his own administration, arguing that the work of most federal employees is worthless. “We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them,” it said.”

The quotes above remind me of a scene in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol  when the miserly Scrooge is approached for a donation to help the poor and he responds: “Are there no prisons?  Are there no workhouses?” There is a special place in the afterlife for individuals like Wilbur Ross, Lara Trump, and of course, The Donald, for their callous attitudes.   

Tony

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Who Needs a Paycheck Anyway?

The shutdown reveals the administration’s callous elitism.

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Jan. 24, 2019

On Thursday morning, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — a man whose extraordinarily shady financial history doesn’t get the attention it deserves — appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk about the government shutdown. He expressed bafflement at the idea of unpaid federal workers suffering financial hardship, wondering why they don’t just take out loans.

“There really is not a good excuse why there really should be a liquidity crisis,” he said. “True, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest, but the idea that it’s paycheck or zero is not a really valid idea.” Told that some workers have been relying on food banks, he said, “I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why.”

A few hours later, Larry Kudlow, director of Donald Trump’s National Economic Council, told reporters that federal employees forced to work without pay were “volunteering.” He added, as he stumbled to clarify, that they’re doing it out of their love of country “and presumably their allegiance to President Trump.” (If they don’t work they can be fired.)

These officials’ comments were just the latest examples of the blithe let-them-eat-steel-slats attitude that people connected to this administration are showing toward victims of the shutdown. On Monday, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and the host of an online pseudo-newscast funded by his re-election campaign, said that the sacrifices of unpaid federal workers are a small price to pay for a border wall. “It’s not fair to you and we all get that,” she said in an interview. “But this is so much bigger than any one person.”

In an interview that aired two weeks ago on PBS, Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, suggested that furloughed workers were fortunate not to have to use vacation days over the Christmas holidays. “And then they come back, and then they get their back pay. Then they’re — in some sense, they’re better off,” he said.

Trump himself has been unable to feign empathy for the 800,000 federal employees who haven’t been paid in more than a month, or the hundreds of thousands of government contractors who likely won’t be paid at all. Earlier this month he retweeted a Daily Caller piece, ostensibly by an anonymous member of his own administration, arguing that the work of most federal employees is worthless. “We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them,” it said. On Thursday afternoon, Trump told reporters that grocery stores will “work along” with people who can’t pay for food.

One effect of this government shutdown, now in its second month and without immediate end in sight, is to reveal the sham of Trump’s purported populism. It’s true, he’s able to connect culturally with some economically precarious parts of America. Despite being expensively educated, his worldview is basically that of Archie Bunker. He eats fast food, likes pro wrestling and has the terrible taste in interior design common to arriviste dictators. His vulgarity creates a kinship with people who purport to hate elites.

Yet in purely financial terms, Trump is as elitist as they come. Though he campaigned as a candidate of (white) workers, he has governed as a shameless oligarch. He has proudly surrounded himself with millionaires and billionaires, seeing their wealth as evidence of their worth. At a rally in 2017, speaking of his economic advisers, he said, “But in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person.” He has gone out of his way not to hire anyone who would actually understand the plight of the workers he’s holding hostage.

Contrary to Ross’s assumptions, it’s not easy for working people without significant collateral to walk into a bank and get a personal loan. “I don’t think a bank is going to lend to them, or it would be very difficult,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told me. “To think that credit is the way out for these government workers is at best a real stretch.”

Some workers are members of credit unions, some of which are offering low-interest loans. Those who own homes might be able to borrow against them. Others, however, will be forced to rely on credit cards, which can charge double-digit interest rates. And then, worst of all, some will resort to payday loans, which can trap people in an asphyxiating cycle of debt.

Gary Rivlin, author of “Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. — How the Working Poor Became Big Business,” explained to me how payday loans usually work. If you take, for example, a $400 loan, two weeks later you’ll owe $460. “If the government is still shut down, you take out a $500 loan to pay back the $460, and now you owe $575,” he said. Some online outfits charge even higher interest.

As people miss payments on their bills, the financial aftershocks could stay with them long after the government reopens, assuming it eventually does. Diane Standaert of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending says there’s a risk of “long-term devastation to people’s financial security.” A missed rent payment or bill can damage someone’s credit report for years, which in turn can make it harder to get a mortgage or rent an apartment. Some employers even check applicants’ credit history when making hiring decisions.

Ordinarily, one might expect a presidential administration’s leading economic figures to understand something of these financial realities. But if they cared about people who aren’t rich, they wouldn’t be working for Trump in the first place. The shocking thing isn’t their indifference to the misery they’re causing. It’s that they can barely be bothered to hide it.

Dear Commons Community,

The Democratic-led New York State Legislature waded into the battle over immigrants’ rights yesterday by approving a bill that for the first time offers undocumented students access to state financial aid and scholarships for higher education.  Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has confirmed he will sign the measure into law.  As reported by the New York Times:

“The Dream Act is the latest in a wave of state-level protections for immigrants as blue state legislatures increasingly seek to act as a counterbalance to President Trump’s federal immigration policies. These issues are also expected to play a prominent role in the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential primary, with candidates who are courting liberal activists supporting the state measures.

After New York Democrats won control of the State Senate in November for the first time in a decade, protections for immigrants became a legislative priority. They included permitting undocumented residents to obtain state driver’s licenses and reducing maximum jail sentences for certain misdemeanors that could otherwise lead to deportation.

“It took us almost a decade to get the Dream Act, and it’s going to take another five, 10, 20 years to undo the damage that Washington is causing our families,” said Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz of Queens, who was born in Colombia and came to New York as an undocumented child.

Even as the bill gained passage, the New York Immigration Coalition and other advocates were pushing for lawmakers to “dream bigger” and address issues like expanded funding for immigrant legal services and health care for immigrants.

All these measures, lawmakers say, could act as a bulwark against Republican efforts in Washington and the ongoing standoff over the nation’s southern border…

…Though the state already allows all students who graduate from high school in New York to pay in-state tuition at the City University of New York and the State University of New York, the Dream Act extends state financial aid to all students who meet the Tuition Assistance Program requirements, opens 529 tuition savings accounts to all New York youth and establishes a commission to raise private funds for college scholarships to be offered to the children of immigrants.”

Welcome dreamers!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that state spending on higher education for the 2019 fiscal year grew almost 4 percent over 2018. As reported:

“The “Grapevine” survey, compiled by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University and the State Higher Education Executive Officers, found wide variations in states’ support for their colleges during the current fiscal year.

But over all, the increase in money for higher education follows a strong year for many state economies, which are projected to grow more than 4 percent in the 2019 fiscal year. Half of the states reported increasing higher-education spending by more than 3 percent for the current fiscal year, with Colorado showing the largest gain, at 12 percent, according to the survey.

Eighteen other states had increases in spending of less than 3 percent, according to a report on the survey.

Six states (Oklahoma, Alaska, North Dakota, West Virginia, Mississippi, South Carolina)  reported decreases in higher-education spending.  That compares favorably to the previous fiscal year, when 18 states cut higher-education spending by as much as 21 percent.

As usual, a handful of populous states accounted for most of the nationwide increase: The 6.6-percent rise in higher-education money in California made up nearly 30 percent of the national increase. The growth in spending in eight states — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington — accounted for nearly 70 percent of the national increase, the survey found.

The five-year trend for higher-education appropriations also continued to improve, the survey found. State spending on colleges has increased more than 18 percent since the 2015 fiscal year, with just seven states seeing declines over that period.”

This is very good news for our colleges and universities.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mayor Eric Garcetti announced yesterday that Los Angeles and the teachers’ union  had reached a tentative deal to end the  strike and that teachers were expected to be back in their classrooms today.  As reported by the New York Times:

Los Angeles public school teachers reached a deal with officials on Tuesday to end a weeklong strike that had affected more than half a million students, winning an array of supplementary services after an era in education marked by attacks on traditional public schools and their teachers.

The deal showed the clout the teachers’ union has with Democrats in power in this city and this state. But union leaders said that what was perhaps more important to them was that the strike had provided an alternate narrative to the school choice movement that grew up around the idea that traditional public schools were factories of failure that needed to be broken up and rethought.

The deal includes caps on class sizes, and hiring full-time nurses for every school, as well as a librarian for every middle and high school in the district by the fall of 2020. The union also won a significant concession from the district on standardized tests: Next year a committee will develop a plan to reduce the number of assessments by half. The pro-charter school board agreed to vote on a resolution calling on the state to cap the number of charter schools. Teachers also won a 6 percent pay raise, but that was the same increase proposed by the district before the strike.

The settlement came after tens of thousands of teachers in the nation’s second-largest public school system marched in downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside schools for six school days, and after a round of marathon negotiating sessions over the holiday weekend. 

 The contract was ratified by an “overwhelming supermajority” of the roughly 30,000 members of the union, officials said Tuesday evening. Teachers are expected to be back in their classrooms Wednesday morning.

“Today is a day full of good news,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a news conference on Tuesday morning at City Hall, as he stood alongside Austin Beutner, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of United Teachers Los Angeles. “This is a good agreement, it is a historic agreement, it gets to lower class sizes, it gets to proper support staff.”

“The strike is painful and had a cost,” the mayor added. “But there is no question to get here, the strike helped.”

The Los Angeles strike was the eighth major teacher walkout over the past year. A movement that calls itself Red For Ed spread like wildfire from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Arizona and beyond. But the strike in Los Angeles was a union-led one against Democratic leaders who are usually on their side. It also was one of the first to highlight one of the most controversial questions in education: whether charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, hurt traditional schools by competing with them for students and funding. Most charter schools are not unionized.

The agreement includes a pledge that the elected school board for the district will vote on a resolution asking the state to “establish a charter school cap” and create a governor’s committee on charter schools, according to a summary statement released by the union.

It is unclear how much practical impact the change would have, because there are already more than 1,100 charters in the state. Roughly 20 percent of all students in Los Angeles are enrolled in charter schools, according to state figures. California law currently allows 100 new charter schools to open each year, which is considered relatively liberal nationally.

Mr. Beutner and his allies on the Los Angeles school board have been vocal supporters of charter schools, which they say offer parents more choices. Charter schools have also been championed by prominent business leaders and philanthropists in Los Angeles, including Eli Broad, who backed Mr. Beutner’s selection as superintendent last year.

Some of the moves bolster traditional public schools after a long period that put heavy emphasis on creating alternatives to them, and on using students’ standardized test scores to hold schools and teachers accountable.

“I see this as a paradigm shift,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who traveled to picket with Los Angeles teachers twice during the strike. “The elite types who use charters as a force for competition will see this as a big blow. We’re now seeing a mainstream shift toward neighborhood public schools with the goal being: let’s make them work for all kids.”

The strike’s outcome pointed to a new direction on education for the Democratic Party, away from President Barack Obama’s agenda — which sought to expand high-quality charter schools and, at times, pushed back against teachers’ unions — and toward a more open embrace of the influence of organized labor on public education. Prominent Democrats — and presidential hopefuls — including Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, all issued statements in support for the striking teachers.

Supporters of charter schools pushed back on the idea of a cap on Tuesday. “Placing a cap on the growth of charter schools puts the agenda of the education bureaucracy before the needs of public school students, and we cannot stand for that,” said Nina Rees, president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Mr. Caputo-Pearl said on Tuesday that the last week had showed an “absolute groundswell” of support for Los Angeles’s public schools. “We have seen over the last week something amazing happened,” Mr. Caputo-Pearl said. “We took on the idea of bargaining for the common good. Public education desperately needs attention.”

The strike drew attention to how California, one of the wealthiest and most liberal states in the country, spends relatively little on its public schools. As they announced the outlines of the deal, Mr. Garcetti, Mr. Beutner and Mr. Caputo-Pearl declined to give specific details on how the district would pay for the changes, but school officials said that they would need more money from local voters and the state.

“We’re spending every nickel we have,” Mr. Beutner said. “It’s all in for schools. This is the start, not the end.”

Many of the changes — including class-size caps and full-time nurses at every school — would be phased in over time, officials said. Because those changes would occur over the next three years, the deal essentially punted on the question of how the district would come up with the $403 million needed to pay for the additional staff members. District officials said Tuesday that they expect to propose a local parcel tax in 2020, which would require the approval of two-thirds of voters in the sprawling school district. Mr. Beutner also made it clear that he expected the attention to now turn to Sacramento for increased funding.

The state’s chronically constrained school spending is largely attributed to its property tax laws, and especially to Proposition 13, a ballot initiative passed in 1978 that drastically limits tax rates and makes increases difficult to enact. Affluent, fast-growing suburban communities have suffered less under the law than large urban systems like the Los Angeles Unified School District, where declining enrollment and rising costs for pensions and health care have created budget problems year after year.

While many educators and local leaders have called the strike a watershed moment for California public schools, it is far from clear whether there is a political willingness to change the statewide property tax laws. The union and district officials are both backing a ballot measure that would increase taxes on commercial, though not residential, properties in 2020.

The strike settlement is also a significant achievement for the Mr. Garcetti, who has no formal authority over the school system. Though he publicly supported the teachers, he acted as a mediator of sorts and helped broker the deal during days of negotiations at City Hall. Before the strike, Mr. Garcetti had largely shied away from involvement with the public schools, but with the national spotlight on the strike and the mayor considering a presidential bid in 2020, he appeared eager to get involved during the past week.  

Teachers in several other states, including Oklahoma and West Virginia, have won raises through statewide strikes that attracted wide public and political support.

Other major American cities and states are now facing a possible school walkout, even as Los Angeles reached a settlement. Teachers in Denver began voting over the weekend on whether to strike after negotiations with the city’s school system failed to produce an agreement on Friday, local news outlets reported. In Virginia, teachers are planning a statewide demonstration later in January. And teachers in Oakland, Calif., said they had drawn lessons from Los Angeles teachers and were now preparing to vote on a strike.”

Congratulations to Los Angeles and its teachers!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York yesterday signed into law new measures to protect and expand abortion rights across the state.

The law essentially codifies the landmark decision made in Roe v. Wade 46 years ago to allow abortion, thus protecting it in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned in the future, something which Democrats fear could occur under a conservative-led Supreme Court.  In a press release, Cuomo stated:

“Today we are taking a giant step forward in the hard-fought battle to ensure a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her own personal health, including the ability to access an abortion… With the signing of this bill, we are sending a clear message that whatever happens in Washington, women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body.”

Aside from keeping abortions available, the law removes the procedure from the state’s criminal code, which had previously made it illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother’s life was in jeopardy.

Now, that option is allowed after that point if the mother’s life or health is at stake or if her fetus is not viable.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins praised the move as an indication of progress for women.

“New York once led the way on choice and women’s rights,” Stewart-Cousins said. “Unfortunately for years, barriers to women’s rights were put up, and our state has fallen behind. Today, we are tearing those barriers down and we are now leading the way again.”

The bill’s passage is a major victory for abortion rights advocates, having been stalled since its 2006 introduction because of the then GOP-dominated Senate. With Democrats having taken back control, they were able to turn it into law.

Congratulations to New York State’s Elected Representatives!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I am in Philadelphia today at Drexel University to give a talk entitled, Higher Education’s Future: The Digital University (see abstract below). Last night I had a most pleasant dinner with Susan Aldridge, President of Drexel University Online, at the Union League, a private club founded in 1862 to support the policies of President Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Aldridge is one of the important pioneers in online learning and has developed a spectacular  program at Drexel. 

My presentation is at 9:30 am in Drexel’s Behrakis Grand Hall.  Stop by if you are in the area.

Tony

———————————————————————————–

Higher Education’s Future:  The Digital University

Anthony G. Picciano

Professor – City University of New York

Abstract

Drew Faust, the former president of Harvard University, in a message to the World Economic Forum in 2015, described three major forces that will shape the future of higher education:

1. the influence of technology
2. the changing shape of knowledge
3. the attempt to define the value of education.

She went on to extol the facilities that digital technology and communications will provide for teaching, learning, and research.  She foresees great benefits in technology’s ability to reach masses of students around the globe and to easily quantify large databases for scaling up and assessment purposes. She concluded that:

“So much of what humanity has achieved has been sparked and sustained by the research and teaching that take place every day at colleges and universities, sites of curiosity and creativity that nurture some of the finest aspirations of individuals and, in turn, improve their lives—and their livelihoods. As the landscape continues to change, we must be careful to protect the ideals at the heart of higher education, ideals that serve us all well as we work together to improve the world.”  (Faust, 2015)

While Faust presented three key elements in higher education’s future, it is the interplay of these elements that will become most crucial in predicting its future.  Will technology drive the shape of knowledge and the definition of value or will it be the other way around?  Techno-centrists see technology as the driver while others who look at higher education holistically see technology as a tool serving the needs of the other elements.

The main focus of this presentation will be on higher education’s digital future.  Critical issues examined will include evolving technologies, pedagogical practice, the role of college faculty, the ascendency of instructional design by independent contractors, and the role of online education in promoting changes in institutional missions and strategies.  The presentation will begin with a review of the present state of online education in our colleges and universities and move to a speculation on the near future (2020s) and more distant future (2030s and beyond) and will explore the roles of emerging technologies such as adaptive learning, brain-machine interfaces, and artificial intelligence on instructional practice.

Dear Commons Community,

Columnist, George Will, lambasted President Trump yesterday calling him an “inexpressibly sad specimen.  The full column is below.  Here is an excerpt:

“Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.

Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive as his indifference to expanding their numbers.”

Don’t hold back, Mr. Will!

Tony

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Trump is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen

George F. Will

January 19, 2019

WASHINGTON — Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which is even worse.

If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that is, America is nothing but an economy — then the state of the union is good. Except that after two years of unified government under the party that formerly claimed to care about fiscal facts and rectitude, the nation faces a $1 trillion deficit during brisk growth and full employment. Unless the president has forever banished business cycles — if he has, his modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it — the next recession will begin with gargantuan deficits, which will be instructive.

The president has kept his promise not to address the unsustainable trajectory of the entitlement state (about the coming unpleasant reckoning, he says: “Yeah, but I won’t be here”), and his party’s congressional caucuses have elevated subservience to him into a political philosophy. The Republican-controlled Senate — the world’s most overrated deliberative body — will not deliberate about, much less pass, legislation the president does not favor. The evident theory is that it would be lese-majeste for the Senate to express independent judgments.

And that senatorial dignity is too brittle to survive the disapproval of a president not famous for familiarity with actual policies. Congressional Republicans have their ears to the ground — never mind Churchill’s observation that it is difficult to look up to anyone in that position.

The president’s most consequential exercise of power has been the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opening the way for China to fill the void of U.S. involvement. His protectionism — government telling Americans what they can consume, in what quantities and at what prices — completes his extinguishing of the limited-government pretenses of the GOP, which needs an entirely new vocabulary. Pending that, the party is resorting to crybaby conservatism: We are being victimized by “elites,” markets, Wall Street, foreigners, etc.

After 30 years of U.S. diplomatic futility regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the artist of the deal spent a few hours in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, then tweeted: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” What price will the president pay — easing sanctions? ending joint military exercises with South Korea? — in attempts to make his tweet seem less dotty?

By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper, always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front them.

Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.

Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive as his indifference to expanding their numbers.

Either the electorate, bored with a menu of faintly variant servings of boorishness, or the 22nd Amendment will end this, our shabbiest but not our first shabby presidency. As Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Dean Howells stepped outside together one morning, a downpour began and Howells asked, “Do you think it will stop?” Twain replied, “It always has.”

George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

Dear Commons Community,

Today we remember the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of peace who committed himself to equal rights, the poor, and to make America a better place.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Vice President Mike Pence made appearances on the Sunday talk shows yesterday and was grilled on his statement that “ISIS has been defeated” on the same day that four Americans and sixteen others were killed by a terrorist bomber in Syria.

“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace questioned Pence, noting the vice president had been briefed on the deadly suicide blast hours before declaring an end to the self-described Islamic State.

“Is that what the defeat of ISIS looks like?” Wallace asked.

Pence stood by his claim that the Islamic State had been devastated and praised President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to quickly withdraw American troops from war-torn Syria.

“First and foremost, our hearts go out to the families of those four American heroes,” Pence responded. “Look, the progress that we have made against ISIS since this president came into office has truly been remarkable. … In a very real sense, the ISIS state has been defeated.”

Later Sunday, Pence was called out on his “ISIS has been defeated” comments during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“Do you regret, in hindsight, saying that? Their deaths seem to contradict what you said,” host Margaret Brennan said.

Pence replied, “First and foremost, we’re deeply saddened at the loss of these four brave Americans. … President Obama withdrew American forces ―”

“But should you have said that?” Brennan interrupted.

Pence continued, “Let me be clear: President Obama withdrew American forces from Iraq precipitously in 2011. ISIS rose up virtually out of the desert, overran vast areas of Iraq and Syria ―”

“And that’s a criticism of what the Trump administration is doing in Syria now,” Brennan interrupted, referring to Trump’s highly controversial decision to pull out American troops from the war-torn country.

“The ISIS state has been defeated,” Pence said. “The president wants to bring our troops home, but he also wants to make sure that we hand off the fight against ISIS in Syria ― what remains of ISIS in Syria ― to our coalition partners.”

Four American troops were killed Wednesday when a suicide improvised explosive device detonated while they were conducting a routine patrol in the northern city of Manbij. They were an interpreter, an Army chief warrant officer, a Navy chief cryptologic technician and a Defense Department civilian, CNN reported.

The blast also killed 10 Syrian civilians and five local fighters, according to The New York Times.

It is a shame to see what a lackey Pence has become for our delusional president!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump’s big announcement yesterday regarding the federal government shutdown was a big dud.  Trump proposed a trade: Give me $5.7 billion in border wall money, and I’ll agree to protecting refugees and immigrants who came here as children for three years.  Democrats panned it as a “non-starter” and even conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter blasted it. Here is an excerpt from an article in the Huffington Post:

“Most Democrats dismissed the offer immediately Saturday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) shot down the deal to extend protections for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration proposal as a “non-starter.”

In a statement issued before Trump’s speech, Pelosi said the idea was a “compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives.”

Trump, meanwhile, falsely presented the proposal as something he had worked out with Democrats.

He said he thought many Democrats would show their “enthusiastic support,” and he said his solution was a “compassionate response to the ongoing tragedy on our southern border.”

But the offer, which Trump made from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room, seemed less like a serious effort to end the shutdown and more like his normal blame-shifting.

In response to the speech, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said on MSNBC that Trump’s deal was a “pipe dream,” and that Democrats would dismiss this speech as a publicity stunt.

While the offer certainly doesn’t seem to be a solution to the shutdown, it could potentially stir a new round of negotiations, and it signals Trump’s willingness to make some deal trading DACA protections for border security money.

Trump also signaled that he has moved from his insistence of a 2,000-mile border wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border to a more targeted approach. He referenced a “see-through steel barrier,” also known as a “fence.” He spoke of border security in broader terms, like in increasing the number of border agents. And he offered those trades for immigration ― specifically, three years of legislative relief for DACA recipients, and three years of protections for refugees.

The Trump administration has attempted to shut down DACA, an Obama-era initiative that allowed around 700,000 young people, called Dreamers, to avoid deportation. It has also sought to severely restrict TPS, which allows people to reside in the U.S. if they come from certain nations undergoing conflict or recovering from a natural disaster. But both would get a three-year extension under Trump’s offer.

That proposal is likely to anger Trump’s far-right base, however. Conservative author Ann Coulter ― whom Trump has taken policy cues from in the past ― tweeted that Trump’s offer was “100 miles of border wall in exchange for amnestying millions of illegals.”

“So if we grant citizenship to a BILLION foreigners, maybe we can finally get a full border wall,” she said.

Trump is also unlikely to move anyone on the left, but he and the White House are hoping there’s a strong group of independents who will see Trump’s effort to negotiate and begin blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

Trump didn’t spend time discussing the shutdown Saturday, but it’s clear he’s facing heat to get federal workers back to work. Polling suggests that 57 percent of Americans blame Trump for the shutdown, and his favorability has been slipping. But he’s hoping he can at least convince some that he’s working to find a solution ― even if his offer is one Democrats were able to easily reject.

One thing Trump did intimate is that he still could use a national emergency declaration to get his border wall, or perhaps other statutes. Trump said he would get his border wall “one way or the other.” That may offer Republicans and Democrats some hope, actually, as many on Capitol Hill believe the only way out of this shutdown is for Trump to declare a national emergency and try to redirect funds to a wall, have that move tied up in court, and then allow both parties to pass funding without giving in to the other side.”

Better luck next time, Mr. President!

Tony