Dear Commons Community,

It appears that a number of senators started dumping stocks just before the coronavirus pandemic took off in this country.  Senators in both political parties denied yesterday  that they exploited advance knowledge when they sold off their financial holdings before the coronavirus wreaked havoc on the economy.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., whose sales of as much as $1.7 million in stocks have come under the most scrutiny, requested an ethics review of his actions in the days before markets dropped in February. But Burr and all the other senators pushed back strongly against suggestions that they used sensitive government information to protect their financial well-being.

The actions by the handful of senators, whose stock transactions are documented in mandatory filings to the Senate, attracted heavy scrutiny as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt everyday life, wiping out jobs and personal wealth. At a moment when political leaders are urging Americans to make shared sacrifices to stop the virus, some questioned whether lawmakers were doing the same.

“It appears that in a time of crisis, these senators chose instead to serve themselves, violating the public trust and abdicating their duty,” said Noah Bookbinder, the director the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed a Senate ethics complaint against Burr and Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia. “They must be immediately investigated.”

The mandatory disclosures senators must make do not detail specific amounts of stock sales. Instead, they give a range in dollars of the value of each transaction.

Senate records show that Burr and his wife sold between roughly $600,000 and $1.7 million in more than 30 separate transactions in late January and mid-February, just before the market began to plummet and government health officials began to sound alarms about the virus. Several of the stocks were in companies that own hotels.

In a statement Friday, Burr said he had asked for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate, “understanding the assumption many could make in hindsight.” He acknowledged selling the stocks because of the virus.

Burr said he relied “solely on public news reports,” specifically CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of Asia, to make the financial decisions.

There is no indication that Burr, who does not plan to run for reelection in 2022, was acting on inside information. The intelligence panel he leads did not have any briefings on the pandemic the week when most of the stocks were sold, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person declined to be identified to discuss confidential committee activity.

enators did receive a closed-door briefing on the virus on Jan. 24, which was public knowledge. A separate briefing was held Feb. 12 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which Burr is a member of. It’s unclear if he attended either session.

The stock sales were first reported by ProPublica and The Center for Responsive Politics. Most of them came on Feb. 13, just before Burr made a speech in Washington, D.C., in which he predicted severe consequences from the virus, according to audio obtained by National Public Radio and released Thursday.

Burr told the small North Carolina State Society audience that the virus was “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history” and “probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

Burr’s remarks were darker than what he was saying publicly, and came as President Donald Trump was still downplaying the severity of the virus.

In a tweet on Thursday, Burr said that Americans were already being warned about the effects of the virus when he made the speech to the North Carolina State Society.

“The message I shared with my constituents is the one public health officials urged all of us to heed as coronavirus spread increased,” Burr wrote. “Be prepared.”

Burr’s North Carolina colleague, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, tweeted that the ethics review of the stock sales was appropriate. Asked in the Capitol about Burr’s sales, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not respond.

Burr was not the only lawmaker to sell off stocks before the market slide. Loeffler, a new senator up for reelection this year, sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in late January and February, as senators began to get briefings on the virus, according to records. So did fellow Georgia Sen. David Perdue, another Republican lawmaker running for reelection, and also Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

Loeffler’s sales were first reported by the Daily Beast. In a tweet early Friday morning, she called it a “ridiculous & baseless attack.”

“Investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisors without my or my husband’s knowledge or involvement,” she tweeted. She said she was informed of the decisions three weeks after they were made. Loeffler is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman and CEO of financial powerhouse Intercontinental Exchange.

Loeffler and her husband offloaded anywhere between about $1.1 million and $2.8 million in stock. But they plunged between $315,000 and $650,000 into real estate investment firm Blackstone, tech company Oracle and Citrix Systems — a company that develops workplace and telecommuting software.

Perdue sold off as much as $770,000 in stock in February.

In more than 40 separate transactions, he dropped a wide array of holdings, including as much as $165,000 in stock in the Nevada-based casino company that owns Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The industry has been battered by the virus, which has led casinos to shut down. In the days after he sold the shares, the value of Caesars Entertainment Corporation stock cratered.

He also purchased shares in Disney and Delta, two companies hard hit by the pandemic.

Perdue attended a Feb. 25 Senate Armed Services committee meeting where spread of the coronavirus was discussed. In the days after, he invested as much as $260,000 in pharmaceutical company Pfizer, according to a disclosure.

Perdue spokeswoman Casey Black said the senator has an outside adviser manage his investments and “goes above and beyond to fully comply with the law.”

Feinstein reported that her husband sold off between $1.5 million and $6 million worth of stock in Allogene Therapeutics more than a month ago. The San Francisco-based biotech company researches and develops cures for cancer.

Feinstein, who also sits on the intelligence panel, said in a statement that she didn’t attend the Jan. 24 briefing and had no input in her husband’s decisions.

“This company is unrelated to any work on the coronavirus and the sale was unrelated to the situation,” she said.

Inhofe, meanwhile, sold anywhere between roughly $395,000 and $850,000 worth of stock he held in multiple companies in late January and early February, according to a disclosure.

Inhofe tweeted that he has no involvement in his investment decisions after asking his financial adviser to move him out of stocks and into mutual funds “to avoid any appearance of controversy.” He said he made that move in December 2018, shortly after becoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

If true, the actions of these senators is an outrage but nothing will come of it as I am sure that the political establishment will protect its own.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Scientists are trying to figure why a colony of 900,000 King penguins have disappeared from their natural habitat on an island located between Madagascar and Antarctica.   An article in this week’s edition of Science Magazine speculates on the reasons for the disappearance including environment issues such as ocean warming.  It also reviews well the difficulties of conducting research in such an isolated place.  In addition to its remoteness and weather challenges, government restrictions are inhibiting any intrusive research expeditions.  Below is the article.

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————

Lyle Roelofs, President of Berea College

Dear Commons Community,

Most of our nation’s colleges and universities have addressed the coronavirus pandemic by cancelling classes, sending students home and moving to online instruction.  Berea College in Kentucky has taken a different approach.  “Many of our students come from rural areas of Appalachia where there is very poor internet access, and, where there is access, it is unaffordable and that is why we specifically ruled out moving online,” said Berea President Lyle Roelofs.  “Their needs have been forgotten by other schools in their haste to go online … so we have gone old-fashioned” said Roelofs.

Berea is going to rely a lot on email which can be accessed through public libraries. It will eschew anything to do with streaming content, which requires more bandwidth, and which isn’t practical for use by students in a public library. The college faculty will try to wrap up courses rather than deliver lectures by email, although in some cases, course material may be emailed or even “snail-mailed,” if need be, to students. Phone calls will be encouraged. Occasionally, teachers might have a session on Zoom, and only to answer questions about projects already assigned.

One small wrinkle in Berea’s approach is that many public libraries are closing. Below is an article that appeared in Diverse Issues in Higher Education and sent to me by Maureen Samedy from Baruch College.  

Tony

———————————-

Diverse Issues in Higher Education

Berea College Praised For Coronavirus Response

March 12, 2020

by Shailaja Neelakantan

Kentucky’s Berea College is winning plaudits for the way it is dealing with the coronavirus crisis. Berea has canceled all in-person classes from March 13 until, it appears, the end of the academic year. Most other colleges and universities have canceled in-person classes only for a limited period of time at this stage.

Though Berea was reluctant to say in-person classes were canceled for the rest of the academic year when contacted, on its website, it did say it was canceling commencement as well.

Additionally, Berea won’t move to online classes, which many colleges and universities in the country have said they will do when stopping in-person classes. Berea will, instead, help students wrap up courses and assignments remotely, using email “or even snail mail.”

Berea has asked all students to leave campus, yes, but it hasn’t left them to their own devices. It will help finance travel arrangements for those who can’t afford the travel expenses. Those students who are from abroad, or domestic students who don’t have the right circumstances to go back home to, won’t be forced to leave and can stay on campus.

And all students will continue to be paid for their campus work positions – thanks to institutional support and education department guidance allowing it – through the end of the semester, even if they are not on campus and not able to work. Almost all students at Berea work and for a minimum of 10 hours a week, some even more than that.

“I nominate @bereacollege for the best #RealCollege #COVID2019 response I have seen thus far,” tweeted Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of higher education and sociology at Temple University. “Look at the acknowledgment of internet issues, housing, and work.”

Others commended Berea for its unique response that didn’t involve jumping on the online bandwagon.

“They appear to be providing a model that people should be following,” said Sean Michael Morris, director, Digital Pedagogy Lab, and senior instructor of learning design and technology at the University of Colorado Denver, to Diverse. “It’s teaching remotely using digital tools,” and it’s different from online teaching which many universities, teachers and students are just not prepared for and which can put students without financial resources at a disadvantage, said Morris.

Berea is very clear about why it’s doing what it’s doing.

“Berea College serves only students who can’t afford tuition, it draws students from the lowest 20% of the socioeconomic spectrum and these students have many disadvantages owing to their background, including those that stem from poverty,” said Dr. Lyle Roelofs, Berea College’s president, in an interview with Diverse. “So we take on a different mission from other colleges and universities.”

At Berea, 95-98% of students are Pell-eligible, 70% come from Appalachia or Kentucky and 40% of the student body are people of color.

“Many come from rural areas of Appalachia where there is very poor internet access, and, where there is access, it is unaffordable and that is why we specifically ruled out moving online,” said Roelofs.

The Berea president said that issues relating to the lack of affordability of broadband are a reality for most students from this demographic, regardless of which university or college they are in.

“Their needs have been forgotten by other schools in their haste to go online … so we have gone old-fashioned” said Roelofs.

Berea is going to rely a lot on email which can be accessed through public libraries. It will eschew anything to do with streaming content, which requires more bandwidth, and which isn’t practical for use by students in a public library. The college faculty will try to wrap up courses rather than deliver lectures by email, although in some cases, course material may be emailed or even “snail-mailed,” if need be, to students. Phone calls will be encouraged. Occasionally, teachers might have a session on Zoom, a videoconferencing tool, but not for lectures, and only to answer questions about projects already assigned.

“The school explored letting students do Zoom courses and discussions, but it’s just not going to work because, where a lot of students come from, there are no cell towers and no internet,” said Kim Brown, associate vice president for marketing and communications at Berea, to Diverse.

Silas House, assistant professor of Appalachian Studies at Berea, addressed criticism of Berea’s decision to not move instruction online.

“Those people don’t seem to understand that not everyone has the same amenities as them. A lot of students don’t have WiFi access,” he tweeted.

It isn’t just the internet many Berea students won’t be able to afford. With all of them being sent back home, students’ families may not have enough resources to support an extra mouth to feed.

“So we need to send income with them too when students go home,” said Roelofs. “We are also giving students a $100 advance on their paycheck from work. And for students for whom travel is expensive, like if someone has to go to California, we are providing extra funding, so they make it home,” said the Berea president.

Despite this institutional help, some students, especially seniors about to graduate, are disappointed even as they understand why the school is canceling in-person classes.

“At first I was excited, but I soon realized I am supposed to graduate this semester, and I found out [about] graduation being canceled. … I was happy only for a second there,” said Berea senior Zita Erez, to Diverse. “I definitely appreciate the recognition due to the graduating college student and it saddened me as I was looking forward to it.”

She added that “it’s a great thing” students will still be paid and said she understands “the gravity of the situation and why they have to do it.”

Roelofs acknowledges that students were taken by surprise at Berea’s announcement that the institution was canceling all in-person classes and asking students to leave campus.

“Students had no idea we were planning this response. We announced earlier that we would be served by our ‘pandemic plan’ and made people aware of it,” said Roelofs, adding that only in the last week did the college realize the plan, which involves quarantining students, wouldn’t do enough to guarantee the safety of students and staff.

“The place where that ‘pandemic plan’ falls short is partly tied to the nature of the coronavirus, in that the transmission of infection is primarily due to contaminated surfaces, which means in practice if you quarantine someone, they would have to be completely isolated which means they have to be in a single room with an attached bath and no sharing,” he said.

That would have been untenable for the college of 1,660 students, said Roelofs. Around 200 students will remain on campus, but Berea can accommodate single-room quarantines for that number.

The college realized earlier this week it must disperse students to reduce the chance of infections. It also knew the local health authorities wouldn’t allow the dispersal of students even if there was one case of infection, said Roelofs.

“We believed we could become a cruise ship wanting to dock somewhere and not being allowed to. We didn’t want to reach that point.”

Ben Adams and Mario Diaz-Balart

Dear Commons Community,

While much of Washington D.C. was celebrating President Trump’s signing of a coronavirus aid bill,  Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Ben McAdams (D-Utah) both announced yesterday that they tested positive for COVID-19.

In a statement, Diaz-Balart said he had developed symptoms of illness, including a high fever and headache, on Saturday. Yesterday, the Republican congressman got notice he had tested positive for coronavirus. 

“I’m feeling much better,” Diaz-Balart tweeted, urging people to “take this seriously” and follow federal health guidelines to avoid spreading the virus.

Though he has been self-quarantined for several days, he was on the floor of the House voting on Friday, where he presumably came in contact with other lawmakers. 

Later Wednesday, McAdams said he’d also tested positive for coronavirus. The Utah Democrat said he’d developed “mild, cold-like” symptoms Saturday after returning from Washington, D.C. He then quarantined himself at home starting Sunday. Yesteday, he got his positive test results.

He, too, urged people to “take this seriously” and follow health officials’ recommendations.

Earlier this month, several Republican members of Congress self-quarantined after interacting with a person at the Conservative Political Action Conference who later tested positive for coronavirus. 

President Donald Trump’s doctor said Saturday that the president had tested negative for the virus after he came into contact with Fabio Wajngarten, an aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who was later diagnosed with COVID-19.

As of yesterday, there were over 100 reported fatalities from COVID-19 in the U.S., with more than 7,000 cases diagnosed across all 50 states. 

Coronavirus is an equal opportunity disease!

Tony

The CUNY Graduate Center at 365 Fifth Avenue and the John Jay College building at 59th Street and Amsterdam Avenue

Dear Commons Community,

The City University of New York is looking to generate revenue for academic programs by selling off some of its 300-building portfolio. The Facilities Planning and Management Committee on CUNY’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a $750,000 contract with Real Estate Solutions Group to assess the value of all of its buildings, according to the New York Post. The review will likely also look at possibly selling air rights above CUNY properties.

CUNY  has considered selling the unused John Jay College building at 59th Street and Amsterdam Avenue for years, and one trustee brought up selling the CUNY Graduate Center at 365 Fifth Avenue by the Empire State Building. However, CUNY spokesperson Frank Sobrino told the Post that the Graduate Center is not for sale.

CUNY has 25 colleges, including senior colleges and community colleges. Its 300 buildings span the five boroughs. By comparison, Columbia University has more than 230 properties and New York University has 110, according to The Real Deal’s 2018 ranking of university property holdings.

Real Estate Solutions Group should be able to prepare its report in six or seven months, laying out the values and options for the potential sale or development of CUNY’s properties.

If anything comes of this, it will likely involve a Manhattan property. It is also likely that any sale of a building will take a few years to go through the bureaucratic channels.  Unless the law has changed, it is my understanding that while CUNY and/or the State Dormitory Authority own buildings, it is the City of New York that owns the land.

Tony

NOTE:  My CUNY colleague, David Chapin, alerted me to this story.

Dear Commons Community,

After weeks of parroting President Donald Trump’s optimistic assurances that the impact of the coronavirus on the US would likely be minimal, Fox News hosts are now admitting that the pandemic is quite serious.

Trump’s supporters at the conservative network had initially backed the president’s previous attempts to downplay the public-health crisis, accusing the media and Democrats of exaggerating the disease’s impact to damage Trump’s presidency.  As reported by the Business Insider.

“On Friday, the president declared the coronavirus a national emergency. And by Monday, the network’s top hosts had shifted their tone as well.

On Monday afternoon’s edition of “The Five,” host Jesse Watters said the gravity of the situation had finally hit home after the weekend. 

“I went to visit my mom this weekend and she made me wear gloves to come inside her house. She is suspicious that I might have coronavirus,” the Fox News host said. “I wore the gloves all afternoon in the house. That’s what it is.” 

“I didn’t take the social distancing that seriously Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. I went out to dinner here in the city,” he said.

“And I woke up this morning I realized that was not the right move. I am no longer going out to dinner.”

As recently as Sunday, Watters had projected a more optimistic view of the coronavirus, telling his show “Watters’ World”: “Be vigilant, don’t be scared, remain calm and clean — America is the greatest country on earth. We’ve beaten more dangerous things than this… and we’ll do it again.”

Weeks ago Watters was also accused of using the crisis to make xenophobic jokes about Chinese people, saying on air: “I’ll tell you why it started in China … Because they have these markets where they are eating raw bats and snakes” prompting laughter from his co-hosts.

On March 3, he also said he would use the power of “positive thinking” to beat the virus if he got infected. 

“I’m not afraid of the coronavirus and no one else should be that afraid either,” he added.

Sean Hannity, who reportedly serves as an informal adviser to the president, last week said on radio that the claims that the coronavirus is a “fraud,” perpetrated by the deep state to suppress dissent and depress the US economy, “may be true.” 

But by last Friday, Hannity struck a very different tone, acknowledging the scale of the crisis faced by the US — and hailing the measures taken by Trump. 

“Tonight, we are witnessing what will be a massive paradigm shift in the future of disease control and prevention,” he said on his show, “Hannity.”

“A bold, new precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from America’s leadership … The federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together, under the president’s leadership, to stem the tide of the coronavirus.”

In another sign that the network may be waking up to the threat of the pandemic, Fox News confirmed Friday that host Trish Regan had been placed on a hiatus after she claimed on the March 10 edition of her show that the coronavirus is an attempt to “destroy the president.”

She blamed stock-market collapses caused by the coronavirus crisis on Trump’s rivals, calling it “another attempt to impeach the president.”

A Fox News producer anonymously told The Washington Post that it was only the higher ratings of hosts like Hannity or Laura Ingraham — who also peddled the conspiracy that the virus is a Democratic plot — shielded them from being punished like Regan was.

The network’s chaotic coverage has seen misinformation and conspiracies being spread on prime slots by its hosts, while reporters try to relay accurate information to viewers, many of whom are older and so fall into the demographic most at risk from the disease.”

Chaotic is a good description of Fox News coverage of coronavirus.

Tony

Courtesy of CNN

Dear Commons Community,

 Joe Biden swept to victory in Florida, Illinois and Arizona yesterday, increasingly pulling away with a Democratic presidential primary upended by the coronavirus and building pressure on Bernie Sanders to abandon his campaign.  The size of Biden’s victories in these three states is most impressive. As reported by the Associated Press.

“The former vice president’s third big night in as many weeks came amid tremendous uncertainty as the Democratic contest collides with efforts to slow the spread of the virus that has shut down large swaths of American life. Polls were shuttered in Ohio, and although balloting went ahead as scheduled in the three other states, election workers and voters reported problems.

Still, Biden’s quest for his party’s nomination now seems well within reach. His trio of wins doubled his delegate haul over Sanders, giving the former vice president a nearly insurmountable lead. Top Democratic leaders and donors have also increasingly lined up behind Biden as the best option to square off against President Donald Trump in November.

Using a livestream to address supporters from his home state of Delaware, Biden seemed ready to move past the primary. He paid tribute to the Vermont senator for advancing key issues like affordable health care and combating climate change.

“Sen. Sanders and his supporters have brought a remarkable passion and tenacity to all of these issues. Together they have shifted the fundamental conversation in this country,” Biden said. “So let me say, especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Sen. Sanders, I hear you. I know what’s at stake. I know what we have to do.”

With the exception of North Dakota and the Northern Mariana Islands, Sanders hasn’t scored a victory since Super Tuesday on March 3. He made no immediate move on Tuesday to contact Biden, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the candidates. During remarks early in the night, Sanders said little about the future of the race and instead focused on the coronavirus outbreak.”

This race is basically over.  Sanders would do the Democratic Party some good by withdrawing as soon as possible.

Tony

Me and Ferdinand Verley Earlier this Year

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday I chaired my first doctoral dissertation using  Zoom.  Due to coronavirus, CUNY ordered on Sunday that all non-essential faculty and staff not come to their colleges.  So I asked my doctoral student, Ferdinand Verley, to defend his dissertation scheduled for yesterday via Zoom.  Ferdinand’s defense was entitled, A Quantitative Examination of Black and Hispanic Students’ Time-to-Graduation, and analyzed data for student records for over 700,000 first-time, full-time students who matriculated at CUNY between Fall 2000 and Fall 2016 semesters.   We set up the videoconference on Sunday evening and all worked fine.  Ferdinand, and his committee including Juan Battle and David Bloomfield had no technical problems. This is not the first time I used videoconferencing for a dissertation defense.  A few years ago, I was an examiner and used Skype for a dissertation defense for a student at Southwest University in South Africa.  It worked well then also.  Tomorrow I am chairing another dissertation defense for my student, Vanita Naidoo. 

By the way, Ferdinand passed and he is now Dr. Verley!

Congratulations!

Tony

PS:  The day after I made this posting, the New York Times had an article entitled, We Live in Zoom Now, that reports:

“Zoom Video Communications is a videoconferencing company in San Jose, Calif., that has been thrust into the spotlight over the past week. On Monday morning, its iOS app became the top free download in Apple’s App Store.  On Sunday, nearly 600,000 people downloaded the app, its biggest day ever, according to Apptopia, which tracks mobile apps. While the stock market crashes, Zoom shares have soared this year, valuing the company at $29 billion — more than airlines like Delta, American Airlines or United Airlines.”

Governors Murphy, Cuomo and Lamont

Dear Commons Community

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have joined other states around the country by agreeing to close bars, restaurants and other businesses and impose curfews that begin at 8 p.m. daily.  This is  a sweeping and unprecedented regional effort to enforce social distancing as new coronavirus cases are jumping across the nation.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said yesterday morning that all gyms, movie theaters and casinos will also close indefinitely starting at 8 p.m. yesterday. Bars and restaurants will only be available for takeout services. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, a directive that follows guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued Sunday evening.  As reported by Politico.

“The governors, who spoke to reporters on a joint conference call and urged the federal government to issue more uniform guidance, said they will shut down all non-essential services from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day. Essential services include grocery stores, gas stations and pharmacies.

“We have agreed to a common set of rules that will pertain in all of our states,” Cuomo said. “So don’t even think about going to a neighboring state because there’s going to be a different set of conditions. I believe we are the only region in the country that has done this.”

The regional order follows Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement Sunday evening that bars and restaurants in the city would be closed indefinitely, as well as similar orders that were issued in New Jersey over the weekend.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday also mandated the closure of all bars and nightclubs and ordered people ages 65 and older to stay home, while Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker issued orders closing bars and restaurants to dine-in customers. Baker also prohibited gatherings of more than 25 people.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order on Monday that also closes theaters, bars and casinos and limits restaurants to carry-out and delivery orders.

In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the restrictions also apply to casinos, and come just days after Cuomo made the decision to carve them out from the state’s prohibition on gatherings of more than 500 people. The jurisdiction does not apply to the tribal casinos in New York and Connecticut, but Cuomo said he believes tribal leaders understand the gravity of the situation and will follow suit in closing.

“This is a do-the-right-thing situation,” Cuomo said.

Shortly after the announcement, at least one of New York’s Indian tribes — Oneida Indian Nation — said it would be temporarily closing its three casino properties.

In New Jersey, where Murphy had previously recommended that all gatherings of 250 or more people be canceled, the state had not made any moves to shutter its Atlantic City casinos until Monday. Murphy said online gaming, which accounts for a growing share of casino revenue, will continue.

The governors say they are in conversations with other governors in the region with whom they’ve tried to collaborate on issues like gun safety or marijuana legalization. Murphy said he had spoken to Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, who on Sunday issued an order limiting bars and restaurants to take-out orders in five different counties.

…

Lamont has already closed all Connecticut schools, while Cuomo has ordered the closure of downstate schools and Murphy is preparing to announce school closures Monday afternoon.

“Everyone needs to stay in and be safe,” Murphy said. “The last thing anyone should be thinking about is going out and spreading the disease.”

Cuomo, who has been vocal in demanding more of President Donald Trump and federal health officials, said the states were taking the regional action in the absence of guidance from Washington. He said a “hodgepodge” approach to the coronavirus response would be ineffective in reducing the spread.

“They’ve been behind from Day One on this crisis,” Cuomo said. “States, frankly, don’t have the capacity or the power to make up for the federal government. We’re doing the best we can, but we really need the federal government to do what it’s supposed to be doing.”

When it comes to closing businesses and institutions, state and local governments typically have far more authority than Washington.

“We are so decentralized because of federalism in the U.S. that we can just expect a wide variety of responses across the U.S.,” said Polly Price, an Emory University law professor who’s an expert in public health law.

But, she said, guidance from federal officials could be key in giving local leaders an opening to issue the sort of orders that began trickling in over the weekend.

“The strong direction of the CDC is really helpful here because these are very unpopular decisions — and brave decisions, as far as I’m concerned — to close down public gatherings,” Price said. “To the extent that they need political cover for doing so, if the CDC is giving them this advice, that could give them legal cover.”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

There was chaos last night at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport as throngs of passengers disembarked and get screened for security, customs, and health reasons.  For some passengers, the ordeal took eight hours as they crowded into narrow hallways and incredibly long lines.  The video above says it all.

Tony