Dear Commons Community,

The House voted 230-199 yesterday to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from her committee assignments after Republican leadership failed to take action against the freshman congresswoman’s embrace of bizarre conspiracy theories and endorsement of violence against Democrats.

Eleven House Republicans broke ranks  to join Democrats in voting to remove her from her committee assignments including:

• Adam Kinzinger of Illinois
• Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania
• John Katko of New York
• Fred Upton of Michigan
• Nicole Malliotakis of New York
• Carlos Gimenez of Florida
• Chris Jacobs of New York
• Young Kim of California
• Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida
• Chris Smith of New Jersey
• Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida

In a fiery speech on the House floor shortly before the vote, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., excoriated Republicans for ignoring Greene’s incendiary rhetoric. Hoyer displayed a poster showing one of Greene’s tweets that included an image of her with an AR-15 alongside Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib above a banner that read “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”

“They’re not ‘The Squad’ They’re Ilhan. They are Alexandria. And they’re Rashida. They are people. They are our colleagues,” Hoyer said. “This is an AR-15.”

Hoyer pointed out that two years ago House Republicans removed Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, of his committee assignments after he questioned publicly why the phrase “white supremacy” was considered offensive. (King was defeated by a primary challenger later that year and is now out of Congress.)

As a rule, every member of Congress is assigned to one or more committees. For a freshman, especially one in the minority, committee meetings are one of the few ways to exercise power or make a mark in Congress.

Greene, who has supported the QAnon conspiracy theory in the past and has a long history of making racist comments, was elected to the House in November, and promptly announced she would introduce a bill on her first day to impeach President Biden. (It’s unclear whether any fellow members supported the proposal, which has no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Congress.)

Last week, Facebook posts unearthed by CNN showed Greene had supported calls for violence against prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said a “bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove the House speaker.

Greene, who was not in office at the time, has said her social media accounts were sometimes handled by others.

Posts on Greene’s Facebook account also expressed support for baseless conspiracy theories that the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla., were staged. (“Exactly!” she wrote in response to a post saying the 2018 Parkland massacre was a “false flag planned shooting.”)

Fred Guttenberg, the father of a slain Parkland student, posted a video of Greene harassing David Hogg, a former Parkland student and gun reform advocate, outside the U.S. Capitol.

In a floor speech ahead of Thursday’s vote, Greene insisted her conspiratorial views — including her belief that the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon never happened — were a thing of the past.

“These were words of the past and these things do not represent me,” Greene said before blaming the media for distorting her views, equating the press corps to QAnon and casting herself as a victim of “cancel culture.” She did not offer an apology.

The unprecedented vote to remove Greene from her committee assignments came a day after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said that her past statements “on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference.” But he did not announce any sanctions, saying instead that she had assured him in a private conversation that she understood the need to meet “a higher standard” as a lawmaker than as a private citizen.

“I hold her to her word, as well as her actions going forward,” McCarthy said.

He also claimed he didn’t know what QAnon is, despite saying in August that there was no place for it in the Republican party.

McCarthy then criticized Democrats for “choosing to raise the temperature” in “their partisan power grab regarding the committee assignments of the other party.”

“It’s so unfortunate. You would think the Republican leadership would have some sense of responsibility to this institution,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said shortly before the vote.

In a Wednesday meeting with House Republicans, Greene attempted to distance herself from some of her past comments. She said that the school shootings were “real and awful,” and apologized for having subscribed to some QAnon conspiracy theories, according to attendees.

Those remarks satisfied McCarthy and her party colleagues, many of whom gave Greene a standing ovation.

But in an interview with the Washington Examiner published after her meeting with McCarthy, Greene seemed less contrite.

“And Kevin McCarthy and all these leaders, the leadership, and everyone is proving that they are all talk and not about action,” she said. “They’re just all about doing business as usual in Washington. And so what’s the difference between them and the Democrats? There isn’t a difference.”

Glad to see eleven Republicans with guts and the courage to put country before party. It is my hope that this will come back to haunt the other 199 Republicans who voted to keep her on the House committees.

Tony

Kevin McCarthy

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article this morning reviewing the Republican Party leadership in the House and the Senate.  House minority leader Kevin McCarthy showed his cowardice last night by supporting “looney conspiracy theorist”  Marjorie Taylor Greene while also supporting Liz Cheney.  Cheney won an impressive 141-65 vote victory to maintain her No. 3 position.  Following Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell labeling Taylor Greene a “cancer”, Senate Republicans Rick Scott and Thom Tillis yesterday  denounced her for her vitriolic views on a variety of sensitive subjects.  Most likely today, the House Democrats will vote to remove Taylor Greene from one or both of her committee appointments. Below is the entire Times article.

Tony

——————————————————————————————

New York Times

Top House Republican Condemns Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Comments, but Stands by Her

By Catie Edmondson, Jonathan Martin and Nicholas Fandos

• Feb. 3, 2021

WASHINGTON — The top House Republican refused on Wednesday to punish Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for spreading false and bigoted conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence against Democrats, condemning the Georgia freshman’s previous comments but declining to take away her posts on influential congressional committees.

After days of public silence and private agonizing over what to do about Ms. Greene — who has endorsed the executions of top Democrats, suggested that school shootings were staged and said that a space laser controlled by Jewish financiers started a wildfire — the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, issued a tortured statement that harshly denounced her past statements but then argued that she should face no consequences for them.

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” Mr. McCarthy said.

The contortions over what to do about Ms. Greene came days after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the most powerful Republican in Washington, denounced her as a threat to his party and as more senators followed his lead.

The feuding played out behind closed doors well into Wednesday evening, as House Republicans debated stripping Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican, of her leadership post, as a penalty for her vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump.

Ms. Cheney ultimately emerged victorious after a 145-to-61 secret ballot vote. The lopsided results also amounted to a vote of confidence in Mr. McCarthy, who delivered an impassioned closing speech, according to officials in the room. In the hours-long, often heated meeting, according to people familiar with the discussion, Mr. McCarthy stood by both Ms. Cheney and Ms. Greene, and stressed the importance of presenting a united front.

In his defense of Ms. Cheney, Mr. McCarthy told lawmakers that he wanted their leadership team to “stay together.” He reminded his colleagues that they elected him as their leader, and he asked them to let him lead by picking his team.

The challenge to Ms. Greene will continue on Thursday, when House Democrats will call a vote of the full chamber to strip her of her committee assignments. Mr. McCarthy called it a “partisan power grab.”

He also warned that if they indulged the effort to strip Ms. Greene of her assignments, Democrats could try to target other Republicans, according to three people familiar with his comments, who insisted on anonymity to divulge the private exchange.

Ms. Greene faced a greater backlash from Republican colleagues in the Senate after Mr. McConnell’s criticism.

“She’s not going to be the face of the party,” Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said of Ms. Greene. Mr. Scott, who was governor in 2018 when a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla., said her effort to portray the shooting as faked was “disgusting.”

“It’s beyond reprehensible for any elected official, especially a member of Congress, to parrot violent QAnon rhetoric and promote deranged conspiracies,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, wrote on Twitter. “It’s not conservative, it’s insane.”

The divergent reactions from House and Senate Republicans illustrated the extraordinary turmoil in the party as it struggles to define itself without Mr. Trump in the White House.

For her part, Ms. Greene offered a modicum of contrition in a brief speech on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the remarks, and received applause from some lawmakers. She apologized for espousing a number of conspiracy theories and emphasized that she no longer believed in them.

But she sidestepped the issue of a Facebook post she made in 2018, unearthed by Media Matters for America, suggesting that a devastating wildfire that ravaged California was started by “a laser” beamed from space and controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family with connections to powerful Democrats.

Ms. Cheney’s victory was all the more remarkable because she refused to apologize for her impeachment vote, even as several members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus accused her of “aiding the enemy” in voting to impeach Mr. Trump, the people said. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the former president’s fiercest defenders, joined in and said he felt Ms. Cheney could not represent a conference that had overwhelmingly voted against impeachment.

The small group of Republicans who joined Ms. Cheney in voting to impeach Mr. Trump voiced their support for her — and some offered barely veiled criticism of Mr. McCarthy’s handling of the party’s dual crises.

Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois spoke in Ms. Cheney’s defense and accused Mr. McCarthy of doing more to defend Ms. Greene than he did to defend Ms. Cheney, calling it “embarrassing,” according to two people familiar with his comments.

The fate of Ms. Cheney, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington said, was only a proxy for the larger issue looming over the Republican Party: its obeisance to Mr. Trump.

“This is about the direction of our party and whether or not we’re going to be a minority dedicated to just one person or a united Republican majority,” she said.

Hours before the conference meeting, a number of other Republican women were even more explicit during an at-times emotional virtual fund-raiser for Ms. Cheney, according to two Republicans who participated.

Most outspoken was former Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia, a longtime party official who was swept out of her suburban Washington seat in the 2018 backlash to Mr. Trump. On the video call, Ms. Comstock belittled Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida — who went to Wyoming last week to rail against Ms. Cheney — describing him as “a joke.”

In a telephone interview, Ms. Comstock warned that exiling Ms. Cheney would send a “horrendous message” and “lead to further hemorrhaging in the suburbs.”

For now, the immediate problem facing House Republicans was how they would vote on Thursday on Democrats’ resolution to strip Ms. Greene of her committees.

With Democrats in control of the House, the measure is certain to pass. But the vote will force Republicans to go on the record for the first time on whether Ms. Greene should be punished for her past comments, and it will force them to confront head-on the conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump allowed to flourish, and in some cases fed, while he was in the White House. Mr. Trump often winked at such theories, like stating that QAnon adherents “love our country.” But Ms. Greene has been more explicit in her embrace of them, and in her endorsement of violence against Democrats.

Mr. McCarthy had tried to shield his members from taking such a vote, and spoke with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, by phone on Wednesday to try to strike a compromise. Mr. McCarthy later told reporters that he had offered to remove Ms. Greene from the Education and Budget Committees and to put her on a panel overseeing small businesses instead. Mr. Hoyer declined the offer, he said, insisting that Ms. Greene should not sit on any committees.

Lawmakers will vote on a resolution on Thursday removing Ms. Greene from her committees, citing simply the “conduct she has exhibited.” While expelling a lawmaker from the chamber requires a two-thirds vote, censuring or stripping one of committee assignments requires a simple majority, according to House rules.

Some Republicans are now arguing that voting in favor of the resolution would set a dangerous precedent because it would effectively allow the majority party to dictate which lawmakers in the minority party are fit to serve on committees, a crucial pipeline for members to advance legislation. Committee assignments have traditionally been the prerogative of the party leaders.

Others argue that members of Congress should not face punishment for remarks they made before they were elected. But Democrats said they were comfortable establishing a new set of rules whereby statements like those Ms. Greene made would prompt banishment from committees.

“A member of this House is calling for assassinations — that’s the new precedent,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Rules Committee. “If that’s the standard that we remove people from committees, I’m fine with that.”

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the rules panel, did not try to excuse Ms. Greene’s comments, calling them “deeply offensive,” “repugnant” and “unbecoming of any member of Congress.” But he argued that the matter should be punted to the Ethics Committee for a bipartisan group of lawmakers to review.

“I do worry a lot about the precedent of another party choosing” to strip committee assignments, Mr. Cole said.

But the attention Ms. Greene is receiving has been a political boon. Seizing on the attempts to boot her off her committees, she has started a fund-raising campaign claiming that Democrats are unfairly targeting her for her beliefs. Ms. Greene said the effort had netted her more than $160,000 in one day.

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has an article this morning reporting that scores of Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. had more than $10 billion in cash and other readily available funds when they received at least $1.5 billion from the nation’s emergency relief program for small businesses slammed by the coronavirus.  As reported:

The financial resources of several dioceses rivaled or exceeded those available to publicly traded companies — like Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House — whose participation in the Paycheck Protection Program triggered outrage last spring.

The taxpayer-backed aid was supposed to help recipients that lacked the kind of financial safety net that cash and short-term assets provide.

While dioceses, their churches and schools went into the pandemic with billions, the cash catastrophe church leaders feared did not materialize, AP found. New financial statements that several dozen dioceses have posted for 2020 show available resources improved despite the pandemic’s hard, early months — the same time they sought paycheck protection aid.

The pattern held whether a diocese was big or small, urban or rural, East or West, North or South.

In Kentucky, funds available to the Archdiocese of Louisville, its parishes and other organizations grew from at least $153 million to $157 million during the fiscal year that ended in June, AP found. Those same offices and organizations received at least $17 million in paycheck aid. “The Archdiocese’s operations have not been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak,” according to its financial statement.

In North Carolina, the Raleigh Diocese and its churches and schools collected at least $11 million. Yet during the church’s 2020 fiscal year, overall offerings were down just 5% and assets available to the diocese, its parishes and schools increased by about $21 million to more than $170 million, AP found. Raleigh officials did not answer direct questions.

In Illinois, the Archdiocese of Chicago had more than $1 billion in cash and investments in its headquarters and cemetery division as of May, while the faithful continued to donate “more than expected,” according to the independent ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service. Chicago’s parishes, schools and ministries accumulated at least $77 million.

Archdiocesan officials said the money was needed to cover substantial expenses while parishioner donations slumped when lockdowns forced the cancellation of Masses. Without paycheck support, “parishes and schools would have been forced to cut many jobs” because the archdiocese couldn’t have made up the difference given its own expenses, spokeswoman Paula Waters wrote.

On top of good financial planning, dioceses benefited when U.S. stock markets rebounded and parishioners found ways to continue donating.

AP’s analysis focused on available assets because federal officials tied those metrics to program eligibility. Therefore, the $10 billion AP identified doesn’t count important financial pillars of the church in the U.S., including its real estate holdings and an estimated $9.5 billion held by charitable foundations created to help dioceses.

Church officials have said their employees were as worthy of paycheck program help as workers at Main Street businesses, and that without it they would have had to curtail their charitable mission as demand for food pantries and social services spiked. They point out the program’s rules didn’t require them to exhaust cash or reserves.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops did not directly answer questions. Presented with AP’s findings, spokeswoman Chieko Noguchi responded that paycheck support was “designed to protect the jobs of Americans from all walks of life.”

The AP’s assessment of church finances is among the most comprehensive to date. It draws largely from audited financial statements posted by the central offices of 112 of the country’s nearly 200 dioceses.

A majority of these dioceses reported enough money on hand to cover at least six months of operating expenses, even without any new income, at the start of the fiscal year that included the pandemic’s arrival. Yet AP’s investigation found the Roman Catholic Church was perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the small business program.

By using a special exemption that the church lobbied to include, Catholic entities across the nearly 200 dioceses amassed at least $3 billion. That was roughly the same, AP found, as the combined total of other faith-based recipients that rounded out the top five: Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Jewish.

Catholic institutions also received many times more than other major nonprofits with charitable missions and national reach, such as the United Way and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Overall, Catholic recipients got roughly twice as much as 40 of the largest charities in America combined.

In their financial statements, the 112 dioceses acknowledged having at least $4.5 billion in liquid or otherwise available assets. To reach its $10 billion total, AP included funding that dioceses opted to designate for special projects instead of general expenses; excess cash parishes and their affiliates deposit with their diocese’s savings and loan; and lines of credit, typically with outside banks.

Some church officials said AP was misreading their finances and therefore overstating available assets. They insisted that money diocesan leaders set aside for special projects couldn’t be repurposed during an emergency, though financial statements posted by multiple dioceses stated the opposite.

For its analysis, AP consulted experts in church law and finance. One was the Rev. James Connell, an accountant before joining the priesthood and becoming an administrator in the Milwaukee Archdiocese. Connell, also an expert in church law who is now retired from his position with the archdiocese, said AP’s findings convinced him that Catholic entities did not need government aid.

AP found other internal skeptics. A church pastor in a Western state said he refused to apply even after diocesan officials pressed him, with one questioning why he was “leaving free money on the table.” He requested anonymity because of his diocese’s policy against talking to reporters and concerns about retaliation.

When the pandemic hit, the pastor used parish savings and trimmed expenses. He said he felt a “sound moral conviction” that the federal funds were meant for shops and restaurants that, without it, might close forever.

“We didn’t need it,” the pastor said, “and intentionally wanted to leave the money for those small business owners who did.”

Pass the basket please!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Conservative columnist Max Boot yesterday reminded the Republicans who are now getting “into a lather” about conspiracy theory-spouting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R.-Ga.) of their support and enabling of former President Donald Trump, which he said they “seem to have instantly forgotten.”

“They spent the past four years tolerating and even supporting ‘loony lies and conspiracy theories’ emanating not from a powerless House newcomer but from the most powerful man on the planet,” Boot wrote in his latest column for The Washington Post.

“Greene might be marginally kookier than former president Donald Trump — but only marginally,” the pundit said, noting how Trump’s “whole political career was defined by his advocacy of insane conspiracy theories.”

Boot recalled just some of Trump’s many, many “loony lies” — from his baseless birther conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama to his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, which led to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters on Jan. 6.

Greene, meanwhile, faces censure in Congress over her support for the unhinged QAnon movement and her claims that mass school shootings were “false flags” and the 9/11 terror attacks were an inside job. The House will vote today over her removal from her committees.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this week said that Greene’s support for conspiracy theories was a “cancer” on the GOP.

“Yes, Marjorie Taylor Greene is awful. But Trump — who called Greene a “real WINNER” and, according to Greene, recently called to offer her support — is far worse,” Boot concluded. “As long as Trump remains a force within the GOP, the cancer afflicting the party will continue to metastasize.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is awful!  Trump is Awful! Lindsey Graham is awful! Kevin McCarthy is awful!  Fox News is awful! 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Justice Department notified a federal judge yesterday that it is dropping a  discrimination lawsuit against Yale University that was brought by the Trump administration.

A two-sentence filing in U.S. District Court in Connecticut gave notice of the government’s “voluntary dismissal of this action.”  As reported by NBC News.

The case marked an escalation in the Trump Justice Department’s attacks on affirmative action programs that many conservatives consider illegal.

Yale said it was gratified by the decision to drop the lawsuit.

“Our admissions process has allowed Yale College to assemble an unparalleled student body, which is distinguished by its academic excellence and diversity. Yale has steadfastly maintained that its process complies fully with Supreme Court precedent, and we are confident that the Justice Department will agree,” it said in a written statement.

Filed last October, the lawsuit said a two-year investigation determined that the Ivy League college illegally discriminated against Asian American and white students in admissions. It said they were only one-tenth to one-fourth as likely to be admitted as African American applicants with comparable academic records.

When the suit was filed, Yale called the government’s conclusion hasty and meritless.

The university said the Justice Department reached its conclusion before allowing Yale to provide all the data the government requested. “Had the department fully received and fairly weighed this information, it would have concluded that Yale’s practices absolutely comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected efforts to stop affirmative action in college admissions, which the court has said can be justified as a way to achieve diversity in the student body. But such programs must be narrowly tailored, using race as a plus factor, its rulings have held.

Many conservatives have hoped that the court’s shift to the right, with Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will produce a decision striking down the use of affirmative action in school admissions.

Yale is a private university, but because it receives millions of dollars in federal funds, it is subject to a provision of civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin and other factors.

The Trump Justice Department joined an earlier lawsuit against Harvard based on similar allegations. But a federal judge ruled that while Harvard’s admissions process may not be perfect, it was not the result of racial bias or conscious prejudice.”

Good move on the part of the Justice Department!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Amazon announced yesterday that Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO, would be stepping down from his role in the third quarter of 2021.  Bezos will be transitioning to executive chair of the company. Andy Jassy, who currently leads Amazon Web Services (AWS), is set to take over as CEO of the company, Amazon said in a statement. Jassy has been with the company for nearly 24 years.  As reported by the New York Times:

“In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have,” Bezos wrote in a letter to employees published online. “He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

“Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else,” he added. “As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.”

The announcement came in tandem with Amazon’s fiscal fourth quarter earnings results, which handily topped expectations. The e-commerce giant reported earnings of $14.09 per share on record revenue of $125.56 billion, compared to consensus estimates for $7.34 per share on revenue of $119.70 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

Good luck to Amazon and Mr. Bezos!

Tony

Aleksei A. Navalny at a court hearing in Moscow. Credit.. Reuters

Dear Commons Community,

A Russian court yesterday sentenced Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, to more than two years in prison.  As reported by the New York Times:

Yesterday’s sentencing represented a pivotal moment for President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. Mr. Navalny, one of the main challengers of the Kremlin, has inspired some of the biggest street protests of the Putin era and repeatedly embarrassed the president and his close allies with investigative reports about corruption that were viewed many millions of times on YouTube.

The authorities previously tried to contain him with short jail terms of a few weeks to avoid making Mr. Navalny into a political martyr. In August, Western officials say, Russian agents tried to assassinate Mr. Navalny by poisoning him. Now, the decision to send him to prison removes his direct voice from Russia’s political landscape, but it could energize his supporters and further rally Russian opposition to Mr. Putin around the figure of Mr. Navalny.

“Hundreds of thousands cannot be locked up,” Mr. Navalny said during the hearing before he was sentenced. “More and more people will recognize this. And when they recognize this — and that moment will come — all of this will fall apart, because you cannot lock up the whole country.”

Mr. Navalny, 44, may seek to appeal the ruling, which held that he repeatedly violated parole by failing to report properly to the authorities in person — in some cases while he was in Germany recovering from being poisoned, and in others because he did so on the wrong day of the week. But the Russian authorities have signaled that they will not be swayed by public pressure to release Mr. Navalny. They have put several of his top allies under house arrest, and last night they deployed a huge riot police force in the streets of Moscow to quell angry protests over Mr. Navalny’s sentencing.

None of this sounds very promising for Navalny and his supporters.

Tony

Peter Buttigieg

Dear Commons Community,

We have had a trying year on so on many fronts, so it is good to see that we have something about which we can feel proud.  Pete Buttigieg won Senate approval yesterday in a 86-13 vote as transportation secretary, and is the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a Cabinet post.  He is the 39-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Joe Biden’s one-time rival during the Democratic presidential primaries. He’ll be tasked with advancing President Biden’s ambitious agenda of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and fighting climate change.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“I’m honored and humbled by today’s vote in the Senate—and ready to get to work,” Buttigieg tweeted shortly after he was confirmed.

Praised by Biden as bringing a “new voice” to the administration, Buttigieg takes over a Transportation Department with 55,000 employees and a budget of tens of billions dollars. He has pledged to quickly get to work promoting safety and restoring consumer trust in America’s transportation networks as airlines, buses, city subway systems and Amtrak reel from plummeting ridership in the coronavirus pandemic.

He is expected to play an important role in promoting Biden’s sweeping green initiatives, helping to oversee stronger automotive fuel economy standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support the president’s push later this year on a $2 trillion climate and infrastructure plan. That plan will be focused on rebuilding roads and bridges and expanding zero-emission mass transit while boosting electric vehicle infrastructure, including building 500,000 charging stations over the next decade.

Speaking on the Senate floor before the vote, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, the incoming chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, praised Buttigieg’s energy and fresh approach and said she looked forward to his leadership to address an aging infrastructure, including the “crumbling off of bridges, delayed trains, buses, congestion, railroads, or any of the many issues.”

“We all know the nominee as Mayor Pete, a man who basically came onto the national stage as a Midwest mayor, who had lots of enthusiasm for making investments in America’s future,” she said. “He’s a young, energetic mayor who is going to help us usher in a new era of transportation.”

Before approval by the full Senate, Buttigieg had cleared the committee on a 21-3 vote. Some Republican senators during his hearing signaled likely fights ahead over the cost and scope of updating the nation’s roads and bridges, rails and airports, questioning in particular the administration’s interest in redirecting money for climate initiatives. But they said they would look forward to further discussions with Buttigieg, including on their desired local projects.

Biden hasn’t indicated how he intends to pay for an infrastructure plan, coming on top of the administration’s proposed $1.9 trillion virus relief plan that has met some headwinds in Congress. Buttigieg’s suggestion during his hearing that a gas tax hike might be needed was immediately walked back by his spokesman afterward.

“We need to build our economy back, better than ever, and the Department of Transportation can play a central role in this,” Buttigieg told his confirmation hearing last week, noting that the transportation sector, particularly car emissions, is the single biggest contributor in the U.S. to global warming.

He stressed that creating jobs, tackling the climate crisis and addressing racial and economic inequality will drive funding decisions at the department.

The Afghanistan war veteran burst onto the national scene in 2019 after launching a longshot presidential bid, introducing himself to voters as “Mayor Pete” and drawing initial skepticism due to his youth and limited government experience. He outperformed expectations after zeroing in on a message of generational change, finishing the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses in a virtual tie with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But Buttigieg struggled to appeal to Black voters and dropped out of the race after a crushing loss to Biden in the South Carolina primary. Buttigieg chose to quickly endorse Biden, helping him solidify centrist support against Sanders’ strong liberal challenge.

Buttigieg, a Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar, now points to his experience as a mayor and on the campaign trail as valuable to his ground-level approach to improving transportation. He described initiating a “smart streets” program to make South Bend’s downtown more pedestrian- and bicyclist-friendly while spurring hundreds of millions of dollars in economic investment.

He’s also expected to be a regular presence on TV, helping to sell the president’s policies as he did during Biden’s campaign. Since he was nominated, Buttigieg has appeared on “The View,” “The Tonight Show,” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as well as Fox local affiliates, addressing topics from Donald Trump’s impeachment and the treatment of veterans to his goals of promoting green-friendly travel.

Buttigieg brings diversity to the Cabinet. There hasn’t been an openly gay Cabinet secretary before. Under President Donald Trump, Richard Grenell served as acting director of national intelligence and is openly gay, but did not have to face Senate confirmation as an acting director. In the late 1990s, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott blocked a confirmation vote on President Bill Clinton’s pick for ambassador to Luxembourg, James Hormel, over his sexual orientation; Clinton ultimately installed Hormel with a recess appointment.

“Congratulations to Secretary Pete Buttigieg on his historic confirmation,” Alphonso David, president of Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said after the vote. “This confirmation breaks through a barrier that has existed for too long, where LGBTQ identity served as an impediment to nomination or confirmation at the highest level of government.”

God bless our country for many things but especially today that we have  found a way to be more accepting of people regardless of sexual preferences.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 9:00 am (EST), I will be giving a keynote address entitled, COVID-19 and higher education’s  future:  ISSUES of technology, finance, student access, and faculty governance, at the 2021 ONLINE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on ICT-ENABLED EDUCATION, sponsored by the Faculty of Languages, Arts and Human Sciences in Ait Melloul, ERET and CLAS LAB, Ibn Zohr University in Morocco.  It was originally planned to be in person but because of COVID is being offered virtually.  The Zoom link to the Conference is:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86525632676

The Facebook page for the conference is:  https://www.facebook.com/ICT-Enabled-Education-107404544492866?_rdc=1&_rdr

Below is the abstract for my presentation.  Please stop by if you have the time.  By the way, a colleague, Randy Garrison, from the University of Calgary, is also on the program.

Tony

———————————————————————————————–

Keynote Session

COVID-19 and higher education’s  future:   ISSUES of technology, finance, student access, and faculty governance       

Presenter: Anthony G. Picciano, Professor, Hunter College and Graduate Center, City University of New York

This session will speculate on the future of higher education in light of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education. Specifically, it will consider how the pandemic will accelerate the development of online and blended learning in our colleges and universities.  It will further examine the implications of this for student access, higher education finance, and faculty governance.

Prior to COVID-19, higher education was slowly evolving to online instructional models based on man-machine interfacing using AI infused adaptive learning programs and cloud-based applications, The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted, some would say wreaked havoc, on our global society and all of its organizations including education. Colleges and universities moved quickly to online and blended learning environments.  Publicly funded institutions saw budgets curtailed as policymakers diverted funds to health services needed to fight the ravages of the pandemic.  Students had to make rapid decisions on how they would pursue higher education goals and ambitions. College administrators sought to forsake many well-established faculty governance processes in order to provide some semblance of an education to students, many of whom were not prepared for online instruction.

This presentation will review the issues above and consider their effects on the future of higher education in the short-term and long-term.

Joe Biden Meeting with Senate Republicans

Dear Commons Community,

Kevin Freking of the Associated Press compared two competing proposals to help the United States respond to the coronavirus pandemic and to provide economic relief to businesses and families as promoted by Joe Biden and a group of ten Senate Republicans.

The president  met with the senators yesterday at the White House in what press secretary Jen Psaki described as “an exchange of ideas” and not a forum for Biden to “make or accept an offer.” Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in Congress are laying the groundwork for taking up Biden’s proposal in the coming weeks.

The top-line numbers are this: Biden’s plan calls for an additional $1.9 trillion in federal spending. The 10 GOP senators are calling for about $618 billion in federal spending.

The aid would come on top of the $900 billion coronavirus package that Congress passed in December and the $2.2 trillion package passed in March.

Here is a look at the major differences  as analyzed by Freking.

AID TO INDIVIDUALS

Biden is proposing $1,400 checks for individuals earning less than $75,000. The amount would be $2,800 for couples earning less than $150,000.

The 10 GOP senators seek $1,000 checks. They would go to individuals earning less than $40,000 a year and would begin phasing out with a hard cap at $50,000 a year. The payment would increase to $2,000 for couples earning up to $80,000 and phase out with a hard cap at $100,000 a year.

AID TO STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Biden’s framework would send $350 billion to state and local governments to allay service cuts and keep police, fire and other public-sector workers on the job.

The Republican senators did not include any direct relief to state and local governments in their proposal. There has been strong resistance in the GOP to such assistance, with many arguing it would reward states for poor fiscal management.

AID TO SCHOOLS

Biden proposes $170 billion for education. Most of that money would go to schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade to offset expenses necessary to reopen safely. About $35 billion would target universities and community colleges.

The plan from Republicans pitches $20 billion for schools serving students in kindergarten through 12th grade as part of an initiative to get children back to school.

MINIMUM WAGE HIKE

Biden’s plan includes a gradual increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The plan from GOP senators does not address the federal minimum wage, which now stands at $7.25 an hour.

CHILD CARE

Biden is proposing $40 billion in federal spending for child care. Within that amount, $25 billion would go to an “emergency stabilization fund” to help child care providers offset expenses necessary to reopen or stay open. An additional $15 billion would go to a long-standing block grant program that subsidizes child care expenses for low-income families with children under age 13. Biden is also calling for increasing tax credits to help cover the cost of child care.

The 10 GOP senators are calling for a $20 billion boost to that block grant program.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

Biden wants a $400 per week unemployment insurance benefit, a $100 increase from current law, though September. His plan would also expand eligibility to include self-employed workers, such as ride-share drivers who don’t typically qualify for unemployment insurance benefits.

The GOP plan also extends unemployment benefits, but at $300 per week through June 30.

VACCINES AND TESTING

Both proposals provide $160 billion to boost vaccinations and COVID-19 testing, essentially allowing the country to launch vaccination centers, purchase more rapid tests, expand lab capacity and buy personal protective equipment for first responders.

It is my guess that something less than what Biden has proposed will happen.   We will have to wait and see how this all plays out! 

Tony