Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai at Wednesday’s Meeting with President Biden

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden had a meeting with the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest tech, energy, and financial services companies on Wednesday to ask their help in dealing with the  nation’s cybersecurity issues.

CEO’s from the biggest technology companies, like newly minted Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet (Google) CEO Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were all on the guest list.

Additionally, players from the financial sector like Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon joined the event, as well as CEOs and leaders in energy — such as energy firm Southern Company CEO Thomas Fanning — insurance, and education.

Speaking to those CEOs, Biden noted some of the administration’s efforts to combat cyberattacks, including bringing together 30 nations to work together to combat ransomware.  As reported by the Reuters and the Associated Press.

“But the reality is, most of our critical infrastructure owned and operated — is owned and operated by the private sector, and the federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Biden said. “So I’ve invited you all here today because you have the power, the capacity, and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity.”

Cybersecurity has become a growing concern within the government following the massive hack of government systems, including the Department of Defense, by Russian hackers in December 2020. A ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in April, and the revelation in July that China-based hackers attacked 23 U.S. pipeline companies from 2011 through 2013, only added to calls for improved cybersecurity at the national level.

Following the meeting the White House announced that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will work with industry partners to create a new framework to improve the security and integrity of the technology supply chain. The Biden administration also announced the expansion of the Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Initiative to natural gas pipelines.

The meeting also saw major announcements from the biggest tech firms on hand. Microsoft, for instance, announced it will spend $20 billion over the next 5 years to boost the company’s cybersecurity capabilities. It also will provide $150 million in services to federal, state, and local governments to improve their cyber defenses.

Amazon, meanwhile, announced that it will make the cybersecurity training materials it has developed to keep its employees and sensitive information safe from cyberattacks available to the public. The company will provide qualified AWS customers with a free multi-factor authentication device to help protect them from cyberattacks.

Google said it will invest $10 billion over the next five years to expand its zero-trust programs to help secure the software supply chain and enhance open-source security.

Apple, for its part, said it will create a new program to build out security improvements for the technology supply chain by working with its suppliers to ensure they use multi-factor authentication, have security training, and understand vulnerability remediation, event logging, and incident response.

U.S. Bancorp CEO Andy Cecere, who was also in attendance, thanked Biden for holding the meeting.

“We’re committed to working with the White House, Congress and private sector partners to put the results of today’s productive discussions into action,” he said in the statement.

The gathering also comes as the Biden administration reportedly pursues investigations of Apple, Google, and Amazon for potential antitrust violations and after repeated criticisms of Big Tech’s role in the spread of disinformation from the president and his team.

In May, the Colonial Pipeline hack cut off nearly 50% of the fuel capacity for the East Coast, causing shortages in some states as drivers bought up as much gasoline as possible. Following that incident, the president emphasized the need for “greater private-sector investment in cybersecurity.”

Biden was all set to ask the assembled CEOs for that type of investment on Wednesday. But the meeting came as he and his administration have developed a complicated relationship on many fronts with the tech giants.

On the one hand, the president and his aides have often taken their companies to task for how they operate in their respective industries. In July, Biden said “they’re killing people” when he was asked about his message for platforms like Facebook when it comes to vaccine misinformation. The president later walked back the remarks somewhat but has maintained an aggressive posture towards the industry.

Biden has also staffed his administration with a mix of prominent critics of Big Tech — like the selection of prominent Amazon critic Lina Khan to head the Federal Trade Commission — that seemed to signal his team would take a tough stance towards tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple.

On the other hand, Biden has also populated his administration with some veterans of the technology industry as the Wall Street Journal reported in May. And just Monday, The New York Times reported that Apple and Google were urging trade officials in Washington to fight a South Korean bill that could hurt their app store businesses.

Despite its mixed past with Big Tech, the Biden administration might need tech giants to help shore up the nation against cyberattacks.

High-profile attacks like those on Colonial Pipeline garner international headlines. But apart from those high-profile cases, states and local municipalities have also been inundated by cyberattacks that impact everything from their records to 9-1-1 systems.

What’s more, the attacks can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time, labor, and new equipment to remediate, money that many localities don’t have. Such hacks often stem from outdated software, user error, or poorly configured security systems.

In May, Biden acknowledged that he can’t force private companies to take measures to prevent attacks. But, he added, “It’s becoming clear to everyone that we have to do more than is being done now.”

The Biden administration has proposed nearly $1 billion in grants within the $1 trillion infrastructure bill for cybersecurity improvements for state, local, and tribal governments.

The federal government has also moved forward with new cybersecurity rules for pipeline operators, requiring them to report any cyberattacks on their systems to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and implementmeans to protect against future cyberattacks.

It is about time that the federal government recognized the resources of private companies especially big tech in addressing cybersecurity issues.  They control the infrastructure and more importantly they have the technological expertise to do so.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Education Department (ED) is continuing to reverse course on Trump-era policies that led to blanket denials of borrower defense claims from students who were allegedly defrauded by various colleges.  As reported by Yahoo Finance.

On Tuesday, the USDOE released reasoning for why the agency previously provided full debt relief for borrowers who had under the previous administration received only partial forgiveness despite being found to have been defrauded by a predatory institution.

“The Department reviewed this methodology and rescinded it in the March 2021 announcement after finding several significant flaws, which are described below,” the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office stated. “The overall effect of these flaws is that the methodology unfairly determined relief for students based upon data that may not have included them, and then incorrectly used statistical concepts that were not suited for the task at hand.”

While about 72,000 borrowers who were given partial debt relief under the old DeVos-era formula were made whole, a borrower defense backlog remains: According to the latest government data as of April 30, 107,825 borrower defense claims are still awaiting adjudication while 137,413 have previously been deemed ineligible.

Furthermore, it’s unclear if those 137,413 ineligible claims involve borrower defense claims that were systematically denied during the Trump administration — including nearly 130,000 in 2020 alone. (The ED did not respond to requests for comment on this specific question.)

“If there is fraud, the entire loan needs to be cancelled,” Eileen Connor, legal director of Harvard’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represents many defrauded student loan borrowers, told Yahoo Finance. “This is true in the vast, vast majority of cases and needs to be the starting presumption.”

Going forward, when the department reviews borrower defense claims for loan forgiveness, ED will “assess all approved claims applying a rebuttable presumption of full relief as a starting point.”

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott applauded the move.

“The Biden administration’s new policy for Borrower Defense claims aligns with that recommendation and provides student loan borrowers the relief that they need and deserve,” Scott said. “Once again, the Biden administration is using its full authority to deliver life-changing loan forgiveness to students and families.”

DeVos ED rushed reviews, spent 12 minutes per case

The borrower defense process, in which students who believe they were defrauded can apply for loan forgiveness, was created in 1995 and barely used until the Corinthian Colleges closed in 2015.

A flood of claims followed.

“For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people — now they have to pay,” then-California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a 2016 statement. “This judgment sends a clear message: there is a cost to this kind of predatory conduct … My office will continue to do everything in our power to help these vulnerable students obtain all available relief, as they work to achieve their academic and professional goals.”

The Obama administration created special rules to address the problem, making it easier for defrauded students to get their loans cleared — with some getting automatic loan forgiveness if they qualified.

The Trump administration rolled back Obama-era regulations, limiting how applicants could access the program, and eventually set up a rubber stamp system for denials.

A letter from an ED official named Colleen Nevin wrote in August 2019 — made public via a complaint filed in a related court case — detailed how the plan for 2020 would require reviewers of borrower defense claims to “on average” look through “a minimum of 5 cases per hour” while maintaining “an error rate under 5%.”

Additionally, Nevin then stated that the “bar for new approvals is high” and that the “majority of applications will be denied — based on either the insufficiency of the borrower’s allegations or the lack of sufficient evidence to support the borrower’s application.”

Harvard’s Connor described the DeVos policy as involving “thinly-veiled, mathematically illiterate pretenses to prop up predatory institutions and hurt our clients.” And despite the blanket denials, the Trump-era ED left a huge backlog of borrower defense claims for the Biden administration.

“The previous administration’s formula for determining debt relief was deeply flawed,” Rep. Scott stated. “Under the old formula, some defrauded borrowers would be granted relief only if they made ‘negative earnings’ — which is obviously impossible.”

When the Trump-era formula was unveiled in December 2019, experts swiftly called out the “bad math,” foreshadowing the ED explanation that the policy had “incorrectly used statistical concepts.”

Congratulations to the USDOE for correcting the Trump and DeVos’ policies on student loans!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Delta Airlines is adopting a tough policy that will charge employees on the company health plan $200 a month if they fail to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a policy the airline’s top executive says is necessary because the average hospital stay for the virus costs the airline $50,000.

CEO Ed Bastian said that all employees who have been hospitalized for the virus in recent weeks were not fully vaccinated.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The airline said yesterday that it also will stop extending pay protection to unvaccinated workers who contract COVID-19 on Sept. 30, and will require unvaccinated workers to be tested weekly beginning Sept. 12, although Delta will cover the cost. They will have to wear masks in all indoor company settings.

Delta stopped short of matching United Airlines, which will require employees to be vaccinated starting Sept. 27 or face termination. However, the $200 monthly surcharge, which starts in November, may have the same effect.

“This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company,” Bastian said in a memo to employees.

The surcharge will only apply to employees who don’t get vaccinated and won’t be levied for spouses or dependents, a Delta spokeswoman said.

Delta is self-insured and sets premiums for its plans, which are administered by UnitedHealthcare. The company spokeswoman had said the average hospital stay costs $40,000, contradicting the figure that Bastian used in his memo, and Delta later said both figures reflected a range of the average bill.

Bastian said that 75% of Delta employees are vaccinated, up from 72% in mid-July. He said the aggressiveness of the leading strain of the virus “means we need to get many more of our people vaccinated, and as close to 100% as possible.”

“I know some of you may be taking a wait-and-see approach or waiting for full (Food and Drug Administration) approval,” he told employees. “With this week’s announcement that the FDA has granted full approval for the Pfizer vaccine, the time for you to get vaccinated is now.”

A growing number of companies including Chevron Corp. and drugstore chain CVS announced they will require workers to get vaccinated after Monday’s FDA decision.

United and Delta already require new hires to be vaccinated. Two smaller carriers, Hawaiian and Frontier, have said they will require either vaccination or regular testing for current employees. Other major U.S. airlines, including American and Southwest, said Wednesday that they are encouraging employees to get vaccinated but have not required it.

Delta’s requirement for weekly testing of unvaccinated employees will start Sept. 12, and the requirement that the unvaccinated wear masks indoors takes effect immediately.

Fueled by the now-dominant delta variant of the virus, new reported cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have topped 150,000 a day, the highest level since late January. Nationally the rate of increase has slowed, but the variant threatens to overwhelm emergency rooms in parts of the country.

On Tuesday, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, where Delta is based, ordered members of the National Guard to 20 hospitals across the state to help deal with a surge that is larger than the national average.

Southwest, Spirit and Frontier have blamed the rise of the delta variant for a slowdown in customers booking flights, and U.S. air travel remains down more than 20% from pre-pandemic 2019.

In his message to employees Bastian referred to the fast-spreading strain of the virus as B.1.617.2, which is used by scientists to identify its lineage. The Delta CEO’s effort to avoid using the more commonly known “delta variant” did not go unnoticed and B.1.617.2 began trending on Twitter Wednesday.

Congratulations Delta Airlines for pushing the envelope to get its employees vaccinated.

Tony

Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones performs onstage during ‘The Rolling Stones American Tour 1981’

Dear Commons Community,

Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest rhythm sections and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died, according to his publicist. He was 80.

Bernard Doherty said yesterday that Watts “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.”

“Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation,” Doherty said.

Watts had announced he would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined health issue.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The quiet, elegantly dressed Watts was often ranked with Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and a handful of others as a premier rock drummer, respected worldwide for his muscular, swinging style as the Stones rose from their scruffy beginnings to international superstardom. He joined the band early in 1963 and remained for nearly 60 years, ranked just behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the group’s longest lasting and most essential member.

Watts stayed on, and largely held himself apart, through the drug abuse, creative clashes and ego wars that helped kill founding member Brian Jones, drove bassist Bill Wyman and Jones’ replacement Mick Taylor to quit and otherwise made being in the Stones a most exhausting jo

A classic Stones song like “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up” often began with a hard guitar riff from Richards, with Watts following closely behind, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say, “fattening the sound.” Watts’ speed, power and time keeping were never better showcased than during the concert documentary, “Shine a Light,” when director Martin Scorsese filmed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from where he drummed toward the back of the stage.

The Stones began, Watts said, “as white blokes from England playing Black American music” but quickly evolved their own distinctive sound. Watts was a jazz drummer in his early years and never lost his affinity for the music he first loved, heading his own jazz band and taking on numerous other side projects.

He had his eccentricities — Watts liked to collect cars even though he didn’t drive and would simply sit in them in his garage. But he was a steadying influence on stage and off as the Stones defied all expectations by rocking well into their 70s, decades longer than their old rivals the Beatles.

Watts didn’t care for flashy solos or attention of any kind, but with Wyman and Richards forged some of rock’s deepest grooves on “Honky Tonk Women,” “Brown Sugar” and other songs. The drummer adapted well to everything from the disco of “Miss You” to the jazzy “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and the dreamy ballad “Moonlight Mile.”

Jagger and Richards at times seemed to agree on little else besides their admiration of Watts, both as a man and a musician. Richards called Watts “the key” and often joked that their affinity was so strong that on stage he’d sometimes try to rattle Watts by suddenly changing the beat — only to have Watts change it right back.

He also had an impact on the Rolling Stones that extended beyond drumming. He worked with Jagger on the ever more spectacular stage designs for the group’s tours. He also provided illustrations for the back cover of the acclaimed 1967 album “Between the Buttons” and inadvertently gave the record its title. When he asked Stones manager Andrew Oldham what the album would be called, Oldham responded “Between the buttons,” meaning undecided. Watts thought that “Between the Buttons” was the actual name and included it in his artwork.

To the world, he was a rock star. But Watts often said that the actual experience was draining and unpleasant, and even frightening. “Girls chasing you down the street, screaming … horrible!… I hated it,” he told The Guardian newspaper in an interview. In another interview, he described the drumming life as a “cross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck.”

Watts found refuge from the rock life, marrying Shirley Ann Shepherd in 1964 and having a daughter, Seraphina, soon after. While other famous rock marriages crumbled, theirs held. Jagger and Richards could only envy their bandmate’s indifference to stardom and relative contentment in his private life, which included happily tending horses on a rural estate in Devon, England.

Author Philip Norman, who has written extensively about the Rolling Stones, said Watts lived “in constant hope of being allowed to catch the next plane home.” On tour, he made a point of drawing each hotel room he stayed in, a way of marking time until he could return to his family. He said little about playing the same songs for more than 40 years as the Stones recycled their classics. But he did branch out far beyond “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by assembling and performing with jazz bands in the second half of his career.

Charles Robert Watts, son of a truck driver and a homemaker, was born in Neasden, London, on June 2, 1941. From childhood, he was passionate about music — jazz in particular. He fell in love with the drums after hearing Chico Hamilton, and taught himself to play by listening to records by Johnny Dodds, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and other jazz giants.

He worked for a London advertising firm after he attended London’s Harrow Art College and played drums in his spare time. London was home to a blues and jazz revival in the early 1960s, with Jagger, Richards and Eric Clapton among the future superstars getting their start. Watts’ career took off after he played with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, for whom Jagger also performed, and was encouraged by Korner to join the Stones.

Watts wasn’t a rock music fan at first and remembered being guided by Richards and Brian Jones as he absorbed blues and rock records, notably the music of bluesman Jimmy Reed. He said the band could trace its roots to a brief period when he had lost his job and shared an apartment with Jagger and Richards because he could live there rent-free.

“Keith Richards taught me rock and roll,” Watts said. “We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ’til then.”

Watts was the final man to join the Stones; the band had searched for months to find a permanent drummer and feared Watts was too accomplished for them. Richards recalled the band wanting him so badly to join that members cut down on expenses so they could afford to pay Watts a proper salary. Watts said he believed at first the band would be lucky to last a year.

“Every band I’d ever been in had lasted a week,” he said. “I always thought the Stones would last a week, then a fortnight, and then suddenly, it’s 30 years.”

For much of his career, Watts resisted the excesses of his bandmates, but he fell into heroin addiction in the mid-1980s. He would credit his stable relationship with his wife for getting him off drugs.

“I was warring with myself at that time,” he told Rolling Stone magazine.

With his financial future secure because of the Stones’ status as one of the world’s most popular live bands, Watts was able to indulge his passion for jazz by putting together some of the most talented musicians in Britain for a series of recordings and performances. They typically played during the long breaks between Stones tours.

His first jazz record, the 1986 “Live at Fulham Town Hall,” was recorded by the Charlie Watts Orchestra. Others by the Charlie Watts Quintet followed, and he expanded that group into the Charlie Watts and the Tentet.

Watts was an acclaimed jazz bandleader when he was stricken with throat cancer in 2004. He received extensive treatment and made a full recovery. His return to health allowed him to resume touring with both the Stones and his jazz band.

By then, the young man who had worn his brown hair down to his shoulders in the late 1960s had evolved into a craggy, white-haired, impeccably dressed senior statesman of rock. Getting Watts to talk about his place in rock history was almost impossible, but he seemed to enjoy talking about fashion. It was not unusual to see him attired in a custom-made suit and polka dot tie while his bandmates wore jeans and T-shirts.

In the tumultuous, extremely competitive world of rock and roll, Watts seemed to make few enemies.

“It all seems to boil down to a certain quality which is as rare as hen’s teeth in the music business, but which Charlie Watts is perceived to have in abundance. In a word, decency,” columnist Barbara Ellen wrote after interviewing Watts in 2000. “You’ve got to hand it to a … man who’s played with the world’s most influential rock ‘n’ roll band … and stayed happily married to his wife, Shirley … A man who, moreover, remains resolutely determined not to take his elevated position too seriously.”

Watts is survived by his wife Shirley, sister Linda, daughter Seraphina and granddaughter Charlotte.

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s, Watts was this quiet confident drummer of the Rolling Stones who seem to commend a presence even while Rick Jagger and Keith Richards were singing and strutting on a stage.

May he rest in peace!

Tony

Kathy Hochul

Dear Commons Community,

Just hours ours after being sworn in as New York’s first female governor, Kathy Hochul delivered her first address from Albany, laying out an agenda largely focused on combating the coronavirus pandemic.

Hochul, the state’s former lieutenant governor, who replaced Andrew Cuomo following his resignation in the wake of a report that found he had sexually harassed 11 women, said Tuesday that she was ready to take “proactive steps” to curb the rapidly spreading Delta variant of COVID-19, particularly when it comes to reopening schools.

“I am also immediately directing the Department of Health to institute universal masking for anyone entering our schools,” Hochul said.

Vaccination against COVID-19 will be required for all school personnel, she said. Those who do not wish to be immunized will have the option to undergo weekly testing for the virus, and the state will make tests more widely available in the coming weeks.

Hochul pointed to the Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday, saying that “New Yorkers can expect new vaccine requirements” as a result.

New York is gearing up for the distribution of booster shots, Hochul said, adding that she had consulted with Dr. Anthony Fauci to ensure they would be “available and distributed quickly and reliably.”

Although the new governor did not mention Cuomo in her speech, she made it clear that she would follow through with her pledge to make sure her office was free of the toxic environment that former staff members said characterized the administration of her predecessor.

“That begins with a dramatic change in culture, with accountability and no tolerance for individuals who cross the line,” Hochul said.

She also announced that she will “overhaul state policies on sexual harassment and ethics” and require live ethics training classes for all New York state employees.

Her final priority, Hochul said, was to make sure New Yorkers receive financial assistance in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, including relief for renters and landlords, with aid for undocumented immigrant workers set aside as part of the Excluded Workers Fund.

In the coming days, Hochul will continue working on filling out her Cabinet. On Monday she appointed two women to top government posts. Karen Persichilli Keogh will become secretary to the governor, the highest-ranking appointed position in the state, and Elizabeth Fine will serve as counsel to the governor. The lieutenant governor, whose position Hochul left vacant, is yet to be determined and is expected to be announced next week.

Good start!

Tony

Kathy Hochual Sworn In as Governor of New York

Dear Commons Community,

Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of New York at the stroke of midnight, taking control of a state government eager to get back to business after months of distractions over sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo.

The Democrat from western New York was sworn in as governor in a brief, private ceremony in the New York State Capitol overseen by the state’s chief judge, Janet DiFiore.

Afterward, she told WGRZ, a Buffalo television station, she felt “the weight of responsibility” on her shoulders.

“I’ll tell New Yorkers I’m up to the task. And I’m really proud to be able to serve as their governor and I won’t let them down,” she said.

Cuomo left office at 12:00 a.m, two weeks after he announced he would resign rather than face a likely impeachment battle. He submitted his resignation letter late Monday to the leaders of the state Assembly and Senate.

On his final day in office, Cuomo released a pre-recorded farewell address in which he defended his record over a decade as New York’s governor and portrayed himself as the victim of a “media frenzy.”

Hochul was scheduled to have a ceremonial swearing-in event Tuesday morning at the Capitol, with more pomp than the brief, legally required event during the night.

She planned to meet with legislative leaders later in the morning and make a public address at 3 p.m.

For the first time, a majority of the most powerful figures in New York state government will be women, including state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Attorney General Letitia James and the chief judge, DiFiore. The state Assembly is led by a man, Speaker Carl Heastie.

Hochul will inherit immense challenges as she takes over an administration facing criticism for inaction in Cuomo’s final months.

COVID-19 has made a comeback, with new cases up nearly 1,370% since late June. Hospitalizations are climbing even as schools prepare to go back into session.

Big decisions lay ahead on whether to mandate masks or vaccines for certain groups, or whether to reinstate social distancing restrictions if the state’s latest wave of infections worsens. Hochul has said she favors making masks mandatory for schoolchildren, a contrast with Cuomo, who said he lacked that authority.

The economy remains unsettled. Jobs lost during the pandemic have been coming back, but unemployment remains double what it was two years ago.

New York has also struggled to get federal relief money into the hands of tenants behind on their rent because of the pandemic, releasing just 6% of the budgeted $2 billion so far. Thousands of households face the possibility of losing their homes if the state allows eviction protections to expire.

Hochul also faces questions about whether she’ll change the culture of governance in New York, following a Cuomo administration that favored force over charm.

Hochul, who once represented a conservative Western New York district in Congress for a year and has a reputation as a moderate, is expected to pick a left-leaning state lawmaker from New York City as her lieutenant governor.

State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs praised Hochul as “formidable.”

“She’s very experienced and I think she’ll be a refreshing and exciting new governor,” he said.

We wish her well!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

 The U.S. gave full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine yesterday, a milestone that may help lift public confidence in the shots as the nation battles the most contagious coronavirus mutant yet.

The vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech now carries the strongest endorsement from the Food and Drug Administration, which has never before had so much evidence to judge a shot’s safety. More than 200 million Pfizer doses already have been administered in the U.S. — and hundreds of millions more worldwide — since emergency use began in December.

“The public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” said acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock. “Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S.” 

The U.S. becomes the first country to fully approve the shot, according to Pfizer, and CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement he hoped the decision “will help increase confidence in our vaccine, as vaccination remains the best tool we have to help protect lives.”

U.S. vaccinations bottomed out in July. As delta fills hospital beds, shots are on the rise again — with a million a day given Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Just over half of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated with one of the country’s three options, from Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. 

While many governments, schools and businesses have put vaccine requirement into place in recent weeks, others said they would hold off until the FDA granted a vaccine its full approval ― a step that goes further than the emergency use authorization that let vaccine distribution kick off in December.

Following the FDA’s approval, President Joe Biden urged decision-makers to put vaccine requirements into place.

“If you’re a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that,” he said at a news conference. “Require it.”

The biggest institution to take that step Monday was the Pentagon, which had said previously it would begin rolling out a vaccine requirement for all service members as soon as the FDA issued full approval for the shots ― or by mid-September if the approval had still not come by then. The requirement will affect more than a million active-duty service members. 

“These efforts ensure the safety of our service members and promote the readiness of our force, not to mention the health and safety of the communities around the country in which we live,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said Monday. 

The New York City Department of Education, the largest school district in the U.S., also announced it will now proceed with a vaccine requirement for all public school teachers and other staff members. 

State University of New York campuses are also going ahead with a vaccine mandate that gives the students, faculty and staff at all 64 SUNY schools 35 days to get both doses of the vaccine. The University of Minnesota and all of Louisiana’s public colleges and universities are also initiating vaccine requirements for students, they confirmed Monday. 

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced that all state and public school system employees will now need to either get vaccinated or undergo regular testing “at minimum” of once or twice a week. Louisiana is doing the same with its state employees. 

The FDA’s announcement triggered vaccine requirements across the private sector, too. CVS Health is now requiring all of its corporate staff and many of its store employees to be vaccinated ― a move that affects about 100,000 people. Chevron also became the first major U.S. oil producer to announce a mandate, which will be applied to select employees. United Airlines announced Monday that it was expediting its plans by a month and requiring all employees to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 27.

As for all the talk about booster doses, the FDA’s licensure doesn’t cover those. The agency will decide that separately. 

The FDA already is allowing emergency use of a third dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine for people with severely weakened immune systems, such as organ transplant recipients who don’t respond as strongly to the usual two shots. For everyone else who got those vaccinations, the Biden administration is planning ahead for booster starting in the fall — if the FDA and CDC agree.

Also still to be decided is vaccination of children under 12. Both Pfizer and Moderna are studying youngsters, with data expected in the fall. 

GET THE SHOT!

Tony

Josephine Baker

Dear Commons Community,

The remains of American-born singer and dancer Josephine Baker will be reinterred at the Pantheon monument in Paris, making the entertainer who is a World War II hero in France the first Black woman to get the country’s highest honor. 

Le Parisien newspaper reported Sunday that French President Emmanuel Macron decided to organize a ceremony on Nov. 30 at the Paris monument, which houses the remains of scientist Marie Curie,  philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, writer Victor Hugo and other French luminaries.

The presidential palace confirmed the newspaper’s report.

After her death in 1975, Baker was buried in Monaco, dressed in a French military uniform with the medals she received for her role as part of the French Resistance during the war.

Baker will be the fifth woman to be honored with a Pantheon burial and will also be the first entertainer honored. 

Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, one of France’s most revered politicians, was buried at the Pantheon in 2018. The other women are two who fought with the French Resistance during World War II — Germaine Tillion and Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz — and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Curie.

The monument also holds the remains of 72 men.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Baker became a megastar in the 1930s, especially in France, where she moved in 1925 as she was seeking to flee racism and segregation in the United States.

Baker quickly became famous for her “banana skirt” dance routines and wowed audiences at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees and later at the Folies Bergere in Paris.

She became a French citizen after her marriage to industrialist Jean Lion in 1937.

During World War II, she joined the French Resistance. Amid other missions, she collected information from German officials she met at parties and carried messages hidden in her underwear to England and other countries, using her star status to justify her travels.

A civil rights activist, she took part in 1963 in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who made his “I Have A Dream” speech.

This is a well-deserved honor!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Colleges are opening for the new fall semester amid a variety of COVID policies, most of which were designed to protect students, faculty and staff.  However, as the Delta variant surges, faculty are asking their administrations to revisit policies that were established prior to the latest COVID outbreak.  The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning focusing on faculty who have raised issues with COVID policies on their campuses.  The entire article is below. 

Unless something dramatic happens to halt the spread of the Delta variant, we may find ourselves in the same situation we were last year with most colleges relying on remote learning.

Tony

The Chronicle of Higher Education

As Delta Variant Surges, Faculty Urge Their Colleges to Change Course

By Emma Pitt

August 20, 2021

A handful of professors gathered this week under the hot sun on a large grassy field at Clemson University. Propped up next to them were signs that read, “All In for Masks,” and, “A Mask Is a Small Ask.”

Kimberly Paul, an associate professor of genetics and biochemistry, had staged the demonstration. She had been galvanized by a tweet posted by James P. Clements, the university president, of the new-student convocation on August 13. In the photos, students are seated shoulder to shoulder, indoors, many of them maskless. Paul got angry. “I was like, That is it. The university is not taking this seriously.”

(A Clemson spokesperson noted in an email that masks were provided at every seat for a transfer-student event on Monday. He sent a photo, which showed the vast majority of attendees wearing masks.)

New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in South Carolina were on the rise. Clemson hadn’t yet issued a mask mandate. The state’s attorney general had told the University of South Carolina that lawmakers had intended to ban such requirements, prompting the flagship to back off its mandate. But Paul wanted Clemson to “be brave,” push back, and “own their power in the state,” she said.

So she made a Facebook post, announcing “Walkout Wednesday.”

The day before the event, the state Supreme Court effectively cleared the way for public universities to require masking, and Clemson quickly issued a temporary mask order, valid for three weeks. That period “coincides with the greatest risk predicted by our public-health team’s modeling of the disease,” said Joe Galbraith, the Clemson spokesperson. He noted that the university has robust testing and administered 22,000 tests in the past week, with a positivity rate under 1 percent.

Three weeks, Paul thought, was not enough. The demonstration was still held but became more of a “teach-in” than a “walkout.” From 8 a.m. to about 4 p.m., the professors handed out masks to students and gave them information about Covid testing and how to get vaccinated. Paul thought she’d be “this lone professor with her sad little sign,” but she wasn’t. Ten to 12 people showed up initially, and people stopped by all day, including a counter-protester. The group passed out more than 350 masks.

What Paul discovered, she said, is that her colleagues were frustrated and easily ignited. “I am not an organizer. I had an idea. I put a post together. I put it on Facebook, and that match landed on a whole lot of dry tinder,” she said.

That tinder isn’t confined to Clemson. Faculty groups at colleges across the country are asking or demanding more protective measures be put in place. They worry about the Delta variant of the coronavirus, straggling vaccination rates in some states, and the fact that — though it’s rare — vaccinated people can catch and transmit the virus.

And, they say, colleges have been slow to adjust to this new surge and what it means for campus safety. Some colleges are embracing a return-to-normal approach in which in-person teaching is highly encouraged and masks aren’t required. Those plans made more sense a month or two ago, faculty leaders say.

The vaccine is still proving effective in greatly reducing — though not completely eliminating — both transmission and the severity of symptoms. But now, hospital workers in many states “are seeing admission numbers that resemble what they saw at the height of the pandemic over the winter,” The New York Times recently reported. Texas hospitals “are in crisis mode” with few available ICU beds, said Dale Rice, speaker for the Faculty Senate at Texas A&M University. The university president was exposed to the virus earlier this month.

“This is not a normal time,” Rice said. “We shouldn’t be treating it that way.”

At other institutions, faculty groups have made their mounting concerns known.

Because faculty members at Spelman College have not received “clear and enforceable protocol and safety guidelines” to “ensure our health and well-being,” they would not be teaching face to face, the Faculty Council told students in a Thursday email. The elected body of tenured faculty members, which represents the faculty body’s interests, wrote that in the meantime, “most faculty will use alternative instructional methods for course delivery.”

On Friday, Mary Schmidt Campbell, the president, said through a college spokesperson that Spelman faculty members have decided to return to in-person teaching on Monday. The college “continues to work with the faculty to provide additional guidance on health and safety protocols as rapidly changing circumstances around Covid-19 continue to develop,” she said.

The Faculty Senate at Penn State University on August 13 voted no confidence in the institution’s fall Covid-safety plan. About 150 professors, staff members, and students rallied that day in opposition to it, The Chronicle previously reported. At Santa Barbara City College, the Academic Senate voted no confidence in five of the seven Board of Trustees members after the board had twice opposed a vaccine mandate. The vote wasn’t solely because of the absence of a mandate, but it was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Raeanne Napoleon, president of the Academic Senate. (The board approved the requirement in August.)

Elsewhere, professors are questioning how seriously administrators are taking rules already in place. The vice president for student affairs at Stony Brook University shared photos on Facebook of an indoors welcome-back event at which some students and a couple of administrators appear unmasked, even though everyone is required to wear face coverings while inside university buildings.

Lauren Sheprow, a spokesperson for Stony Brook, said in an email that the welcome-back event took place inside the campus recreation center, which had been following protocols established by the county and allowed face masks to be optional. During Welcome Week, Stony Brook reassessed the center’s mask-optional protocol and “out of an abundance of caution” will require masks, consistent with all other indoor spaces on campus, effective Saturday, August 21.

When Josh Dubnau, director of the Center for Developmental Genetics at Stony Brook, saw those photos, he thought, This could be a super spreader event. He didn’t blame the students. Rather, he saw it as a “failure of leadership.” Still, Dubnau commended Stony Brook for doing a good job of promoting vaccines. As of August 19, 87 percent of students who are registered in at least one in-person course have submitted proof of vaccination.

In some states, elected leaders have severely limited what protective measures colleges can take. In Texas, Greg Abbott, the governor who is fully vaccinated and recently tested positive for Covid-19, banned government entities from mandating masks or vaccines. In Iowa, the president of the state’s Board of Regents, which oversees the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa, said in May that there’d be no mask or vaccine requirements and that classrooms and other campus spaces “will operate at their normal (pre-pandemic) capacity.”

Hundreds of employees have petitioned the regents to reconsider. Northern Iowa’s faculty union filed a complaint against the board with the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration for failing to provide a safe work environment, the Gazette reported. “We recognize that this is a politically charged issue,” the union wrote in an August letter to regents, but “you must answer to your own conscience or higher power whether you did all you could to protect the most vulnerable.”

At the University of South Carolina at Columbia, “the whiplash has been severe,” said Carol E. Harrison, president of the institution’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

In general, faculty members felt “pretty good” at the beginning of the summer about their role in helping the university weather the pandemic, maintain its enrollment, and offer a variety of course modalities to students, said Harrison. That good feeling quickly waned.

In late July, the university announced that it’d require masks indoors on campus. But days later, the state’s attorney general told the president that the mandate was invalid because of a budget proviso the legislature had recently approved. That prompted the university to back down. But then, the state Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the proviso prevented mask mandates. The flagship swiftly reinstated the requirement, which pleased Harrison, though she was shocked that the university had reversed course in the first place.

Faculty members still have other concerns, she said, especially those who are teaching in person who have children who are not eligible to be vaccinated. If a child is exposed to the coronavirus, “you cannot responsibly come in to teach your class when your child is quarantined. You can’t responsibly hire a babysitter for them. I don’t see how you can keep your own distance from your child so that you can be isolated and come teach,” Harrison said.

“We do think that it is possible to hold safe university instruction. We did it last year,” she added. “But it requires a certain amount of flexibility, and we’re not seeing that flexibility right now.”

Stephen Cutler, the interim provost, said he’s directed deans and unit leaders to be “as flexible as possible” with those who are seeking a change of modality in teaching. Regarding faculty parents who worry about their children needing to quarantine, Cutler said that ensuring a continuity of teaching “doesn’t necessarily mean the person who is quarantined has to be the one teaching.” On that front, “we’re just asking individuals at the unit level to work together.”

He noted that South Carolina was one of just a handful of universities to establish saliva-based testing for Covid-19 last year. The university monitored its wastewater, tested students and employees regularly, and used other mitigation strategies to keep positivity rates low, he said. For this fall, “we still have all of those tools in the tool chest.”

And, he said, many faculty members — and students — are eager to be on campus. There’s “a sense of excitement” in the air.

In Alabama, one scholar reached his tipping point.

State lawmakers have banned colleges from requiring students to get Covid vaccines. Colleges also can’t require students to prove their vaccination status before returning to campus or fine unvaccinated students.

Jeremy Fischer, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, considered his institution’s Covid-19 policies inadequate and raised concerns in a petition. Eventually, he began to ask himself whether his relationship with the university “might render me complicit in a moral atrocity.”

It did, he decided. He tendered his resignation.

“Perhaps due to the political nature of this crisis … some faculty, staff, and administrators are looking the other way, holding their tongues, holding their noses, or holding their breath in fear as they prepare to convene or attend in-person gatherings on campus,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which he posted on Twitter.

But this, the philosophy scholar wrote, is “a moral emergency.”

.@RepKinzinger (R-IL) calls Republican "fear-mongering" about Afghan refugees "non-American."

Kinzinger to Republicans who do this: "a) you are either evil at your heart yourself or b) you're charlatan who's only interested in winning an election…" pic.twitter.com/HRhBCcdoOa

— The Recount (@therecount) August 22, 2021

Dear Commons Community,

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) yesterday slammed right-wing media and politicians engaging in “fearmongering” rhetoric about Afghans seeking refuge from the Taliban in America. 

Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been critical of both the Biden and Trump administration’s contributions to failures in Afghanistan leading to the Taliban takeover this month. Thousands of people are still trying to escape the country a week after insurgents overthrew the capital and much of the country. 

Appearing on CNN, Kinzinger said that though he believes the blame lies with both parties, things “can’t continue with just pointing fingers while America’s embarrassed in front of the world.”

He was then asked about members of his party who are using the crisis as a political opportunity, including framing refugees as “invaders.”

Kinzinger noted that most of his GOP colleagues supported legislation passed last month that would make it easier for Afghan nationals who assisted the American military to apply for special immigrant visas. But the 16 House Republicans who voted against it “should be asked why they did,” he added.

“But what you see is in the media echo chamber, this fearmongering,” he continued. “This ‘They’re coming to your neighborhood, these hordes of people that haven’t been vetted.’”

“That is not American. You can always have questions with how this was executed, but America’s always been the country that opens our heart,” he said, adding that refugees in the U.S. have always worked and fought hard for success.

“If anybody wants to go out and fearmonger and continue that darkness in your heart and speaking it so you can win an election: A) you are either evil at your heart yourself, or, B) you’re a charlatan who’s only interested in winning reelection and you truly can’t say you care about the health of the American people.”

In the aftermath of the Afghan government’s collapse, several right-wing media personalities have stoked fears about asylum seekers. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson described it as an invasion, warning viewers that Afghan refugees would probably be settling in their neighborhoods. His colleague Laura Ingraham asked, “Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan?” And Charlie Kirk, the conservative talk radio host, said President Joe Biden intentionally let Afghanistan collapse so he could let “a couple hundred thousand more Ilhan Omars to come into America to change the body politic permanently.”

Kinzinger has become the moral conscience of the Republican Party!

Tony