Dear Commons Community,

The University of Alaska Board of Regents voted unanimously yesterday to terminate its declaration of financial exigency.  Its vote came after Governor Michael Dunleavy formally agreed to reduce cuts in the university’s budget from the $135 million he had sought for the current fiscal year to the $25 million that state lawmakers countered with.

The vote was 10-0 in favor of terminating the decision that would have allowed the system to cut programs quickly and to dismiss tenured faculty members with 60 days’ notice. That status has hurt morale and created a sense of instability for the university, critics said, prompting some faculty members to file a grievance seeking to have it lifted.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Tuesday’s vote comes one month after regents, faced with an unprecedented 41-percent cut in the state budget for the university system, declared financial exigency. At the time, they said it could be terminated if the university’s budget situation improved.

Dale Anderson, a member of the Board of Regents, reminded the board that under the agreement signed by the governor and the university, the $25 million in cuts this year will be followed by $45 million in reductions over the next two years.

“We’ve been given the luxury of a three-year glide path” and a smaller reduction, Anderson said, “but remember, the reduction is $70 million.” Another declaration of financial exigency might be needed in the future, he said, “to save the institution.”

Since the governor’s budget cuts were announced in late June, the system, which includes separately accredited universities in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau, as well as 13 community campuses, has made significant cuts.

In addition to administrative reductions, the contracts of many of the system’s adjunct instructors and term professors have not been renewed, James R. Johnsen, the system’s president, said. Travel and hiring freezes are now being allowed to “thaw” to resume essential operations, he said.

None of the cuts made so far relied on the existence of the exigency declaration, Johnsen said.

Next month, the regents will meet to consider Johnsen’s proposal that the system be consolidated from three separately accredited universities to one, with a number of regional campuses. The chancellors of the three main campuses are among those who oppose the move.

In a recorded announcement, Dunleavy defended his decision to initially push for the draconian cuts that led to an ongoing campaign to recall him from office.

“I understand the budget approach and timing, being so late in the legislative year, created significant angst among Alaskans,” he said. His budget vetoes, he maintained, forced Alaskans to take the state’s fiscal challenges seriously.”

The U of Alaska community is giving thanks today!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump, slammed the Fox News network on Sunday after a new poll showed him falling behind several potential Democratic challengers in next year’s presidential election.  Fox News anchor Bret Baier fired back last night on his evening news program.

“There’s something going on at Fox, I’ll tell you right now, and I’m not happy with it,” Trump said in a swipe at his once-favorite network.  Baier insisted  that “Fox has not changed,” and then explained that the network has an opinion side and a news side.

“The opinion folks express their opinions,” Baier said. “We do polls. Our latest poll had the Democratic candidates, head-to-head, several of them ahead of President Trump.”

He said the numbers are similar to the aggregations of polls on RealClearPolitics.

“This poll matches what we are seeing out there, Mr. President,” he said, then challenged him to appear on the network for an interview. 

“We’d love to have you back on,” he said. “You’ve talked to George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Todd. Come on back. Me, Chris Wallace, the news side cover it fair, balanced and unafraid.”

Trump has lately been attacking Fox News for what he sees as less favorable coverage than what he enjoyed from the right-wing network throughout the 2016 campaign.

Though he still gets enthusiastic support from opinion hosts Sean Hannity ― who has campaigned with him on stage ― Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, he’s griped over some of its news coverage. 

He’s complained about previous polls showing him behind and has slammed the network for even covering the Democratic candidates as “moving to the losing side.” 

Last month, Trump griped that Fox News “forgot the people who got them there.” 

If Trump loses the Fox News crew, he might want to give up his election bid and move to Greenland.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

There has been talk about how much Trump’s trade war with China will cost Americans especially if the third round of tariffs are enacted in September 2019.  J.P. Morgan Chase estimates that the new tariffs will cost American households up to $1,000 per year starting on September 1.  As reported by the International Business Times:

According to the bank’s analysts, the cost of the U.S.-China trade war borne by consumers is likely to rise from around $600 per year — based on the first two “phases” of the tariffs on Chinese imports — to around $1,000, based on the third round of tariffs.

That $1,000 figure assumes a 10% tariff on about $112 billion of Chinese imports, which U.S. President Donald Trump announced will begin next month. While he had initially proposed 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, he later scaled it back to exclude certain consumer products like cell phones, laptops, and toys.

If the tariff increase to 25% — as President Trump has threatened — the cost to consumers would rise to $1,500 per year, J.P. Morgan stated.

“What distinguishes China Phase III tariffs from preceding tariffs is the impact to Consumption and Capital goods,” analysts wrote. While previous tariffs focused more on “intermediate goods,” this batch “suggests that the expected consumer impact should be larger in the latest round,” the bank’s analysts wrote.

The $1,000 cost is also expected to offset the majority of the benefit that American households received from the Tax Act, the analysts added, which was around $1,300.

“The impact from reduced spending could be immediate for discretionary goods and services since tariffs are regressive,” they wrote. “Unlike the agriculture sector which is receiving subsidies/aid to offset the impact of China’s retaliatory actions, there is no simple way to compensate consumers.”

Since this move comes at a “much higher cost for the U.S. administration” ahead of a presidential election, the analysts noted that there was “a good chance they end up reversing their decision and finding a way to reach some common ground with Chinese negotiators.”

I have no doubt that Trump is trying to figure out how to back out of his tariff proposals.  Bullies always back down when confronted.

Tony

Daniel Pantaleo Applying a Chokehold on Eric Garner

Dear Commons Community,

After five years of investigations and protests, New York City’s Police Commissioner James O’Neill fired Daniel Pantaleo, who was involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man whose dying cries of “I can’t breathe” fueled a national debate over race and police use of force.  As reported by the Associated Press:

“Police Commissioner James O’Neill’s announced at a midday news conference that he had fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who is white, based on a recent recommendation of a department disciplinary judge. He said it was clear that Pantaleo “can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer.”

“None of us can take back our decisions,” O’Neill said, “especially when they lead to the death of another human being.”

O’Neill has been deliberating on whether to accept a disciplinary judge’s recommendation to fire Officer Daniel Pantaleo for using a banned chokehold on Eric Garner.

The recordings led to years of protests and calls by black activists and liberal politicians for Pantaleo to lose his job. City officials had long insisted, though, they couldn’t take action until criminal investigations were complete.

A state grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo in 2014. Federal authorities, however, kept a civil rights investigation open for five years before announcing last month they wouldn’t bring charges.

Pantaleo’s lawyer has insisted the officer used a reasonable amount of force and didn’t mean to hurt Garner.

New York City’s mayor has declined to say whether he believes Garner should lose his job but has been promising “justice” to the slain man’s family.

Garner’s death came at a time of a growing public outcry over police killings of unarmed black men that sparked the national Black Lives Matter movement.

Just weeks later, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. And later in 2014, a man angry about the Garner and Brown cases shot two New York City police officers to death in their cruiser in retribution.

At a recent administrative trial at New York Police Department headquarters, Pantaleo’s lawyers argued he used an approved “seat belt” technique to subdue Garner, who refused to be handcuffed after officers accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes.

In a bystander’s video, it appeared that Pantaleo initially tried to use two approved restraint tactics on Garner, who was much larger at 6-foot-2 and about 400 pounds, but ended up wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck for about seven seconds as they struggled against a glass storefront window and fell to the sidewalk.

The footage showed Garner, who was 43 at the time, crying out, “I can’t breathe,” at least 11 times before he fell unconscious. The medical examiner’s office said a chokehold contributed to Garner’s death.”

This was a long overdue decision!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As the stock market gets jittery and the talk of a recession increases, President Trump rather that easing fears and anxieties is blaming a host of conspirators who are out to get him.  Maggie Haberman analyzes Trump’s responses to two weeks of scary economics as a pathetic attempt to deflect blame from his own ill-conceived comments and inept approaches to international economic negotiations.  Below is her article.

Tony

New York Times

In Economic Warning Signals, Trump Sees Signs of a Conspiracy

By Maggie Haberman

Aug. 18, 2019

President Trump, confronting perhaps the most ominous economic signs of his time in office, has unleashed what is by now a familiar response: lashing out at what he believes is a conspiracy of forces arrayed against him.

He has insisted that his own handpicked Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, is intentionally acting against him. He has said other countries, including allies, are working to hurt American economic interests. And he has accused the news media of trying to create a recession.

“The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election,” Mr. Trump tweeted last week. “The problem they have is that the economy is way too strong and we will soon be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!”

Mr. Trump has repeated the claims in private discussions with aides and allies, insisting that his critics are trying to take away what he sees as his calling card for re-election. Mr. Trump has been agitated in discussions of the economy, and by the news media’s reporting of warnings of a possible recession. He has said forces that do not want him to win have been overstating the damage his trade war has caused, according to people who have spoken with him. And several aides agree with him that the news media is overplaying the economic fears, adding to his feeling of being justified, people close to the president said.

The claims provide a ready target to help Mr. Trump deflect blame if the economy does tip into recession. But whether they could truly insulate the president on what could be a significant issue of the 2020 election after he has so conspicuously wrapped himself in the good economic news of the past two years remains an open question, and he and his advisers have sought to tamp down concerns that a downturn is on the way.

“Our economy is the best in the world, by far,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday. “Lowest unemployment ever within almost all categories. Poised for big growth after trade deals are completed.”

“I don’t see a recession,” he told reporters later on Sunday before leaving his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for Washington. But he added that if the economy slowed down, “it would be because I have to take on China and some other countries,” singling out the European Union as among those treating the United States “very badly.”

The president’s broadsides follow a long pattern of conspiratorial thinking. He has claimed, without evidence, that undocumented immigrants cast millions of ballots, costing him the popular vote in the 2016 election. During the campaign, he predicted that the system might prove to be “rigged” if he did not win. He conjured up a “deep state” conspiracy within the government to thwart his election and, more recently, his agenda. And he has said reporters are trying to harm him with pictures of empty seats at his rallies.

The attacks come as the economy has begun flashing some warning signs, despite unemployment near historic lows and relatively high marks by voters on Mr. Trump’s economic stewardship. Global growth has been slowing. Last week, stock markets plunged as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note briefly fell below that of the two-year Treasury note, an unusual situation known as an inversion of the yield curve that is considered one of the most reliable leading indicators of recession in the United States.

In some conversations, the president has been preoccupied with the trade war, as well as with how to handle the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, according to the people who have spoken with him. “I’d love to see it worked out in a humane fashion,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday, referring to potential retaliation against the demonstrators by China. “It does put pressure on the trade deal,” he added.

Mr. Trump also indicated that the Chinese tech giant Huawei, which his administration sees as a national security threat, might not receive an extension of a reprieve that allows American companies to supply it with certain goods despite a ban on such trade.

“Huawei is a company we may not do business with at all,” the president said, casting doubt on reports that the reprieve, which is set to expire on Monday, would be extended.

On Sunday, his advisers battled any notion that the trade war could be harming the economy. Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser who has urged the president on in his trade war, dismissed a study from researchers at Harvard, the University of Chicago, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that showed that the cost of Mr. Trump’s tariffs had “fallen largely on the U.S.,” not on China and other countries, as the administration has asserted.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that American consumers are bearing any of this,” Mr. Navarro said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” insisting, despite abundant data to the contrary, that “they’re not hurting anybody here.”

While maintaining that any turmoil in the economy is overstated, Mr. Navarro and Larry Kudlow, the White House economic adviser, also said the Federal Reserve had slowed economic growth, mirroring Mr. Trump’s criticisms.

Mr. Kudlow, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said that the state of the economy under the Trump administration “is kind of a miracle, because we face severe monetary restraint from the Fed.”

Mr. Navarro, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” blamed the Fed for raising interest rates “too far, too fast,” adding that “they have cost us a full point” of growth in gross domestic product.

Mr. Trump has also struck an increasingly strident economic tone.

“You have no choice but to vote for me because your 401(k), everything is going to be down the tubes” if Democrats win, he told a crowd at a campaign rally in Manchester, N.H., last week. “Whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.”

The rally was one a few departures from a relatively low-profile period during a nearly two-week trip to his club in Bedminster, where he typically spends part of August. He also took official trips to El Paso, Tex., and Dayton, Ohio, after the gun massacres there, and he went to Pennsylvania ostensibly to talk about energy sources, but instead delivered remarks indistinguishable from those at one of his rallies.

But the dyspeptic diatribes came in spurts, and the president whipsawed between frustration and freewheeling meetings and golf outings, including one on Saturday with the president of the P.G.A. and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to two people familiar with his playing partners. Still, Mr. Trump was frustrated by the news media’s coverage of his rally in New Hampshire. He repeatedly complained about misleading pictures of empty seats, or that attendance at the arena had beat Elton John’s record crowd there, but no one was covering it.

Long-serving aides say that Mr. Trump understands that presidents face harder re-election battles in a bad economy, and he has made the issue central to his presidency.

But even as he returns to Washington facing new pressures, Mr. Trump did not seem to anticipate a quick resolution to the trade war. “The tariffs have cost nothing, in my opinion, or certainly very little,” in terms of pain to American consumers and businesses, Mr. Trump insisted, adding that “China is eating the tariffs.”

“China would like to make a deal,” he said. “I’m not ready.”

Dear Commons Community,

Kim Brooks, a writer and author of Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear, had an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, ringing an alarm that “our kids are not O.K.”

She comments: “For youngsters these days, an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they’re miserable.  But I’ve come to believe that the problems with children’s mental and emotional health are caused not by any single change in kids’ environment but by a fundamental shift in the way we view children and child-rearing, and the way this shift has transformed our schools, our neighborhoods and our relationships to one another and our communities.” 

She specifically mentions that the hours outside school are more like school than ever. Children spend afternoons, weekends and summers in aftercare and camps while their parents work. The areas where children once congregated for unstructured, unsupervised play are now often off limits. And so those who can afford it drive their children from one structured activity to another. Those who can’t keep them inside. Free play and childhood independence have become relics….  Brooks references Denise Pope, a co-founder of Challenge Success, that helps schools make research-backed changes to improve children’s mental health. Kids need recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on social-emotional learning.

The full op-ed is below.  It is important reading for parents and educators.

Tony

—————————————————————————————-

New York Times

We Have Ruined Childhood

By Kim Brooks

Aug. 17, 2019

According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression rose by more than 60 percent among those ages 14 to 17, and 47 percent among those ages 12 to 13. This isn’t just a matter of increased diagnoses. The number of children and teenagers who were seen in emergency rooms with suicidal thoughts or having attempted suicide doubled between 2007 and 2015.

To put it simply, our kids are not O.K.

For a long time, as a mother and as a writer, I searched for a single culprit. Was it the screens? The food? The lack of fresh air and free time, the rise of the overscheduled, overprotected child, the overarching culture of anxiety and fear?

Those things might all contribute. But I’ve come to believe that the problems with children’s mental and emotional health are caused not by any single change in kids’ environment but by a fundamental shift in the way we view children and child-rearing, and the way this shift has transformed our schools, our neighborhoods and our relationships to one another and our communities.

The work of raising children, once seen as socially necessary labor benefiting the common good, is an isolated endeavor for all but the most well-off parents. Parents are entirely on their own when it comes to their offspring’s well-being. Many have had to prioritize physical safety and adult supervision over healthy emotional and social development.

No longer able to rely on communal structures for child care or allow children time alone, parents who need to work are forced to warehouse their youngsters for long stretches of time. School days are longer and more regimented. Kindergarten, which used to be focused on play, is now an academic training ground for the first grade. Young children are assigned homework even though numerous studies have found it harmful. STEM, standardized testing and active-shooter drills have largely replaced recess, leisurely lunches, art and music.

The role of school stress in mental distress is backed up by data on the timing of child suicide. “The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it’s higher in the summer.” But the problems with kids’ mental and emotional health are not only caused by what goes on in the classroom. They also reflect what’s happening in our communities. The scarcity of resources of every kind, including but not limited to access to mental health services, health care, affordable housing and higher education, means that many parents are working longer and harder than ever. At the same time that more is demanded of parents, childhood free time and self-directed activities have become taboo.

And so for many children, when the school day is over, it hardly matters; the hours outside school are more like school than ever. Children spend afternoons, weekends and summers in aftercare and camps while their parents work. The areas where children once congregated for unstructured, unsupervised play are now often off limits. And so those who can afford it drive their children from one structured activity to another. Those who can’t keep them inside. Free play and childhood independence have become relics, insurance risks, at times criminal offenses.

Tali Raviv, the associate director of the Center for Childhood Resilience, says many children today are suffering a social-skills deficit. She told me kids today “have fewer opportunities to practice social-emotional skills, whether it’s because they live in a violent community where they can’t go outside, or whether it’s because there’s overprotection of kids and they don’t get the independence to walk down to the corner store.” They don’t learn “how to start a friendship, how to start a relationship, what to do when someone’s bothering you, how to solve a problem.”

Many parents and pediatricians speculate about the role that screen time and social media might play in this social deficit. But it’s important to acknowledge that simply taking away or limiting screens is not enough. Children turn to screens because opportunities for real-life human interaction have vanished; the public places and spaces where kids used to learn to be people have been decimated or deemed too dangerous for those under 18.

And so for many Americans, the nuclear family has become a lonely institution — and childhood, one long unpaid internship meant to secure a spot in a dwindling middle class.

Something has to change, says Denise Pope, a co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., that helps schools make research-backed changes to improve children’s mental health. Kids need recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on social-emotional learning.

Challenge Success also works with parents, encouraging them to get together with their neighbors and organize things like extracurricular-free days when kids can simply play, and teaching them how not to intervene in normal peer conflict so that children can build problem-solving skills themselves. A similar organization, Let Grow, helps schools set up unstructured free play before and after the school day.

Dr. Gray told me it’s no surprise that the program, which he consults for, has been well received. “Children are willing to get up an hour early to have free play, one hour a week,” he said. “It’s like a drop of water if you’ve been in the desert.”

These groups are doing important work, but if that kind of desperation is any indication, we shouldn’t be surprised that so many kids are so unhappy. Investing in a segment of the population means finding a way to make them both safe and free. When it comes to kids, we too often fall short. It’s no wonder so many are succumbing to despair. In many ways, America has given up on childhood, and on children.

Dear Commons Community,

Workers at a massive new Shell plant in Pennsylvania had to attend a speech by President Donald Trump there earlier this week to be paid — and were ordered not to protest.  As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“Attendance was not mandatory for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant north of Pittsburgh, but they had to forfeit pay for the day if they skipped, according to attendance and comportment information obtained by the newspaper.

 “Your attendance is not mandatory,” one manager told workers, summarizing a memo that Shell sent to union leaders, the Post-Gazette reported, but only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards and prepared to stand for hours through lunch would be paid.

“No scan, no pay,” workers were warned.

The newspaper said that they were also told: “No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”

“This is just what Shell wanted to do and we went along with it,” Ken Broadbent, business manager for Steamfitters Local 449, told the newspaper. He said he wouldn’t “bad rap” the situation.

“We’re glad to have the jobs. We’re glad to have the project built,” he said. “The president is the president whether we like him or dislike him. We respect him for the title.”

The new $6 billion plant, which has been under construction since 2017, is an “ethane cracker” plant. It will “crack” ethane, a natural gas liquid found in some natural gas deposits, and turn it into plastic pellets to be used in various plastic products. The plant will produce over 1 million tons of plastic. Environmentalists and community groups complain that the operation will harm the region’s air quality and will increase carbon emissions and plastic pollution.

Trump took full credit for the plant in his speech, even though it was initially approved in June 2016, during the Obama administration, CNN reported. 

“It was the Trump administration that made it possible,“ Trump told workers.  “No one else. Without us, you would never have been able to do this.”

He also told workers: “I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ’I hope you’re going to support Trump. If they don’t, vote them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”

What a phony!

Tony

Antonio Basco, companion of Margie Reckard, leans on her casket during her funeral at La Paz Faith Memorial & Spiritual Center

Dear Commons Community,

Thousands of strangers came to say goodbye to a woman who was killed in a mass shooting in El Paso after hearing her longtime companion had few family members left.  As reported by the Associated Press:

Antonio Basco had told reporters he felt alone in planning the funeral for Margie Reckard, one of 22 people killed when a gunman opened fire at a Walmart on Aug. 3. Basco had almost no family left, so he invited the world to join him in remembering his companion of 22 years.

He thought he might get a few well-wishers from El Paso.

Then, the flowers started coming in.

Then, the funeral home had to change venues.

People came from California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and across the border in Mexico. They stood in line for hours Friday for Reckard’s funeral, then patiently waited Saturday in sweltering temperatures as Basco buried her.

Few of those in attendance had ever met Reckard, but almost all said the suffering city — and the nation — needed to see how to rally around those in pain.

Jordan Ballard, 38, of Los Angeles, said she lived in New York City during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and in Oklahoma City doing the 1995 bombing. After reading about Basco online, she bought a plane ticket Thursday.

“The potential of him experiencing this alone made me come,” she said. “I know if I was lost, my family had each other.”

Angelique Tadeo, 52, her husband, Paul, 69, and their 3-year-old granddaughter drove more than four hours from Tucson, Arizona. Tadeo worked as a nurse and treated victims during the 2011 shooting in Tucson that injured former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six.

“We know what the city is going through and we wanted to be here,” Tadeo said.

As soon as he got the memorial details, Jerry Brown, 58, of San Angelo, Texas, got in his car and drove 400 miles (644 kilometers) in six hours.

“In the military, we have this saying: ‘We don’t leave people behind,’” said Brown, a veteran. “It didn’t matter where I was. I knew I was going to come here today.”

He got into town, stood in line for hours to pay his respects and planned on driving all night back home for a child’s soccer practice. But he paused for a moment to look at the crowd of strangers who had created a line that wrapped around the block and into the city’s Manhattan Heights Historic District.

“This is amazing,” said Brown, a contractor.

“This is El Paso, bro,” Jerry Medina, 42, of El Paso, wearing a black and red zoot suit, said when asked about the crowd.

He brushed off the 100-degree (38 Celsius) temperatures and wore a similar suit the next day to the burial.

“I really felt for that guy,” Medina said. “Our love is for him. Hopefully, he gets through this.”

Isabel Regalado, 27, held her 10-month-old boy, Preston Regalado-Soliz, as she stood in line for more than two hours with her husband, Esteban Soliz.

“As we drove up here, I started crying,” Regalado said. “It’s beautiful.”

The family had been heading to the mall where the gunman opened fire that day. Regalado stops before continuing the story, holding back tears.

A mariachi band begins playing for the people in line. Some clap. The band plays recognizable tunes to many in El Paso. Then the musicians cross the street and play ”Amor Eterno ” — the 1984 ballad by the late-Juan Gabriel that has become an anthem of sorts of the city in the days after the shooting.

“How I wish that you still lived, that your precious eyes had never closed, so that I could see them now,” the translated lyrics go.

The lips of a woman in line quiver. She eventually breaks down and walks away. Another woman offers to hold her place in line.

Emma Portela, 81, who drove in from Chihuahua, Mexico, shakes her head: “That song has so much power right now.”

Glen Blasdel, 83, standing alone, was one of the first in line. “I know what it’s like to have no family,” said Blasdel, a Vietnam War veteran who drove in from nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Moments before burying his companion, Basco spoke to reporters. “My life is not complete no more,” he said. But when he looked out and saw a crowd of 3,000 on Friday, he was in awe. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

In the days ahead, Basco plans on keeping in touch with new friends and resting.

He still speaks to Reckard as if she’s in the room. “She loved El Paso. She would have loved this,” he said.

Then, he turned toward a hearse, got inside and rode to the burial site, where more strangers were waiting.”

Our hearts feel for Mr. Basco and all the relatives and friends of those senselessly killed in El Paso and Dayton

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg, has a piece this morning skewering Donald Trump for his foreign policy failures.  Entitled, With Trump as President, the World is Spiraling into Chaos, she comments about all the trouble spots on the globe and traces them in part to “the fruits of Donald Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy, his systematic undermining of alliances and hollowing out of America’s diplomatic and national security architecture.”  She concludes “the most powerful country in the world is being run by a sundowning demagogue whose oceanic ignorance is matched only by his gargantuan ego.

Anyone remember George Will’s description of Trump as a “bloviating ignoramus.”

The entire column is below.

Read it and weep!

Tony

————————————————–

With Trump as President, the World Is Spiraling Into Chaos

Trump torched America’s foreign policy infrastructure. The results are becoming clear.

By Michelle Goldberg

Earlier this week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, visited The New York Times editorial board, and I asked him about the threat of armed conflict between his country and India over Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over the Himalayan territory, which both countries claim, and which is mostly divided between them. India recently revoked the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls and put nearly seven million people there under virtual house arrest. Pakistan’s prime minister compared India’s leaders to Nazis and warned that they’ll target Pakistan next. It seems like there’s potential for humanitarian and geopolitical horror.

Khan’s answer was not comforting. “We are two big countries with very large militaries with nuclear capability and a history of conflict,” he said. “So I would not like to burden your imagination on that one, but obviously if things get worse, then things get worse.”

All over the world, things are getting worse. China appears to be weighing a Tiananmen Square-like crackdown in Hong Kong. After I spoke to Khan, hostilities between India and Pakistan ratcheted up further; on Thursday, fighting across the border in Kashmir left three Pakistani soldiers dead. (Pakistan also claimed that five Indian soldiers were killed, but India denied it.) Turkey is threatening to invade Northeast Syria to go after America’s Kurdish allies there, and it’s not clear if an American agreement meant to prevent such an incursion will hold.

North Korea’s nuclear program and ballistic missile testing continue apace. The prospect of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine is more remote than it’s been in decades. Tensions between America and Iran keep escalating. Relations between Japan and South Korea have broken down. A Pentagon report warns that ISIS is “re-surging” in Syria. The U.K. could see food shortages if the country’s Trumpish prime minister, Boris Johnson, follows through on his promise to crash out of the European Union without an agreement in place for the aftermath. Oh, and the globe may be lurching towards recession.

In a world spiraling towards chaos, we can begin to see the fruits of Donald Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy, his systematic undermining of alliances and hollowing out of America’s diplomatic and national security architecture. Over the last two and a half years, Trump has been playing Jenga with the world order, pulling out once piece after another. For a while, things more or less held up. But now the whole structure is teetering.

To be sure, most of these crises have causes other than Trump. Even competent American administrations can’t dictate policy to other countries, particularly powerful ones like India and China. But in one flashpoint after another, the Trump administration has either failed to act appropriately, or acted in ways that have made things worse. “Almost everything they do is the wrong move,” said Susan Thornton, who until last year was the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, America’s top diplomat for Asia.

Consider Trump’s role in the Kashmir crisis. In July, during a White House visit by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump offered to mediate India and Pakistan’s long-running conflict over Kashmir, even suggesting that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to do so. Modi’s government quickly denied this, and Trump’s words reportedly alarmed India, which has long resisted outside involvement in Kashmir. Two weeks later, India sent troops to lock Kashmir down, then stripped it of its autonomy.

Americans have grown used to ignoring Trump’s casual lies and verbal incontinence, but people in other countries have not. Thornton thinks the president’s comments were a “precipitating factor” in Modi’s decision to annex Kashmir. By blundering into the conflict, she suggested, Trump put the Indian prime minister on the defensive before his Hindu nationalist constituency. “He might not have had to do that,” she said of Modi’s Kashmir takeover, “but he would have had to do something. And this was the thing he was looking to do anyway.”

At the same time, Modi can be confident that Trump, unlike previous American presidents, won’t even pretend to care about democratic backsliding or human rights abuses, particularly against Muslims. “There’s a cost-benefit analysis that any political leader makes,” said Ben Rhodes, a former top Obama national security aide. “If the leader of India felt like he was going to face public criticism, potential scrutiny at the United Nations,” or damage to the bilateral relationship with the United States, “that might affect his cost-benefit analysis.” Trump’s instinctive sympathy for authoritarian leaders empowers them diplomatically.

Obviously, India and Pakistan still have every interest in avoiding a nuclear holocaust. China may show restraint on Hong Kong. Wary of starting a war before the 2020 election, Trump might make a deal with Iran, though probably a worse one than the Obama agreement that he jettisoned. The global economy could slow down but not seize up. We could get through the next 17 months with a world that still looks basically recognizable.

Even then, America will emerge with a desiccated diplomatic corps, strained alliances, and a tattered reputation. It will never again play the same leadership role internationally that it did before Trump.

And that’s the best-case scenario. The most powerful country in the world is being run by a sundowning demagogue whose oceanic ignorance is matched only by his gargantuan ego. The United States has been lucky that things have hung together as much as they have, save the odd government shutdown or white nationalist terrorist attack. But now, in foreign affairs as in the economy, the consequences of not having a functioning American administration are coming into focus. “No U.S. leadership is leaving a vacuum,” said Thornton. We’ll see what gets sucked into it.

Dear Commons Community,

In response to one of my earlier blog postings on how much big corporations are spending on lobbying efforts, I received an email from Natasha Myles of Comparitech alerting me to a new study her organization has completed regarding Internet service providers (ISPs).  According to the findings, more than $1.2 billion was spent on lobbying since 1998, and 2018 was the biggest year so far with a total of more than $80 million.  A summary of the report and access to a database is available at:  https://comparite.ch/isp-lobbying.  Above are the top five ISP spenders.  Here are the highlights of the latest report:

• 2018 was the biggest year yet for ISP lobbying at $80 million.
• Top spenders include AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, which have amassed lobbying expenses of $341 million, $265 million, and $200 million, respectively since 1998.
• Since 2011, yearly spending on lobbying across all ISPs hasn’t strayed below $72 million.
• The largest amount spent by any provider in any year was AT&T in 1999, at almost $23 million. AT&T’s acquisition of Ameritech Corp accounted for much of this, and the merger eventually led to the creation of America’s largest telecom company.
• Total spent from 2016 to 2019 is set to exceed lobbying expenses between 2012 and 2015, which totaled $295 million.
• Lobbying in favor of mergers and acquisitions accounted for many of the biggest expenses for individual ISPs in a single year.
• $1.2 billion has been spent by ISPs on lobbying since 1998.

Thank you Natasha for this information.  Very helpful to see how government works!

Tony