Dear Commons Community,

John Versani, the University Faculty Senate Representative to the Board of Trustee’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs, provided a summary (see below) of CUNY’s fiscal situation going into the next academic year. There are some bright spots as well as areas of concern.  I was especially surprised in seeing  the number of full-time faculty leaving the University at some of our colleges.

This is important information for our CUNY colleagues!

Tony

——————————————————————————————

Outlook for Fiscal Year 2022

Prof. John Verzani (CSI)

UFS Representative to the Committee on Fiscal Affairs

Questions: John.Verzani@csi.cuny.edu

1. Overview

In keeping with the University Faculty Senate InfoPortal’s scope and intentions, I wish to take this opportunity to outline and analyze at length and in-depth fiscal situation CUNY finds itself in and its implications for faculty and academic affairs moving forward. In light of this account I strongly encourage you to reach out to your campus Personnel & Budget (P & B) representatives and your campus governance leaders [cuny.edu] for further updates.

At the June 7th meeting of the CUNY Board of Trustees Committee on Fiscal Affairs, a budget for the upcoming fiscal year (July 2021 – June 2022) was presented and approved, along with some other items of interest. The meeting in its entirety can be viewed here. Among the items of interest, perhaps the most important to faculty would be the $3.8B budget for the upcoming year. The CUNY finance team based this on a) the enacted state budget, and b) the proposed executive budget of the Mayor. As you may know, the latter is subject to revision before it is passed later this month. Some important takeaways:

• The state restored the $26M that was held back from the FY21 budget as part of state-imposed 5% reduction – or roughly 1.8% of the budget.
• The state is contributing some $23M to begin to close the existing TAP gap (an extra $500 per maximum award)
• The state will hold tuition in place for this upcoming fiscal year.
• The state imposed a floor on enrollment related base-aid reductions in case of significant loss of CC enrollment.
• The state did not, however, adjust for fringe benefit increases.
• The Mayor’s proposed budget plans to accelerate its reduction of operating support for CUNY’s Community Colleges. This would amount to a substantial decrease in funds—$67.3M, to be exact—from FY19. The gravity of this cannot be gainsaid, and some perspective is warranted in light of this decision. For FY21, for example reductions in operating support amounted to $46M; for FY20, $20M.
• The Mayor’s budget plans to fund collective bargaining and fringe benefit increases.

There is some support among members of the Board as to the challenges described above. Trustee Henry T. Berger, for example, summarized the situation very well when he indicated (at roughly the 1:40:00 mark of the recording) that our funding sources are not serving us well. As you can see in his remarks, he proceeded to enumerate the additions and subtractions for prior years and concludes that we are down substantially on what we have to spend on our programs for our students.

This support is far from unanimous, however. For example, in response to a question from Trustee Lorraine Cortez-Vasquez, it was noted by Senior Vice Chancellor Sapienza that CUNY would not seek a tuition increase this year. However, when pressed to clarify, CUNY did not commit to not asking for a tuition increase next year for either the Senior or Community Colleges.

The budget includes the anticipated initial tax levy allocations for each campus. In a quick look at the Senior Campuses, I identified three campuses which will not have enough of a tax-levy allocation to cover the personnel costs incurred in FY21 even if enrollment at these campuses bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the College of Staten Island, and York College were referred to in terms of the ongoing “structural deficits” they face because their current and forecasted expenses systematically exceed resources.

Of great relief is the infusion of federal dollars through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Coronavirus Presponse and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSAA), and American Rescue Plan (ARPA) programs. Each act contains resources for direct support of students and for institutional support. In addition, most all campuses also received some additional funds, as they are designated “minority serving institutions.” It is understood that these one-time funds are available through FY23. Resources dedicated to students from CARES and CRRSAA have been or will very soon be distributed, and it was mentioned that the ARPA monies would likely be distributed around the fall term. With the exception of Baruch, Hunter, Lehman, and Queens colleges, the institutional component of the CARES funds has by and large been spent by each campus. Many campuses, however, will need to spend part of the CRRSAA allocations to balance out the current fiscal year. For further information on these developments, please see CUNY’s Third-Quarter Financial Report (especially page 21) here [cuny.edu].

1. The Current Scene

Remaining Federal Funds. The budget for FY22 also includes detailed plans for the balance of the federal funds. Of note, are some CUNY directives on areas to spend:

• $125M on student support and retention
• $20M on campus reopening • $5M on mental health services
• $8M on online program development • $4M for faculty professional development.

Additionally, there is $136M budgeted for projected revenue losses for FY22. This is concentrated primarily at the Community Colleges, which, as some of you there may well know, continue to struggle with both significant enrollment declines and the steep reduction in city support. They are not alone, however; some Senior Colleges, especially New York City College of Technology (NYCCT) anticipate significant revenue losses.

Remaining from the federal allocation is $385M for use by the campuses between now and the end of FY23. The colleges are being asked to indicate how this money will be spent in their financial plans for FY22. As has been a longstanding policy, the colleges must indicate when consultation with elected faculty and student leadership groups took place. This is at least one opportunity where faculty have a chance to express their thoughts on how these significant funds should be employed. Please consult with your campus governance leaders and P & B representatives on this matter.

Please note for reasons stated above, some campuses will have little to say about this spending, however. For example, at nearly every community college, if the city does not restore its funding to pre-pandemic levels, the loss of revenue through FY23 will not be covered by the entirety of the federal funds. The view is that the federal funds will buy these campuses time before significant changes must be made. Some campuses will have quite a lot of money to spend over the next two years; it is worth reminding everyone, however, that the campus spending is subject to U.S. Department of Education guidelines, which oversees and narrows their usage. That said, the CUNY Board members expressed a strong interest in having more say on the campus plans for spending.

Faculty Status. In the budget presentation for the meeting, a slide titled “Positioning CUNY for the Future” emphasized, among other things, that “structural deficits” exist at several campuses and the hiring freeze has led to a reduction of 590 full time positions in FY2021 translating to $71M in payroll deductions. The committee was reminded that Brooklyn College colleagues recently sent the Board a letter alerting its members to the alarming attrition in the ranks of full-time (FT) faculty there. In real numbers, this has amounted to the loss of 37 FT faculty, or 8%, between Fall 2019 and Spring 2021. This is second only to Queens College with 44, or 8%, and trails closely by the College of Staten Island with 35, or 10%. Medgar Evers College lost 12% of their FT faculty in this period.

Trustee Berger (at roughly 1:38:20 of the recording) argued for new full-time faculty lines, emphasizing CUNY’s stated commitments within the past few budget requests to increase the ranks of the full-time faculty and asked whether the hiring freeze will continue and what plans are there for hiring additional full-time faculty. It was pointed out later that the structural deficits at some campuses would preclude any such hiring, even if the freeze were to be lifted on new positions. In response it was mentioned that pre-pandemic efforts had begun to evaluate the CUNY allocation model and, post-pandemic, it is expected that these efforts will continue. It remains to be seen what will happen long term, however.

III. Miscellany

In addition to the FY22 budget, other items of interest to faculty were discussed at the meeting:

• Our BMCC colleagues will continue to have clean buildings.
• CUNY faculty and students will continue to be able to use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) at home and on campus for the next few years.
• At Baruch, however, the promise that its elevators will continue functioning as new for the next few years was tabled pending further discussion.
• Lehman College faculty had indicated concern about campus plans to spend over $7M of their federal funds to add the necessary technology for “HyFlex” classrooms, and their concerns were threefold: 1) the costs; 2) the potential additional workload for the involved faculty; and 3) the potential for surveillance through the to-be-installed microphones and cameras. In response, Lehman’s administration assured the committee that the intent is to provide maximum flexibility for faculty who will be in complete control of classroom technology (this can be found at roughly 43:20 of the recording). The sticker shock for the cost may be lessened by realizing Lehman will have upwards of $33M in discretionary institutional spending. Another point was made by UFS Faculty Alternate Prof. Ned Benton (John Jay) about how the HyFlex model is not well suited for reducing classroom demands. In response, it was noted that the new technology gives flexibility to the space that is not currently available and does not preclude other uses of the rooms.
• CUNY has partnered with the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG) since 2018 to meet the goals of increasing student retention and graduation rates. A four-year continuation of this partnership was presented to the Fiscal Affairs Committee and passed without dissent. Points raised about the plan included the need for faculty involvement in the area of “Rethink Community Colleges to best serve their students” and to be mindful of the past year’s experiences when they “Evaluate modes of course delivery to bring transformative innovation to CUNY.” In response, the Chancellor noted that ISLG is closely aligned with the Chancellery and any recommendations would be implemented through the University Provost’s office where significant consultation is already the practice.

My thanks to you for taking the time to read through this. The UFS InfoPortal will provide as much information on these and many other budgetary matters as possible moving forward. Please be sure to follow up with your campus representatives along the way.

Dear Commons Community,

The long-awaited meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin came and went yesterday with little substantive agreement.   Their relationship seems destined to be strained and frustrating, one where the two leaders may maintain a veneer of civil discourse even as they joust on the international stage. New York Times correspondent, Peter Baker, analyzes their meeting in a featured article this morning. Mr. Baker’s main point is that the meeting “was not warm, but neither was it hot.”  I watched parts of the post-meeting press conferences held by the two world leaders and I think Baker has it right.  Below is an excerpt from his article.

Tony

————————————————————————————————————————-

“As he became the fifth American president to sit down with the troublesome Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden on Wednesday made an effort to forge a working relationship shorn of the ingratiating flattery of his immediate predecessor yet without the belligerent language that he himself has employed about the Russian leader in the past.

If their opening encounter in Geneva proves any indication, theirs seems likely to be a strained and frustrating association, one where the two leaders may maintain a veneer of civil discourse even as they joust on the international stage and in the shadows of cyberspace. The two emerged from about three hours of meetings having reviewed a laundry list of disputes without a hint of resolution to any of them and no sign of a personal bond that could bridge the gulf that has opened between their two nations.

Their assessments of each other were dutiful but restrained. Mr. Putin called Mr. Biden “a very balanced, professional man” and “very experienced” politician. “It seems to me that we did speak the same language,” Mr. Putin said. “It certainly doesn’t imply that we looked into each other’s eyes and found a soul or swore eternal friendship.”

As for Mr. Biden, he did not answer when asked if he had developed a deeper understanding of the Russian leader and avoided characterizing his counterpart. Their talks were “good, positive,” he said, and not “strident.” They discussed their disagreements, “but it was not done in a hyperbolic atmosphere.”

Mr. Biden, who agreed this year with an interviewer that Mr. Putin was a “killer,” said on Wednesday that he had no need to discuss that further. “Why would I bring it up again?” Mr. Biden asked.

But he was palpably sensitive to criticism that he was too accommodating to Mr. Putin, a worry shared by some inside his own administration and a critique that has turned into an increasingly loud talking point by Republicans who rarely protested President Donald J. Trump’s chummy bromance with the Russian leader.

Asked as he was leaving his post-meeting news conference how he could be confident that Mr. Putin’s behavior would change, Mr. Biden whirled about and grew testy. “When did I say I was confident?” he snapped at a reporter. “I said what will change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world. I’m not confident of anything. I’m just stating a fact.”

The fact that Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin offered their judgments at separate news conferences was itself a telling sign of the coolness in the relationship. Since 1989, when President George H.W. Bush and President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union addressed reporters together after a summit meeting in Malta, joint media appearances have been the standard for American and Russian leaders.

Mr. Biden opted instead not to share a stage with the Russian leader, drawing a sharp contrast with Mr. Trump, who benefited from Russian interference in the 2016 campaign even though no illegal collusion was ever charged. With the master of the Kremlin by his side in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018, Mr. Trump memorably suggested that he trusted Mr. Putin’s denial more than American intelligence agencies that detected the election interference — a view the former president reaffirmed just last week.

Mr. Biden, by contrast, emphasized that he did not place his faith in Mr. Putin. “This is not about trust,” he said. “This is about self-interest and verification of self-interest.”

But the decision to hold the meeting at all was also a break from the previous administration Mr. Biden was a part of. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, President Barack Obama, with the support of Mr. Biden, then his vice president, sought to isolate Mr. Putin, throwing him out of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and refusing to meet with him.

Mr. Biden has effectively abandoned that approach, gambling that it was better to grant Mr. Putin the respect of a meeting and the stature that comes from sitting down with an American president in hopes of preventing further escalation in the conflict with Moscow. The goal is less to make the situation better than to keep it from becoming worse.

In that sense, some experts said offering the Geneva meeting may have forestalled Mr. Putin from taking more aggressive action in recent weeks, given that in the interim he pulled back at least some troops he had massed on the border with Ukraine and provided medical assistance to Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who was said to be on the edge of death.

By appearing before cameras together only for a few moments at the beginning of their meeting, Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin gave little indication of personal chemistry. They shook hands but shared little of the body-language bonhomie that Mr. Trump did with Mr. Putin. In one small area of commonality, Mr. Biden gave a pair of his favorite aviator sunglasses to Mr. Putin, who also loves wearing shades. And Mr. Putin noted that Mr. Biden shared stories about his mother, as he often does.

They each voiced their divergent positions afterward, with Mr. Biden condemning Russian cyberattacks, international aggression and domestic oppression and Mr. Putin engaging in his typical what-about defense by citing objectionable American actions. In a truculent tone, Mr. Putin even defended his crackdown on nonviolent opposition figures like Mr. Navalny by saying he wanted to avoid an insurrection like the Jan. 6 storming of the United States Capitol, a comparison Mr. Biden called “ridiculous.” But they kept their criticisms from becoming personal.

“It was businesslike, it was professional,” said Angela E. Stent, a former national intelligence officer on Russia and author of books about Mr. Putin and the West. “Neither of them really gave ground on anything. But they seemed to have established something that could be a working relationship.”

Fiona Hill, who as Mr. Trump’s senior Russia adviser was so alarmed by his deference to Mr. Putin in Helsinki that she has said she thought about faking a medical emergency to end the session, called this meeting a marked contrast. “It just feels more professional on both sides,” she said.

While Mr. Biden is sunnier and Mr. Putin more dour, they are both seasoned political leaders under no illusions about each other. “Both of them are realists,” she said. “There’s nobody going in there with high expectations.”

Mr. Biden is only the latest in a long line of American presidents forced to figure out how to deal with Mr. Putin, a two-decade story of misjudgment, exasperation and bitterness. A onetime K.G.B. colonel who reversed Russia’s halting post-Soviet experiment with democracy and consolidated power in the hands of a small, well-heeled ruling clique, Mr. Putin has defied all manner of American charm, inducement, pressure and punishment.

President Bill Clinton was the first to interact with Mr. Putin after he became prime minister and considered him “tough enough to hold Russia together,” as he later put it in his memoir, but felt brushed off by the new leader who seemed uninterested in doing business with a departing American president.

His successor, President George W. Bush, fashioned a closer bond with Mr. Putin at first, famously declaring after their first meeting that he had gotten “a sense of his soul,” a comment he came to regret.

The two grew apart, particularly after Mr. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Mr. Putin’s increasing suppression of internal dissent. By later years, Mr. Bush complained privately that meetings with Mr. Putin were “like arguing with an eighth-grader with his facts wrong” and told a European leader that Mr. Putin had become “a czar.” They finally broke after Russia’s invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden came into office determined to “reset” relations with Russia and made some progress by negotiating a new arms control treaty and transit rights for American troops heading to Afghanistan through Russian airspace. But Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin came to disdain each other even before the Ukraine invasion, with the American mocking the Russian for having a “kind of slouch” that made him look “like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.”

Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Putin was most perplexing because he broke from bipartisan consensus and lavished extravagant praise on a Russian leader considered an anti-democratic, anti-American authoritarian by almost everyone else in Washington. Under pressure from Congress or his own advisers, Mr. Trump’s administration at times imposed sanctions or expelled diplomats in response to Russian provocations, but the president himself avoided publicly criticizing Mr. Putin.

Even discounting Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden arrived in Geneva with the advantage of having met with Mr. Putin before as vice president and watching his predecessors struggle with the Putin challenge. “He’s trying to synthesize all the lessons from every other president,” Ms. Hill said.

As a result, the Biden team knew how Mr. Putin tries to knock American presidents off guard by keeping them waiting or by having the last word, so it made certain to sidestep those traps in Geneva by starting the meetings on time and having Mr. Biden go second in the dueling news conferences.

“Our side now knows what the games are that Putin plays,” said Evelyn Farkas, a senior Pentagon official focused on Russia under Mr. Obama. “There are a lot of things we got smart on.”

But if Mr. Biden avoided a rupture with Mr. Putin at their first meeting, it was only the beginning of this latest chapter in Russian-American relations. “We can all wipe the sweat off our brow that we got through that one,” Ms. Hill said. “The question is what comes next.”

Dear Commons Community,

Forbes had a featured article earlier this year entitled, “The Digital Disruption Of Higher-Ed Is Inevitable: Alternative Models Will Challenge Status Quo.” It provides a corporate perspective on the future of higher education in the post-pandemic era.  Its basis is that the last decade introduced us to the emergence of the gig economy, fractional employment, and rapidly evolving consumer behavior. It  concludes that if you’re looking for what will change the most this decade, it might be higher education.  Like anything ripe for change, it starts with the problem and opportunity. The article goes on to identify several areas as follows:

“Bubble Trouble: The Post Pandemic Economics of Higher Education

The cost of a four-year degree has skyrocketed—the average tuition alone has increased 361% instructing, compared to 1963 and 69% of college students graduate with a mix of private and federal debt. Yet, it is still valued based on the opportunities it can unlock. However, the average American higher-ed student doesn’t have much choice in disrupting the system. Taking on $100,000 or more likely $200,000 in student debt is seen as the cost of doing business to achieve career goals. Dan Rosenweig, CEO of Chegg, a student textbook company asks “is this the American dream or American nightmare? and asserts that higher education is a bubble.

Dr. Tunisha Singleton, an adjunct faculty member of Fielding Graduate University with a Ph.D. in Media Psychology from her alma mater believes diversity on multiple levels poses challenges: “A big challenge for higher Ed continues to be the rather bullish attitude that fuels the hesitation to believe that there are alternative models. Diversity has and continues to be a big problem as well and that is in multiple areas. Yes, the diversity of administration and faculty because representation certainly matters and that is something students can see as well. But also, diversity in approach.” 

In addition to college campus shut-downs, the pandemic has also intensified the professional pivot. With so many people suddenly out of work, there needs to be alternative models. Google recently unveiled plans to provide multiple certificates in a variety of subjects to get people back to work or switch careers faster. This will not wholly circumvent the college or specialized degree, but it does present another option depending on the field someone wants to pursue.

Digital Disruption Is Inevitable

When Google is thinking hard about this, you can bet the industry is taking notice. 3M, Walgreens, and CVS have all partnered with Carrus, a digital education leader, to create quick, high-quality healthcare training that makes a pipeline of qualified talent for their companies. This kind of direct partnership, in theory, creates a faster and direct pipeline of talent for a company, and they can also tailor the education to fit their objectives better. Having a certificate or education program backed by a company looking to hire off that specific expertise is vast and takes some of the uncertainty out of the education process for a job seeker. Minerva, a highly selective online-only university combines a digital-centric college without the campus experience with what feels like an Ivy league value proposition: “nurturing critical wisdom for the sake of the world.” Professors here hold virtual office hours and the digital university attracts global students who never have to leave their home country to attend and graduate. 

Employers in some industries are also getting aggressive in recruiting. For example, Gearbox Entertainment president Randy Pitchford has embarked on a virtual speaking tour at top universities like Michigan State University, the University of Southern California, and more to share his insights directly with students considering a career in interactive entertainment. Pitchford recognizes the need for new ideas and perspectives to keep moving forward. The world’s best game developers ten years from now are probably people who aren’t even in the industry today.

Ben Shank, former CEO of The American Higher Education Alliance and current CEO at Tower Education Technologies views digital disruption differently when it comes to large vs. smaller institutions: “Larger, well known institutions, will likely continue with the on-campus model being their main generator of revenue. They also tend to offer some virtual experiences, but that has only amounted to a small portion of their income. Small-to-mid sized institutions, on the other hand, have a major decision to make. These colleges and universities could continue to struggle and may even be forced to close if they choose to continue to fully rely on on-campus students for their revenue.”

Ben also notes the shifting sands of degrees vs. credentials: “looking at it from a more consumer-based perspective, Covid-19 has opened the doors for traditional and non-traditional students alike to procure an education that is personalized to meet their needs. Getting an education now is less about earning a degree, and more about receiving micro, and alternative credentials.”  

Digital Education Integration Will Lead The Way

Much of higher-ed’s future will go digital to some degree. The pandemic accelerated change but the change was always inevitable. This will not displace the need for in-person schooling, however. Digital education is still viewed as a way to supplement education, create flexibility when needed and allow students to become more proficient faster. It’s why Gartner estimates by 2025, 90% of U.S. public school districts will use a mix of in-person and digital remote learning.

Instructure, the maker of the online learning management tool Canvas, has over 30 million users. They have been working with at least 14 states to maximize their digital offerings and prepare for that future. They have also led an initiative with Zoom and other digital companies to help bridge the digital divide as we add more technology to education. Having digital education offerings prepares school systems for unforeseen future events like a pandemic and gives them more options in how they instruct, where they instruct, and when they instruct. Instructure even offers a quick tool to determine how much learning has been gained or lost during this pandemic so school systems can supplement knowledge where needed most. It also can help students progress faster in their education or get specific one-on-one help where it’s needed most. For some, it’s all about flexibility. 

Nathalie Mainland, SVP and GM of Education Cloud at Salesforce envisions a future of learning flexibility: “We see more flexible learning options coming to the forefront which will include more flexible cost structures for students. The four-year degree will persist alongside growing opportunities for credentials, badges, certifications that will provide greater choice for all lifelong learners.” Part of this flexibility includes what she refers to as “stackable credentials”…she expands on this as “the ticket to a more diverse and equitable workforce especially for women, Black, and LatinX workers.”

Overall, while the traditional college campus experience is unlikely to vanish, we are becoming more conditioned around online education. Some students will use digital education to catch up in certain areas, while others can use it to get a head-start in pursuing a career aligned with what they learn. Much like the electric vehicle market, once you see everyone getting into the game, it’s hard to deny that the digital transformation of education will accelerate exponentially. We’re inevitably heading toward a less linear, more flexible, more credentialed and hybrid higher education system that adapts with, and ideally gets in front of change.”

This article makes several valid points.  Higher education as the entire world, has been disrupted due to the coronavirus,  but online learning technology had already taken root in many of our colleges and universities prior to the pandemic.  Online technology is becoming  the new normal throughout academia and is already fueling the “blended university.”

 I thank Fred Lane for passing this article on to me.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom, the governors of New York and California, the states hit earliest and hardest by the pandemic, announced yesterday that they had lifted virtually all coronavirus restrictions on businesses and social gatherings as both states hit milestones in vaccinating their residents.

In New York, where 70 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, the order from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo means that restaurants will no longer be forced to space tables six feet apart; movie theaters will be allowed to pack their auditoriums without spacing seats apart; and entering commercial buildings won’t require a temperature check.  As reported by The New York Times:

“This is a momentous day and we deserve it because it has been a long, long road,” Mr. Cuomo said at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, adding that the changes meant a “return to life as we know it.”

In California, where 72 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, Gov. Gavin Newsom called Tuesday “reopening day,” as he lifted similar capacity limits on businesses and social distancing requirements, with some exceptions.

Businesses in both states, however, will still have the option of requiring health precautions on their premises. The two governors, both Democrats who are facing political difficulties, made their announcements at events that seemed more like rallies than news conferences.

For all the celebration, however, the nation was also poised to reach 600,000 dead from the coronavirus, a grim reminder of the virus’s painful toll even as Americans begin to enjoy a summer with significantly fewer limitations, if any, on their ability to live, work and socialize. More than 63,000 have died from the virus in California, while in New York that number has reached nearly 53,000 — the two highest totals in the country.

Yet both governors took the opportunity to look ahead.

In a 45-minute speech, Mr. Cuomo, who is facing multiple investigations and the possibility of an impeachment proceeding, highlighted many of his pet infrastructure projects, embraced political supporters and announced a display of fireworks statewide scheduled for last night (see video above).

Mr. Newsom, who is facing a recall campaign, but has seen his approval ratings improve as the pandemic has receded, showed up at Universal Studios Hollywood flanked by an assortment of Minions from the “Despicable Me” movie franchise and the “Transformers” robot hero Optimus Prime to announce $1.5 million lottery prizes to people who had been vaccinated.

In both states, health officials have struggled to expand vaccinations among significant pockets of their population. Some of the lowest adult vaccination rates in New York City, for example, are in the Bronx, where 38 percent of adults are fully vaccinated and in Brooklyn, where 41 percent are, while several populous counties in California have yet to hit a 40 percent full vaccination rate for all residents.

Cautious congratulations to Coumo and Newsom for leading us out of the pandemic.  It wasn’t easy.

Tony

MacKenzie Scott

Dear Commons Community,

MacKenzie Scott, philanthropist and former wife of billionaire and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced yesterday that she donated another $2.74 billion to charity. 

Scott has donated a total of $8.5 billion since July 2020.

“Me, Dan [Jewett, Scott’s new husband], a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change,” Scott wrote in a Medium post titled ‘Seeding by Ceding’. “In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”

According to Scott’s post, she and her husband chose 286 “high-impact” organizations in areas and communities that “have been historically underfunded and overlooked.” These included institutions educating children in underserved areas, organizations promoting interfaith community, and arts and cultural institutions

Scott, one of the world’s richest women, noted that they “prioritized organizations with local teams, leaders of color, and a specific focus on empowering women and girls,” along with organizations supporting community engagement.

Among the recipients were 31 colleges and universities.

“It’s not often that we get this kind of news,” said Ellen Treanor, senior vice president for strategic communication at California State University at Fullerton, which received $40 million.

In fact, it is the only time that Fullerton has gotten this kind of news. Treanor said the gift is the largest ever made to the university.

“Higher education is a proven pathway to opportunity,” Scott wrote in a blog post announcing the gifts, “so we looked for two- and four-year institutions successfully educating students who come from communities that have been chronically underserved.” In 2020, Scott gave away a total of more than $5.7 billion to 512 organizations, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and was the second-largest individual donor in the nation, behind her former husband.

Like many of the colleges on the list of the latest recipients, Fullerton serves a diverse student body. Among the nearly 35,000 undergraduates, 44 percent are Hispanic, 22 percent are Asian, and half are from low-income families.

The gifts also went to institutions that are “historically underfunded and overlooked” — in other words, those that typically don’t get a lot of attention, or money, from big-name donors.

Lee College, in Baytown, Tex., received $5 million from Scott, the largest donation in its history. “We are overwhelmed by Ms. Scott’s generosity, and we are thrilled to be recognized for our transformative student-success work,” Lee’s president, Lynda Villanueva, said in a news release.

Significantly, for the recipients, the money comes with no strings attached. “What do we think they might do with more cash on hand than they expected?” Scott wrote. “Buy needed supplies. Find new creative ways to help. Hire a few extra team members they know they can pay for the next five years. Buy chairs for them. Stop having to work every weekend. Get some sleep.”

Sarita E. Brown, president and co-founder of Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit dedicated to helping Latino/a students succeed in college, said it would use its $10-million gift to further its “Seal of Excelencia” certification program, which provides a framework to improve academic outcomes for students.

“It’s about the most powerful donation,” Brown said, “a nonprofit organization can get.”

Twenty institutions have publicly announced the amounts they received from Scott, totaling $500 million. They are listed here, along with colleges that have not disclosed their gifts:

• Amarillo College — $15 million
• Brazosport College
• Broward College
• California State Polytechnic University at Pomona — $40 million
• California State University-Channel Islands — $15 million
• California State University at Fullerton — $40 million
• California State University at Northridge — $40 million
• Chaffey College — $25 million
• College of the Desert
• El Paso Community College
• Florida International University — $40 million
• Harper College — $18 million
• Hostos Community College of City University of New York
• Kennedy-King College of City Colleges of Chicago — $5 million
• Lee College — $5 million
• Long Beach City College — $30 million
• Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College
• Odessa College
• Pasadena City College — $30 million
• Porterville College — $7 million
• Renton Technical College — $5 million
• San Antonio College — $15 million
• San Jacinto Community College — $30 million
• Santa Barbara City College — $20 million
• Southwest Texas Junior College
• University of California at Merced
• University of Central Florida — $40 million
• University of Illinois at Chicago — $40 million
• University of Texas at San Antonio — $40 million
• University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley
• West Hills College at Lemoore

Ms. Scott is upstaging many of the other heavily-endowed philanthropies such as Gates, Broad, and Walton that make donations with conditions and strings attached.

She is an angel!

Tony

Sam Altman

Dear Commons Community,

Ezra Klein recently interviewed Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on the future of artificial intelligence, during which he discusses “the revolution” that A.I. will bring.

 “The technological progress we make in the next 100 years will be far larger than all we’ve made since we first controlled fire and invented the wheel,” writes Sam Altman in his essay “Moore’s Law for Everything.” “This revolution will generate enough wealth for everyone to have what they need, if we as a society manage it responsibly.”

Altman is the C.E.O. of one of the biggest, most important players in the artificial intelligence space. His argument is this: Since the 1970s, computers have gotten exponentially better even as they’re gotten cheaper, a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law. Altman believes that A.I. could get us closer to Moore’s Law for everything: it could make everything better even as it makes it cheaper. Housing, health care, education, you name it.

Altman makes the critical point  that “we as a society have to manage it [A.I.]responsibly.” Because, as Altman also admits, if he is right then A.I. will generate phenomenal wealth largely by destroying countless jobs — that’s a big part of how everything gets cheaper — and shifting huge amounts of wealth from labor to capital. And whether that world becomes a post-scarcity utopia or a feudal dystopia hinges on how wealth, power and dignity are then distributed — it hinges, in other words, on politics and the control of large corporations.

This is a conversation, then, about the political economy of the next technological age. Some of it is speculative, of course, but some of it isn’t. That shift of power and wealth is already underway. Altman is proposing an answer: a move toward taxing land and wealth, and distributing it to all. We talk about that idea, but also the political economy behind it: Are the people gaining all this power and wealth really going to offer themselves up for more taxation? Or will they fight it tooth-and-nail?

He also discusses who is funding the A.I. revolution, the business models these systems will use (and the dangers of those business models), how A.I. would change the geopolitical balance of power, whether we should allow trillionaires, why the political debate over A.I. is stuck, why a pro-technology progressivism would also need to be committed to a radical politics of equality, what global governance of A.I. could look like, whether it is  just “energy flowing through a neural network,” and much more.

Altman makes a number of important points and brings an A.I. insider’s perspective on its future.  As with all predictions, it is easy to predict what will happen.  It is the “when” that is the tricky part!

Tony

Mitch McConnell

Dear Commons Community,

Mitch McConnell, whose dubious maneuvering to turn the Supreme Court to the far right still haunts Democrats, just previewed a fresh scheme to bolster conservative judicial supremacy on the nation’s top bench for years to come. McConnell indicated yesterday he would implement his self-declared rule and refuse to confirm a Supreme Court nominee picked by President Joe Biden in election year 2024 if the GOP wins the Senate next year.

“I think it’s highly unlikely — in fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

As Senate majority leader in 2016, McConnell prevented President Barack Obama from appointing a successor to former Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly in February of that year. Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who is now serving as Biden’s attorney general, didn’t even get a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, much less a vote. McConnell argued at the time that Supreme Court vacancies shouldn’t be filled during a presidential election year.

In late 2020, however, shortly before the November presidential election, Republicans raced to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The rule on election-year high court vacancies that Republicans set in 2016, McConnell explained, didn’t apply in 2020 because one party now controlled both the White House and the Senate. 

McConnell called the decision to hold open a Supreme Court seat for eight months “the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader in the Senate.” In the end, Republicans did it because they could, not because of any contrived ‘precedent.’ The balance of the court now tilts 6-3 to the conservatives and likely will for decades. 

Some progressive groups and activists have been calling on Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, to retire this year so Democrats can appoint his successor while they control both the Senate and the White House. The liberal justice has given no indication of his future on the court, and Democratic senators have, at least in public, been unwilling to urge him to step down.

The window Democrats have to potentially fill a Supreme Court vacancy may be even narrower than they think. If Republicans win control of the Senate next year, which is considered a possibility, they could once again deny a Democratic president the chance to fill a high court seat ― maybe even in 2023, according to McConnell’s interview with Hewitt.

“Again, if you were back as the Senate Republican Leader, and I hope you are, and a Democrat retires at the end of 2023, and there are 18 months, that would be the Anthony Kennedy precedent,” Hewitt told McConnell. “Would they get a fair shot at a hearing, not a radical, but a normal mainstream liberal?”

“Well, we’d have to wait and see what happens,” McConnell replied.

Who would expect anything else from him!

Tony

Don McGahn

Dear Commons Community,

Apple informed former White House counsel Don McGahn and his wife last month that their records were sought by the Justice Department in February 2018 while McGahn was still serving as then-President Donald Trump’s top lawyer, The New York Times and CNN reported yesterday.

The U.S. government barred Apple from telling McGahn about the move at the time, two people briefed on the matter told the Times. The Justice Department’s move to subpoena information about McGahn and his wife was under a nondisclosure order until May, CNN reported. 

Apple’s reported disclosure exposes an extraordinary move by the Justice Department to subpoena records of a then-current White House counsel.

Weeks before his records were subpoenaed, McGahn had reportedly fallen out of favor with Trump for refusing to instruct DOJ officials to fire then-special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who was leading the department’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

There’s no indication as to whether the pursuit of McGahn’s records was politically motivated or which investigation they may have been related to. A source told CNN that Mueller’s team was not behind the subpoena.

McGahn is one of several top officials to have had their records secretly obtained by the Trump DOJ as part of its investigation into the source of leaks related to the Russia probe. Earlier this week, two House Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said they had been notified that their data had been subpoenaed as part of the DOJ’s investigation. 

In total, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee, including aides and relatives of committee members, were subpoenaed in 2017 and 2018, reported the Times. One was a minor.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates called the subpoenas a stunning misuse of authority.

“Attorneys general’s only loyalty should be to the rule of law — never to politics,” Bates told the Associated Press.

Top congressional Democrats have called on former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr to testify on the matter.

Trump’s presidency just gets slimier and slimier.

Tony

Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett

Dear Commons Community,

The major international news this morning is that Israel’s parliament yesterday narrowly voted in favor of a new coalition government, ending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s historic 12-year rule.

Naftali Bennett, a former ally of Netanyahu turned bitter rival, becomes prime minister, presiding over a diverse and fragile coalition comprised of eight parties with deep ideological differences. Netanyahu remains head of the Likud party and will hold the post of opposition leader.

Netanyahu sat silently during the vote. After it was approved, he stood up to leave the chamber, before turning around and shaking Bennett’s hand. A dejected Netanyahu, wearing a black medical mask, then sat down in the opposition leader’s chair.

Sunday’s vote, passed by a 60-59 margin, ended a two-year cycle of political paralysis in which the country held four elections. 

Minutes later, Bennett was sworn into office, followed by members of the new Cabinet.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Bennett, the head of a small ultranationalist party, will have to maintain an unwieldy coalition of parties from the political right, left and center.

The eight parties, including a small Arab faction that is making history by sitting in the ruling coalition, are united in their opposition to Netanyahu and new elections but agree on little else. They are likely to pursue a modest agenda that seeks to reduce tensions with the Palestinians and maintain good relations with the U.S. without launching any major initiatives. 

Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, remains the head of the largest party in parliament and is expected to vigorously oppose the new government. If just one faction bolts, it could lose its majority and would be at risk of collapse, giving him an opening to return to power.

The country’s deep divisions were on vivid display as Bennett addressed parliament ahead of the vote. He was repeatedly interrupted and loudly heckled by supporters of Netanyahu, several of whom were escorted out of the chamber.

Bennett’s speech mostly dwelled on domestic issues, but he expressed opposition to U.S. efforts to revive Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

“Israel will not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons,” Bennett said, vowing to maintain Netanyahu’s confrontational policy. “Israel will not be a party to the agreement and will continue to preserve full freedom of action.”

Bennett nevertheless thanked President Joe Biden and the U.S. for its decades of support for Israel.

Netanyahu, speaking after him, vowed to return to power. He predicted the incoming government would be weak on Iran and give in to U.S. demands to make concessions to the Palestinians.

“If it is destined for us to be in the opposition, we will do it with our backs straight until we topple this dangerous government and return to lead the country in our way,” he said.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said the new government will likely be more stable than it appears.

“Even though it has a very narrow majority, it will be very difficult to topple and replace because the opposition is not cohesive,” he said. Each party in the coalition will want to prove that it can deliver, and for that they need “time and achievements.”

Still, Netanyahu “will continue to cast a shadow,” Plesner said. He expects the incoming opposition leader to exploit events and propose legislation that right-wing coalition members would like to support but can’t — all in order to embarrass and undermine them.

The new government is meanwhile promising a return to normalcy after a tumultuous two years that saw four elections, an 11-day Gaza war last month and a coronavirus outbreak that devastated the economy before it was largely brought under control by a successful vaccination campaign.

The driving force behind the coalition is Yair Lapid, a political centrist who will become prime minister in two years, if the government lasts that long.

He called off a planned speech to parliament, instead saying he was ashamed that his 86-year-old mother had to witness the raucous behavior of his opponents. In a brief speech, he asked for “forgiveness from my mother.”

“I wanted her to be proud of the democratic process in Israel. Instead she, along with every citizen of Israel, is ashamed of you and remembers clearly why it’s time to replace you,” he said.

It’s unclear if Netanyahu will move out of the official residence. He has lashed out at the new government in apocalyptic terms and accused Bennett of defrauding voters by running as a right-wing stalwart and then partnering with the left.

Netanyahu’s supporters have held angry protests outside the homes of rival lawmakers, who say they have received death threats naming their family members. Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service issued a rare public warning about the incitement earlier this month, saying it could lead to violence.

Netanyahu has condemned the incitement while noting that he has also been a target.

His place in Israeli history is secure, having served as prime minister for a total of 15 years — more than any other, including the country’s founder, David Ben-Gurion.

Netanyahu began his long rule by defying the Obama administration, refusing to freeze settlement construction as it tried unsuccessfully to revive the peace process. Relations with Israel’s closest ally grew even rockier when Netanyahu vigorously campaigned against President Barack Obama’s emerging nuclear deal with Iran, even denouncing it in an address to the U.S. Congress.

But he suffered few if any consequences from those clashes and was richly rewarded by the Trump administration, which recognized contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, helped broker normalization agreements with four Arab states and withdrew the U.S. from the Iran deal.

Netanyahu has portrayed himself as a world-class statesman, boasting of his close ties with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also cultivated ties with Arab and African countries that long shunned Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians.

But he has gotten a far chillier reception from the Biden administration and is widely seen as having undermined the long tradition of bipartisan support for Israel in the United States.

His reputation as a political magician has also faded at home, where he has become a deeply polarizing figure. Critics say he has long pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy that aggravated rifts in Israeli society between Jews and Arabs and between his close ultra-Orthodox allies and secular Jews.

In November 2019, he was indicted for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. He refused calls to step down, instead lashing out at the media, judiciary and law enforcement, going so far as to accuse his political opponents of orchestrating an attempted coup. Last year, protesters began holding weekly rallies across the country calling on him to resign.

Netanyahu remains popular among the hard-line nationalists who dominate Israeli politics, but he could soon face a leadership challenge from within his own party. A less polarizing Likud leader would stand a good chance of assembling a coalition that is both farther to the right and more stable than the government that is set to be sworn in.”

It was time for Netanyahu to go!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd goes after  billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk who pay little or no income taxes in her New York Times column this morning.  Entitled, Fat Cats on a Hot Tin Roof, she cites ProPublica’s “cracking open the vault on America’s biggest tax grifters” and revealing how the Midas men dip, dodge and duck, paying pennies on the dollar, if that, while we suckers have to pony up.  She comments: “Given what this country has been through with Covid, given all the corrupt bankers who got off scot-free after the economic collapse, and given how hard it is to earn a buck, this new glimpse into inequities is genuinely disgusting.”  She concludes:  “The richest of the rich want unspeakably high gains with unspeakably low costs. It may not be against the law but it certainly isn’t right.”

Her entire column is below!

Tony

The New York Times

Fat Cats on a Hot Tin Roof

June 12, 2021 

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

WASHINGTON — I find this all quite taxing.

Infrastructure talks just collapsed, with Republicans scratching their heads, wondering where on earth we could find the money to save our cratering bridges and highways, among other things. This was the same crowd who happily helped Donald Trump slash tax rates for corporations and the ultrawealthy in 2017.

Meanwhile, ProPublica cracked open the vault on America’s biggest tax grifters, revealing how the Midas men dip, dodge and duck, paying pennies on the dollar, if that, while we suckers have to pony up.

How rich.

“In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes,” ProPublica reported. “He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

“Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.”

Grandfatherly shark Warren Buffett — who famously tut-tutted that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did — topped the list, among the 25 richest Americans, for avoiding the most taxes.

“Taken together,” ProPublica concluded, “it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The I.R.S. records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.”

It turns out Donald Trump was the canary in the gold mine. While everyone was outraged about the first modern president who refused to show his tax returns, real billionaires were skating.

Senator Patrick Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, who was one of the architects of the law that cut taxes by more than a trillion dollars, defended tax rates for “high income people” at a town hall, but in an interview with The Times sounded a more critical note.

“My intention as the author of the 2017 tax reform was not that multibillionaires ought to pay no taxes,” he said. “I believe dividends and capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate, but certainly not zero.”

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and the chairman of the Finance Committee, said he was working on a bunch of proposals to force billionaires to pay their fair share, including some sort of minimum tax.

The Times story noted that ProPublica shed light on the fact that “the superrich earn virtually all their wealth from the constantly rising value of their assets, particularly in the stock market, and that the sales of those assets are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income from a paycheck.” And while the value of those assets grows by the billion, untaxed, these rich folks can borrow against them, deducting the interest.

The revelations may renew calls for the wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have long pushed. In 2019, during a campaign debate, Sanders lamented the outrageous fact that three people own more wealth in America than the bottom half of society, and he railed against the “billionaire class whose greed and corruption has been at war with the working families in this country for 45 years.”

So the secret I.R.S. cache did not surprise him. “The rich have money, the rich have power, the rich have lobbyists, and the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes,” he said in a peak-Bernie moment.

Republicans talk a good game about adopting the winning parts of Trumpism, but you can’t be populists if you shield the rich and stick it to everybody else.

Even if they make the rich pay their fair share, it likely won’t be enough to fund most of what President Biden needs to do. They’ll have to raise the corporate tax rate, which began to plunge during the Reagan years, to an equitable level and stop corporations from tax-shopping to find countries with the lowest rates.

Look, rolling around in gobs of dough and displays of obscene consumption is a tradition as American as apple pie. But, Up to a point, Lord Copper. Forgive me if I don’t want to celebrate Jeff Bezos’ midlife crisis rocket ride.

Given what this country has been through with Covid, given all the corrupt bankers who got off scot-free after the economic collapse, and given how hard it is to earn a buck, this new glimpse into inequities is genuinely disgusting. Paging Madame Defarge: Where do you get your knitting needles?

Paying taxes is an expression of citizenship. You can’t belong to the club and not pay your dues.

You shouldn’t come into the world with the ambition to pay no taxes. Paying more taxes should be a sign that you made more money — and good for you. We don’t want to ding you for succeeding but we’re halfway to a plutocracy here.

The richest of the rich want unspeakably high gains with unspeakably low costs. It may not be against the law but it certainly isn’t right. It’s tacky.

Show some public spirit, Monopoly Men! Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200