Trump Will be Looking Over Pence’s Shoulder Tomorrow!

Dear Commons Community,

Vice President Mike Pence finds himself in the most precarious position of his political life as he prepares to preside over tomorrow’s congressional tally of Electoral College votes, the last front in Trump’s futile attempts to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November election.  For the past four years, he has been Trump’s most loyal soldier, dutifully backing the the President leader through one chaotic situation after another.

Tomorrow, Pence will bear witness to the formalization of Trump’s — and his own — election defeat, as tellers from the House and Senate record states’ electoral votes. At the end of the count, it will be his job to announce who has won the majority of votes for both president and vice president.

But Pence, whose role is pro forma, is under intense pressure from the president and legions of supporters who want the vice president to use the moment to overturn the will of the voters in a handful of critical battleground states.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you,” Trump said at a rally last night in Georgia for candidates in two Senate runoff elections.

“Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much,” Trump added, drawing laughs. He said Pence was “going to have a lot to say about it. And you know one thing with him, you’re going to get straight shots. He’s going to call it straight.”

Pence has spent hours huddling with the president, staff and the Senate parliamentarian. His office declined to discuss his plans heading into Wednesday’s count. But people close to the vice president stressed his respect for institutions and said they expect him to act in accordance with the law and hew to the Constitution.

“I think he will approach this as a constitutionalist, basically, and say, ’What’s my role in the Constitution as president of the Senate?’” said David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth and a Pence friend. “What he’ll do is allow anybody who is going to move to object to be heard, but then abide by what the majority of the Senate makes the outcome.”

In fulfilling one of the few formal responsibilities of the vice presidency, Pence also risks compromising his own political future. Pence is eyeing his own run for the White House in 2024, and is banking on his years of loyalty to Trump — likely to be the GOP’s top kingmaker for years to come — to help him stand out in what is expected to be a crowded field.

That means he must avoid angering Trump along with large portions of the Republican base, who have bought into the president’s unsupported claims of widespread election fraud and have been falsely led to believe that Pence has the power to reverse the outcome by rejecting the votes from states like Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that swung from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020.

“Stop the steal!” voters in Georgia chanted to Pence at a rally for the Senate candidates at the Rock Springs Church in Milner, Georgia yesterday.

“I know we all — we all got our doubts about the last election. And I want to assure you, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities,” Pence told the crowd. “And I promise you, come this Wednesday, we’ll have our day in Congress. We’ll hear the objections. We’ll hear the evidence.”

Tomorrow beginning at 1 p.m., Pence is to preside over a joint session of Congress. His role is to open the certificates of the electoral votes from each state and present them to the appointed “tellers” from the House and Senate in alphabetical order. At the end of the count, it falls to Pence to announce who won.

Pence on Sunday held a two-hour meeting that included the Senate parliamentarian to review his role and responsibilities. Allies stress his role is largely ministerial, and that the electoral count could only be overturned by the lawmakers — a virtual impossibility given that Democrats control the House.

But yesterday, Pence was in the Oval Office with Trump and senior aides as the president continued to seek pathways to overturn the election results. The scene appeared animated as the president, Pence and their chiefs of staff met with lawyer John Eastman and others.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been leading the president’s legal effort, said in a podcast interview that the team had been consulting with constitutional law professors and analyzing Pence’s options. He said Trump and Pence were “going through all of the research” and would probably wait to make a decision on how to proceed.

“The vice president will make this decision based on his judgment and the advice that he gets on what the Constitution demands,” Giuliani told conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Despite claims by Trump and his allies, there was not widespread fraud in the election. This has been confirmed by a range of election officials and by William Barr, who stepped down as attorney general last month. Neither Trump nor any of the lawmakers promising to object to the count have presented credible evidence that would change the outcome.

Nevertheless, more than 100 House Republicans and a dozen Senate Republicans have said they will challenge the electoral votes of at least one of the battleground states on Wednesday.

Republican parties in several states had Ronna McDaniel, who chairs the Republican National Committee, deliver letters to Pence encouraging him to reject the legally selected electors from Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The efforts make it all but impossible for Pence to remain above the fray, as some allies had hoped. Others have expressed regret that some extreme Trump loyalists, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell, have tried to drive a wedge between Trump and his vice president during the final days of the administration.

That frustration seems to be shared by Pence, who recently expressed his frustrations to McIntosh about an ad from the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project that painted the vice president as distancing himself from Trump. So the Club for Growth cut its own ad, which it aired in Palm Beach during Trump’s Florida vacation, trumpeting Pence’s loyalty to the president.

McIntosh said Pence resented what he felt was a “cheap shot” by the group, adding that he expects Pence to emerge from this week’s drama with his reputation intact.

“In the moment, there is that uncomfortable feeling, but in the long run, people respect you if you do what you think is right and explain why you do it,” he said. “This moment will pass. The decision will be made.”

Pence has a choice to make tomorrow. Will he function as Trump’s quivering toady or will he display a touch of courageous independence putting the Constitution and the country first.

Tony

Dick Cheney, William Perry, Donald Rumsfeld, Chuck Hagel, Ash Carter (Top Row)

William Cohen, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, James Mattis, Mark Esper (Bottom Row)

Dear Commons Community,

Ten  living former secretaries of defense warned President Trump against any move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud, arguing that it would take the country into “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.” The former Pentagon chiefs also warned against use of the military in any effort to change the outcome.

The 10 former secretaries, both Democrats and Republicans, signed on to an opinion article published Sunday in The Washington Post that implicitly questioned Trump’s willingness to follow his Constitutional duty to peacefully relinquish power on Jan. 20. Following the Nov. 3 election and subsequent recounts in some states, as well as unsuccessful court challenges, the outcome is clear, they wrote, while not specifying Trump in the article.

“The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived,” they wrote.

“Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” they wrote. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.”

A number of senior military officers, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said publicly in recent weeks that the military has no role in determining the outcome of U.S. elections and that their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to an individual leader or a political party.

The 10 former Pentagon leaders also warned in their Post article of the dangers of impeding a full and smooth transition at Defense Department prior to Inauguration Day as part of a transfer to power to President-elect Joe Biden. Biden has complained of efforts by Trump-appointed Pentagon officials to obstruct the transition.

Without mentioning a specific example, the former defense secretaries wrote that transfers of power “often occur at times of international uncertainty about U.S. national security policy and posture,” adding, “They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation.

Tensions with Iran represent just such a moment. Sunday marked one year since the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, the top Iranian general; Iran has vowed to avenge the killing, and U.S. officials said in recent days that they are on heightened alert for potential Iranian attack on U.S. forces or interests in the Middle East.

In a further sign of U.S.-Iranian tension, the acting secretary of defense, Christopher Milller, announced Sunday evening that he has changed his mind about sending the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, home from the Middle East and instead will keep the vessel on duty. Just last week, Miller announced that he was sending the Nimitz home, a decision that had been opposed by senior military officers.

In reversing himself, Miller cited “recent threats issued by Iranian leaders against President Trump and other U.S. government officials.” He did not elaborate, and the Pentagon did not respond to questions.

The opinion article in the Post was signed by Dick Cheney, William Perry, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Ash Carter, James Mattis and Mark Esper. Mattis was Trump’s first defense secretary; he resigned in 2018 and was succeeded by Esper, who was fired just days after the Nov. 3 election.

The Post reported that the idea for writing the opinion piece began with a conversation between Cheney and Eric Edelman, a retired ambassador and former senior Pentagon official, about how Trump might seek to use the military in coming days.

The secretaries do not mention if President-elect Joe Biden might have to call in the military to escort Trump, Melania, and the rest of the family out of the White House on January 20th.

Tony

Mayor Muriel Bowser

Dear Commons Commmunity,

As Donald Trump continues to embarrass himself and the presidency by advocating protests for tomorrow’s certifying of the Electoral College votes, Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser has called in the D.C. National Guard to maintain peace in our nation’s capital.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Washington, D.C.’s mayor urged calm yesterday as some 340 National Guard troops were being activated while the city prepared for potentially violent protests surrounding Congress’ expected vote to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

According to a U.S. defense official, Mayor Muriel Bowser put in a request on New Year’s Eve to have Guard members on the streets from Jan. 5-7th, to help with the protests. The official said the D.C. National Guard members will be used for traffic control and other assistance but they will not be armed or wearing body armor. Congress is meeting this week to certify the Electoral College results, and President Donald Trump has refused to concede while whipping up support for protests.

During a press conference on Monday, Bowser asked that people stay away from downtown D.C., and avoid confrontations with anyone who is “looking for a fight.” But, she warned, “we will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents or cause destruction in our city.”

There will be about 115 Guard troops on duty at any one time in the city, said the defense official, who provided details on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The official said Guard members will be used to set up traffic control points around the city and to stand with district police officers at all the city’s Metro stops. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Guard troops will also be used for some crowd management.

“Some of our intelligence certainly suggests there will be increased crowd sizes,” said Contee, adding, “There are people intent on coming to our city armed.”

Because D.C. does not have a governor, the designated commander of the city’s National Guard is Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. Any D.C. requests for Guard deployments have to be approved by him.

The defense official said that there will be no active duty military troops in the city, and the U.S. military will not be providing any aircraft or intelligence. The D.C. Guard will provide specialized teams that will be prepared to respond to any chemical or biological incident. But the official said there will be no D.C. Guard members on the National Mall or at the U.S. Capitol.

We wish Mayor Bowser and the people of Washington, D.C. well and we hope that the Guard and the police will maintain order .

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The higher-education community has been waiting to see how much money Congress would give to colleges and students in an aid package meant to offset economic losses from the Covid-19 pandemic. The number that emerged, about $23 billion, was not a surprise, and fell short of what higher-education associations said was needed to repair the fiscal damage of the last nine months.

The bill also contains a new requirement to simplify the application process for federal student aid, forgives more than $1 billion in federal loans to historically Black colleges, expands the Pell Grant program to people who are incarcerated, and restores Pell eligibility for students who were defrauded by their colleges, among other things.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Higher-education associations, which are likely to seek more economic aid in 2021 from a new Congress and presidential administration, praised the policy changes. “Community-college leaders welcome adoption of the second-chance Pell,” said David S. Baime, senior vice president for government relations and policy analysis at the American Association of Community Colleges.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, applauded the changes in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the Fafsa: “This important legislation will support struggling students and families in coming years by simplifying and expanding the federal student-aid system.”

But he called the amount of money in the aid package “disappointing” and “wholly inadequate to meet the needs of students and colleges and universities.”

The legislation’s policy changes are, in part, a reflection of how much higher-education policy remains to be worked out in the long-delayed next reauthorization of the federal Higher Education Act, which expired in 2013.

Last year Sen. Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, sought to shepherd a reauthorization bill through the chamber’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which he leads. But that effort failed, and Alexander retires next month.

Simplifying the Fafsa has been the senator’s mantra for many years now — accompanied by his dramatic unfolding of a lengthy string of papers meant to represent the existing form — and this legislation takes several steps in that direction.

Under the bill, the Fafsa will be cut from more than 100 questions to 36, and the income-verification process will be streamlined by using data from the Internal Revenue Service. Advocates for low-income students have long pushed for such measures to increase the number of disadvantaged students who apply for federal aid.

The bill also increases the number of students who will be able to receive Pell Grants and, notably, reverses a 26-year-old ban on Pell Grants for people who are incarcerated — now commonly referred to as a “second-chance Pell.”

“After so many years of advocacy on this issue,” Baime wrote in an email, “it is incredibly gratifying to see bipartisan political support for this enlightened and rational policy.”

The bill — part of a larger, $900-billion stimulus package — comes nearly eight months after the $2-trillion Cares Act. That law appropriated some $14 billion to higher education, split evenly between money for students and for institutions.

While the latest legislation will provide more money than the March package did, the amount is just a fraction of the $120 billion that higher-education associations have sought in recent months.

Since last spring, colleges have shed more than half a million jobs — the largest decline in the higher-education work force since the federal government began collecting such data. Freshman enrollment in higher education fell more than 13 percent over all, and more than 22 percent at community colleges.

Declining tuition revenue was just the start of problems for colleges as money from room and board and athletics dried up and the expenses of operating campuses in a pandemic increased.

Baime, of the community-college association, said the fiscal aid was important but institutions would seek more in the new year. “Given increasing enrollment drops and looming budget cuts, the aid is essential,” he said. “College leaders are hoping for additional support in the new year, along with a focused community-college job-training program and support for short-term Pell Grants.”

Mitchell, of ACE, was less sanguine: “The money provided in this bill will provide some limited relief, which is welcome news to struggling students and institutions,” he said in a separate news release. “But it is not going to be nearly enough in the long run or even the medium term.”

Another disappointment for some was the removal of a provision to extend the pause on student-loan repayment until April. The U.S. Department of Education has allowed borrowers to refrain from making such payments through the end of January, so the administration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will have to issue an order to extend that period.

The result will be weeks of unnecessary chaos and uncertainty.

“The result will be weeks of unnecessary chaos and uncertainty as borrowers wait to see if the Biden administration will extend the pause upon taking office, on January 20, 2021,” Jessica Thompson, associate vice president of the Institute for College Access and Success, said in a news release.

At the same time, some in higher education hope the latest measure will avoid some controversies of the Cares Act, including its language meant to distribute more of the money to colleges that enroll a larger percentage of low-income students.

In March the Cares Act doled out money based on each college’s full-time enrollment of Pell-eligible students, a formula that favored four-year colleges over community colleges and others with a high percentage of part-time students. The new legislation is expected to use a formula that counts both full-time enrollment and headcount, said Antoinette Flores, a higher-education-policy expert at the Center for American Progress.

The bill also limits how much money will go to the few dozen colleges that are subject to the endowment tax — those that enroll more than 500 students and hold $500,000 in endowment per student. Those colleges will get just half of the money that would otherwise be allocated under the law, with the exception of Berea College, in Kentucky, an institution in the home state of the U.S. Senate’s majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Several wealthy colleges declined to accept any of the Cares Act money, over legal concerns as well as the threat of negative publicity.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Just two days before the Georgia runoffs that will determine the leadership of the Senate, President Trump attempted to intimidate Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes to overturn the November presidential election vote according to the Washington Post, which published audio (hear the entire audio tape above) of their call yesterday.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump told Raffensperger, laying bare his overriding goal of overturning the November election results.

President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia on Nov. 3, the first time the state had gone for a Democratic candidate since 1992. Despite three vote recounts, Trump has continued to insist that the voting was tainted, casting a wide range of allegations without any credible evidence to back up his assertions.

Trump continued to attack Raffensperger while addressing their call hours before the Post published the audio.

“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia,” Trump tweeted. “He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters,’ dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

“Respectfully, President Trump,” Raffensperger replied on Twitter, “What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”

Yesterday, the truth did come out in the form of the Post publishing audio of the conversation. In the course of the call, Trump attempted on multiple occasions to induce Raffensperger to change the results of the election, one way or another.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

“Well, Mr. President,” Raffensperger responded, “the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

In a CNN interview, investigative reporter Carl Bernstein said. “This is something far worse than Watergate. We have both a criminal president of the United States in Donald Trump, and a subversive president of the United States.”

“This is the ultimate smoking gun tape,” he continued. “It is the tape with the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly and immorally try to instigate a coup.”

Bernstein believes the taped conversation is more than sufficient evidence to call for Trump’s immediate resignation. He urged all of the leaders in Washington D.C. to come together and condemn this threat to democracy.

“In any other presidency,” said Bernstein, “this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the president of the United States, his conviction in the senate of the United States, and really an immediate call by the members of congress, including of his own party, that he resign immediately.”

We have sixteen more days before the disgraced loser, Donald Trump, leaves the White House!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Guest op-ed writer, Karen Swisher, has a piece today in the New York Times where she makes several predictions for 2021.  She saves her best for Donald Trump and his twitter obsession.  Here is an excerpt: 

“No one expected 2020 to turn out the way it did. The worst I imagined for this year, in my annual list of digital predictions in 2019, was that the “ever screechy” President Trump would get “to stay on Twitter retweeting fake accounts and links that appear to unmask a whistle-blower.”

If only. Mr. Trump is screechier than ever, and even more unhinged than expected. Most of his tweets are now labeled “disputed” by Twitter, which I would translate from geekspeak as a polite way of calling them lies.

Since I’m not polite, I’m starting this round of prognosticating with this: Soon after our forever troller in chief leaves office on Jan. 20, his account will be suspended by Twitter temporarily, and then, since he cannot stop breaking rules, he’ll get tossed off, just like his hideous pal, Alex Jones.

I have never thought, as many have, that Mr. Trump should have been de-platformed during his term as president. As flagitious as he can be, Mr. Trump has been a legitimate news figure and, thus, what he had to say should be aired.

But after Joe Biden is inaugurated, Mr. Trump should be treated like any other mendacious loudmouth, and Twitter will be well within its rights to put a sock in it. He’ll rage and then head over Parler to try to make fetch happen, which will not satisfy his enormous ego. It will all end in a whimper.”

I hope Ms. Swisher is correct that Twitter bounces Trump and he disappears whimpering as most bullies do when slapped on the nose.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial this morning examines the four years of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education.  It isn’t pretty.  Besides being completely unqualified for the position, the editorial mentions several of her policies related to civil rights and predatory for-profit colleges.  It also blisters her for being a complete no-show when it came to providing leadership during the current pandemic.  Miguel Cardona, Joe Biden’s nominee for her position, will have a lot on his agenda when he takes office.  For most educators, his appointment will be a welcome change.

Good riddance, Betsy!

The entire editorial is below.

Tony

——————————————————————————————–

The New York Times

The Wreckage Betsy DeVos Leaves Behind

The Education Department lies in ruins right when it’s needed most.

By The Editorial Board

Jan. 2, 2021

The departing education secretary, Betsy DeVos, will be remembered as perhaps the most disastrous leader in the Education Department’s history. Her lack of vision has been apparent in a variety of contexts, but never more so than this fall when she told districts that were seeking guidance on how to operate during the coronavirus pandemic that it was not her responsibility to track school district infection rates or keep track of school reopening plans. This telling remark implies a vision of the Education Department as a mere bystander in a crisis that disrupted the lives of more than 50 million schoolchildren.

If the Senate confirms President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee, Miguel Cardona, as Ms. DeVos’s successor, he will face the herculean task of clearing away the wreckage left by his predecessor — while helping the states find a safe and equitable path to reopening schools.

Beyond that, the new secretary needs to quickly reverse a range of corrosive DeVos-era policies, including initiatives that rolled back civil rights protections for minority children as well as actions that turned the department into a subsidiary of predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crushing debt while granting them useless degrees.

There is still more to learn about Mr. Cardona. But at first glance, the contrast between him and his predecessor is striking. Ms. DeVos had almost no experience in public education and was clearly disinterested in the department’s mission. Mr. Cardona worked his way up from teacher to principal to education commissioner of Connecticut. Moreover, he seems to understand that a big part of his job involves using the bully pulpit to advance policies that benefit all schoolchildren and protect the most vulnerable.

Mr. Cardona would need to pay close attention to how districts plan to deal with learning loss that many children will suffer while the schools are closed. Fall testing data analyzed by the nonprofit research organization NWEA suggests that setbacks have been less severe than were feared, with students showing continued academic progress in reading and only modest setbacks in math.

However, given a shortage of testing data for Black, Hispanic and poor children, it could well be that these groups have fared worse in the pandemic than their white or more affluent peers. The country needs specific information on how these subgroups are doing so that it can allocate educational resources strategically.

Beyond that, parents need to know where their children stand after such a sustained period without much face-to-face instruction. Given these realities, the new education secretary — whoever he or she turns out to be — should resist calls to put off annual student testing.

Research has long since shown that a summer vacation can wipe out a month or two of student learning. Making up for an even more serious learning shortfall will require planning that should begin now. An obvious first step would be to use the summer of 2021 for summer school or catch-up tutoring. If the Biden Education Department decides on this approach, it will need to petition Congress to fund the project. The states are too cash poor at the moment and could not undertake such a venture on their own.

The Education Department should also recognize that this pandemic will not be the last one. That means developing a list of best practices and strategic schools plans that can be swiftly rolled out when another medical crisis occurs with a different infectious agent.

In addition to addressing worrisome matters like these, the new education commissioner needs to revoke a series of department communiqués that had the effect of letting school districts off the hook for discriminatory disciplinary practices and other potential violations of civil rights law. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights exposed the depth of this problem during the Obama years, when it released data showing that excessively punitive policies were being used at every level of the public school system — and that even minority 4-year-olds were being disproportionately suspended and expelled.

The new administration needs to underscore the message that these damaging practices are unacceptable. This means renewing civil rights guidance to school districts and opening investigations after credible reports of wrongdoing.

The DeVos administration sold out to predatory for-profit colleges and their various abettors within a nanosecond of taking office. To get a jump on reversing this particular set of policies, the new education secretary can begin rule-making processes where necessary and inform the courts that it will no longer defend against lawsuits filed by state attorneys general and others who have dogged the DeVos department in court for buddying up to the for-profit industry and attacking student borrowers who deserve to have their student loans forgiven because they were defrauded by career education programs.

The department should immediately begin rule-making to reverse Ms. DeVos’s gutting of the “gainful employment” rule, which was supposed to cut off access to federal student aid for career training programs that buried students in debt while failing to prepare them for the job market.

Pending in court is a lawsuit filed by 22 states and the District of Columbia charging that Ms. DeVos unlawfully rescinded an Obama-era rule that allowed students who had been defrauded by career colleges to have their federal loans forgiven. The department should stop defending against this lawsuit and revisit loan discharge claims by borrowers who remain saddled with debt even though the schools they attended were shown to be engaged in fraud. The DeVos version of the so-called borrower defense rule was so onerous for defrauded borrowers that Congress passed a bipartisan measure blocking it. That measure, however, was vetoed by the president.

In yet another sop to the for-profit industry, Ms. DeVos disregarded a scathing indictment by her department’s career staff, reinstating an accrediting body that had been stripped of its authority for exercising lax oversight. The organization was the accreditor for two for-profit institutions that collapsed, leaving tens of thousands of students with debt and useless degrees. The new education secretary would do well to closely scrutinize the department’s methodology for evaluating accreditors.

Yet another set of lawsuits has shown how the companies that are handsomely paid to collect student loans aggravate the debt crisis by giving advice that costs borrowers money while earning the companies cash.

The Department of Education lies in ruins at precisely the time when the country most needs it. The president-elect and his new education secretary, whoever that turns out to be, need to get the institution up and running as swiftly as possible. Given the dire context, there is no time to waste.

Dear Commons Community,

General Electric’s Haliade-X wind turbine at Rotterdam Harbor in the Netherlands is capable of providing all of the energy needs of a small town of 12,000 people. Building a wind farm of many such turbines would change the nature of the discussion about  renewable energy.  The graphic above shows the size of the Haliade-X as compared to the Empire State Building and the London Eye Ferris Wheel.  The New York Times has a featured article this morning entitled, A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry, that describes the development of this new technology.  The entire article is below.

Tony

New York Times

A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry

By Stanley Reed

Jan. 1, 2021

Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.

Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today.

G.E. has yet to install one of these machines in ocean water. As a relative newcomer to the offshore wind business, the company faces questions about how quickly and efficiently it can scale up production to build and install hundreds of the turbines.

But already the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. A top executive at the world’s leading wind farm developer called it a “bit of a leapfrog over the latest technology.” And an analyst said the machine’s size and advance sales had “shaken the industry.”

The prototype is the first of a generation of new machines that are about a third more powerful than the largest already in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment makers, developers and investors.

The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.

The turbine, which is capable of producing as much thrust as the four engines of a Boeing 747 jet, according to G.E., will be deployed at sea, where developers have learned that they can plant larger and more numerous turbines than on land to capture breezes that are stronger and more reliable.

The race to build bigger turbines has moved faster than many industry figures foresaw. G.E.’s Haliade-X generates almost 30 times more electricity than the first offshore machines installed off Denmark in 1991.

In coming years, customers are likely to demand even bigger machines, industry executives say. On the other hand, they predict that, just as commercial airliners peaked with the Airbus A380, turbines will reach a point where greater size no longer makes economic sense.

Climate Fwd:: Our latest insights about climate change, with answers to your questions and tips on how to help.

“We will also reach a plateau; we just don’t know where it is yet,” said Morten Pilgaard Rasmussen, chief technology officer of the offshore wind unit of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, the leading maker of offshore turbines.

Although offshore turbines now account for only about 5 percent of the generating capacity of the overall wind industry, this part of the business has taken on an identity of its own and is expected to grow faster in the coming years than land-based wind.

Offshore technology took hold in Northern Europe in the last three decades, and is now spreading to the East Coast of the United States as well as Asia, including Taiwan, China and South Korea. The big-ticket projects costing billions of dollars that are possible at sea are attracting large investors, including oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, that want to quickly enhance their green energy offerings. Capital investment in offshore wind has more than tripled over the last decade to $26 billion, according the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based forecasting group.

G.E. began making inroads in wind power in 2002 when it bought Enron’s land-based turbine business — a successful unit in a company brought down in a spectacular accounting scandal — at a bankruptcy auction. It was a marginal force in the offshore industry when its executives decided to try to crack it about four years ago. They saw a growing market with only a couple of serious Western competitors.

Still, G.E.’s bosses figured that to become a leader in the more challenging marine environment, they needed to be audacious. They proceeded to more than double the size of their existing offshore machine, which came to G.E. through its acquisition of the power business of France’s Alstom in 2015. The idea was to gain a lead on key competitors like Siemens Gamesa and Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish-based turbine maker.

A larger turbine produces more electricity and, thus, more revenue than a smaller machine. Size also helps reduce the costs of building and maintaining a wind farm because fewer turbines are required to produce a given amount of power.

These qualities create a powerful incentive for developers to go for the largest machine available to aid their efforts to win the auctions for offshore power supply deals that many countries have adopted. These auctions vary in format, but developers compete to provide power over a number of years for the lowest price.

The prototype is on a piece of land in Rotterdam Harbor, but the Haliade-X is designed as an offshore turbine, to be planted in relatively shallow sea water. Credit…Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

“What they are looking for is a turbine that allows them to win these auctions,” said Vincent Schellings, who has headed design and production of the G.E. turbine. “That is where turbine size plays a very important role.”

Among the early customers is Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest developer of offshore wind farms. It has a preliminary agreement to buy about 90 of the Haliade-X machines for a project called Ocean Wind off Atlantic City, N.J.

“I think they surprised everybody when they came out with that machine,” said David Hardy, chief executive of Orsted’s offshore business in North America.

As a huge buyer of turbines, Orsted wants to help “establish this new platform and create some volume for G.E.” so as to promote competition and innovation, Mr. Hardy said.

The G.E. turbine is selling better than its competitors may have expected, analysts say.

On Dec. 1, G.E. reached another preliminary agreement to provide turbines for Vineyard Wind, a large wind farm off Massachusetts, and it has deals to supply 276 turbines to what is likely to be the world’s largest wind farm at Dogger Bank off Britain.

These deals, with accompanying maintenance contracts, could add up to $13 billion, estimates Shashi Barla, principal wind analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a market research firm.

The waves made by the G.E. machine have pushed Siemens Gamesa to announce a series of competing turbines. Vestas, which until recently had the industry’s biggest machine in its stable, is also expected to unveil a new entry soon.

“We didn’t move as the first one, and that of course we have to address today,” said Henrik Andersen, the chief executive of Vestas.

To pull off its gambit, G.E. had to start “pretty much from scratch,” Mr. Schellings said. The business unit called G.E. Renewable Energy is spending about $400 million on design, hiring engineers and retooling factories at St. Nazaire and Cherbourg in France.

length that doesn’t buckle from its own weight, G.E. called on designers at LM Wind Power, a blade maker in Denmark that the company bought in 2016 for $1.7 billion. Among their innovations: a material combining carbon fiber and glass fiber that is lightweight yet strong and flexible.

G.E. still must work out how to manufacture large numbers of the machines efficiently, initially at the plants in France and, possibly later, in Britain and the United States. With a skimpy offshore track record, G.E. also needs to show that it can reliably install and maintain the big machines at sea, using specialized ships and dealing with rough weather.

“G.E. has to prove a lot to asset owners for them to procure G.E. turbines,” Mr. Barla said.

Bringing out bigger machines has been easier and cheaper for Siemens Gamesa, G.E.’s key rival, which is already building a prototype for a new and more powerful machine at its offshore complex at Brande on Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. The secret: The company’s ever larger new models have not strayed far from a decade-old template.

“The fundamentals of the machine and how it works remain the same,” said Mr. Rasmussen, the unit’s chief technology officer, leading to a “starting point that was a little better” than G.E.’s.

There seems to be plenty of room for competition. John Lavelle, the chief executive of G.E.’s offshore business, said the outlook for the market “gets bigger each year.”

Dear Commons Community,

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, dismissed a  last-gasp lawsuit brought by Representative Louie Gohmert aimed at giving Vice President Mike Pence the power to overturn the results of the presidential election won by Joe Biden when Congress formally counts the Electoral College votes next week.  As reported by various media.

Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, will oversee a session on Wednesday and will declare the winner of the presidential election. The Electoral College this month cemented Biden’s 306-232 victory, and multiple legal efforts by President Donald Trump’s campaign to challenge the results have failed.

The lawsuit named Pence, who has a largely ceremonial role in next week’s proceedings, as the defendant and asked the court to throw out the 1887 law that spells out how Congress handles the vote counting. It asserted that the vice president “may exercise the exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count for a given State.”

In dismissing the lawsuit filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and a group of Republican electors from Arizona, Texas U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, wrote that the plaintiffs “allege an injury that is not fairly traceable” to Pence, “and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief.”

The Justice Department represented Pence in a case that aimed to find a way to keep his boss, President Donald Trump, in power. In a court filing in Texas on Thursday, the department said the plaintiffs “have sued the wrong defendant” — if, in fact, any of those suing actually have “a judicially cognizable claim.”

The department said, in effect, that the suit objects to long-standing procedures laid out in law, “not any actions that Vice President Pence has taken,” so he should not be the target of the suit.

“A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” the department argued.

Trump, the first president to lose a reelection bid in almost 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread voter fraud. But a range of nonpartisan election officials and Republicans has confirmed there was no fraud in the November contest that would change the results of the election. That includes former Attorney General William Barr, who said he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel to look into the president’s claims about the 2020 election. He resigned from his post last week.

Trump and his allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits challenging election results, and nearly all have been dismissed or dropped. He’s also lost twice at the Supreme Court.’

What a ludicrous waste of time on the part of Trump and his toady allies.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In a sign that the Republicans have begun to drift away from Trump’s influence, the U.S. Senate voted 81-13 to override the President’s veto of the country’s major defense bill.  This vote followed a 322-87 override in the House of Representatives passed earlier and was the first time in the four years of his presidency that a Trump veto has been overridden.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Congress has overridden President Donald Trump’s veto of a defense policy bill, a first by lawmakers since he took office nearly four years ago.

In an extraordinary New Year’s Day session, the Republican-controlled Senate easily turned aside the veto, dismissing Trump’s objections to the $740 billion bill and handing him a stinging rebuke just weeks before his term ends.

Trump had lashed out at GOP lawmakers on Twitter, charging earlier this week that “Weak and tired Republican ‘leadership’ will allow the bad Defense Bill to pass.″

Trump called the looming override vote a “disgraceful act of cowardice and total submission by weak people to Big Tech. Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW!”

The 81-13 vote in the Senate followed an earlier 322-87 override vote in the House of the widely popular defense measure. The bill provides a 3% pay raise for U.S. troops and guides defense policy, cementing decisions about troop levels, new weapons systems and military readiness, personnel policy and other military goals. Many programs, including military construction, can only go into effect if the bill is approved.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said before the vote that Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act every year for 59 years in a row, “and one way or another, we are going to complete the 60th annual NDAA and pass it into law before this Congress concludes on Sunday.”

The bill “looks after our brave men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform,” McConnell said. “But it’s also a tremendous opportunity: to direct our national security priorities to reflect the resolve of the American people and the evolving threats to their safety, at home and abroad. It’s our chance to ensure we keep pace with competitors like Russia and China.”

The Senate override was delayed after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., objected to moving ahead until McConnell allowed a vote on a Trump-backed plan to increase COVID-19 relief payments to $2,000. McConnel did not allow that vote; instead he used his parliamentary power to set a vote limiting debate on the defense measure, overcoming a filibuster threat by Sanders and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Without a bipartisan agreement, a vote on the bill could have been delayed until Saturday night. Lawmakers, however, agreed to an immediate roll call Friday once the filibuster threat was stopped.

Trump rejected the defense measure last week, saying it failed to limit social media companies he claimed were biased against him during his failed reelection campaign. Trump also opposed language that allows for the renaming of military bases that honor Confederate leaders.

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “disappointed” with Trump’s veto and called the bill “absolutely vital to our national security and our troops.″

“This is the most important bill we have,″ Inhofe said. “It puts members of the military first.″

Trump has succeeded throughout his four-year term in enforcing party discipline in Congress, with few Republicans willing to publicly oppose him. The bipartisan overrides on the defense bill showed the limits of Trump’s influence in the final weeks of his term.

Earlier this week, 130 House Republicans voted against the Trump-backed COVID relief checks, with many arguing they were unnecessary and would increase the federal budget deficit.

The Democratic-controlled House approved the larger payments, but the plan is dead in the Senate, another sign of Trump’s fading hold over Congress.

Besides his concerns about social media and military base names, Trump also said the defense bill restricted his ability to conduct foreign policy, “particularly my efforts to bring our troops home.″ Trump was referring to provisions in the bill that impose conditions on his plan to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan and Germany. The measures require the Pentagon to submit reports certifying that the proposed withdrawals would not jeopardize U.S. national security.

Trump has vetoed eight other bills, but those were all sustained because supporters did not gain the two-thirds vote needed in each chamber for the bills to become law without Trump’s signature.

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Trump’s Dec. 23 veto a “parting gift” to Russian President Vladimir Putin “and a lump of coal for our troops. Donald Trump is showing more devotion to Confederate base names than to the men and women who defend our nation.″

Hopefully, Trump’s influence will continue to fade in the Republican Party once he leaves office.

Tony