Dear Commons Community,

The families of nine Sandy Hook school shooting victims settled a lawsuit for $73 million yesterday against Remington, the maker of the AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre, in what is believed to be the largest payout by a gun manufacturer in a mass shooting case.

The agreement is a significant setback to the firearms industry because the lawsuit worked around the federal law protecting gun companies from litigation by arguing that the manufacturer’s marketing of the weapon had violated Connecticut consumer law.

The families argued that Remington, the gunmaker, promoted sales of the weapon that appealed to troubled men like the killer who stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, killing 20 first graders and six adults. The lawsuit was filed by relatives of five of the children and four of the adults.  As reported by The New York Times.

“These nine families have shared a single goal from the very beginning: to do whatever they could to help prevent the next Sandy Hook,” said Josh Koskoff, the lead lawyer for the families. “It is hard to imagine an outcome that better accomplishes that goal.”

In addition to the financial settlement, lawyers for the families said that Remington agreed to release thousands of pages of internal company documents, including possible plans for how to market the weapon used in the massacre — a stipulation that had been a key sticking point during negotiations.

The families have said that a central aim of the lawsuit was to pry open the industry and expose it to more scrutiny. Remington had resisted turning over any internal documents.

Even in a country where mass shootings had become a painfully common occurrence, the Sandy Hook massacre was a gut-wrenching moment because so many of the victims were so young. President Barack Obama, in a powerful speech at a memorial, blended words of bereavement with a promise to curb the spread of firearms, though in the end his vow yielded little legislative action.

President Biden, in a statement last night, praised the settlement, saying, “While this settlement does not erase the pain of that tragic day, it does begin the necessary work of holding gun manufacturers accountable for manufacturing weapons of war and irresponsibly marketing these firearms.”

Legal experts stressed that not only have most federal gun control efforts failed, but federal immunity for gunmakers remains a formidable barrier to litigation. Still, the outcome in this case has shown that it is possible to circumvent the federal shield.

Like Connecticut, New York has adopted a consumer protection measure that could be used against gunmakers; a similar bill has been introduced in California, and elected officials in other states, including New Jersey, are also considering introducing proposals that could offer a template to families of victims in mass shootings.

The families contended that Remington violated state law by promoting the weapon with an approach that appealed to so-called couch commandos and troubled young men like the gunman who committed the Sandy Hook massacre.

Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed, said the documents included in the settlement were crucial — and “paint a picture of a company that lost its way, choosing more aggressive marketing campaigns for profit.”

Lawyers for the company did not immediately return calls for comment. The agreement was disclosed in documents filed in Connecticut Superior Court on Tuesday, but it did not divulge details of the settlement, including the amount the families would receive.

The financial settlement is being paid by insurance companies that had represented Remington, which is in bankruptcy. As a result, gun industry officials said that Remington Outdoor Company “effectively no longer exists,” and the decision to settle “was not made by a member of the firearms industry.”

Gun industry representatives said the settlement would not set a pattern. “This settlement orchestrated by insurance companies has no impact on the strength and efficacy” of federal law, Mark Oliva, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearm trade association, said in a statement.

The association remained confident that the company “would have prevailed if this case proceeded to trial,” Mr. Oliva said.

For families involved in the case, though, the agreement felt like a measure of justice….

“David and I will never have true justice,” said Francine Wheeler, whose son Ben was killed, speaking for herself and her husband at a news conference. “True justice would be our 15-year-old, healthy and standing next to us right now. But Benny will never be 15. He will be 6 forever, because he is gone forever.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm has dropped the family business as its client amid New York prosecutors’ multiple escalating investigations into whether Trump overvalued his assets in financial statements.

On Feb. 9, accounting firm Mazars USA’s William Kelly sent a letter to Trump Organization executive vice president and chief legal officer Alan Garten notifying him of the firm’s decision to cut ties with the company. Mazars also said that the financial statements it prepared for Trump between June 30, 2011, and June 30, 2020, “should no longer be relied upon.”

The letter was included in a court document filed yesterday by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office, and reveals that Trump’s accountants are essentially washing their hands of the former president by claiming they acted in good faith based on information Trump gave them.

“We have come to this conclusion based, in part, upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources,” Kelly wrote. “While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate.”

According to George Conway, who is married to Trump’s former senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, having a decade’s worth of financial statements pulled by accountants is “just about the most calamitous thing” that could happen to any business with outside financing or investors.

“This is worse for him than being impeached twice,” he added.

A Trump Organization spokesperson said that the company is “disappointed that Mazars has chosen to part ways,” but the accounting firm’s Feb. 9 letter confirms that “Mazars’ work has performed in accordance with all applicable accounting standards and principles and that such statements of financial condition do not contain any material discrepancies.”

“This confirmation effectively renders the investigations by the DA and the AG moot,” the spokesperson said.

According to the case file, the aforementioned statements of financial condition were previously entered as exhibits for the two investigations into Trump and his company. James’ office and the Manhattan district attorney’s office have been investigating whether Trump used the statements to defraud his lenders into giving him the best possible loan terms.

James launched her investigation in March 2019 after Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that the real estate magnate inflated some assets to obtain favorable loans, and devalued others to avoid paying the appropriate amount in taxes.

The Mazars USA letter, signed by the accounting firm’s general counsel, appeared in a petition filed in the New York Supreme Court by James’ office, which is seeking to question Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump under oath as part of the attorney general’s investigation. Eric Trump has already been deposed, and spoke to state investigators in October 2020.

Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a judge to prohibit the questioning, to which the attorney general’s office argued in court documents last month that the Trump Organization engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices.

“In the three years that we have been conducting this investigation, the Trump Organization and its principles have never challenged the legality of the investigation, until now, when Mr. Trump himself was subpoenaed to testify,” James said on Jan. 26. “We will not be deterred by frivolous lawsuits and will continue to follow the facts of this case because no one is above the law.”

They should throw the book at Trump and his family, however, I fear it will be a while before there are any conclusions in this case!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The buzz on the daily news media shows the past several days has been the reporting that Rudy Giuliani is open to making an about-face and answering the House January 6 committee’s questions.  It is being cast as is a potentially “explosive move” that could redirect the course of the entire investigation. I am not so sure.  He may blow the lid on Trump’s deviousness and on the other hand he may just obfuscate any inquiry by claiming attorney-client privilege, invoking the Fifth Amendment, or just speaking nonsense as has been his wont the past year. The New Republic has an analysis as follows:

What Giuliani has to share could be some of the most valuable information the committee will obtain. Giuliani has been Donald Trump’s personal attorney while Trump was president and usually the face (besides Trump himself) of the former president’s most outlandish actions while in office. The former New York mayor was part of the inner circle coordinating the push to block Congress from certifying that Joe Biden won the election fairly from the Willard Hotel command center just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. He has also been Trump’s sounding board and cheerleader for the most bizarre conspiracy theories and false claims the president has peddled. His information could fill in the most important holes about Trump in ways that no one else could.

But attorneys and experts who specialize in congressional investigations said in interviews yesterday that it’s really not clear how willing Giuliani is to work with the committee—or over what. What little information Giuliani is revealing about his newfound willingness to talk with the committee creates more questions than answers. But if he does talk, it seems pretty obvious what the committee will want to talk to him about.

“Clearly all investigative roads lead to Donald Trump,” said Norm Eisen, the former co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment trial. “So there’s a myriad of indicators of that but the desire to talk to Giuliani is the latest.”

Giuliani was not always the cartoonish, bumbling legal sidekick he is today. Once he was considered the frontrunner in the Republican primary for the presidency. Before that he was the leader of the largest city in America. And before that, and most relevant for present purposes, he was the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. Even as he’s lost a step or three, he still must understand the intricacies of serious federal legal inquiries. So Giuliani could just be looking to give the bare minimum of cooperation to the panel and thereby avoid facing a referral to the Justice Department for defying a subpoena.

“I still feel a little bit like I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan Law professor and former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Giuliani could “fake it,” cooperating with the committee so he’s not charged with contempt of Congress, McQuade offered. “It may be that that’s all he’s doing. But, if he wanted to, he could be the John Dean of this moment. He was in the room, he is at the heart of the storm here. He absolutely saw where all the bodies are buried. So I think if he wanted to, he could be extremely helpful. I also think he is extremely sophisticated.”

McQuade continued: “We write him off as a crackpot now but don’t forget that there was a time when he was a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York handling very high-profile mafia cases, public corruption cases, and corporate fraud insider trader cases. He knows all the tools of the Justice Department and he knows the department has him in a very bad spot.”

Last year federal agents with the Justice Department raided Giuliani’s office and home, seizing his electronic devices (think cell phones and computers) as part of its investigation into Trump’s business dealings. The information on those devices they may already have important and incriminating proof of Giuliani “plotting a coup,” McQuade offered. “So what is it you can do? You can offer your testimony in exchange.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Giuliani. His association with Trump over the years has been a classic story of Icarus getting too close to the sun and his lifetime of work will be eclipsed by his role in trying to undermine the American democratic system. Pride, in other words, might be the main driver, suggested Eisen.

“It would be a precipitous come down for a man who at one point was the most famous prosecutor in America, heralded as a modern-day Eliot Ness, to now have to take the Fifth Amendment,” Eisen said. “It just would be devastating to his ego.”

Publicly, the committee has shown no sign of looking to bargain with Giuliani. “Mr. Giuliani’s appearance was rescheduled at his request. He remains under subpoena, and the Select Committee expects him to cooperate fully,” a committee aide said in a statement.

Whatever Giuliani’s motivations it’s not enough to stop the committee in its tracks. The January 6 committee has already proved that without the cooperation of the biggest-name figures it has been able to glean important and devastating information about how those people took extraordinary steps to flip the election to Trump. But Giuliani could still add to that.

“His vanity point is incredibly valuable to the investigation for a lot of reasons,” a former congressional investigator who now works at a major Washington law firm said, adding that Giuliani’s credibility as a witness has waned substantially. “He has been all over the map on public statements which make him” difficult to take seriously.

Giuliani has found himself in a precarious position. As various serious investigations and legal inquiries weigh down on him the tools he has at his disposal are few, and as a former prosecutor he clearly knows that. He has to decide now whether what’s at stake for him outweighs what’s at stake for Trump if he does.

“The Trump machine, I’m sure, is already fired up to either bring him back into the fold or demolish him,” the former investigator said. If Giuliani were to publicly help the inquiry it would be the clearest defiance of Trump that the former president could imagine. There would be no going back. “There’s that other factor here, the sort of witness intimidation factor. Who knows how he’ll weather that crucible.”

As stated above, this might be Giuliani’s last attempt to salvage his name and reputation which right now is about as low as they can go.  He should turn on Trump who has used him as a toady footstool to do ugly things!

Tony

Cooper Kupp

Dear Commons Community,

It not common for a player other than a quarterback to get an MVP award in a super bowl but Los Angeles wide-receiver Cooper Kupp did just that last night as LA best Cincinnati 23-20 in Super Bowl LVI.

Kupp beat Eli Apple for the back-shoulder 1-yard touchdown catch with 1:25 remaining to give the Rams their first Super Bowl title ever in Los Angeles with the victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.

“I just don’t feel deserving of this,” Kupp said. “I’m just so thankful for the guys I get to be around, for the coaches, for my family. I just don’t have words, I’m just so thankful for everyone, everyone that’s been in my life and has encouraged me, has pushed me, has been there for me every step of the way.”

The Rams put together the game-winning drive after barely being able to move the ball in their first seven drives after Kupp’s running mate Odell Beckham Jr. went down with a knee injury. That allowed the Bengals to focus their coverage on Kupp and slow him down, but the Rams didn’t care when the game was on the line.

“That’s hard work, that’s hours together,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said. “I just thank Coach (Sean McVay) for putting it … ‘Hey, Matthew, you and Coop go get this thing done.’ He kept calling plays for him, kept finding ways to get him the ball. He made unbelievable plays, that’s what he does.”

Kupp caught four passes for 39 yards on the game-winning drive, converted a fourth-and-1 with a 7-yard run and drew three penalties near the goal line to set the stage for his game-winning catch. It was a fitting end to one of the greatest seasons and postseason runs ever for a wide receiver.

Kupp joined Jerry Rice (1990), Sterling Sharpe (1992) and Steve Smith (2005) as the only players since the merger to lead the NFL in receptions, yards receiving and receiving yards in the same season when he had 145 catches for 1,947 yards and 16 touchdowns to win the AP Offensive Player of the Year.

Kupp joined Joe Montana in 1989 as the only players to win Super Bowl MVP and AP Offensive Player of the Year in the same season.

The performance in the Super Bowl was just as good when he had eight catches for 92 yards and the two TDs to go along with his key run. About the only thing Kupp didn’t do came when he missed Stafford on a pass on a trick play in the second half.

It’s quite a ride for someone who played his college ball at lower-level Eastern Washington before coming into the NFL as a third-round pick in 2017.

“I don’t really think about it. It was part of my journey,” Kupp said about becoming a star after getting no scholarship offers coming out of high school. “I don’t have any regrets or feel any grudge toward anyone. I’m just thankful for the path that I’ve been on.”

Kupp did it all during this playoff run, setting an NFL record with 33 catches and trailing only Larry Fitzgerald’s remarkable 2008 playoffs (30 catches for 546 yards and seven TDs) with his 478 yards and six TDs in four games.

“I just feel so undeserving of all these awards and accolades,” Kupp said. “I’ve played from a place of freedom and allowed myself to be in the moment every single time.”

A warrior who comes through in the clutch!

Tony

Kamila Valieva

Dear Commons Community,

For those of us following the Beijing Olympics, a major controversy with Russian figure-skater Kamila Valieva, has been partially resolved by  The Court of Arbitration for Sport.  Yesterday she was cleared to compete in the women’s figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics despite failing a pre-Games drug test.   Whatever happens on the ice, Valieva will not get a medal ceremony moment in Beijing. Nor will any skater who finishes in the top three with her.

The Court cleared Valieva to skate less than 12 hours after a hearing that lasted into early yesterday. A panel of judges ruled that the 15-year-old Valieva, the favorite for the women’s individual gold, does not need to be provisionally suspended ahead of a full investigation.

The court gave her a favorable decision in part because she is a minor, known in Olympic jargon as a “protected person,” and is subject to different rules from an adult athlete. As reported by the Associated Press.

“The panel considered that preventing the athlete to compete at the Olympic Games would cause her irreparable harm in the circumstances,” CAS Director General Matthieu Reeb said.

Now, Valieva and her fellow Russian skaters can aim for the first podium sweep of women’s figure skating in Olympic history. The event starts with the short program Tuesday and concludes Thursday with the free skate.

The International Olympic Committee said that if Valieva finishes in the top three, there will be no medal ceremony during the Games. There will also be no ceremony for the team event won by Valieva and the Russian team a week ago.

“It would not be appropriate to hold the medal ceremony,” the IOC said.

Valieva landed the first quadruple jumps by a woman at the Olympics as the Russian team won gold in a dominant performance.

The decision not to award medals also affects Nathan Chen and the rest of the second-place American team, who will leave Beijing unsure if they won silver or gold. It would be Chen’s second gold of the Games. If Valieva and Russia are disqualified, Japan moves up to silver and Canada wins bronze.

“We are devastated that they will leave Beijing without their medals in hand, but we appreciate the intention of the IOC to ensure the right medals are awarded to the right individuals,” the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said in a statement.

The IOC decision also means the fourth-place finisher in the women’s event will have a good chance to move into the bronze position.

Shortly after the CAS ruling, Valieva skated at practice, watched by her coach, Eteri Tutberidze. She completed her program without a fall, drawing a smattering of applause from the Russian media watching.

Reaction around the world ranged from support of the young skater to complaints that Russian doping had once again damaged a sporting event.

In addition to her status as a minor, the CAS ruling cited fundamental issues of fairness, the fact she tested clean in Beijing and that there were “serious issues of untimely notification” of her positive test.

Valieva tested positive for the heart drug trimetazidine on Dec. 25 at the Russian nationals, but the result from a Swedish lab didn’t come to light until a week ago, after she helped the Russian Olympic Committee win the team gold.

Reasons for the six-week wait for a result from Sweden are unclear. In a statement, WADA suggested RUSADA slipped up by not signaling to the Stockholm lab that Valieva’s sample was a priority to be analyzed so close to the Olympics.

Her case has caused havoc at the Olympics since last Tuesday when the team event medal ceremony was pulled from the schedule because of the positive test.

The Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA) immediately suspended her, then lifted the ban a day later. The IOC and others appealed, and an expedited hearing was held Sunday night. Valieva testified via video.

Athletes under 16 like Valieva have more rights under anti-doping rules and typically aren’t held responsible for taking banned substances. The focus of any future investigation will be on her coaches, doctors, nutritionists, etc.

This ruling only addresses whether Valieva can keep skating before her case is resolved. It doesn’t decide the fate of the one gold medal she has already won.

Those issues will be dealt with in a separate, longer-term investigation led by RUSADA, which took the sample in St. Petersburg.

The World Anti-Doping Agency will have the right to appeal any ruling by RUSADA, and also said it wants to independently investigate Valieva’s entourage.

The Valieva case means Russian doping has been a major theme for a six straight Olympic Games.

“This appears to be another chapter in the systematic and pervasive disregard for clean sport by Russia,” US Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland said in a statement.

Hirshland said the USOPC was “disappointed by the message this decision sends” and suggested athletes were denied the confidence of knowing they competed on a level playing field.

At the rink Tuesday, the ice dance competition was decided as the CAS prepared its verdict.

Gold medalists Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France and American bronze medalists Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue offered, “No comment.”

Nikita Katsalapov, who along with Victoria Sinitsina won the silver medal for the Russians, said simply: “Go Kamila!”

Hubbell and Donohue could have their silver medals upgraded to gold in the team competition.

“There’s no done deal yet, but I know all the people in the team want to receive the medals here as a team’” Hubbell said. “If we miss that opportunity, it’s huge disappointment.”

The IOC now says it will “organize dignified medal ceremonies once the case of Ms Valieva has been concluded,” whenever that may be.

What a sad situation for all of the athletes involved who have trained for years to compete in the Olympics only to have results come under a cloud. Thank you, Russia!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat,  has commentary this morning on the legalization and proliferation of sports betting in our country.

Entitled “We Aren’t in Vegas Anymore”, he states that:

“This is a good weekend for thinking about that impulse, because Super Bowl Sunday is capping off a transition in big-time sports that has made the symbiosis between professional athletics and professional gambling all but complete. The cascading, state-after-state legalization of sports betting, the ubiquitous ads for online gambling in the football playoffs, the billion dollars that the National Football League hopes to soon be making annually from its deals with sports betting companies — everywhere you look, the thin wall separating the games from the gambling industry is being torn away.

This transformation will separate many millions of non-wealthy Americans from their money, very often harmlessly but in some cases disastrously, with a lot of sustainable-or-are-they gambling addictions falling somewhere in between. And we’ve reached this point, in part, because of our unwillingness to live with inconsistencies and hypocrisies instead of ironing them out, our inability to take a cautious step or two down a slippery slope without tobogganing to the bottom.”

I agree fully with Douthat.  There is an unholy alliance forming between big-time sports, gambling companies, and sports media stations that are pushing the country to go all-into betting and losing money.  The ready availability and appeal of online gambling sites make the situation far darker than anything we have ever experienced in this country.

Below is his entire column.  Important reading on this Superbowl Sunday!

Tony

————————————————

The New York Times

“We Aren’t in Vegas Anymore”

by Ross Douthat

Feb. 12, 2022

When future historians ponder the forces that unraveled the American social fabric between the 1960s and the 2020s, I hope they spare some time for one besetting vice in particular: our fatal impulse toward consistency.

This is a good weekend for thinking about that impulse, because Super Bowl Sunday is capping off a transition in big-time sports that has made the symbiosis between professional athletics and professional gambling all but complete. The cascading, state-after-state legalization of sports betting, the ubiquitous ads for online gambling in the football playoffs, the billion dollars that the National Football League hopes to soon be making annually from its deals with sports betting companies — everywhere you look, the thin wall separating the games from the gambling industry is being torn away.

This transformation will separate many millions of non-wealthy Americans from their money, very often harmlessly but in some cases disastrously, with a lot of sustainable-or-are-they gambling addictions falling somewhere in between. And we’ve reached this point, in part, because of our unwillingness to live with inconsistencies and hypocrisies instead of ironing them out, our inability to take a cautious step or two down a slippery slope without tobogganing to the bottom.

In the case of gambling, that tobogganing impulse meant that once we decided that some forms of gambling should be legally available, in some places, with some people profiting, it became inevitable that restrictions would eventually crumble on a much larger scale. The multi-generational path from Las Vegas and Atlantic City, to Native American casinos, to today’s ubiquitous online gambling looks like one continuous process, with no natural stopping place along the way.

But the trouble is that societal health often depends on law and custom not being perfectly consistent, not taking every permission to its logical conclusion.

In the case of gambling, some limited permission was always necessary: Betting will always be with us, it’s a harmless vice for many people, if you over-police it you’ll end up with an array of injustices.

But the easier it is to gamble, the more unhappy outcomes you’ll get. The more money in the industry, the stronger the incentives to come up with new ways to hook people and then bleed and ruin them. And all that damage is likely to fall disproportionately on the psychologically vulnerable and economically marginal, the strong preying on the weak.

So what you want, then, is for society to be able to say this far and no farther, even if the limiting principle is somewhat arbitrary. Did it make perfect rational sense to have the betting regime of my youth, where a couple of American cities were gambling havens for accidental historical reasons? Not really: If gambling is bad, it’s bad everywhere, and if it’s OK for Nevadans, why shouldn’t it be OK for everyone? And did it make constitutional sense for this arbitrary system to be partially propped up by a federal ban on state-sanctioned sports gambling? No, the Supreme Court decided in 2018, it does not.

But that contingent, somewhat irrational, arguably unconstitutional system nevertheless struck a useful balance, making gambling available without making it universal, encouraging Americans to treat the gambling experience as a holiday from the everyday, not seriously wicked but still a little bit shameful or indulgent — which is why it stays under the table, or in Vegas.

And in abandoning this approach, in rationalizing our gambling regime by making it ever more universal, we’re following the same misguided principle that we’ve followed in other cases. With pornography, for instance, where the difficulty of identifying a perfectly consistent rule that would allow the publication of “Lolita” but not Penthouse has led to a world where online porn doubles as sex education and it’s assumed that the internet will always be a sewer and we just have to live with it. Or now with marijuana, where the injustice and hypocrisy of the drug war made a good case for partial decriminalization, but stopping at decriminalization may be impossible when the consistent logic of commercialization beckons.

The reliability of this process doesn’t mean that it can never be questioned or reversed. Part of what we’re witnessing from #MeToo-era feminism, for instance, is a backlash against the ruthless logic of an unregulated sexual marketplace, and a quest for some organic form of social regulation, some new set of imperfect-but-still-useful scruples and taboos.

But it’s a lot easier to tear down an inconsistent but workable system than it is to build a new one up from scratch — and the impulse to rebuild usually becomes powerful only once you’ve reached the bottom of consistency’s long slope.

I’m not sure where we are with gambling’s cultural trajectory. But every time this playoff season served up another ad for Caesars Sportsbook, it felt like a sign that we’ve accelerated downward, with a long way yet to fall.

Dear Commons Community,

This news item  that appeared in Inside Education, was sent to me by my colleague, Ray Schroeder, from the University of Illinois, Springfield.

“With enrollments dwindling, Oklahoma City University is phasing out its early childhood and elementary teacher preparation programs. Just three students remain in the combined programs.

While the decision to close the programs was quietly made in 2020, pre–COVID-19, the news only recently became widely known. In addition to local media coverage, it’s prompted questions about the health of teacher education programs elsewhere—especially as Oklahoma and other states face a possible wave of teacher retirements and resignations this year.

“That’s the biggest concern of all,” said Heather Sparks, director of teacher education at OCU. “We know we’re going to continue to need teachers, and yet we’re not doing a good enough job, collectively, at getting folks into the pipeline.”

Sparks, who graduated from OCU’s education program some 30 years ago and only returned to teach there recently, said early childhood and elementary teacher education classes historically enrolled 10 to 12 students. But about 10 years ago, enrollments began to “trickle,” Sparks said, prompting the university to finally deem the two programs unsustainable.

Nationally, total enrollment in teacher preparation programs declined by more than one-third between 2010 and 2017, even as overall undergraduate enrollment increased over the same period, according to a 2019 analysis by American Progress. Oklahoma fared worst in the state-by-state portion of the analysis, with an enrollment crash of 80 percent.

COVID-19 stands to make things worse in some places. According to a recent survey by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, 20 percent of institutions reported that the pandemic resulted in a decline of 11 percent or more in new undergraduate enrollment. For graduate enrollment, 13 percent of institutions reported significant declines due to COVID-19.

Jacqueline Rodriguez, vice president for research, policy and advocacy at the association, said that pandemic-related enrollment declines may threaten smaller programs in particular, as they need a critical mass of students to operate. And “if those programs start closing, we’re going to have a real problem with the labor workforce,” she added.

OCU’s presecondary education programs aren’t the only education programs to be targeted for elimination in recent years. The University of South Florida shocked students, faculty members and community partners in 2020 when it said it was shuttering all its undergraduate education programs due to significant enrollment declines, coupled with systemwide university budget cuts. The university reversed course after backlash, including from local school districts that hire many teachers from the program. Around the same time, the University of California, Davis, backed off a plan to suspend its teacher education program due to similar outcry.

Rodriguez said that what she gleaned from these reversals is that the planned closures were “shortsighted decisions that didn’t include the stakeholders.”

OCU hasn’t seen this kind of opposition to its decision to close two of its programs, probably because it’s a smaller, private institution, not a large public. OCU’s other education programs, in art, music and other secondary school disciplines, also remain live and are in some cases growing. But Sparks said it’s relatively unsurprising to see any program struggling right now, “based on how teachers are treated in the community and on social media, and just the level of pay and benefits … All the things that go into making a job enjoyable and a career for someone, you know? We’re just missing the boat.”

Minimum starting salary in Oklahoma for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and no experience is $36,601. For someone with a master’s degree, 25 years of experience and a national board certification, that figure is about $53,000.

Beyond relatively low pay, many teachers have unwittingly found themselves deep in the culture wars and subject to murkily outlined laws against teaching so-called divisive concepts, critical race theory or both. This year already, an Oklahoma bill banning the use of public funds to teach “social emotional learning” has already been introduced.

That’s all in addition to COVID-19–related struggles, such as remote learning, reopening and masking debates, and ongoing concerns about classroom exposure.

Sparks said she hopes to one day reopen what’s closing at OCU by generating enough buzz around the remaining programs to attract new students to revised early childhood and elementary programs. What remains clear, she said, is that “there are people who remain passionate about becoming teachers.”

Reviving general teacher education program enrollment will require a “collective effort,” however, she said. And, as of now, “the problem hasn’t really revealed itself in a way that everyone feels like it’s a hair-on-fire situation. And I’m afraid it’s going to take August rolling around, with us having thousands of [teaching] vacancies, for that to happen. I hope not. But who knows?”

Rodriguez said her association is tracking numerous programs that have found innovative ways to attract new students to the profession. But across the U.S., she said, “it’s not about recruitment at this point—it’s about convincing the public that this a profession and that, as professionals, educators have autonomy.”

The closing of these programs seems counter-intuitive!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that invading Ukraine would cause “widespread human suffering” and that the West was committed to diplomacy to end the crisis but “equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House said Saturday. It offered no suggestion that the hourlong call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe.

Biden also said the United States and its allies would respond “decisively and impose swift and severe costs” if the Kremlin attacked its neighbor, according to the White House.

The two presidents spoke a day after Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that U.S. intelligence shows a Russian invasion could begin within days and before the Winter Olympics in Beijing end on Feb. 20. As reported by the Associated Press.

Russia denies it intends to invade but has massed well over 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border and has sent troops to exercises in neighboring Belarus, encircling Ukraine on three sides. U.S. officials say Russia’s buildup of firepower has reached the point where it could invade on short notice.

The conversation came at a critical moment for what has become the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. U.S. officials believe they have mere days to prevent an invasion and enormous bloodshed in Ukraine. And while the U.S. and its NATO allies have no plans to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, an invasion and resulting punishing sanctions could reverberate far beyond the former Soviet republic, affecting energy supplies, global markets and the power balance in Europe.

“President Biden was clear with President Putin that while the United States remains prepared to engage in diplomacy, in full coordination with our Allies and partners, we are equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House statement said.

The call was “professional and substantive” but produced “no fundamental change in the dynamic that has been unfolding now for several weeks,” according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters following the call on condition of anonymity.

The official added that it remains unclear whether Putin has made a final decision to move forward with military action.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, said that while tensions have been escalating for months, in recent days “the situation has simply been brought to the point of absurdity.”

He said Biden mentioned the possible sanctions that could be imposed on Russia, but “this issue was not the focus during a fairly long conversation with the Russian leader.”

Before talking to Biden, Putin had a telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with him in Moscow earlier in the week to try to resolve the crisis. A Kremlin summary of the call suggested that little progress was made toward cooling down the tensions.

Putin complained in the call that the United States and NATO have not responded satisfactorily to Russian demands that Ukraine be prohibited from joining the military alliance and that NATO pull back forces from Eastern Europe.

In a sign that American officials are getting ready for a worst-case scenario, the United States announced plans to evacuate most of its staff from the embassy in the Ukrainian capital, and Britain joined other European nations in urging its citizens to leave Ukraine.

The timing of any possible Russian military action remained a key question.
The U.S. picked up intelligence that Russia is looking at Wednesday as a target date, according to a U.S. official familiar with the findings. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did so only on condition of anonymity, would not say how definitive the intelligence was.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he told his Russian counterpart Saturday that “further Russian aggression would be met with a resolute, massive and united trans-Atlantic response.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to project calm as he observed military exercises Saturday near Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.

“We are not afraid, we’re without panic, all is under control,” he said.

Ukrainian armed forces chief commander Lt. Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny and Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov issued a more defiant joint statement.

“We are ready to meet the enemy, and not with flowers, but with Stingers, Javelins and NLAWs” — anti-tank and -aircraft weapons, they said. “Welcome to hell!”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, also held telephone discussions on Saturday.

Further U.S.-Russia tensions arose on Saturday when the Defense Ministry summoned the U.S. embassy’s military attache after it said the navy detected an American submarine in Russian waters near the Kuril Islands in the Pacific. The submarine declined orders to leave, but departed after the navy used unspecified “appropriate means,” the ministry said.

Adding to the sense of crisis, the Pentagon ordered an additional 3,000 U.S. troops to Poland to reassure allies.

The U.S. has urged all American citizens in Ukraine to leave the country immediately, and Sullivan said those who remain should not expect the U.S. military to rescue them in the event that air and rail transportation is severed after a Russian invasion.

The Biden administration has been warning for weeks that Russia could invade Ukraine soon, but U.S. officials had previously said the Kremlin would likely wait until after the Winter Games ended so as not to antagonize China.

Sullivan told reporters on Friday that U.S. intelligence shows that Russia could take invade during the Olympics. He said military action could start with missile and air attacks, followed by a ground offensive.

“Russia has all the forces it needs to conduct a major military action,” Sullivan said, adding that “Russia could choose, in very short order, to commence a major military action against Ukraine.” He said the scale of such an invasion could range from a limited incursion to a strike on Kyiv, the capital.

Russia scoffed at the U.S. talk of urgency.

“The hysteria of the White House is more indicative than ever,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. “The Anglo-Saxons need a war. At any cost. Provocations, misinformation and threats are a favorite method of solving their own problems.”

Zakharova said her country had “optimized” staffing at its own embassy in Kyiv in response to concerns about possible military actions from the Ukrainian side.

In addition to the more than 100,000 ground troops that U.S. officials say Russia has assembled along Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders, the Russians have deployed missile, air, naval and special operations forces, as well as supplies to sustain a war. This week, Russia moved six amphibious assault ships into the Black Sea, augmenting its capability to land marines on the coast.

Biden has bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe as reassurance to allies on NATO’s eastern flank. The 3,000 additional soldiers ordered to Poland come on top of 1,700 who are on their way there. The U.S. Army also is shifting 1,000 soldiers from Germany to Romania, which like Poland shares a border with Ukraine.

Russia is demanding that the West keep former Soviet countries out of NATO. It also wants NATO to refrain from deploying weapons near its border and to roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people.

A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped halt large-scale battles, but regular skirmishes have continued, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Vladimir Putin’s Russia has perfected the art of flouting the rules, whether the venue is the Olympic arena, international diplomacy or meddling in other countries’ elections. And it has suffered little consequence for its actions.

At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Russia the country isn’t here — technically. Its athletes are competing under the acronym ROC, for Russian Olympic Committee, for the second time. The national colors and flag are banned because of a massive state-sponsored doping operation that goes back to the 2014 Sochi Games, which Russia hosted.

And yet the 2022 Games’ first major scandal has managed to involve a 15-year-old figure skater who has tested positive for using a banned heart medication that may cost her Russia-but-not-really-Russia team a gold medal in team competition.

Her provisional suspension, like the so-called ban on Russia’s official participation in these Games, didn’t do much. Kamila Valieva continues to train even as her final disposition is considered, and she may yet compete in the women’s individual competition, in which she is favored.

Those who have watched the country’s interactions with others in recent decades aren’t entirely surprised at the developments.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“In Russia, the culture is generally that the ends justify the means, and the only thing that matters is the outcome,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, who grew up in the former Soviet Union.

Doping in particular has been a longstanding tradition in the Soviet Union and Russia, Alperovitch said. But Putin frequently operates with impunity in other arenas, including when the stakes are much higher than bronze, silver and gold.

More than 100,000 Russian troops are currently massed along the Ukrainian border preparing for a possible invasion. Despite weeks of diplomacy, Putin still seems to hold all the cards, pushing Europe to the brink of war and prompting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to call this the continent’s “most dangerous moment” in decades.

Many have accused the Russian government of dabbling in poisoning with little consequence. Among those poisoned after criticizing the Kremlin: investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who fell severely ill after drinking a cup of tea in 2004 and recovered, only to be shot to death two years later; and Russian opposition politician and vocal Putin critic Alexei Navalny, who fell gravely ill from poison in 2020. He recovered and is currently in a Russian prison. Neither poisoning was explicitly linked to the Russian government.

Putin’s efforts to upend U.S. elections included hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016 in an effort to aid then-candidate Donald Trump and damage his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. federal investigations showed. Russian government hackers were also blamed last year for a massive hacking campaign that breached vital federal agencies.

The current Ukraine standoff isn’t the first time Russian militarism has threatened to upend the so-called “Olympic truce,” an agreement among nations to set aside their conflicts during the Games.

In 2014, while hosting the Sochi Olympics, Putin seized control of the Crimean peninsula and its strategic Black Sea ports from Ukraine. And during the 2008 Summer Olympics, also held in Beijing, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions of neighboring Georgia, as independent nations and bolstered its military foothold there following a five-day war.

Economic sanctions and other punishments imposed by the United States and its allies after various Russian transgressions seem to have had little effect as a deterrent against future bad behavior by Putin.

In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department charged six current and former Russian intelligence officers in a hacking campaign targeting the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. They were accused of unleashing a devastating malicious software attack during the opening ceremony of those Games, in apparent retaliation for the IOC’s decision to ban Russia from future Games for doping.

“Time and again, Russia has made it clear: They will not abide by accepted norms, and instead, they intend to continue their destructive, destabilizing cyber behavior,” then-FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said at the time the indictment was announced.

And time and again, Russia presses on unchastened. So there was Putin last Friday, waving from his luxury box to Russian athletes entering Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium during the Games’ opening ceremony.

Even though it is banned on Russian uniforms at these Games, Russian flags waved in the stands as the ROC men’s hockey team, clad in their traditional red, shut out Switzerland in their inaugural match.

“I don’t know why the Russians are competing as they are given their history of doping,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who helmed the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. “I think it is a huge mistake.”

Russian athletes’ involvement in the Games, Romney said, “is something which I think is leaving a great stain on the Olympic movement.”

Back home, Valieva’s positive test has been met with outrage, fueling a sense that when it comes to sports, politics and international relations, it’s Russia vs. the world.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the scandal has been fueled by “those who did not have the appropriate information.” And other prominent Russian skaters, including Tatiana Navka, former Olympic ice-dancing gold medalist and Peskov’s wife, spoke out in support of Valieva.

“This is some kind of a fake,” said Russia’s top figure skating coach, Tatiana Tarasova. “She’s only 15, what do you mean doping?”

Ordinary Russians questioned the allegations as well. Nikolai Stashenkov, 88, blamed the scandal on the “impudence of European and Western politicians.”

“This is not nice,” he said. “This is not sport. This is dirty politics.”

Politics were also to blame, according to Russian officials, in the doping scandal that resulted in a reduced squad of Russian athletes being allowed to compete in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“This has become one of the most compelling evidence of direct political interference in sports,” Putin would later say in a meeting with Russian Paralympians.

Polling has shown the tactic is working with the Russian public. A 2016 poll by the Levada Center, Russia’s top independent pollster, showed 76% of Russians viewed the decision to bar the Russian track and field team from the Rio Olympics as “politicized” and “aimed at discrediting Russia.”

But Russia has often done an able job of discrediting itself.

For the Sochi Games in 2014, Russian medal contenders handed over samples of clean urine months in advance before taking a cocktail of steroids dissolved in alcohol, according to Grigory Rodchenkov, then the director of the drug-testing lab for the Games. He later fled to the United States.

During the Olympics, Rodchenkov said he swapped out samples via a hole in the wall of the laboratory to a person from the Russian security services who opened the urine sample bottles and replaced the contents with the stored, clean urine.

Russia has admitted some individual lapses on doping, but strenuously denies it formed part of an organized program or that the Russian state writ large supported doping.

In Beijing this week, events are moving fast. Urgent hearings are being convened about Valieva, and lots of officials are saying lots of things behind lots of closed doors. It remains to be seen whether her case becomes a new chapter in Russia’s twin track records of operating with impunity in both sport and geopolitics, or a footnote to the rise of another Olympic superstar.

Either way, Alperovitch, who is also the co-founder and former chief technology officer of the CrowdStrike cybersecurity firm, sees all of it as of a piece — evidence of a facet of Russian culture that prizes outcomes above everything else and will do what it takes to achieve them.

“The thing in Russia is that cheating is acceptable if you don’t get caught,” Alperovitch said. “Shame on you if you do. But if you think you can get away with it, go for it.”

Tony

Trump the Plumber

Dear Commons Community,

For most of the 2016 election and beyond, Donald Trump and his sycophants at Fox News moaned and groaned over Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  Clinton gave back yesterday and made light of allegations by former Trump administration staffers that they found ripped-up documents clogging a White House toilet and that they believe then-President Donald Trump had attempted to flush them.  These allegations appear in the forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman titled “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.”

Trump, whose response to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol is being investigated by a House select committee, was discovered last week to have improperly removed boxes of documents from the White House in possible violation of the Presidential Records Act. Some of the documents contained in 15 boxes that have since been retrieved were marked “classified” and “top secret,” the Washington Post reported.

On Thursday, Trump issued a statement denying that he had ever flushed official documents down a White House toilet.

“Another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book,” Trump said in the statement.

Haberman’s reporting was corroborated, however, by Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs.

Clinton is offering a hat with the message, “BUT HER EMAILS,” that harks back to the FBI investigation and subsequent media coverage that stemmed from Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Many people — including Clinton herself — believe that outsize attention to this, which pales in comparison to many scandals surrounding Trump, may have kept her from winning the 2016 presidential election. The FBI eventually cleared Clinton of allegations that she and her staff had deliberately mishandled classified information.

The hat that appears in Clinton’s tweet, meanwhile, can be purchased for $30 at OnwardTogether.org, which notes that “all proceeds go to supporting progressive groups working to build a fairer, more inclusive America.”

You can’t make this stuff up!

Tony