Dear Commons Community,

Not Our Faith, a new bipartisan Christian super PAC is taking on President Donald Trump with an ad that accuses him of hypocrisy when it comes to matters of faith.  

“Mr. President, the days of using our faith for your benefit are over,” the ad from Not Our Faith warns. “We know you need the support of Christians like us to win this election. But you can’t have it.”

The spot also accuses Trump of “using Christianity for his own purposes,” and shows footage of his Bible-toting photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, across from the White House, after having peaceful protesters teargassed to clear the area for him. 

Not Our Faith’s advisory council includes Michael Wear, a faith adviser to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, and Autumn Vandehei, who was an aide to former Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas), The Associated Press reported. The group is launching a six-figure TV and digital ad campaign targeting Christians, especially evangelical and Catholic voters.

“Trump eked out 2016 with unprecedented support from white evangelicals and, important to note, a really strong showing among Catholics. We’re going after all of it,” Wear told AP. “We think Christian support is on the table in this election.”

Indeed, last week more than 1,600 Christian leaders signed a letter endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden. And this week, a Pew poll found that Trump is bleeding support among Christian voters, including the evangelicals who were essential to his 2016 victory. 

“Christians don’t need Trump to save them,” the new ad states. “The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.”

In a USA Today op-ed, Wear took issue with Trump’s bold claims about faith ― and in particular spoke out against Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, for proclaiming that Trump had “literally saved” Christianity. 

“For Christians, of course, the position of Savior is already filled,” Wear wrote. “And Jesus is one person Trump can’t fire or bully.”

Amen!

Tony

William R. Doyle

Dear Commons Community,

William R. Doyle, a professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, has an article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled Higher Education’s Nightmare Scenario.  In it he rings an alarm that public colleges face two crises: the impact of Covid-19 on their operations and a downturn in state funding brought on by the current recession. And based on what state budget offices are saying, the funding problem for higher education is about to get a lot worse. Without action by the federal government, higher education in most states will be facing severe cuts, very likely larger than those incurred during the recession of 2008-9. Here is his analysis:

“There has already been a large contraction in our industry’s work force, and state systems are feeling the pain: In Pennsylvania, for instance, a plan to lay off approximately 350 faculty members has reportedly been expedited. All of that may merely be prelude to a looming, historic decline in the sector. There is time to act, but the window is closing. Academic leaders are planning now for unprecedented cuts.

The current budget plan for most states was developed in an entirely different economy, with radically different expectations for state revenues. Fiscal years generally start on July 1, and are named for the year that they end. States are now in the 2021 fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2020, through the end of June 2021. They adopted budgets for the 2021 fiscal year based on revenue and expenditure projections that took place in the fall-winter of 2019-20, that were then proposed to state legislatures in the winter-spring of 2020 and adopted in most states in the summer of 2020. As one can imagine, those revenue and expenditure predictions may as well have taken place in a different world.

According to an analysis by the National Association of State Budget Officers, state revenues decreased enough from April to June to completely wipe out the previous three-quarters of strong performance. Before Covid-19, states had been expecting strong year-over-year revenue growth. By the time they settled their end-of-fiscal-year books, they saw roughly a 6-percent shortfall in general funds.

State leaders, including governors and legislators, made use of an already-strong fiscal position, existing reserves, and emergency funds, and the federal government’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, to cover the initial costs imposed by the crisis. Those reserves may allow states to fund their operations through some of the current fiscal year. But, by and large, they are out of options for the 2022 fiscal year.

When will this harsh new reality hit higher education in full? States’ planning for budget decisions starts with budget offices’ sending out guidance to state agencies — including higher education — detailing how to structure requests for funding. Those documents set the expectations for budget requests. (While actual policy will be determined by the governor and the legislature, a good budget office will let agencies know what to expect.) The picture those guidance documents paint is bleak: Those released in the last few months contain extraordinary warnings as to the possibility of unprecedented cuts.

Washington State’s guidance to state agencies says:

“For the 2021–23 biennium, forecasted revenue growth will not meet current demands on the state’s resources … In addition to the current difficult economic situation created by Covid-19, Washington continues to face a structural budget gap because the state’s tax and revenue system does not keep pace with the increasing demands for services of a growing population.”

As a result, Washington’s budget office is asking its agencies to prepare for cuts of up to 15 percent.

Ohio’s Office of Budget and Management is asking for two types of requests, one that includes a 10-percent reduction in costs, and another that covers the minimum required to continue offering current services. In Illinois the budget director told its agencies to prepare for 10-percent cuts in the 2022 fiscal year. Gov. J.B. Pritzker called this a “nightmare scenario.” The list goes on: Connecticut’s budget office is asking for cuts of 10 percent. Minnesota has warned its agencies to expect a decrease of 9 percent.

Those kinds of across-the-board requests for cuts are particularly alarming for higher education. We tend to ultimately receive bigger budget cuts than other agencies during recessionary periods because, unlike other state budget categories such as elementary and secondary education or public assistance, higher ed has its own revenue stream in the form of tuition. Even though many do so reluctantly, state legislators have relied on higher education to be the balance wheel of state finance, covering gaps in revenues that can’t be covered by other state budget categories.

In the past, state cuts of 10 to 15 percent have resulted in decreased enrollment capacity, tuition increases in the range of 20 percent, staff layoffs, departmental and unit closures, and layoffs for both tenured and untenured faculty members due to fiscal exigency. Tuition increases and cuts in state financial-aid programs during recessions mean that prices go up at the exact time when fewer people can afford to pay. If the past is a guide, we can expect that tuition increases in this range will result in many more students’ being priced out of a college degree. And those students who do enroll will have no choice but to borrow even more to pay for college.

The layoffs and cuts in programs in previous recessions have been moderated by other forces. In past downturns, enrollment tended to grow as younger people and older working adults who were not in the labor market sought to expand their skills. In addition, many public colleges turned to out-of-state and international students, who pay much higher tuition and thus can be lucrative sources of revenue.

This time is different. Given travel restrictions and students’ unwillingness to travel far from home during the pandemic, those options most likely will not be available. Early indicators show that, so far in this recession, undergraduate enrollment is down. Faced with both declining enrollments and steep budget cuts, many public colleges may face the possibility of drastic cuts, which could cause them to be unable to fulfill their missions of research, teaching, and service.

The fallout from the initial round of budget reductions is already being felt. The University of Massachusetts has announced indefinite furloughs of 850 employees. The University of Delaware and Rutgers are both planning layoffs of adjunct faculty and staff members. Worryingly, all of those changes are happening before the kinds of cuts anticipated by state policy makers in the next fiscal year.

There’s only so much state policy makers can do to support our sector right now. Governors and legislators in most states must balance their budgets, and there simply isn’t enough tax revenue to collect from citizens who are facing high unemployment and decreased earnings. State leaders will also need to fund critical functions such as health care, K-12 education, and public assistance.

The solution lies with the federal government, which must step in to avert cuts that could imperil higher education’s ability to fulfill its mission. Congress can and should act to provide assistance to the states, with provisions made to ensure that colleges and universities receive much-needed funding that could be used to assure access and to keep colleges affordable. At the moment, it seems such a program is exceedingly unlikely. Meanwhile, the window to act continues to shrink, and plans proceed for a future of higher prices, fewer students, a smaller academic work force, and reduced opportunity.”

A horrible situation that will only get worse without financial assistance from the federal government.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Asked about whether he would back expanding the US Supreme Court to more than nine justices, Joe Biden said on Monday that he’s “not a fan of court packing.”

“I’ve already spoken on — I’m not a fan of court packing, but I don’t want to get off on that whole issue. I want to keep focused,” the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview with Cincinnati’s WKRC.

The former vice president said Trump’s decision to quickly fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ahead of the election is the “court packing” that he wants people to pay attention to.

“The focus is why is he doing what he’s doing now? Why now with less than 24 days to go until the election?” he said. “That’s the court packing…the public should be focused on.”

Biden’s comments Monday were his clearest on the issue since Ginsburg’s death and come as he and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., have been hit with a barrage of GOP attacks and deflected numerous questions from the press in recent weeks about whether they would expand the Supreme Court.

Biden and Harris dodged the question at both of their respective debates. Last weekend, Biden created a stir when he said in response to a reporter’s question that voters “don’t deserve” to know his position on the issue, because it would only be a distraction. He had said he would reveal his stance after Nov. 3.

Republicans have been arguing that if Biden and Harris are elected, they would seek to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court to dilute its conservative majority. Such a change — which is backed by progressive groups — could be done legislatively but Democrats would need to win control of the Senate in order for that scenario to even become a reality.

While serving in the Senate, Biden had previously expressed opposition to expanding the Supreme Court and said as recently as last year during the Democratic primary that it would be a “bad idea.”

“It will come back to bite us,” he said. “It should not be a political football.”

I would add that in addition to President Trump’s rush to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the US Senate who would not accept President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland in March 2016, as another prime example of court packing.

Tony

Charles Koch

Dear Commons Community,

Christopher Leonard, the author of  Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America  has an op-ed in today’s New York Times entitled  Charles Koch’s Big Bet on Barrett.  He traces the history of the monetary investment that Koch has made going back to the 1970s to have a US Supreme Court that supports an unregulated free market.  And with Amy Coney Barrett, Koch may finally realize his goal.  Leonard mentions that Mr. Koch has “built an influence network with three arms: a phalanx of lobbyists; a constellation of think tanks and university programs; and Americans For Prosperity, a grass-roots army of political activists.”    Below is Leonard’s op-ed.

Read it and understand the influence of big corporate money on our American system of government.

Tony

—————————————————————–

New York Times

Charles Koch’s Big Bet on Barrett

By Christopher Leonard

Oct. 12, 2020

Charles Koch has activated his political network to support Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination, and to tip the scales on her nomination battle in the U.S. Senate. While much of the commentary about Judge Barrett’s nomination has focused on the real prospect that Roe v. Wade may be undermined or overturned, Mr. Koch has other concerns. Judge Barrett’s nomination is the latest battleground in his decades-long war to reshape American society in a way that ensures that corporations can operate with untrammeled freedom. It may be a pivotal one.

Since the early 1970s, Mr. Koch has sought to dismantle most federal regulatory institutions, and the federal courts have been central to that battle. In 1974, Mr. Koch gave a blistering speech to a libertarian think tank, called the Institute for Humane Studies, in which he outlined his vision of the American regulatory state, and the strategy he would employ over the ensuing decades to realize that vision. On the list of government interventions he condemned were “confiscatory taxation, wage and price controls, commodity allocations programs, trade barriers, restrictions on foreign investments, so-called equal opportunity requirements, safety and health regulations, land use controls, licensing laws, outright government ownership of businesses and industries.” As if that list were not exhaustive enough, he added, “… and many more interventions.” In short, Charles Koch believes that an unregulated free market is the only sustainable structure for human society.

To achieve his goal, Mr. Koch has built an influence network with three arms: a phalanx of lobbyists; a constellation of think tanks and university programs; and Americans For Prosperity, a grass-roots army of political activists. And shaping the U.S. judiciary has been part of Mr. Koch’s strategy from the beginning. In that 1974 speech, he recommended strategy of “strategically planned litigation” to test the regulatory authority of government agencies. Such lawsuits could make their way to the Supreme Court, where justices could set precedent. In the 1990s, he focused on lower-level judges, funding a legal institute that paid for judges to attend junkets at a Utah ski resort and Florida beachfront properties; the judges attended seminars on the importance of market forces in society and were warned against consideration of “junk science” — like specific methods to measure the effects of pollution — that plaintiffs used to prove corporate malfeasance.

Mr. Koch also sought to influence the judiciary at the federal level. Between 1997 and 2017, the Koch brothers gave more than $6 million to the Federalist Society, a nonprofit institute that recruits libertarian and conservative judges for the federal judiciary, according to a tally by the activist group Greenpeace.

Mr. Koch’s efforts on the Supreme Court intensified after Donald Trump’s election, when a Republican-controlled Senate opened the way to install judges who could tip the court’s ideological balance. Americans for Prosperity undertook national campaigns to support President Trump’s previous Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. A.F.P. said the Kavanaugh campaign alone — fliers, digital ads and staff for phone banking and door knocking — ran into “seven figures.”

Now, Americans for Prosperity is doing the same for Judge Barrett. A.F.P. activists are pressuring U.S. senators in several states, with a particular eye toward vulnerable Democrats like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. The group is also working in Alaska, where Republican Lisa Murkowski has given mixed signals about whether she is willing to vote on Judge Barrett’s nomination before the next president is elected.

Mr. Koch is selective about where he spends on politics, and the returns to reshaping the Supreme Court could dwarf the millions he’s invested. The court plays a pivotal role in determining how much regulatory power the federal government has over corporate America. The closest the Supreme Court has come to reflecting Koch’s vision for regulation is the so-called “Lochner era” of the early 20th century, during which an activist court struck down a wide-range of federal regulations on business, turning the country into a free market free-fire zone.

A Supreme Court that has swung hard to the right could reverse earlier decisions and issue new ones that create something like a new Lochner era. In the world of corporate law, the lodestar legal case is Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. This case, decided in 1984, created an important legal precedent called “Chevron deference.” It holds that courts should generally defer to an agency’s interpretation of a law enacted by Congress when the law is ambiguous (provided that the agency interpretation is reasonable). This helps empower agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to operate complex regulatory regimes, even if some details are not specifically detailed in the law. The current Supreme Court has signaled a willingness to reconsider this precedent, a move that could dramatically weaken federal regulatory agencies.

Mr. Koch and the Trump administration are united in their desire to undo the Chevron decision. Mark Holden, a board member of Americans for Prosperity, has publicly decried Chevron deference as a tool of tyranny. “The administrative state is often fundamentally at odds with our carefully crafted constitutional order,” Mr. Holden, then general counsel for Koch Industries, wrote in a 2018 op-ed essay for The Hill. He said the legal precedent gave agencies like E.P.A. so much power that they consolidated the authority of all three branches of government under one roof: Passing rules, enforcing them and then handing down verdicts in administrative courts. At the White House, a former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, said the Trump administration sought to appoint Supreme Court justices who would rein in the independent agencies. Justice Gorsuch, for example, wrote multiple appeals court opinions that echoed Mr. Holden’s views.

The Koch network apparently has faith that Judge Barrett will rule in concert with these beliefs. This is something of a gamble. She has been a federal judge for only three years, leaving a short paper trail of cases and academic work from which to deduce her views. Judge Barrett’s legal writings do point toward one important idea: She, like many judges, appears to believe that some precedents which the court has created with its decisions should be overturned. Judge Barrett has publicly said that her judicial philosophy is the same as former Justice Antonin Scalia. As Lisa Heinzerling, a law professor at Georgetown, told The Washington Post, what this signals depends on which version of Justice Scalia Judge Barrett agrees with. Justice Scalia was a supporter of Chevron deference early in his tenure, but became more skeptical of it over time as he defended the power of courts to undo or weaken acts of Congress.

The Americans for Prosperity campaign literature supporting Judge Barrett does not appear to mention the Chevron case, nor any other ruling about corporate power. One Facebook ad simply says that she is “committed to our Constitution, and that she won’t legislate from the bench.” Spokesmen for A.F.P. echo that line, emphasizing that the Koch network isn’t looking for policy outcomes, but for honest jurists who will follow the Constitution to the letter.

History shows that it is just as effective to legislate from the bench by striking down laws as by upholding them. The Lochner era proves that policy negation is just as powerful as creation, and it affects just as many lives. As Charles Koch has written and stated so often in the past five decades, there are many, many laws and programs that he would like to negate. With the nomination of Judge Barrett to the court, he appears to be closer than ever to achieving this goal.

Dear Commons Community,

Two American economists, Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, were awarded the 2020 Nobel in economic science yesterday for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats — innovations that have had huge practical applications when it comes to allocating scarce resources.

The pair, close collaborators who are both affiliated with Stanford University, pioneered a type of auction that governments have since used to bid radio frequency.

Mr. Wilson was born in 1937 in Geneva, Neb., earned both his bachelor’s and graduate degrees from Harvard University, and he is now a professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Mr. Milgrom was born in 1948 in Detroit. He completed his bachelor’s at the University of Michigan and his graduate education at Stanford, where he received a doctorate in 1979 and where he is now a professor.

“They haven’t just profoundly changed the way we understand auctions — they have changed how things are auctioned,” said Alvin E. Roth, a Nobel laureate himself who was one of Mr. Wilson’s doctoral students. “The two of them are some of the greatest theorists living in economics today.”

Auctions help to sell a variety of products, including diamonds, minerals and online advertising. They can also take on various characteristics: Objects can have a shared, common value for all bidders (such as commodities like oil) or private values that vary across bidders (like art). Bidders may know exactly what the object’s value is, or they may have imperfect information. Bids can be open, meaning everyone can see them, or closed.

Mr. Wilson “was the first to create a framework” for auctions of items with a common value, according to the prize committee. In his work, he explained that bidders will offer less than they think the object or service is worth because they are afraid of overpaying — the winner’s curse — even more acutely when they are at an information disadvantage.

But in most auctions, bidders have both common and private values — when buying a house, for instance, shoppers think about both what they personally like about the amenities and what the market value of the home might be.

Mr. Milgrom came up with a theory to deal with that mix of common and private value, and he examined how the “winner’s curse” plays out in such instances. He found that people underbid by less in so-called English auctions, in which prices start low and are raised, than in Dutch auctions, where they start high and are reduced.

Congratulations to Professors Wilson and Milgrom!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dr. Anthony Fauci said yesterday that President Donald Trump’s campaign should take down a political ad featuring his comments because he did not consent to it and the remarks were taken out of context.

The nation’s leading infectious disease expert spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper about the 30-second campaign ad, which appears to show the doctor endorsing Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a misleading clip not approved by Fauci before it aired. Tapper asked if the Trump campaign should take down the ad, to which Fauci said, “You know, I think so.”  As reported by CNN and several news media.

“I think it’s really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that. It’s so clear that I’m not a political person, and I have never ― either directly or indirectly ― endorsed a political candidate,” Fauci told Tapper. “And to take a completely out-of-context statement and put in what is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing.”

Asked how he would feel if the Trump campaign was preparing to release another ad featuring the doctor, Fauci said it would be “terrible.”

“I mean, that would be outrageous if they do that. In fact, that might actually come back to backfire on them. I hope they don’t do that, ’cause that would be kind of playing a game that we don’t want to play,” he said. “So I hope they reconsider that, if, in fact, they are indeed considering that.”

Asked what he meant by “backfire,” Fauci told The Daily Beast that the Trump campaign is “in effect harassing me” by putting him in ads against his will.

“Since campaign ads are about getting votes, their harassment of me might have the opposite effect of turning some voters off,” he told the publication. Fauci assured that the “backfire” comment was in no way a threat that he would leave his post if featured in another ad.

The ad first began airing in Michigan and features a video clip of an interview Fauci gave on Fox News in March, when the pandemic was spreading throughout the country.

“I can’t imagine that … anybody could be doing more,” Fauci is heard saying right after the video’s narrator praises Trump’s response to the pandemic, stating: “President Trump tackled the virus head-on, as leaders should.”

Fauci was actually referring to the efforts of himself and his entire team of scientists, as shown in a video of the uncut interview clip.

“I’m connected by phone throughout the day and into the night and I’m talking, 12, one, two in the morning,” Fauci said in the uncut clip. “I’m not the only one. There’s a whole group of us that are doing that, it’s every single day. So I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more.”

Upon seeing the Trump campaign’s political ad, Fauci released a statement Sunday condemning it. 

“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” the doctor said in the statement. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh defended the ad.

“These are Dr. Fauci’s own words. The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump Administration,” Murtaugh said in a statement. “The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth.”

Trump has publicly undermined Fauci, who is a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on safety protocols and potential treatments for COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. The president tweeted on Sunday in defense of the ad, saying: “They are indeed Dr. Fauci’s own words. We have done a ‘phenomenal’ job, according to certain governors. Many people agree.”

The conflict over the ad signals rising tensions between Fauci and the president, with the doctor’s notoriously apolitical statements growing more and more frustrated.

When it comes to truth, honesty and forthrightness on coronavirus, the American people know that they can depend upon Anthony Fauci.  When it comes to lies and incompetence, they can depend upon Donald Trump!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Ithaca College’s newspaper, The Ithacan reported on October 8^th, that approximately 130 faculty members will lose their jobs because of decreased enrollment.  La Jerne Cornish, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, stated that the college needs to cut $30 million from its budget  because enrollment has dropped for the 2020–21 academic year. Laurie Koehler, vice president for marketing and enrollment strategy, said there are 4,957 undergraduate students enrolled for Fall 2020. This number has decreased from 5,852 undergraduate students in Fall 2019 and 6,101 in Fall 2018. More students than in past years deferred enrollment or took leaves of absence this semester. Koehler said 143 students deferred enrollment and 391 students took leaves of absence. The college would usually expect 20 to 30 students to defer enrollment and 100 to take leaves of absence, Koehler said.  As reported:

“To maintain a 12-to-1 student-faculty ratio, the college will only need 415 out of its 547 faculty members, Cornish said.

“We need to look at student-faculty ratio,” Cornish said. “We need to look at administrative-student ratio. We need to look at staff-student ratio. So we need to look at all those things, and at the end of the day, many staff have already been furloughed. We are not going to hit our targets just by reducing staff.”

At the end of April, the college had cut at least 167 staff positions because of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the college’s strategic plan. The majority of those who were laid off were employees in the Offices of Facilities and Dining Services. Dave Maley, director of public relations, said the total number of staff members who have been cut will be released when all of the cuts are made. At the All-College Gathering on Sept. 22, Hayley Harris, vice president for human resources and planning, said that there will be additional furloughs throughout the semester.

Cornish said the college created a dashboard to analyze which departments are bringing the fewest students to the college. Entire departments may be discontinued, Cornish said, and it is possible for tenured faculty to lose their jobs. There are 90 undergraduate majors, 76 undergraduate minors and 16 graduate programs at the college.

The college has not yet made any decisions regarding which departments and faculty members will be cut. Cornish said the college will recommend to the Academic Program Prioritization committee which faculty members should be “nonrenewed” by Dec. 31. Faculty members whose positions will not be renewed for the 2021–22 academic year will be notified in March 2021.

Tom Swensen, professor in the Department of Exercise Science and Athletic Training, said he is concerned that more positions than necessary will be cut.

“It will be very hard to rally everybody to do all the other things that we need to do, like to improve retention and enhance enrollment and tweak curricula to maybe make them more appealing to prospective students, while we’re simultaneously cutting maybe potentially more positions than we need to cut,” Swensen said.

Projections suggest enrollment will continue to drop in coming years, Koehler said. She said the college is hoping to increase enrollment by strengthening academic programs and changing its pricing and financial aid strategy.

The college has been increasing its tuition over the years. Tuition for the 2020–21 academic year is $46,610, a 2.95% increase from the previous year. The college increased its tuition $45,275 for the 2019–20 academic year, also a 2.95% increase from the previous year.

The council discussed other strategies to increase enrollment, and several faculty members suggested more national and international recruiting.

Koehler cited data that predicts states in the Northeast will experience a 15% decrease in students enrolling in higher education from 2012 to 2029. Much of Ithaca College’s student population comes from Northeastern states, with 2,408 students residing in New York state, according to AIR.

Rebecca Lesses, associate professor and Jewish Studies coordinator for the Department of Philosophy and Religion, asked Koehler if the college is recruiting in other parts of the country. She mentioned she has had an Asian-American student complain to her about the lack of Asian students at the college and asked Koehler why enrollment of Asian, Asian-American, Latino or African-American students is not higher.

In Fall 2020, 72.2% of students are white, according to AIR. There are 123 fewer students of color enrolled this year compared to last year, but because there are fewer students overall this year, students of color now make up 23.7% of the student body, whereas last year they made up 22.2%.

Koehler said this is not an issue resulting from recruitment but rather the environment of the college. Students have voiced concerns about racism at the college in the past, and on Oct. 6, the Student Governance Council and the Students of Color Coalition hosted the Stand for Justice webinar to discuss ways to address racism at the college.

“You can enroll students of color when you are a campus that is welcoming to students of color,” Koehler said.

Cornish also presented a tentative reopening plan for Spring 2021. The college will use a phased approach for bringing students back to campus, with the first two weeks of classes being remote. The first phase of students will return to campus Jan. 21. Cornish did not specify if the college will be using the same groups as the planned phased move-in for Fall 2020.”

As long as the pandemic continues and without financial assistance from Washington, D.C., I am afraid we will continue to see losses of faculty and administrative positions on our college campuses.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to the US Supreme Court, will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee starting today.  These deliberations will garner a good deal of attention as Republicans and Democrats spar over her qualifications especially as to her positions on social issues such as women’s rights, abortion and gay rights. One aspect of her personal life that will likely come up is her association with a Roman Catholic religious organization known as the People of Praise.  According to its website, the People of Praise was founded in 1971 in South Bend, Indiana, and now has 22 branches and 1,700 members across North America.  It considers itself a non-partisan religious community not a church. The Associated Press has a review of the organization including interviews with previous members.  The entire review is below.  It is illuminating.

Tony

——————————————————————————

Associated Press

Ex-members of religious group mixed on Barrett nomination

By Michelle Smith

October 11, 2020

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s affiliation with the Christian community People of Praise is drawing scrutiny because of what former members and observers describe as its ultraconservative views on women. Her defenders say scrutinizing her beliefs and relationship to the mostly Catholic organization is akin to anti-religious bigotry.

But in interviews with a dozen former members of the organization and graduates of the schools it runs, most told The Associated Press that Barrett’s association with the group should be examined when the Senate takes up her nomination beginning Monday.

Some were proud and excited that one of their own could soon be on the high court, in a position to roll back abortion rights.

Others were deeply concerned about that threat, and also about the community’s teachings on gender, gay rights, and other social issues. They also raised flags about what they describe as the organization’s authoritarian structure.

Some wondered why Barrett has not disclosed or even acknowledged her connection to People of Praise and why the group appeared to try to hide her affiliation by deleting documents from its website.

“I don’t think membership in the group is disqualifying,” said Rachel Coleman, who left the community in 2010. “I think that she needs to be open about it and transparent about it.”

The AP has documented extensive ties Barrett and her family have to the community, including that an old directory listed her as being one of the organization’s “handmaids,” now called a “woman leader.” She was a trustee of the group’s Trinity Schools, and as a young law student, lived in a house owned by one of its co-founders.

People of Praise is not a church, but a faith community. It grew out of the Catholic charismatic movement rooted in Pentecostalism that began in the late 1960s. The movement emphasizes a personal relationship with Jesus and can include baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophecy, according to former members and experts who have studied the movement. People of Praise was founded in 1971 in South Bend, Indiana, and now has 22 branches and around 1,700 members across North America, according to its website.

While it includes people from several Christian denominations, most of its members are Roman Catholic.

Among its teachings are that men are divinely ordained as the “head” of both the family and faith, and it is the duty of wives to submit to them, according to current and former members. People who have been involved in and studied the organization say it is authoritarian and hierarchical, and some former members told AP of practices such as leaders deciding who can date who.

The group has a strong communitarian bent. It encourages members to live in the same neighborhoods. Single people often live with families in the community or together in same-gender communal households, where they pool resources or even turn their paychecks over to be shared, according to articles previously published on the organization’s website, as well as former members. People who join the community must sign a “covenant,” in which they pledge love and service to fellow community members and to God. Members agree to give at least 5% of their income to the community, according to their website.

The AP left messages with more than a dozen current members of the organization and scores of former members. Several declined to comment, and about a dozen agreed to interviews. Several spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because they have family involved in the community.

A People of Praise spokesman declined to comment on the current and former members’ views.

“The People of Praise does not take positions on partisan political matters, legislation, or constitutional interpretation. Similarly, we take no position on who should or should not sit on the U.S. Supreme Court,” spokesman Sean Connolly wrote.

Coleman’s husband grew up in the community and when they were dating, she agreed to go “underway,” a multiyear process that members undertake before signing the covenant. Coleman said People of Praise offers a strong sense of community that is often missing in modern secular life, and that can be a powerful draw.

“They really are about living in the community and serving and giving back and helping and building God’s kingdom on earth in a way that’s easy to feel really, really passionate about,” Coleman said.

But she said the organization adheres to outdated and troubling ideas on gender, such as that a woman’s “spiritual head” is her husband, while a man’s spiritual head is outside the marriage, with a man in the community. She wonders why members haven’t pushed for change.

Barrett grew up in the community, Coleman noted, and as an adult, made the choice to join.

“What does her membership in People Praise mean that she believes about gender roles?” Coleman asked, adding, “She signed on to it.”

Particularly notable is that Barrett would be replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in her career stood against practices such as women not being able to get credit cards in their own names.

“It just kind of bothers me to feel like someone’s being put in her seat who signed into the same sort of oppressive gender ideas that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was trying to overturn,” Coleman said.

She and others said Barrett should make public the covenant she signed to become a member, so people can read for themselves the pledge she made to become a permanent part of the community.

Mary Belton thinks Barrett’s history with People of Praise is disqualifying. Belton was in 8th grade, around 1990, when she says her family was cast out after her mother came out as gay. She said the community they had been so close to in South Bend then shunned them.

“When we were kicked out, I literally thought that my that my mom was this awful sinner, and she’s going to this literal fiery hell. And that if I supported her, that I was going there, too,” Belton said.

She said it took her years to let go of teachings that she grew up hearing while involved with People of Praise, and that she now believes are deeply damaging. Barrett, she believes, will not be able to set those teachings aside.

“It’s worrisome. It’s who she is,” Belton said. “Anyone that I know, including myself, that has grown up in it and has left has had to go through a huge transformation and rewiring of your personhood, of your brain, of your soul and spirit.”

Cara Wood graduated from Trinity School at Meadow View in Falls Church, Virginia, in 2010. She recalled that the school’s views on sexuality were “deeply repressive,” where girls and boys were not allowed to hug or touch. Wood said it took her years to realize she was bisexual because “nothing in my environment made it possible that I could be anything but straight.”

Wood says she worries about Barrett’s nomination because she recalls Trinity students being encouraged to get the best education they could to then “take positions of power in the community,” such as doctors and lawyers. Trinity schools, with small class sizes and a rigorous curriculum, serve grades six through 12, boast of high SAT scores, and national awards.

“They are specifically attempting to influence politics and power in the United States,” Wood said. “This is to me why Amy Coney Barrett is so dangerous, because (People of Praise) could not have a bigger win than landing a Supreme Court justice for life.”

Others pushed back against that idea, saying teachers were trying to get across the idea that students provided with a stellar education had the responsibility to give back to society.

Several former members said they opposed Barrett’s nomination in full or in part because it comes under a cloud so late in President Donald Trump’s term. Gene Stowe, who left People of Praise on good terms in 2011 and who spent years teaching at the Trinity School in South Bend, said he doesn’t think it’s right for Trump to fill the seat.

But if Trump does get a pick, Stowe says the best-case scenario is Barrett.

“She’s smart, and I think she’s reflective,” Stowe said. “Because that’s what the People of Praise does to people. It makes you deliberative.”

Others were thrilled by the nomination, without reserve. Those included Peter Radosevich, a former longtime member in the Appleton, Wisconsin, branch.

He described the community as family oriented and internally focused, and very conservative, in the vein of evangelical Christians. The groups stays away from politics, he said, except in one area: abortion.

“They think it’s a heinous crime, akin to infanticide, Auschwitz,” Radosevich said.

Susie Lea, a retired Catholic sister who left the Shreveport, Louisiana, branch last year, said she recalled hearing about Barrett within the People of Praise when Barrett’s name was first floated for the Supreme Court two years ago. Lea has not met Barrett, but based on what the judge has said publicly and due to her involvement in People of Praise, Lea believes Barrett agrees with her that abortion is wrong and will vote against it if she were on the court.

Lea believes Barrett’s association with People of Praise may have had a hand in her nomination.

“I’m hoping it helped her, you know, all our prayers lifting her up,” Lea said. “I just think that prayers work. If it’s the will of God, that it will work.”

Dear Commons Community,

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat, goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow in what is sure to be a major news event.  All eyes will be on the tenor and style of questioning particularly among Democrats.

Republicans applaud Barrett as a dazzling legal scholar, while Democrats fear the creation of a conservative majority that would threaten the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage and abortion rights.  Judge Barrett signed an anti-abortion ad in 2006.

Our former Supreme Court correspondent, Linda Greenhouse, has a list of questions the senators might ask Judge Barrett, including, “Will you recuse yourself from abortion cases on the Supreme Court’s docket? If not, why not?”

The committee is headed by Senator Lindsey Graham. His refusal to take a coronavirus test last week despite having been in proximity to two other Republican senators who tested positive prompted Democrats to speculate that he was worried that a positive result would imperil the confirmation hearings.

Let the questioning begin!

Tony

Tanya McDowell went to prison in part for misleading officials so her son could go to a better school.

Credit…Douglas Healey for The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

Nicholas Kristof has column this morning that asks the question who is the bigger tax cheat:  A lady who lies to get her son in a better school or a man in the White House who deducts $70,000. for hair styling?   Kristof compares the plight of a homeless African-American woman named Tanya McDowell who was sentenced to five years in prison for misleading officials so her young son could get into a better school district in Connecticut and President Trump who claimed $70,000 in dubious tax deductions.

Kristof concludes:  “The bottom line: We imprisoned the homeless tax cheat for trying to get her son a decent education, and we elevated the self-entitled rich guy with an army of lawyers and accountants so that he could monetize the White House as well. (Trump properties have charged the Secret Service enormous sums for hotel rooms and other fees while agents were protecting Trump.)

The larger point is not that Trump is a con artist, although he is, but that the entire tax system is a con. The proper reaction to the revelations about Trump’s taxes is not to fume at the president — although that’s merited — but to demand far-reaching changes in the tax code.

I would add that we need changes to a judicial system that favors those with access to good lawyers who can drag cases on for years or more that end up in acquittals or slap on the wrist monetary payments that are drops in the bucket for the rich in this country.

Kristof’s entire column is below.

Tony

———————————————————————

New York Times

Who’s the Tax Cheat: The Lady in Jail or the Man in the White House?

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

Oct. 10, 2020

While reading that President Trump had claimed $70,000 in highly dubious tax deductions for hair styling for his television show, I kept thinking about a homeless African-American woman named Tanya McDowell who was imprisoned for misleading officials to get her young son into a better school district.

McDowell was sentenced to five years in prison in 2012, in part for drug offenses and in part for “larceny” because she had claimed her babysitter’s address so her son could attend a better school in Connecticut.

In some sense both Trump and McDowell appear to have cheated on their taxes. McDowell sent her son to a school district without paying taxes there. And according to The Times’s extraordinary reporting, Trump may have illegitimately claimed a $72.9 million refund that the I.R.S. is now trying to recover.

In addition, my ace Times colleague James B. Stewart reported that hair styling is not a deductible expense and that, in any case, Trump’s hair expenses for his “Apprentice” TV shows should have been reimbursed by NBC — in which case Trump may have committed criminal tax fraud.

The bottom line: We imprisoned the homeless tax cheat for trying to get her son a decent education, and we elevated the self-entitled rich guy with an army of lawyers and accountants so that he could monetize the White House as well. (Sure enough, Trump properties then charged the Secret Service enormous sums for hotel rooms and other fees while agents were protecting Trump.)

The larger point is not that Trump is a con artist, although he is, but that the entire tax system is a con. The proper reaction to the revelations about Trump’s taxes is not to fume at the president — although that’s merited — but to demand far-reaching changes in the tax code.

We interrupt this column for a quiz question: What county in the United States has the highest rate of tax audits?

The answer is Humphreys County in rural Mississippi, where three-quarters of the population is Black and more than one-third lives below the poverty line, according to ProPublica and Tax Notes. Tax collectors go after Humphreys County, where the median annual household income is $28,500, because the government targets audits on poor families using the earned-income tax credit, an antipoverty program, rather than on real estate tycoons who pay their daughters (that’s you, Ivanka!) questionable consulting fees to reduce taxes.

The five counties with the highest audit rates in the United States, according to Tax Notes, are all predominately African-American counties in the South.

Meanwhile, zillionaires claim enormous tax deductions for donating expensive art to their own private “museums” located on their own property. That’s the kind of scam that works if you’re a billionaire, but not so well if you’re my old friend Mike, who is homeless and once gave his food stamp card to a friend to buy groceries for him. The government responded by suspending Mike’s food stamps.

Tax cheats thrive because Congress has slashed the I.R.S. budget, so that the risk of audits for people earning more than $1 million per year plunged by 81 percent from 2011 to 2019. The I.R.S. has opened audits on only 0.03 percent of returns reporting income of more than $10 million in 2018 (that percentage probably will rise), according to the Center for American Progress.

Need more evidence of systemic unfairness? Trump is still holding on to the almost $73 million that he appears to have bilked out of the I.R.S. a decade ago, even though the I.R.S. is contesting his maneuvers. For wealthy people like Trump, taxes become something like a long negotiation.

An undocumented immigrant housekeeper who had worked for the Trump Organization posted tax statements on Twitter showing that she had paid more federal income taxes than Trump himself had in many years. And by one estimate, the failure of wealthy Americans to pay their fair share forces everyone else to pay an extra 15 percent in taxes.

At the same time, almost one-fifth of American families with children report that they can’t afford to give their kids enough food.

A starting point for a fairer system would be auditing the wealthy as aggressively as impoverished Black workers in rural Mississippi. The economists Natasha Sarin and Lawrence Summers estimate that 70 percent of tax underpayment is by the top 1 percent and conclude that tougher enforcement by the I.R.S. could raise $1 trillion over a decade.

Investing in the I.R.S. to go after rich tax cheats not only promotes fairness but also pays for itself: Each additional dollar spent on enforcement brings in about $24.

Remember Leona Helmsley, the wealthy hotel owner who was prosecuted for cheating on her taxes? She sadly had a point when she reportedly scoffed: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

On the bright side, Helmsley ended up in prison. I generally believe that in America we over-incarcerate, but I’m appalled that we treat a man with a gilded life and $70,000 in hair styling deductions more gently than a mom who cheats to try to give her son a better future.