Dear Commons Community,

Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times warning Democrats not to be complacent as they organize for the 2020 presidential election and not to get excited about recent polls showing most Democratic candidates ahead of Trump.  He also directs attention to a global anti-elite movement that improves Trump’s chance of victory.  Here is an excerpt:

“Political professionals are so focused on the micro-details of the 2020 elections that they miss the macro trends favoring President Trump as he kicks off his re-election campaign in Florida. They are looking at national and state polls when our “America First” president ought to be viewed in a global context.

The lobbyists, consultants and pundits inside the Beltway are obsessed with recent data that show Mr. Trump losing to several Democratic challengers. But surveys taken more than a year before Election Day are meaningless. More important, Mr. Trump benefits from incumbency and continued economic recovery, and he’s riding a wave of national populism that has yet to crest.

Only two of the nine presidents up for re-election since World War II have lost. In the past century the public has booted a party from the White House after a single term just once. And Jimmy Carter’s presidency was plagued by foreign policy setbacks and stagflation. Neither condition pertains today.

The United States is not engaged in a major war. And the economic recovery that began in mid-2009 has continued under Mr. Trump, with unemployment at half-century lows. Manufacturing employment has increased. Economic growth approached 3 percent last year. The Dow Jones industrial average has increased by about a third since Inauguration Day 2017.

Circumstances might change, of course. The flare-up with Iran and mixed signals from the bond market remind us that our political future isn’t a straight-line projection of the present. But Mr. Trump is wary of foreign entanglements, and a slowdown is not the same as a recession. Sustained peace and prosperity improve Mr. Trump’s chances of a second term.

So does the continuing revolt against global elites. One of the many oddities of this presidency is that a uniquely American figure such as Mr. Trump is part of a worldwide phenomenon. But there really can be no doubt that Mr. Trump was among the first heralds of an anti-elitist turn that has disrupted politics from London to Melbourne. The issues animating this upheaval have not disappeared. Nor is Mr. Trump likely to.”

Chris Matthews may similar comments on his MSNBC evening program last night.  Sound advice!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Goldberg has a column this morning evaluating New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s run for the Democratic nomination for president.  Her conclusion is that he will not get the nomination but nonetheless he has been a very successful mayor.  Below is her entire column.

I agree fully with Ms. Goldberg.  I believe he has been the best mayor New York has had in years and it has had some pretty good ones such as Michael Bloomberg.

So go for it Bill.  You have nothing to lose.

Tony

—————————————————————————————

New York Times

Stop Sneering at Bill de Blasio

By Michelle Goldberg

A common type of viral news story in our age of American decline involves school lunch debt.

School employees have seized lunches from students whose parents fall behind on their bills and thrown them in the trash. Kids who owe lunch fees have been branded with stamps and markers and served inferior cold meals.

Recently, a sweet third grader made national news for using his allowance to pay off his classmates’ debt, a feel-good story with a dystopian undercurrent, since individual altruism is no match for systemic desperation.

These stories never come from New York City, which has the country’s largest public school system. In 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration made school lunch free for all students, eliminating both the problem of school lunch debt and the stigma of getting a government subsidy.

That’s in addition to the city’s free school breakfasts, which are often served in classrooms to make sure more kids eat them. The free meals start at an early age, since de Blasio has instituted universal free pre-K for 4-year-olds and is scaling up a program for 3-year-olds.

Conventional wisdom holds that de Blasio is a joke, a sanctimonious dork held in widespread contempt by the city he governs. New York’s tabloids despise him. His presidential bid has been greeted with a combination of sneering, eye-rolling and baffled pity.

I’m as confused as everyone else about why de Blasio is running for president. But the mockery greeting his every move obscures what a successful mayor he’s been, particularly for working- and middle-class families.

In addition to free pre-K, he’s increased the minimum wage for city workers to $15 an hour, expanded a law mandating paid sick leave and set a record in financing affordable housing. In his book about de Blasio, former Daily News columnist Juan González estimated that the mayor’s policies delivered at least $21 billion in benefits to ordinary New Yorkers.

In de Blasio’s first mayoral race, he campaigned on ending stop-and-frisk, a Bloomberg-era policy in which police stop, question and sometimes search pedestrians, usually young men of color. Stop-and-frisks began falling before he took office but have declined further on his watch: “Since Mayor de Blasio came into office in January 2014, N.Y.P.D. stops have plummeted,” said a New York Civil Liberties Union report. At the same time, contrary to dire warnings from de Blasio’s opponents, crime in the city has dropped to record lows. In 2017, he was re-elected in a landslide, the first Democratic mayor to win a second term in New York City since the 1980s.

So why does it sometimes seem like everyone detests him?

I don’t just mean the law-and-order conservatives and financial elites whom de Blasio has fought with throughout his administration. He has become a national punching bag, the subject of a perpetual media hazing. “Everybody’s Having a Great Time Hating de Blasio,” said a recent Buzzfeed headline.

There is, obviously, much for progressives to criticize in de Blasio’s record. He’s been involved in serious campaign finance and corruption scandals. The city’s public housing system is in crisis. (So are its subways, though that’s largely the state’s responsibility.) He’s promised to close the brutal jail complex on Rikers Island, but advocates of criminal justice reform say he’s moving way too slow.

But reflexive disdain for de Blasio isn’t based only on his policies, or his ethics. It’s also about his affect.

He’s awkward, perpetually late and insists on being driven to Brooklyn to exercise at the Park Slope Y.M.C.A. He dropped a groundhog on Groundhog Day, and it later died. He’s condescending and self-righteous and refuses to go to the Met Gala.

“His style is that of a nervous suburban dad trying to be cool in front of his teenager’s pals,” said Vanity Fair. “His lack of charm is so stark for a politician that it’s almost inspiring,” said a piece in New York magazine’s The Cut.

This may be true, but it seems as if the material improvements he’s made in the lives of his poor and working-class constituents should count for as much as his personality flaws. The fact that they often don’t says something, I think, about whose priorities matter most in shaping political reputations.

The mayor’s approval rating in New York City is about 42 percent, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, compared with 44 percent who disapprove. That’s not great, but it’s not catastrophic. Former mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg both had moments when their approval ratings sank into the 30s, but both were considered at least semi-serious potential presidential contenders.

Perhaps one difference was who approved of them. De Blasio is pretty unpopular with white voters, but according to the Quinnipiac poll, 66 percent of black voters think well of him. Brian Lehrer, the New York City radio host who has de Blasio on his program every week, told me that these voters don’t “get the media microphone very much to set the narrative about Bill de Blasio.”

If they did, his presidential run would still be a bad idea, but he might be more famous for feeding the city’s kids than for killing a rodent.

Dear Commons Community,

Unicaf University is an African institution founded in 2012 with programs in fields like business, education and health care management. Offering degrees largely online, with some blended learning options, Unicaf reaches 18,000 students across the continent, many of them working adults.

Unicaf offers the convenience of anytime, anywhere study — as long as the internet service is sufficient. The cost of a degree, about $4,000, is not cheap by African standards, but it is within reach of the region’s growing middle class, and many students receive scholarships.  

As American colleges rush to recruit in China or to build campuses in Singapore, Africa has an important higher education story to tell. Of the continent’s 1.2 billion people, 60 percent are under 25, and thanks to a broad campaign over the last several decades to improve elementary and secondary school participation rates, the number of high school graduates is higher than ever.

What’s more, the economy is beginning to diversify and is generating an increasing demand for a more highly skilled workers..

The region’s universities, however, are not keeping pace. Less than 10 percent of college-age students in sub-Saharan Africa are enrolled in higher education, according to the World Bank. By contrast, in the wealthy member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the share is closer to 80 percent.  A recent New York Times article reports:

“Africa’s longstanding public universities have wrestled with the pressure to expand capacity without sacrificing quality, and not always successfully, said Jamil Salmi, a higher education consultant and former World Bank official from Morocco. Such universities have grown up, but they vary in caliber and can be costly. Going abroad to study is an option for only a select few.

“All of these efforts on their own are not adequate,” said Peter Okebukola, president of the Global University Network for Innovation in Lagos, Nigeria, who has been involved with several efforts to expand online, or distance, education across Africa. “To improve access in Africa will require a multiplicity of ways.”

Could one of those be a Pan-African, Cyprus-based, mostly online university? Nicos Nicolaou, Unicaf’s founder, said he believes so, despite issues with internet access across Africa. The university gives every student a tablet, and course materials can be downloaded and accessed offline. Power failures, however, are common, and dependable internet is far from guaranteed.

But Mr. Nicolaou remains positive. He was born in northern Cyprus, and like many Cypriots, he studied overseas. Returning home, he wanted to play a part in rebuilding the country’s education system, which had been disrupted by civil war. A private college he helped start became the University of Nicosia. It was working there that first took him to Africa in 1989.

Initially, Unicaf was essentially a distance-learning platform, taking courses offered by British and American universities, translating them to an online environment and marketing them to Africans. Partner institutions set admissions standards, approve hiring and determine whether students meet graduation requirements.

Ariane Schauer is provost of Marymount California University, a small Catholic college outside Los Angeles. “It was very aligned with our mission of serving the underserved,” Ms. Schauer said of the decision to offer an M.B.A. through Unicaf.

Under a new president, Marymount has ended the relationship to concentrate on the home campus, but Ms. Schauer said the university, which awarded 150 degrees to African students over six years, was pleased with the partnership.

For universities it pairs with, Unicaf — which takes a share of tuition revenues, typically 20 to 35 percent — provides an entrance into a new market with reduced risk. But its financial model, which rests on volume, is not always an easy fit for western universities. A $60,000 M.B.A. program, which is commonplace in the United States, costs four years’ average salary in Nigeria, one of Africa’s wealthiest countries.

For some students, however, the ability to get an international degree is central to Unicaf’s appeal.

While Mr. Nicolaou is in talks with several more potential British partners, Unicaf is moving toward offering more of its own degrees, accredited by African national regulatory bodies. It already is recognized to offer degrees in Malawi and Zambia and hopes to soon add Rwanda and Zimbabwe, says Jonathan Kydd, a former dean of international programs at the University of London who advises the Unicaf board.

Mr. Kydd, a development economist who spent much of his career in Africa, says it is important that a degree have practical value in the local labor market. “A student in Africa doesn’t need a degree from the American Ivy League to get the kind of job he wants,” he said.

After focusing on graduate programs, Unicaf also plans more undergraduate degrees. Bachelor’s programs are now offered only in Malawi and Zambia, where Unicaf has bricks-and-mortar campuses. (It has an additional nine learning centers, where students can access support services.)

…

Skepticism about online education remains, says Mr. Okebukola, who is also chairman of the council at the Open University of Nigeria. If Unicaf degrees earn regulatory approval in more African countries that will help, but many Africans see distance learning as “second grade,” he says. Online providers need to prove their value in the job market, he says. “The test of the pudding is in the eating.”

By 2023, Mr. Nicolaou hopes Unicaf will enroll 100,000 students. That sort of increase in a few short years may sound crazy, he acknowledged to an outsider. “But when I talk with people I know in Africa,” he said, “they think 100,000 is a pessimistic target. That’s because the need is in the millions.”

In 2014,  I was invited to South Africa to discuss online and blended learning with administrators and faculty at North-West University.  The demand for higher education was as great there as described in the above article.  However, building new campuses was almost financially impossible.  They saw online technology as the only vehicle for expanding student access.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump appears to have booted acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney from the Oval Office for coughing during his interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that aired yesterday.

“Let’s do that over, he’s coughing in the middle of my answer,” Trump said in the footage released by the network. “I don’t like that, you know. I don’t like that.” 

Then, Trump asked Mulvaney to leave.

“If you’re going to cough, please leave the room,” Trump said, pointing and shaking his head. “You just can’t, you just can’t cough.” 

Mulvaney was not seen on camera, but he was identified by Stephanopoulos as the unusual scene unfolded.

Let’s clear out throats for Trump!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

West Virginia teachers went on strike this past  February to protest a bill that would open up the state to charter schools and help students pay for alternatives to the public education system. They won that strike, and went back to work when the House of Delegates’ rejected the legislation.

Just four months later, history may repeat itself.  As reported by The Huffington Post:

“Earlier this month, the state Senate passed two bills similar to the one teachers protested in February, but with additional language that makes it more difficult for the educators to go on strike. The fate of the bills is again in the hands of the House of Delegates, which reconvenes today.

The bills represent the latest skirmish in a nearly two-year tug-of-war between local teachers and state legislators, during which teachers went on strike twice. The first walkout, in 2018, protested low pay and health care costs, and was teachers’ first in the state since 1990. It lasted nine days and helped spur a “red state revolt” across the country, as teachers in Kentucky, Oklahoma and elsewhere subsequently staged their own walkouts. The second strike in West Virginia earlier this year lasted just two days.  

Now, during the summer break for public schools, teachers are getting ready to mobilize again.

The two education bills that the state Senate advanced promise a pay hike but would allow the establishment of charter schools and create education savings accounts that help families use public money to pay for private schools. One bill also specifies that strikes by public employees are illegal in the state and that the workers can be fired for such work stoppages. It also says school superintendents must keep schools open during walkouts.

The West Virginia Supreme Court previously ruled that teachers don’t have the right to strike. But in the recent labor strife local superintendents closed schools in anticipation of work stoppages, which took the onus off of the teachers. 

In Arizona and Oklahoma, legislators also recently introduced bills that included new penalties for striking teachers, but the measures did not pass. 

…

A recent report by the state Department of Education suggests widespread opposition to the idea of charter schools and education savings accounts across the state. The report, based on a series of forums, surveyed participants on their views of education issues. The department received nearly 700 comment cards on the topic of charter schools and education savings accounts, with 90% of respondents expressing disapproval.

But GOP state Sen. Patricia Rucker, chair of the education committee, disputes that the report accurately reflects public attitudes. She said its findings were “slanted” by the large number of teachers who participated, and that respondents weren’t given proper clarification on the definition of charter schools and education savings accounts. She also noted that most indicated support for the idea of more flexibility in education.

Responding to criticism that the Senate bills represent reprisal against teachers, Rucker said in an email to HuffPost, “There is nothing retaliatory about local control or clarifying that our state does not allow for public employees to strike (as determined by our state Supreme Court). … There is nothing retaliatory in giving local counties the option to have charters, something the majority of the United States has already,” 

The Republican-led bid in the West Virginia Senate has the support of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.”

Get ready to wear red again!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, who delighted audiences around the world with his romantic vision and extravagant productions died yesterday at the age of 96.

While Zeffirelli was most popularly known for his films such as Romeo and Juliet (1968),  his name was also inextricably linked to the theater and opera. He produced classics for the world’s most famous opera houses, from Milan’s venerable La Scala to the Metropolitan Opera in New York and plays for London and Italian stages.  He staged eleven productions here in New York at the Metropolitan Opera including two, La Boheme and Turandot, that are still part of the Met’s repertoire.  When the curtain goes up on a Zeffirelli set, the audience oohs and aahs and applauds the color and attention to historical and cultural details for which he is famous. 

In his 2006 autobiography, Zeffirelli recounted how his mother attended her husband’s funeral pregnant with another man’s child. Unable to give the baby either her name or his father’s, she tried to name him Zeffiretti, after an aria in Mozart’s Idomeneo. But a typographical error made it Zeffirelli, making him “the only person in the world with Zeffirelli as a name, thanks to my mother’s folly.”

His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 6, and Zeffirelli went to live with his father’s cousin, whom he affectionately called Zia (Aunt) Lide.

Living in Zia Lide’s house and getting weekly visits from his father, Zeffirelli developed the passions that would shape his life. The first was for opera, after seeing Wagner’s  Walkure  at age 8 or 9 in Florence. The second was a love of English culture and literature, after his father started him on thrice-weekly English lessons.

His experiences with the British expatriate community under fascism, and their staunch disbelief that they would be victimized by Benito Mussolini’s regime, were at the heart of the semi-autobiographical 1991 film Tea with Mussolini starring Judith Dench, Maggie Smith, and Cher.

I had the pleasure of hearing him give a lecture on opera at Lincoln Center in New York in 1998.  During the question and lecture portion, he was asked:  How does he start a new production?  Does he start he start with the music, the story, the performers, or the sets?  He immediately responded that he starts with the audience who he visualizes as an ensemble of individuals each with unique expectations and needs for coming to a production.  As a result, his work becomes a struggle to meet these individual expectations.

He was a master of his art and a person for the people!

Tony

Carrie Lam

Dear Commons Community,

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam said yesterday that she will suspend the controversial China extradition bill in an apparent bid to quell further unrest and mass demonstrations throughout the city.   According to CNN.

“…after consultations with lawmakers, Lam said passage of the bill would be suspended and a second reading due to take place this month canceled. There is no timeline for discussions around the bill to resum and she indicated it likely will not pass this year.

“We have made many attempts to narrow differences and eliminate doubts,” Lam said. “In the last week, tens of thousands of people took part in protests and gatherings. Serious conflicts broke out … resulting in a number of police officers, media workers and other members of the public being injured. I am saddened by this.”

She added that in suspending the bill she hoped the government could “restore calmness” to society. Failure to do so would “deal another blow to the society,” Lam said.

The announcement follows violent clashes between police and protesters Wednesday, after tens of thousands of mostly young people surrounded the city’s government headquarters, forcing legislators to postpone a debate on the bill.

They were just the latest in a series of public protests against the bill, which critics fear could be used to extradite residents to mainland China for political or inadvertent business offenses.

On June 9, more than one million people took to the streets in a peaceful march against the legislation, about one in seven of the city’s population — a potential repeat of that demonstration is planned for this Sunday.

Speaking in advance of Lam’s press conference, a spokesman for the Civil Human Rights Front confirmed to CNN that the march would go ahead even if the bill is paused. In a statement, the Democratic Party said the march would start at 2:30pm local time Sunday in Victoria Park. Protesters will wear black and demand the bill be completely withdrawn and Lam step down.

Addressing the media, Saturday, Lam blamed herself for failure to communicate effectively to the public. She said the original driving force of the bill was a murder case in Taiwan, in which the alleged perpetrator, a Hong Kong man, fled to the city. That case, Lam said, highlighted “loopholes” in the current law with regards to Greater China.

“As a responsible government we needed to find a solution to deal with this murder case (and) give justice to the family,” Lam said.

However, Taipei said earlier this month it would not seek the man’s extradition based on the bill, which it said put Taiwanese citizens at risk, removing any urgency for Hong Kong lawmakers to change the law.

While she said the “original purpose of the bill is correct in my mind,” Lam added that “our communication has not been adequate.”

“I feel deep sorrow and regret that the deficiencies in my work and other factors has stirred up deep dissatisfaction and controversies in society,” Lam said, adding that she and her team would “adopt the most sincere and humble attitude” in future.

The climbdown over the bill will raise questions over Lam’s future. Before she became Chief Executive in 2017, Lam said she would resign “if mainstream opinion makes me no longer able to continue the job.” 

Pro-democracy figures said that the bill, championed by the pro-Beijing Lam government, would lead to the erosion of civil rights in Hong Kong, including freedom of speech and rule of law.

“We are afraid that we will become a mainland city,” lawmaker Fernando Cheung said Thursday. “We would no longer have rule of law, our own autonomy.”

Throughout the debate Lam has maintained that the bill is necessary to ensure that Hong Kong does not become a sanctuary for fugitives running from justice in mainland China”

Power to the people of Hong Kong!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Cathedral of Notre Dame will hold its first Mass tonight since a devastating fire ripped through the French cathedral and sent its spire crashing down in April.

For “security reasons,” it will be limited to about 30 people and will take place in a side chapel, Agence France-Presse reported.  Attendees will be required to wear hard hats inside the 850-year-old structure, which is still in repair, according to ABC News. 

Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit will lead the service, which will also celebrate the anniversary of the consecration of its altar. The event is commemorated each year on June 16.

The April 15 blaze began in the cathedral’s attic during the start of Holy Week and was “potentially linked” to renovations, firefighters said, according to HuffPost France. Though the flames destroyed roughly two-thirds of the roof, city officials confirmed that the main structure had been “saved and preserved.”

The next morning, Paris firefighters announced that it took nearly 400 of them more than nine hours to put out the fire. Three first responders were slightly injured, but no one died.

The first images of the building appeared to show sculptor Nicolas Coustou’s 300-year-old Pieta still intact before rows of charred pews. However, burning embers could be seen through gaping holes in the ceiling, which had been eaten through by the flames.

French President Emmanuel Macron immediately assured the public the cathedral would be rebuilt as messages of solidarity arrived from leaders around the world.

I was in Paris two weeks ago and it was quite sad to see Notre Dame covered in huge tarps, scaffolding, and with  cranes and other construction equipment surrounding it.  At that time, the area around it was cordoned off and the public was not allowed to get close to it.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump said in a new interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, that he would gladly take incriminating information about a campaign opponent from countries like Russia. Asked what he would do if he were offered foreign dirt on an opponent in 2020, he said he’d take it, and pooh-poohed the idea of calling federal law enforcement stating:  “Oh, let me call the F.B.I.,” he said derisively. “Give me a break, life doesn’t work that way.”   Michelle Goldberg analyzes his comments in her column this morning.  Here is an excerpt:

“That Trump has no loyalty to his country, its institutions and the integrity of its elections is not surprising. That he feels no need to fake it is alarming. With the end of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, House Democrats’ craven fear of launching an impeachment inquiry, and the abject capitulation of Republicans to Trumpian authoritarianism, the president is reveling in his own impunity.

Maybe the insult of it can jolt the country out of its current stasis. Every so often, Trump says or does something so grotesque that it cuts through the despairing numbness engendered by his presidency, galvanizing the forces of decency anew. It happened after Trump defended white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, after he compared nonwhite countries to excrement, and after he bowed and scraped before Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. This should be one of those moments.

That doesn’t mean it will be. Much of the Resistance is exhausted by last year’s push to retake the House and deflated by the anti-climactic aftermath of the Mueller report. For two and a half years, as Trump has treated his oath of office the way he’s rumored to have treated a Moscow hotel bed, it’s felt as if something has to give. But day by day, what’s giving is the will to stop him.”

Her last comment about the “will to stop him” says it all!

Tony