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

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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

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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

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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.

Dear Commons Community,

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) announced yesterday that it has cancelled the Oct. 15 debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden after Trump declined to go along with the plan to hold it virtually.

In the wake of Trump’s positive test for COVID-19, the CPD opted to move the second debate to an online format out of safety concerns.

Trump, however, was quick to say that he would not participate if the debate in Miami was not held in-person.

“I am not going to do a virtual debate,” Trump said in a Thursday night interview with Fox Business.

The Trump campaign put out a statement saying that Trump’s doctor Sean Conley had cleared him to participate in the Oct. 15 event, but held fast to the president’s insistence that the two candidates appear alongside one another onstage in Miami.

With Trump hedging on participating in a virtual debate, Biden made other plans, booking a town hall event with ABC News for the scheduled date.

A third debate is scheduled for Oct. 22 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., and Biden’s campaign made clear that they intend to honor that date.

“We look forward to participating in the final debate, scheduled for October 22” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement. “Donald Trump can show up, or he can decline again. That’s his choice.”

Good.  If the 2^nd debate turned out anything like the first, it would be another embarrassment for the American presidency with a lying Trump continually crying and interfering in front of a world audience.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Throughout its 208-year history, The New England Journal of Medicine has remained staunchly nonpartisan. The world’s most prestigious medical journal has never supported or condemned a political candidate.

Until now.

In an editorial signed by 34 editors who are United States citizens and published on Wednesday, the journal said the Trump administration had responded so poorly to the coronavirus pandemic that they “have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”

The journal did not explicitly endorse Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, but that was the only possible inference, other scientists noted.  As reported by The New York Times.

“The editor in chief, Dr. Eric Rubin, said the scathing editorial was one of only four in the journal’s history that were signed by all of the editors. The N.E.J.M.’s editors join those of another influential publication, Scientific American, who last month endorsed Mr. Biden, the former vice president.

The political leadership has failed Americans in many ways that contrast vividly with responses from leaders in other countries, the N.E.J.M. said.

In the United States, the journal said, there was too little testing for the virus, especially early on. There was too little protective equipment, and a lack of national leadership on important measures like mask wearing, social distancing, quarantine and isolation.

There were attempts to politicize and undermine the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the journal noted.

As a result, the United States has had tens of thousands of “excess” deaths — those caused both directly and indirectly by the pandemic — as well as immense economic pain and an increase in social inequality as the virus hit disadvantaged communities hardest.

The editorial castigated the Trump administration’s rejection of science, writing, “Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.”

The uncharacteristically pungent editorial called for change: “When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

Scientific American, too, had never before endorsed a political candidate. “The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump’s rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic,” the journal’s editors said.

The N.E.J.M., like all medical journals these days, is deluged with papers on the coronavirus and the illness it causes, Covid-19. Editors have struggled to reconcile efforts to insist on quality with a constant barrage of misinformation and misleading statements from the administration, said Dr. Clifford Rosen, associate editor of the journal and an endocrinologist at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

“Our mission is to promote the best science and also to educate,” Dr. Rosen said. “We were seeing anti-science and poor leadership.”

Mounting public health failures and misinformation had eventually taken a toll, said Dr. Rubin, the editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.

“It should be clear that we are not a political organization,” he said. “But pretty much every week in our editorial meeting there would be some new outrage.”

“How can you not speak out at a time like this?” he added.

Dr. Thomas H. Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the journal’s editorial board, did not participate in writing or voting on the editorial.

But “to say nothing definitive at this point in history would be a cause for shame,” he said.

Medical specialists not associated with the N.E.J.M. applauded the decision.

“Wow,” said Dr. Matthew K. Wynia, an infectious disease specialist and director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado. He noted that the editorial did not explicitly mention Mr. Biden, but said it was clearly “an obvious call to replace the president.”

There is a risk that such a departure could taint the N.E.J.M.’s reputation for impartiality. While other medical journals, including JAMA, the Lancet and The British Medical Journal, have taken political positions, the N.E.J.M. has dealt with political issues in a measured way, as it did in a forum published in October 2000 in which Al Gore and George W. Bush answered questions on health care.

But it is hard to imagine such a deliberative debate in today’s acrimonious atmosphere, said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a professor of medicine and historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

The Trump administration, he said, had demonstrated “a continuous, reckless disregard of truth.”

Reckless disregard for truth is an appropriate description of Trump and company.

Tony

Gretchen Whitmer

Dear Commons Community,

Federal agents foiled a plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer in an alleged scheme that involved months of planning and even rehearsals to seize her from her vacation home.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Six men were charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap the governor before the Novemeber 3 elections in reaction to what they viewed as her “uncontrolled power,” according to a federal complaint. Separately, seven others linked to a paramilitary group called the Wolverine Watchmen were charged in state court for allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a “civil war.”

The two groups trained together and planned “various acts of violence,” according to the state police.

Surveillance for the kidnapping plot took place in August and September, according to an FBI affidavit, and four of the men had planned to meet Wednesday to “make a payment on explosives and exchange tactical gear.”

The FBI quoted one of the men as saying Whitmer “has no checks and balances at all. She has uncontrolled power right now. All good things must come to an end.”

Authorities said the plots were stopped with the work of undercover agents and informants. The men were arrested Wednesday night. The six charged in federal court face up to life in prison if convicted. The state terrorism charges the other seven men face carry a possible 20-year sentence.

Andrew Birge, the U.S. attorney in western Michigan, called the men “violent extremists.” They discussed detonating explosive devices — including under a highway bridge — to divert police from the area near Whitmer’s vacation home and Fox bought a Taser for use in the kidnapping, Birge said.

“All of us in Michigan can disagree about politics, but those disagreements should never, ever amount to violence. Violence has been prevented today,” Detroit U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider told reporters.

A few hours later, Whitmer pinned some blame on President Donald Trump, noting that he did not condemn white supremacists in last week’s debate with Joe Biden and instead told a far-right group to “stand back and stand by.”

“Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry, as a call to action,” Whitmer said.

Trump tweeted that the governor “has done a terrible job” and again called on her to “open up your state.” He said he does not tolerate any extreme violence.

Whitmer, who was considered as Biden’s running mate and is nearly halfway through a four-year term, has been widely praised for her response to the coronavirus but also sharply criticized by Republican lawmakers and people in conservative areas of the state. The Capitol has been the site of many rallies, including ones with gun-toting protesters calling for her ouster.

Whitmer put major restrictions on personal movement and the economy, although many of those limits have been lifted since spring. The governor has exchanged barbs with Trump on social media, with the president declaring in April, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

There is no indication in the criminal complaint that the men were inspired by Trump. Authorities also have not publicly said whether the men were angry about Whitmer’s coronavirus orders.

The criminal complaint identified the six accused in the plot against Whitmer as Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, all of Michigan, and Barry Croft of Delaware. All but Croft appeared Thursday in federal court in Grand Rapids. They asked for court-appointed lawyers and were returned to jail to await detention hearings Tuesday.

Fox, who was described as one of the leaders, was living in the basement of a vacuum shop in Grand Rapids. The owner said Fox was opposed to wearing a mask during the pandemic and kept firearms and ammunition at the store.

“He was anti-police, anti-government,” Brian Titus told WOOD-TV. “He was afraid if he didn’t stand up for the Second Amendment and his rights that the country is going to go communism and socialism.”

The government said the plot against Whitmer appeared to have roots in a June gathering in Dublin, Ohio, attended by more than a dozen people from several states, including Croft and Fox.

“The group talked about creating a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient,” the FBI affidavit said. “They discussed different ways of achieving this goal from peaceful endeavors to violent actions. … Several members talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a sitting governor.”

The seven men charged in state court are accused of identifying the homes of law enforcement officers and making violent threats “intended to instigate a civil war,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said.

They were identified as Paul Bellar, 21, of Milford; Shawn Fix, 38, of Belleville; Eric Molitor, 36, of Cadillac; Michael Null, 38, of Plainwell; William Null, 38, of Shelbyville; Pete Musico, 42, and Joseph Morrison, 26, who live together in Munith. According to the affidavit, Musico and Morrison are founding members of the Wolverine Watchmen, which authorities described as “an anti-government, anti-law enforcement militia group.”

At least three of the 13 defendants were among some armed demonstrators who entered the Senate gallery on April 30 following a larger protest outside the Capitol against Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, said Nessel spokeswoman Kelly Rossman-McKinney. At the time, a senator said the men shouted down at senators who were meeting amid debate over extending the governor’s emergency declaration. The identities of the three men were not immediately available.

The Watchmen have met periodically for firearms and tactical training in remote areas “to prepare for the ‘boogaloo,’ a term referencing a violent uprising against the government or impending politically motivated civil war,” state police Det. Sgt. Michael Fink wrote in an affidavit.

Some boogaloo promoters insist they are not genuinely advocating for violence. But the boogaloo has been linked to a recent string of domestic terrorism plots, including the arrests of three Nevada men accused of conspiring to incite violence during protests in Las Vegas.

Boogaloo supporters have shown up at protests against COVID-19 lockdown orders and racial injustice, carrying rifles and wearing tactical gear over Hawaiian shirts.

Michigan became known for anti-government paramilitary activity in the mid-1990s, when a number of loosely affiliated groups began organizing and training in rural areas. They used short-wave radio, newsletters and early internet connections to spread a message of resistance to what they contended was a conspiracy to impose world government and seize guns.

They gained notoriety after reports surfaced that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, convicted in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, had met with group members, although their connections were murky.

“That old militia world is still there, but kind of long in tooth,” said J.J. MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

Nonetheless, rallies at the Michigan Capitol against Whitmer’s shutdown orders were recruiting events for such groups, said MacNab, who monitors their social media activity.”

It is difficult to imagine such deranged activity in the United States in 2020!

Tony