Chuck Dziuban

Dear Commons Community,

I was most happy to see that the University of Central Florida was planning on recognizing Chuck Dziuban for his fifty years of service to the school.  He was to be honored at the annual Founders’ Day ceremonies last week—until that event was canceled because of the coronavirus threat. UCF Today did a featured article on Chuck two days ago asking him to look back on his career.  It is an illuminating story of someone who has given a lifetime to his teaching, scholarship and service.  Most recently, he helped position UCF to move all classes online during the coronavirus pandemic.

Chuck Dziuban has been my colleague for more than twenty years.  We have co-authored three books and are currently working on our fourth.  We have given dozens of papers and presentations along with other colleagues associated with the Online Learning Consortium, formerly the Sloan Consortium.  It has been my privilege to call him my colleague and most of all, my friend.  Below is the entire UCF Today piece. 

Congratulations, Chuck!

Tony

UCF TODAY

COLLEGES & CAMPUS NEWS

UCF’s 1st Pegasus Professor Looks Back at His 50 Years on CampuS

BY GENE KRUCKEMYER ’73

APRIL 6, 202

During his time at UCF – 50 years and still counting – Chuck Dziuban says he didn’t feel like a pioneer as he taught, researched, mentored and directed programs at a young university that started just two years before he arrived – even though everything along the way was new.

“Not at the time, but looking back, absolutely we were all pioneers, all the faculty, students, [first President] Charles Millican, the deans, department chairs and many others,” he says. “The trouble is that at the time you are making history you don’t realize it. Only when you look back do you see it. The soldiers in the Battle of Gettysburg didn’t know they were making history that day until the war was over.”

Dziuban arrived on campus in 1970 as an assistant professor in the then College of Education. Today, he is director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness and UCF’s first Pegasus Professor.

He was going to be recognized for his five decades of service at the annual Founders’ Day ceremonies on April 1—until that event was canceled because of the coronavirus threat.

The Path to UCF

Dziuban grew up in Utica, New York, before leaving home to earn his bachelor’s degree at State University of New York at Oswego, followed by his master’s degree in education at the University of Miami, and his doctorate in research and administration at the University of Wisconsin.

In the back of his mind, he expected to land at Cornell or Stanford after graduation. But after a professor at the fresh campus of Florida Technological University—the original name of UCF—invited him for a visit, Dziuban changed his mind about his next destination.

The campus had just a handful of buildings at the time, the entire output of the computing center was in a cardboard box on a card table, and the only nearby places he could go out to eat were at the Town House Restaurant in Oviedo or the Ramada Inn on Colonial Drive, he recalls.

“My wife, Judy, was shocked by how small the campus was. However, after a couple of years we saw the long-term potential, liked the warm and accepting climate and somehow knew we were home,” he says.

“There were many job offers over the years, but I stayed because every campus I visited never quite lived up. As I walk around now, I can hardly remember the little university—landscape amnesia.”

Solidifying the university’s reputation

In his early years at UCF, Dziuban taught research design and statistics, and was the founding director of the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Since 1996, he has directed the impact evaluation of UCF’s distributed learning initiative, examining student and faculty outcomes and measuring the impact of the initiative on the university courses. His research has received funding from several government and industrial agencies including the Ford Foundation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucfs-1st-pegasus-professor-looks-back-at-his-50-years-on-campus/ 2/3

“Chuck has been a key contributor to the growth of distributed learning not just at UCF but nationally,” says Tom Cavanagh, vice provost for digital learning, which oversees the campus Center for Distributed Learning. “His research into the efficacy and practice of online, blended, and adaptive learning has been groundbreaking and has done much to help solidify UCF’s reputation as a leader in the field.”

In 2000, Dziuban was named UCF’s first Pegasus Professor—the highest academic award for a faculty member on campus—for his extraordinary research, teaching and service, and in 2005 received the honor of professor emeritus.

“He was a hyper-engaged faculty member with his students. He is a brilliant lecturer—you could probably sell tickets to his talks—and his research is cutting-edge,” Cavanagh says. “His impact has been both wide and deep.”

Dziuban has contributed to numerous books, chapters and other publications, and has given more than 100 presentations on how modern technologies impact learning at universities, both in the United States and abroad.

In recognition of Dziuban’s contributions to both the deeper understanding of online learning and his national reputation as a positive reflection on UCF, the university created the Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching, which annually recognizes one faculty member who has recently taught an exemplary online course.

Learning during the coronavirus threat

Because of Dziuban’s focus and contributions to developing online teaching, UCF was well positioned to handle the recent move to hosting all classes remotely during the coronavirus threat.

“Given the rise of the internet with ubiquitous access to information we all knew that this was, in many respects, the future of learning. So many things so rapidly. I’m just grateful that we had the foresight to see this coming,” he says.

“Fortunately we have the virtual infrastructure in place to handle the COVID crises. Not that we haven’t had to scramble. With UCF essentially shuttered, remote learning is the only way we can keep serving our students. No one saw this coming but fortunately we were ready. And it is working.”

In this age of the internet, Dziuban says his graduate students teach hi m things all the time, especially about technology.

“They grew up with it, I did not,” he says. “The net generation has been criticized and celebrated. For me it the first cohort of young people who were connected—connected to everything. They have new research, communication and networking skills. However, they have been criticized for their longterm commitment to the learning process…They were bright, quick and impatient, but now they are grown and have given way to young people who are even more connected.”

The advent of new technology will continually change education, he says, especially at colleges and universities with respect to access, where living on campus is no longer an absolute requirement.

“Underrepresented populations will no longer be excluded from advanced learning. Roles of faculty members and students are changing dramatically,” Dziuban says. “Hopefully we will find effective ways to eliminate the unacceptable educational and economic equality in our country. We will realize that more than ever before our universities will be the source of continuous learning.”

“The best thing I have done at UCF.”

Dziuban still works with the College of Community Involvement and Education but his faculty position now is assigned to Digital Learning. His teaching these days focuses on mentoring graduate students in statistics, data mining and research methods, and he continues to evaluate the university’s online-learning initiative.

As the university’s representative to the Rosen Foundation, much of his time is devoted to the philanthropic educational initiatives of the foundation’s Tangelo Park and Parramore programs.

“This is the best thing I have done at UCF. It is so important to me,” he says.

Orlando hotelier and philanthropist Harris Rosen started the foundation in 1993 with the goal of providing educational initiatives in the underserved Tangelo Park community in south Orlando, where the high school dropout rate was about 25 percent. His vision was to engage children early so they can get a jump on education by the time they are 5, which leads to success later on.

The program guarantees free preschool education for every child living in Tangelo Park—which starts them off on the right footing—then offers full college or vocational school scholarships, including tuition, room and board, and books for every graduating high school senior in the community.

When the project was coming together, Rosen says he vividly remembers Dziuban attending a foundation board meeting.

“He introduced himself and said he had heard some nice things about the program and wanted to participate,” says Rosen, also the namesake of UCF’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management. “Without Chuck, likely the project would not have evolved to what it is today and would not have evolved to Parramore,” an underserved community on the west side of downtown Orlando that is being modeled after Tangelo Park’s successful program.

Rosen said he was reticent about promoting the Tangelo Park program at first because he didn’t want the community to think it was to benefit him in any way.

“But Chuck said that if we didn’t have data, the project wouldn’t advance,” Rosen says. “He put together data to give credibility to what we were doing. That was so incredibly important.”

The results showed that the philanthropic endeavor also benefited the community with a surprising return on investment. Crime is down in the community by 80 percent, graduation rates are virtually 100 percent, and four-year college graduation rates are upper 70 percent.

Rosen and Dziuban both believe if other areas would only replicate the concept, the economic impact would be unbelievable.

“Chuck and I believe that if virtually every underserved community in the United States had a Tangelo Park/Parramore program, we would not recognize America,” Rosen says. “That education alone is enabling these youngsters to earn a half million dollars more over their lifetimes than youngsters who don’t graduate from high school.”

In 2017, Dziuban received another inaugural UCF recognition, the Collective Excellence award, for his work strengthening the university’s impact with the Tangelo Park Program.

‘Why would you leave this job?’

Dziuban and his wife live in Casselberry. On average, he says he reads two books a week and his love of fishing has lured him all over the world.

His travels have led him to 45 countries—some for work and some for pleasure—including going to Budapest, Hungary, 25 times working with the Hungarian Ministry of Education since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“I have been here for every president, provost, dean and department chair. Saying our university has changed – it’s a whole different universe,” he says. “The changes are so vast I can’t begin to wrap my head around them. Metaphorically, I have walked through the matrix.

“I have given some thought to retirement, but not seriously. Why would you leave this job?”

Dear Commons Community,

Absenteeism is a problem in American education during the best of times, but now, with the vast majority of the nation’s school buildings closed and lessons being conducted remotely, more students than ever are missing class — not logging on, not checking in or not completing assignments.  Teachers at some schools across the country report that less than half of their students are participating in online learning.  As reported in the New York Times.

“The absence rate appears particularly high in schools with many low-income students, whose access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Some teachers report that less than half of their students are regularly participating.

The trend is leading to widespread concern among educators, with talk of a potential need for summer sessions, an early start in the fall, or perhaps having some or even all students repeat a grade once Americans are able to return to classrooms.

Students are struggling to connect in districts large and small. Los Angeles said last week that about a third of its high school students were not logging in for classes. And there are daunting challenges for rural communities like Minford, Ohio, where many students live in remote wooded areas unserved by internet providers.

Educators say that some students and their parents have dropped out of touch with schools completely — unavailable by phone, email or any other form of communication — as families struggle with the broader economic and health effects of the coronavirus outbreak.

Even before the outbreak, chronic absenteeism was a problem in many schools, especially those with a lot of low-income students. Many obstacles can prevent children who live in poverty from making it to class: a parent’s broken-down car or a teenager’s need to babysit siblings, for example. But online learning presents new obstacles, particularly with uneven levels of technology and adult supervision.

Titilayo Aluko, 18, a junior at Landmark High School in Manhattan, is one of the students trying hard to keep up with her classes who has been thwarted by her lack of access to technology. She has a district-issued laptop, but no Wi-Fi network in her Bronx apartment since her family had trouble paying the monthly bill.

For classes like statistics and neuroscience, Ms. Aluko has tried to complete assignments and participate in video conferences using her cellphone, but that is sometimes impossible.

“I actually need my teachers, who know me and understand me, to help me, and I don’t have that,” she said. “I just keep thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I might not pass.’ I’m just really scared for the future.”

Cratering attendance in some districts contrasts with reports from several selective or affluent schools where close to 100 percent of students are participating in online learning. The dramatic split promises to further deepen the typical academic achievement gaps between poor, middle-class and wealthy students.”

This article demonstrates the problem with trying to switch automatically to online learning without proper planning. A major aspect of developing any type of online learning program for any level of education but especially K-12 is to understand first your students’ needs and especially their access to technology.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dr. Gabriel Leung, an infectious disease epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times, entitled, “Lockdown Can’t Last Forever. Here’s How to Lift It.”  His piece gets quite technical at times and he explains in some detail a statistic – the Rt reproductive number.  The “effective” version of the Rt — or the reproductive number at time “t” — is the virus’s actual transmission rate at a given moment. It varies according to the measures to control the epidemic — quarantine and isolation protocols, travel restrictions, school closures, physical distancing, the use of face masks — that have been put in place.   An Rt of 1 means that the epidemic is holding steady: For every person who is infected, another one becomes infected, and as the first one either recovers or dies, the second one replaces it; the size of the total pool of infected people remains the same. At a rate below 1, the epidemic will fade out. Above 1, it will grow, perhaps exponentially.   An example of a Rt graph is above.

He summarizes his op-ed by posing the following questions:  “How long can the population accept the restrictions required to maintain that level of infections? Will people stop complying? Are their mental and emotional well-being being jeopardized?” And responds.

There is no right or wrong answer about the best way to respond to a threat as great and as complex as this pandemic. One can imagine a variety of individual views: “I’d rather protect the economy and take a chance with the epidemic”; “I’d rather take no chance and allow the economy to tank, partly because I’m sure it will bounce back in a year”; “I’m already going crazy after one week of lockdown; I can’t see myself sticking to this for three months.” This range is the reason the general public, especially in Western democracies, should have a chance to shape this discussion.

And yet, even though different communities will strike a different balance between these interests, the “suppress and lift” strategy is generalizable to all.

After achieving a sustained decline in the Rt and bringing the number of daily new cases down to an acceptable baseline thanks to stringent physical distancing, a society can consider relaxing some measures (say, reopen schools). But it must be ready to reimpose drastic restrictions as soon as those critical figures start rising again — as they will, especially, paradoxically, in places that have fared not too badly so far. Then the restrictions must be lifted and reapplied, and lifted and reapplied, as long as it takes for the population at large to build up enough immunity to the virus.

Trying to see our way through the pandemic with this “suppress and lift” approach is much like driving a car on a long and tortuous road. One needs to hit the brakes and release them, again and again, to keep moving forward without crashing, all with an eye toward safely reaching one’s final destination.

I strongly urge everyone to read Dr. Leung’s article.  It is sobering but makes a lot of sense.  We may be in for periods of lockdown/no lockdown or “suppress and lift” for quite a while and until a vaccine is develop for the coronavirus.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump said yesterday the U.S. had stockpiled 29 million pills of an anti-malaria drug he’s repeatedly pushed as a potential treatment for COVID-19, despite persistent warnings from the nation’s top infectious disease expert there is no “strong” evidence yet the medication could help rein in the ongoing pandemic.   As reported by the Huffington Post.

“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked several times during a briefing at the White House, later saying: “I want them to try it, and it may work and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, there is nothing lost by doing it. What I want is to save lives, but I don’t want it to be in a lab for a year and a half.”

He added: “I’m not acting as a doctor, I’m saying do what you want, but there are some good signs.”

The comments add to Trump’s growing persistence that hydroxychloroquine, an FDA-approved malaria prevention drug, could help save American lives as infection rates in the country topped 337,000. More than 9,600 people have died.

But the president’s hopeful claims about the drug go against the advice of many doctors, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci has repeatedly and aggressively thrown water on the idea in recent days. He told CBS on Sunday we can’t “definitively say it works,” calling data thus far merely “suggestive.” In an interview with Fox News a day before, he said the country had to be “careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug.” And during the press conference on Sunday, he said the country’s best hope right now to rein in the spread of the virus was simply “mitigation, mitigation, mitigation,” referring to social distancing measures and frequent hand-washing.

When a reporter attempted to ask Fauci about the president’s claims on Sunday, Trump refused to let him answer, saying the doctor had already done so “15 times.” 

Despite Fauci’s assertions, Trump and others in the White House continue to tout hydroxychloroquine as a potential balm to those infected with the virus. Axios reported Sunday that Fauci got into an argument with White House economic adviser Peter Navarro over claims the drug could be, as Trump’s referred to it, a “game-changer.”

“What, really, do we have to lose,” Trump continued on Sunday. “We have this medicine tested for many years, so it’s a very strong, powerful medicine but it doesn’t kill people. We don’t have time to go and say ‘gee, let’s take a couple years.’”

One small study on hydroxychloroquine out of China did find that a small number of patients that had mild illnesses due to COVID-19 were able to recover faster when administered the drug. According to Healthline, the drug does have side effects, including headaches and nausea.  And any of  the following:

• blurred vision or other vision changes, which may be permanent in some cases
• heart disease, including heart failure and issues with your heart rhythm; some cases have been fatal
• ringing in your ears or hearing loss
• angioedema (rapid swelling of your skin)
• hives
• mild or severe bronchospasm
• sore throat
• severe hypoglycemia
• unusual bleeding or bruising
• blue-black skin color
• muscle weakness
• hair loss or changes in hair color
• abnormal mood changes
• mental health effects, including suicidal thoughts.

Maybe Donald Trump and Peter Navarro can be used as test cases to determine if this drug has side effects.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Coronavirus is testing the ability of college and university presidents  to take care of their students and faculty and staff members.  Classes moved to remote delivery, dorms closed, and students sent home. The crisis is already taking a toll on the financial stability of many colleges and universities.

A survey of presidents conducted in late March reveals that 70 percent expect revenue decreases of 10 percent or more on their campuses. As a result, a large majority are freezing hiring, and more than half expect to lay off staff and implement furloughs. Perhaps just as importantly, nearly all presidents say they expect to examine their processes and make changes to how people do their work, academically and administratively.

While the majority of respondents, 64 percent, are optimistic that the coronavirus will generally resolve over the summer and that campuses will return to normalcy in the fall, 36 percent of the presidents think that serious disruption awaits them come September. One president went so far as to suggest that he anticipates his campus remaining in virtual-instruction mode for all of fiscal 2021.

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education written by Paul N. Friga, a clinical associate professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a co-founder of ABC Insights, a consortium of universities working to make higher education more efficient and effective, reviews the survey results.  Here is an excerpt.

“I think that there will be spikes of disruption but regionally specific; online courses and remote work will become much more normal,” predicted one president of a medium-sized public university. “Even if Covid is under control in the summer, there will be a new ‘normal.’ We are planning many scenarios, and even the best case is not back to normal.”

The vast majority of presidents, 84 percent, anticipate a drop in enrollments, both for new and returning students, a development that is particularly worrisome for small private colleges already strained by their dependence on tuition and lack of endowment funds. Even a 10-percent drop in enrollment can be enough to set off dramatic cash shortages at some colleges. Particularly at risk are institutions with higher percentages of international students and students of lower financial means. A typical mitigating factor to enrollment drops during a recession would be increases in unemployment, which could reach more than 30 percent this time around.

“My biggest concern, given drops in enrollments and financial resources, is whether or not we will even be able to open again in the fall,” lamented one leader of a small private college.

A survey conducted by ABC Insights  was sent March 27 to 285 presidents and chancellors who are members of the Presidents’ Trust of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. The survey, a collaboration between the AAC&U and ABC Insights, received 142 responses from presidents with a mix of institutional sizes and types representative of general higher education.

A key issue all universities are trying to assess is the potential decrease in resources for planning and budget considerations. The pandemic could result in as much as a 25-percent decrease in resources or approximately $146-billion loss across the sector expenditure of $584 billion.

The presidents in this survey seem a bit more optimistic. Only 18 percent said they expected revenue losses greater than 20 percent, though 52 percent expect decreases of revenue between 10 and 20 percent.

So how will universities make up for such potential significant losses of resources? Aside from the federal stimulus funds, which will be critically important to maintaining employment of the approximately four million people who work at colleges and universities, higher-education leaders have two options to pursue.

First, they could increase revenues through increasing enrollments and research grants or spending more of their endowments, which 27 percent of the presidents plan to do. The other option is to cut expenses — both administrative and academic. …

…While most of the leaders in the survey mentioned the strong desire to protect the health and well-being of their students and employees first and foremost, the presidents believe it is time to make changes to personnel levels, since labor represents up to 70 percent of higher education’s costs.

Eighty-three percent plan to immediately implement hiring freezes for the next fiscal year, while 55 percent anticipate layoffs and 57 percent expect to do furloughs. Thirty percent expect to hire more part-time faculty members. Only 21 percent are looking to find ways to cut benefits such as health care, release time, or leave. An amazing 96 percent are planning to re-engineer processes and look for efficiencies related to the higher-education operational model. That likely includes a great expansion of virtual education — for nontraditional as well as traditional students.

The magnitude of anticipated change varies by type of institution. Overall, administrative costs will be a priority as 86 percent expect “some” cutting, and 13 percent are leaning toward “significant” cutting. Perhaps predictably, academic cost-cutting may be coming as well but at a lower rate, with only 48 percent expecting “some” cutting, and 2 percent expecting “significant” cuts here…

…As we look to the future, the presidents in our survey are recognizing the severity of the situation facing higher education; however, they are optimistic their institutions will not only survive but also thrive. Certainly, some college leaders realize that the risk of closure is real, but others commented that if they make the right decisions, they will be better off.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the AAC&U, states it well as she thinks of her recent conversations with many university and college presidents across the country: “We are likely to see a new world order of higher education — more global, more online, more focus on return on investment, and overall more student-focused.”

I agree with many of the points raised in this article. However, a lot depends upon what resources might flow to the colleges as a result of existing and future stimulus packages.  For private institutions, stimulus funds would flow directly to them.  For public institutions, the budget issues will be integrated with state and local budget issues caused by the pandemic.  The existing stimulus provides relief for expenditures being made to combat coronavirus but does nothing to offset lost revenue. In some states such as New York, Florida, and Nevada with large tourist industries, the revenue loss will be staggering. 

I foresee a lot of fiscal pain next year for higher education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd gives it to President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in her column this morning entitled, He Went to Jared, with a subtitle, “Heaven help us, we’re at the mercy of the Slim Suit crowd.”  She starts off by comparing Trump’s response to coronavirus to George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. In both cases, their leadership is and was questioned, to put it mildly.  However, she saves her sharpest cuts for Kushner.  Here is an excerpt.

“…The president seems oblivious to the fact that his own clown car of an administration bungled the priceless lead time we had to get ready for the pandemic.

With the death toll in this country soaring past 7,000, Trump is focused on the same thing he is always focused on: himself. He proudly told reporters Wednesday, “Did you know I was No. 1 on Facebook? I just found out I was No. 1 on Facebook. I thought that was very nice for whatever it means.” Our doom, perhaps?

Trump’s most defining qualities have been on display in this fight: He has been mercurial, vindictive, deceptive, narcissistic, blame-shifting and nepotistic.

At the Thursday briefing, the president brought out another wealthy, uninformed man-child who loves to play boss: Jared Kushner. Where’s our Mideast peace deal, dude? Surely Trump did not think giving Kushner a lead role would inspire confidence. This is the very same adviser who told his father-in-law early on that the virus was being overplayed by the press and also urged him to tout a Google website guiding people to testing sites that turned out to be, um, still under construction.

Now he is leading a group, mocked within the government as “the Slim Suit crowd,” that is providing one more layer of confusion — and inane consultant argot — to the laggardly, disorganized response.

From the lectern, Kushner drilled down on his role as the annoying, spoiled kid in every teen movie ever made. “And the notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be the states’ stockpiles that they then use.”

Our stockpile?

That’s the way the Trump-Kushner dynasty has approached this whole presidency, conflating what belongs to the people with what is theirs. Trump acts like he has the right to dole out “favors,” based on which governor is most assiduous about kissing up to him.

On Friday, the administration changed the wording on the Department of Health and Human Services website about the stockpile to be matchy-matchy with Kushner’s cavalier dismissal of the states.

It was typical of Trump’s muddled message that on Friday, as the C.D.C. issued new guidelines to wear masks, the president said: “You can wear ’em. You don’t have to wear ’em,” adding he had no intention of wearing one because “Somehow, sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute desk, the great Resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask” did not gel with his image of greeting “prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know somehow, I don’t see it for myself.”

Trump’s eyes may not have the same fearful look that W.’s did. But ours do.”

Dowd refers to Kusher as a “slim suit.”  I would go a step further, he is an “empty suit.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Many corporations particularly those dependent upon travel and tourism are in desperate financial situations due to the coronavirus pandemic.   The Trump Organization has been hit hard as people slash their stays in hotels and trips to golf resorts. The company has laid off or furloughed some 1,500 employees in several hotels, The Washington Post reported. As of Friday, 17 of the Trump Organization’s hotels and clubs were closed, according to the Post. The shuttered operations amounted to some $650,000 a day in lost revenue, the newspaper reported.  However, and as reported by various media.

“In a tangled ethics situation for Donald Trump, the president’s Trump Organization is reportedly asking to postpone its loan payments to Deutsche Bank — which is being investigated by the Department of Justice to determine if it complied with anti-money laundering regulations.

Trump did not divest from his businesses when he moved into the White House as other presidents have done to avoid conflicts of interest. The current scenario is the “absolute nightmare that someone (ahem) warned about” when Trump took office, tweeted Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics under both Barack Obama and Trump.

Loans from Deutsche Bank, the Trump Organization’s biggest creditor,  have reportedly been used for Trump’s Chicago Tower, the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort — which is now shuttered — and his Washington, D.C., hotel, which has closed its bar and restaurant, The New York Times reported. The loans are backed by a personal guarantee from Trump himself, according to the Times. Deutsche Bank has loaned the Trump Organization some $2 billion since 1998, and there are currently an estimated $350 million in loans outstanding, the newspaper reported.

Trump Organization representatives reached out to Deutsche Bank’s private banking unit in New York last month for preliminary talks to discuss new loan arrangements, according to the Times. Company officials are also taking to Palm Beach County about delaying payments of rent owed on land leased from the county, the Post reported.

David Enrich, a Times business reporter who recently authored a book on Deutsche Bank, “Dark Towers,” told NPR that the bank has been “worried” about a situation like this.

Bank officials are now “forced to choose between doing what seems like it’s financially right for the bank and for its regulators, versus doing what’s right to protect the relationship with someone who has the ability to inflict enormous damage on the institution if he is so inclined,” Enrich explained.

This “highlights for … the umpteenth time here, the perils of having someone in the Oval Office who … owns huge swaths of businesses and has refused to divest” from them, Enrich noted. “It a very tricky, messy situation.”

Deutsche Bank is currently being investigated by the Justice Department over whether it failed to report suspicious activity that may have been linked to money laundering, the Times and Reuters have reported. A bank whistleblower said that she flagged transactions involving Jared Kushner’s family business and Trump’s former charitable foundation — since closed amid an ethics investigation — for suspicious activity in 2016 and 2017. But the whistleblower said the bank never reported her suspicions to authorities. Trump and a representative of Kushner Cos. have denied any wrongdoing.

The bank, which was linked to a massive $20 billion money-laundering operation headquartered in Russia, paid millions of dollars in fines last year to the U.S. and Germany for other corruption and compliance violations. It’s also at the center of a court battle as the House of Representatives seeks to obtain its records on Trump’s loans.

Neither the Trump Organization nor Trump have commented on his business problems and possible debt rearrangement.”

There is some sleaze dripping here!

Tony

Dear Commons Communty,

The front page of the New York Daily News illustrates Trump’s poor leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.  Yesterday he said all Americans should consider wearing a mask over their faces to protect themselves from the virus.  But then says he won’t wear a mask.

Doesn’t that set a good example!  

Why doesn’t he do the country a big favor by just letting Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx do the press conferences.  He doesn’t understand how unprepared he is to lead in time of crisis.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Trevor Noah of The Daily Show has put together a video montage of media personalities and politicians who played down the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic.  Entitled Heroes of the Pandumbic, it shows a number of Fox News hosts as well as Donald Trump and other politicians who did not take this virus seriously and in doing so, endangered the lives of many Americans who believed the misinformation that was being spread.

The video says it all.

Tony