Dear Commons Community,

The  number of Kmarts in the U.S. — once well over 2,000 — will be down to three in the continental U.S. according to multiple reports, in a retail world now dominated by Walmart, Target and Amazon.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“You’re always thinking about it because stores are closing all over, but it’s still sad,” said cashier Michelle Yavorsky, who said she has worked at the Kmart Avenel, New Jersey store for 2 ½ years and is now scheduled to close permanently. “I’ll miss the place. A lot of people shopped here.”

In its heyday, Kmart sold product lines endorsed by celebrities Martha Stewart and Jaclyn Smith, sponsored NASCAR auto races and was mentioned in movies including “Rain Man” and “Beetlejuice.” It was name-dropped in songs by artists from Eminem to the Beastie Boys to Hall & Oates; in 2003, Eminem bought a 29-room, suburban Detroit mansion once owned by former Kmart chairman Chuck Conaway.

The chain cemented a place in American culture with its Blue Light Specials, a flashing blue orb affixed to a pole that would beckon shoppers to a flash sale in progress. Part of its success was due to its early adoption of layaway programs, which allowed customers who lacked credit to reserve items and pay for them in installments.

For a time, Kmart had a little bit of everything: You could shop for your kids’ back-to-school supplies, get your car tuned up and grab a meal without leaving the premises.

“Kmart was part of America,” said Michael Lisicky, a Baltimore-based author who has written several books on U.S. retail history. “Everybody went to Kmart, whether you liked it or not. They had everything. You had toys. You had sporting goods. You had candy. You had stationery. It was something for everybody. This was almost as much of a social visit as it was a shopping visit. You could spend hours here. And these just dotted the American landscape over the years.”

Kmart’s decline has been slow but steady, brought about by years of falling sales, changes in shopping habits and the looming shadow of Walmart, which coincidentally began its life within months of Kmart’s founding in 1962.

Struggling to compete with Walmart’s low prices and Target’s trendier offerings, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002 — becoming the largest U.S. retailer to take that step — and announced it would close more than 250 stores.

A few years later, hedge fund executive Edward Lampert combined Sears and Kmart and pledged to return them to their former greatness, but the recession and the rising dominance of Amazon contributed in derailing those goals. Sears filed for Chapter 11 in 2018 and currently has a handful of stores left in the U.S. where it once had thousands.

Kmarts continue to operate in Westwood, New Jersey; Bridgehampton, on New York’s Long Island, and Miami.

It didn’t have to end this way, according to Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University in New York and former CEO of Sears Canada. Trying to compete with Walmart on price was a foolish strategy, he said, and Lampert was criticized for not having a retail background and appearing more interested in stripping off the assets of the two chains for their cash value.

“It’s a study in greed, avarice and incompetence,” Cohen said. “Sears should have never gone away; Kmart was in worse shape, but not fatally so. And now they’re both gone.

“Retailers fall by the wayside sometimes because they’re selling things people don’t want to buy,” he continued. “In the case of Kmart, everything they used to sell, people are buying but they’re buying it from Walmart and Target.”

Transformco, which owns Kmart and Sears, did not respond to an email seeking comment and a phone number listed for the company was not taking messages.

Nationwide, some former Kmarts remain vacant while others have been replaced by other big-box stores, fitness centers, self-storage facilities, even churches. One former site in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is now a popular dine-in movie theater.

Employees at the Kmart in Avenel found out last month that the store would close.

Unlike 20 years ago, when news of impending Kmart closures around the country prompted an outpouring of support from loyal shoppers and a Detroit radio station even mounted a campaign to try and save a local store, the closing of the Avenel location was met mostly with an air of resignation.

“It’s maybe a little nostalgic because I’ve lived my whole life in this area, but it’s just another retail store closing,” said Jim Schaber, a resident of nearby Iselin who said his brother worked in the shoe department at Kmart for years. “It’s just another sign of people doing online shopping and not going out to the retail stores.”

The closing packed a little more of an emotional punch for Mike Jerdonek, a truck driver who recalled shopping at Kmart in Brooklyn and Queens in his younger days.

“It’s like history passing right in front of our eyes,” he said as he sat in his car outside the Avenel store. “When I was younger I didn’t have any money, so it was a good place to shop because the prices were cheap. And to see it gone right now, it’s kind of sad.”

Goodbye to a retail giant!

Tony

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Governor Kathy Hochul and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins

Dear Commons Community,

New York is relying on an influx of federal funds and higher-than-expected tax revenues to balance a $220 billion, one-year state budget, which went into law over the weekend.

Disagreements over policy issues held up passage of the spending plan past an April 1 deadline. The budget has often served over the decades as a vehicle for passing major policy legislation, and elected officials are using this year’s to tackle issues expected to resonate with voters during an election year.

The budget boosts pay for health care and home care workers, shaves 16 cents off the cost of a gallon of gas through December and helps New Yorkers with unpaid rent and utility bills.  Most important to readers of this blog are provisions for increased funding for education.

Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the new budget includes a record $31.5 billion in total school aid for school year 2023, the highest level of State aid ever, and $8.2 billion in support for higher education as part of this year’s Budget.  

“The opportunity to pursue a quality education is the silver bullet for so many New Yorkers,” Governor Hochul said. “With this budget we are going to unleash the power of higher education to lift up the people of our state by investing in our institutions and our teachers. Thanks to the help of Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and Speaker Heastie, this unprecedented level of funding will broaden access to opportunity in New York and build the education system of the future.”  Here are some of the education highlights.

Historic Education Funding
The State Budget is reflective of Governor Hochul’s strong commitment to education by providing additional funding and services to meet the needs of students, teachers, and schools amid the pandemic. The Budget is providing $31.5 billion in total school aid for school year 2023, the highest level of State aid ever. This investment represents a year-to-year increase of $2.1 billion, or 7.2 percent, compared to school year 2022, including a $1.5 billion or 7.7 percent Foundation Aid increase, representing the second year of Governor Hochul’s three-year commitment to fully fund Foundation Aid.

Universal Pre-Kindergarten
The Enacted Budget increases the State’s annual investment in high-quality prekindergarten to $1.1 billion, an increase of $125 million, or 13 percent. With this funding, school districts will be able to provide access to high-quality, full-day pre-kindergarten across the State for approximately 17,500 additional four-year-old children.

Academic and Mental Health Support
The State Budget includes a total of $100 million of matching funds over two years to be provided to school districts and BOCES with the highest needs to address student wellbeing and learning loss in response to the trauma brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes support for extended school day or school year programs, afterschool programs, mental health professionals and other locally determined initiatives.

Recruiting and Retaining Teachers
The Budget includes funding for new initiatives centered around expanding the workforce for teachers, as well as expanding the means by which professionals from other careers may become teachers.

The Budget creates a state teacher residency program to bring more teachers into schools sooner while providing greater opportunity for support and training as they embark on their careers. The State will also expand alternative teacher certification programs, such as the New York City Teaching Collaborative, to make it easier and more appealing for professionals in other careers to become teachers. Aspiring teachers would apprentice in high-need school districts while pursuing a master’s degree in their field.

The Budget includes initiatives to upskill current paraprofessionals and teaching assistants. There are more than 100,000 paraprofessionals and teaching assistants in New York State schools—a number that is rapidly rising. The Budget will provide grants for paraprofessionals who remain employed in a school district to pursue a teaching degree. School districts would be required to pair candidates with professional mentors.

In order to bolster the workforce and address the teacher shortage, the Budget will temporarily waive the income cap for certain retirees. There are 169,000 retired New York State Teachers, many of whom would be willing to return to teaching by waiving the current pension limit. Certain retirees would have the $35,000 limit removed, incentivizing teachers and other school workers to rejoin the workforce.

Green Education
In order to improve air quality for school-age New Yorkers, the State Budget requires that all new school bus purchases be zero-emissions by 2027 and all school buses on the road be zero-emissions by 2035. The State Budget will provide $500 million through the Environmental Bond Act to support school districts in purchases of zero-emission buses and related charging infrastructure including charging stations. Additionally, the State Budget authorizes school districts to lease or finance zero-emission buses for 12 years, more than double the current five-year limitation for diesel buses, in order to help districts meet this goal, and ensures Transportation Aid is provided on zero-emission buses and related charging infrastructure.

The Budget will build on Governor Hochul’s commitment to bring environmental sustainability to New York schools. The Clean Green Schools initiative provided in the “Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act” will serve more than 1,000 public schools and benefit nearly 1 million students. The program will drive significant infrastructure upgrades, such as geothermal heating and cooling, solar, green roofs, and indoor air quality/ventilation. This vital investment will not only boost the state’s economy but advance climate justice by bringing clean energy and a healthier indoor environment to under-resourced public schools.

SUNY and CUNY Operating Support
Governor Hochul is providing more than $500 million in new SUNY and CUNY operating support. This transformational increase includes money for both systems and greater supports for students across the State. This includes $68 million of one-time debt service relief for the three SUNY teaching hospitals.

New Faculty
The State Budget provides SUNY and CUNY with $106 million—$53 million for each system—to hire additional full-time faculty at both four-year colleges and community colleges. This investment will fund additional full-time faculty— at SUNY and CUNY, including support for CUNY’s plan to convert adjuncts to full-time faculty. In addition, the Budget includes a $110 million increase to fund fringe benefits for SUNY and CUNY staff.

Strategic Investments
The Budget allocates $100 million for nonrecurring strategic investments—$60 million for SUNY and $40 million for CUNY—to improve academic programs, increase enrollment, enhance student support services and modernize operations.

New Capital Support for SUNY and CUNY Facilities
The Budget invests $2.2 billion in new State-funded appropriations for capital projects at SUNY and CUNY—$1.2 billion for SUNY’s State-operated campuses, $879 million for CUNY’s senior colleges, and $102 million for community colleges across the State.

Supporting Community Colleges

The Budget includes a funding floor to protect community colleges from the loss of over $80 million in funding from declining enrollment.

Part-Time TAP
Governor Hochul recognizes that for many students, full-time higher education is not viable with other challenges like work or families. She also recognizes that many students need access to effective training courses to upskill in their current careers. To address this, the Governor is providing $150 million to expand the Part-time Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) to support part-time students in degree-seeking programs and non-degree training programs at community colleges.

Expanded Opportunity Programs for Students
The Governor is providing a $30 million increase in funding for higher education opportunity programs and training centers, to ensure those students who face academic and economic challenges are positioned for success.

Expanded Childcare on Campus
The Governor is providing $15.6 million in start-up funding to establish childcare centers on all remaining SUNY and CUNY campuses. This initiative will greatly expand access to higher education for more individuals.

Thank you Governor, State Assembly and State Senate!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Tesla CEO Elon Musk won’t be joining Twitter’s board of directors as previously announced even while he remains Twitter’s largest shareholder.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted the news late last night, which followed a weekend of Musk tweets suggesting possible changes to Twitter, including making the site ad-free. Nearly 90% of Twitter’s 2021 revenue came from ads. As reported by the Associated Press.

“Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective on 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he would not be joining the board,” Agrawal wrote in a reposted note originally sent to Tesla employees. “I believe this is for the best.”

Agrawal didn’t offer an explanation for Musk’s apparent decision. He said the board understood the risks of having Musk as a member. But it, “believed having Elon as a fiduciary of the company, where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward,” he wrote.

Musk posted a few tweets late yesterday, including one showing a meme saying, “In all fairness, your honor, my client was in goblin mode,” followed by one saying “Explains everything.” Another, later tweet was of an emoji with a hand over its mouth.

He now has a 9% stake in Twitter, raising questions about how he might try to reshape the social media platform as Twitter’s biggest shareholder.

Musk’s 80.5 million Twitter followers make him one of the most popular figures on the platform, rivaling pop stars like Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga. But his prolific tweeting has sometimes gotten him into trouble, such as when he has used it to promote his business ventures, rally Tesla loyalists, question pandemic measures and pick fights.

In one famous example, Musk apologized to a British cave explorer who alleged the Tesla CEO had branded him a pedophile by referring to him as “pedo guy” in an angry — and subsequently deleted — tweet. The explorer filed a defamation suit, although a Los Angeles jury later cleared Musk.

He’s also been locked in a long-running dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over his Twitter activity. Musk and Tesla in 2018 agreed to pay $40 million in civil fines and for Musk to have his tweets approved by a corporate lawyer after he tweeted about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share. That didn’t happen but the tweet caused Tesla’s stock price to jump. His lawyer has contended that the SEC is infringing on Musk’s free speech rights.

Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has said he doesn’t think Twitter is living up to free speech principles — an opinion shared by followers of Donald Trump and several right-wing political figures who’ve had their accounts suspended for violating Twitter content rules.

But what’s really has been driving Musk’s Twitter involvement isn’t clear. Other preoccupations with the service include arguing to make Twitter’s algorithm viewable by the public, widening the availability of “verified” Twitter accounts, and blasting a profile photo initiative involving non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

Musk has also called “crypto spam bots,” which search tweets for cryptocurrency related keywords then pose as customer support to empty user crypto wallets, the “most annoying problem on Twitter.”

Twitter’s CEO and other board members have praised Musk, suggesting they might take his ideas seriously.

Agrawal’s initial actions since taking over from co-founder Jack Dorsey in November have involved reorganizing divisions without making major changes. The company has long lagged behind its social media rivals and boasts far fewer users.

I think Tesla should stick to other ventures.

Tony

Emmanuel Macron vs Marine Le Pen in Runoff Election

Dear Commons Community,

With most votes from the 12-candidate first round counted by Monday morning, Emmanuel Macron had more than 27% and Marine Le Pen had 23%. Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon was third with close to 22%.  Macron may be ahead in the presidential race so far, but he warned his supporters that “nothing is done” and his runoff battle with far-right challenger Marine Le Pen will be a hard fight.   As reported by the Associated Press.

The duel starts today, after the two came out on top in Sunday’s first-round vote. The centrist Macron is heading to an economically depressed area of northern France where a majority of voters chose Le Pen, close to her electoral stronghold of Henin-Beaumont.

Meanwhile, Le Pen’s National Rally officials will meet Monday to plan strategy for the second round, scheduled on April 24. Le Pen summed up the standoff by saying voters are faced with “a fundamental choice between two opposing visions of the future.”

Macron already faced Le Pen in the presidential runoff five years ago. But all opinion polls show the leader of the National Rally is much closer this time to a potential win.

Macron said he wants to convince those who voted for the “extremes” or stayed at home that “our project responds much more seriously to their fears and to the challenges of the time.”

On her third attempt to become France’s first woman president, Le Pen was rewarded Sunday for her years-long effort to rebrand herself as more pragmatic and less extreme. Macron has accused Le Pen of pushing a dangerous manifesto of racist, ruinous policies. Le Pen wants to roll back some rights for Muslims, banning them from wearing headscarves in public, and to drastically reduce immigration from outside Europe.

In his speech on Sunday evening, Macron said his project would protect all religions and the freedom “to believe, or not.”

The rise of food and energy prices is at the core of Le Pen’s campaign, but Macron’s team argue she wouldn’t have the financial means to meet her promises.

“Our focus is now on the project and the values,” Senator Francois Patriat, a member of Macron’s party, said. The strategy consists in being “proud” of what has been done over the past five years, showing “a bit of humility,” and “above all, some fighting spirit,” he said.

Le Pen’s camp, meanwhile, is hoping to capitalize on anger at Macron over policies seen as favoring the rich.

“Now everything is possible,” Aurélien Lopez Liguori, a municipal councilor with Le Pen’s party in the southern city of Sete, told The AP. Compared with 2017, “now Macron has a record, a bad record.” He credited Le Pen’s proximity to the French during the campaign for closing the gap with Macron.

French Minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune told the AP “we should not think that it’s done.”

The battle will go “project against project,” he said.

Noting Macron’s “pro-European” project, Beaune recalled that five years ago “Le Pen was proposing — must not forget it — to leave the euro (area), to break Europe when Brexit and Frexit were trendy.”

Le Pen has dropped earlier threats to pull France out of the EU and abandon the euro if elected, but some of her proposals, including setting up a national border control, are contrary to EU rules.

Macron and Le Pen are to debate on national television next week.

Macron improved on his first-round showing in 2017, despite his presidency being rocked by the yellow vest protest movement over perceived economic injustice, the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The election outcome will have wide international influence as Europe struggles to contain the havoc wreaked by that war. Macron has strongly backed European Union sanctions on Russia while Le Pen has worried about their impact on French living standards. Macron also is a firm supporter of NATO and of close collaboration among the EU 27 members.

I think Macron has led his country well and deserves reelection!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

MacKensie Scott has built a philanthropic operation that is notable not just for the monumental size and speed of its gifts but also for its seemingly impenetrable secrecy. The New York Times had an article yesterday entitled, The Fortunes of MacKensie Scott, that tried to penetrate that secrecy.  Here is an excerpt.

“The billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott once recounted, in a television interview, a Chinese folk tale sometimes known as “The Lost Horse.” The story is about the reversals of fortune a farmer experiences after his prized stallion runs away. It can also be read as a summary of her philosophy.

“You never know where it’s going to end up. Good luck, bad luck, it’s not the way that we really need to look at things,” she told the television host Charlie Rose in 2013, after relating the parable to him.

The hardships we experience “are the things that we’ll look back and be the most grateful for,” she said during the interview. “They take us where we need to go.”

Her own life has taken sharp turns that have shaped her choices, including her extraordinary leap into philanthropy, which in under three years has exceeded $12 billion in grants.

A privileged child, she left a Connecticut boarding school after her family declared bankruptcy. In college, a loan from a friend helped keep her from dropping out. That allowed her to carry on studying creative writing under the acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison, who would become her mentor and help her achieve her own life’s goal of becoming a novelist as well.

And as a recent college graduate, working in recruitment at a financial firm, she married the man in the office next to hers, Jeff Bezos, and moved to Seattle to help him pursue his dream of an online retail empire — one that would make each of them among the wealthiest people in the world even after their marriage dissolved.

A few months after their divorce was finalized in 2019, a new shell company was quietly set up in Delaware called Lost Horse. Soon, representatives from Lost Horse were calling nonprofits around the country about multimillion-dollar donations from an anonymous giver.

The secret benefactor turned out, of course, to be Ms. Scott. Her sudden spate of giving has now reached 1,257 groups, from little-known charities to mainstream organizations like Habitat for Humanity, which last month received $436 million, her largest known gift.

The $12 billion in grants she has announced add up to more than the total lifetime giving of the late Eli Broad and his widow, Edythe, renowned for their generosity in Los Angeles, not to mention far richer couples, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Her ex-husband, Mr. Bezos, has pledged $10 billion to combat climate change. Forbes in January calculated that he had paid out $2.1 billion in charitable giving so far.

But as Ms. Scott’s fame for giving away money has grown, so, too, has the deluge of appeals for gifts from strangers and old friends alike. That clamor may have driven Ms. Scott’s already discreet operation further underground, with recent philanthropic announcements akin to sudden lightning bolts for unsuspecting recipients.

Attempts to reach Ms. Scott and her husband, Dan Jewett, a chemistry teacher, for this article by phone, email and letter, directly and through intermediaries, were met with silence.

Instead, The New York Times relied on interviews with more than two dozen friends, teachers, former colleagues and acquaintances from every chapter of her life, as well as public records and the rare interviews Ms. Scott has given, generally in conjunction with the publication of one of her novels. This article is also based on previously unpublished letters between Ms. Scott and Ms. Morrison, kept in the Nobel laureate’s archive at the Princeton University library.

“I guess the only way I will find out what will not work for me in life is by trying it,” she wrote to Ms. Morrison in September 1992, a few months after graduation and at a pivotal moment for her future. Waitressing in New York had proved more grueling than waiting tables in Princeton during college, leaving her too tired to write.

“I found myself with unpredictable and small chunks of time during which I either collapsed from exhaustion and frustration, or ruminated over the excruciating monotony of making and selling sandwiches,” she wrote, “and worried about how I might pay my rent with the nickels they gave me in exchange for my ennui.”

The week before, she had started work at an investment firm, with her future husband, Mr. Bezos.

Three decades after worrying about making rent, and even in the wake of her recent gifts, Ms. Scott, 52, has a net worth that hovers around $50 billion, according to Forbes magazine. She has set about dispersing her enormous fortune with unprecedented speed and directness to frontline charities and nonprofits with a stated emphasis on advancing social justice and combating inequality, all while trying to keep herself out of the spotlight.

“Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role,” she wrote in an essay last year, one in a series of deliberate public communiqués on her giving.

While Ms. Scott may be seeking to stay in the background, her funds are reshaping the nonprofit sector in the United States and beyond. She has become arguably the most consequential philanthropist in the world right now — one who is very much operating on her own terms.

She has indeed become the most consequential philanthropist in the world! 

Bless her!

Tony

Thomas Piketty

Dear Commons Community,

In 2013, the French economist Thomas Piketty, in his best seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a book eagerly received in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse, put forth the notion that returns on capital historically outstrip economic growth (his famous r>g formula). The upshot? The rich get richer, while the rest of us stay stuck in the mud. Now, nearly a decade later, Piketty is set to publish, A Brief History of Equality, in which he argues that we’re on a trajectory of greater, not less, equality and lays out his prescriptions for remedying our current corrosive wealth disparities. If the line from one book to the other looks slightly askew given the state of the world, then, Piketty suggests, you’re looking from the wrong vantage point. “I am relatively optimistic,” says Piketty, who is 50, “about the fact that there is a long-run movement toward more equality, which goes beyond the little details of what happens within a specific decade.”  In an interview with David Marchese, Piketty expands on his revised outlook.  Below is an excerpt. Questions in bold.

Tony

———————————————————-

In the time since “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” was published, there has been a huge proliferation in the number of American billionaires. Something like 130 new ones were added between 2020 and 2021 alone. That happened in the context of growing public discussion — and anger — about economic inequality. So what the hell happened? What enabled the ultrawealthy to flourish in the face of such widespread antipathy?

Let me put this very clearly: I understand that each year and each decade is tremendously important, but it’s also important not to forget about the general evolution. We have become much more equal societies in terms of political equality, economic equality, social equality, as compared with 100 years ago, 200 years ago. This movement, which began with the French and U.S. revolutions, I think it is going to continue.

Of course there are structural factors that make it difficult: the system of political finance, the structure of media finance, the basic democratic institutions are less democratic than they should be. This makes things complicated. But it’s always been complicated. The Supreme Court for decades made it impossible to create a progressive income tax. They were fine with the racial segregation, but having a progressive income tax was unconstitutional. In the end, it took 20 years to change the Constitution, but

OK, so you’re saying that the long-term trend is toward more equality. But in 1990 there were 66 U.S. billionaires. Now there are more than 700. Over the last 40 years or so, chief-executive pay is up more than 900 percent, even accounting for inflation. The average worker’s pay over the same period is up only 12 percent. You believe we should be thinking of those facts as road bumps on the path to greater economic equality?

If you take the big picture, yes. But the other lesson from the big picture, from history, is that it takes major political mobilization to keep moving in the direction of equality. In the United States today, the democratic institutions, the rules of the game, are set up in a manner that, indeed, the rich are entrenched. But if you look at opinion polls about a billionaire tax in the U.S. — among Democratic and also Republican voters — you have said that they strongly or somewhat agreed that “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs.”

So is the political system able to respond to this, or is it rigged? The lesson from history is that when the political system is rigged, at some point you have a reaction, you have a mobilization.

What did you think of the billionaire tax that Biden just proposed?

It would have been better before his election. If you had told the American public before the elections that he wanted a wealth tax — which again is something that is very high in opinion polls — this would have been much easier. This could have forced the Democratic Congress to take a stand. It’s more complicated now. But if it works, it’s better than nothing.

I understand what you’re saying about the popularity of a proposed billionaire tax, but do you believe America is at a place where a phrase like “wealth redistribution,” which is what you’re talking about, is broadly politically plausible?

When you say Americans don’t like redistribution, some certainly don’t like it, but in the 20th century, high, progressive taxation of income and inherited wealth was to a large extent invented in the United States. That’s why it always makes me skeptical when people say, Americans don’t like this, don’t like that. Look at history! There’s no deterministic reason why a given country should be this or that. Sometimes, in my country and in the U.S. also, people tell you, “Look, we are not Swedes.” This is used as an argument to say that there is a culture of equality in Sweden, which we would never have.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen

Dear Commons Community,

Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario has begun to blur in the campaign’s closing stages. The pain of inflation and of food and energy prices that are hitting low-income households particularly hard have roared back as dominant election themes. They could drive many voters today into the arms of right-of-center leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Macron, now 44, trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker who, unlike Le Pen, is a fervent proponent of European collaboration was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.

In courting voters, Macron has economic successes to point to: The French economy is rebounding faster than expected from the battering of COVID-19, with a 2021 growth rate of 7%, the highest since 1969. Unemployment is down to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II, Macron also got a polling bump, with people rallying around the wartime leader.

But the 53-year-old Le Pen is a now a more polished, formidable and savvy political foe as she makes her third attempt to become France’s first woman president. And she has campaigned particularly hard and for months on cost of living concerns, capitalizing on the issue that pollsters say is foremost on voters’ minds.

Le Pen also pulled off two remarkable feats. Despite her plans to sharply curtail immigration and dial back some rights for Muslims in France, she nevertheless appears to have convinced growing numbers of voters that she is no longer the dangerous, racist nationalist extremist that critics, including Macron, accuse her of being.

She’s done that partly by diluting some of her rhetoric and fieriness. She also had outside help: A presidential run by Eric Zemmour, an even more extreme far-right rabble-rouser with repeated convictions for hate speech, has had the knock-on benefit for Le Pen of making her look almost mainstream by comparison.

Secondly, and also stunning: Le Pen has adroitly sidestepped any significant blowback for her previous perceived closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She went to the Kremlin to meet him during her last presidential campaign in 2017. But in the wake of the war in Ukraine, that potential embarrassment doesn’t appear to have turned Le Pen’s supporters against her. She has called the invasion “absolutely indefensible” and said Putin’s behavior cannot be excused “in any way.”

Barring a monumental surprise, both Macron and Le Pen are expected to advance again from the first-round field of 12 candidates, to set up a winner-takes-all rematch in the second-round vote on April 24. Polls suggest that far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is likely to finish out of the running in third place.

In early March, pollsters had Macron leading Le Pen by double digits. Although a Le Pen victory still appears improbable, much of Macron’s advantage has subsequently evaporated. Kept busy by the war in Ukraine, Macron may be paying a price for his somewhat subdued campaign, which made him look aloof to some voters.

The results of today’s French election will be closely watched!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A class-action lawsuit alleges that Walden University engaged in a scheme to lure students, especially those who were Black and female, into a cycle of debt and despair.  The suit claims that Walden University not only misrepresented the costs and credits required for an advanced degree but also engaged in “reverse redlining” by targeting minority communities.  The National Student Legal Defense Network, which is representing the students with the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax, claims that Walden violated not only consumer protection laws, but also Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by preying on minorities and women and misrepresenting the costs and credits required for getting an advanced degree.  Here is an excerpt of an article as reported in The New York Times:

“The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Maryland, charges that Walden intentionally stretched out the process of completing a capstone project, requiring students to re-enroll for semesters on end, paying tuition all the while, while they waited for approval from a three-member committee. As a result, the suit estimates, the school overcharged students by more than $28.5 million.

“Walden lured in students with the promise of an affordable degree, then strung them along to increase profits,” said Aaron Ament, the president of the National Student Legal Defense Network. “As if that’s not bad enough, Walden specifically targeted Black students and women for this predatory program, masking its discrimination as a focus on diversity.”

The lawsuit further claims that the school engaged in “reverse redlining,” a practice usually associated with housing discrimination, by targeting minority communities with its advertising and tailoring it to appeal to women.

Walden, which has faced similar lawsuits in the past, has denied any wrongdoing. Its mission, it says, is to serve a diverse community, and the school says it has succeeded in that mission. In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, it said that in 2020, it awarded doctorate degrees to a greater number of Black and female students than any other school in the United States.

In the court filing, the university said the suit was a “baseless and inflammatory attempt to repackage Walden’s school mission into calculated discrimination.”

In response to questions about the lawsuit, a spokeswoman for Walden said it would “continue to work to ensure that those groups of people that have been typically underrepresented in higher education know that attaining an education and expanding their access to opportunities is possible at Walden University.”

The claim that Walden violated students’ civil rights is an unusual strategy for proving predatory practices. Critics of the for-profit college sector have often denounced its tactics as impinging on civil rights when pressing for administrative or policy changes, but Title VI and reverse-redlining claims are notoriously difficult to prove in court, in part because of the need to prove intent.

Eileen Connor, the director of Harvard’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has pursued one of the only other lawsuits to make Title VI claims on behalf of students at for-profit colleges and universities, said courts were “suspicious of, if not hostile to, these reverse-redlining claims.”

“It’s not that the claims don’t have merit or are not worth bringing,” she said. “But to stop relentless targeting of people of color by predatory schools, it’s going to require greater involvement from regulators like the Department of Education and the Federal Trade Commission.”

These poor students!

Tony

Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Dear Commons Community,

David Leonhardt, staff writer for The New York Times had an article on Wednesday describing what he called: “The G.O.P.’s Putin Wing.  He starts with Donald Trump who has admired Putin for years even during the more recent Ukraine invasion.  Leonhardt describes how Trump’s position has trickled down to other Republicans.  Here is an excerpt.

“Donald Trump turned Vladimir Putin into a popular figure among a significant segment of Republican voters. As a candidate, president and ex-president, Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, calling him “strong,” “savvy” and “genius.” Trump has also echoed Putin’s ideology, by harshly criticizing NATO.

Taking their cue from Trump, some Republican voters began to view Putin more favorably. A YouGov poll in January found that Republicans viewed Putin more favorably than they viewed President Biden, Kamala Harris or Nancy Pelosi.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the situation, damaging his popularity in the U.S., even among Republicans. If anything, many Republican voters say they wish the Biden administration would take more aggressive action to help Ukraine, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet Trump’s effect on Putin’s popularity has not entirely disappeared: There is still a meaningful faction of Republican elites who feel an affinity for the Russian president.

Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican and frequent Trump critic, describes it as “the Putin wing of the G.O.P.” It both admires him as a strong leader and likes his right-wing nationalism, including his opposition to NATO, Western liberalism and L.G.B.T. rights.

For now, this wing remains on the party’s fringe, with little ability to affect policy. Senator Lindsey Graham has called Putin’s defenders “outliers,” while Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, has described Putin as an evil dictator who is murdering people.

But the G.O.P.’s Putin wing still has influence. It is affecting coverage by the most important news source for Republicans voters: Fox News. It seems to be shaping the behavior of another major corporation: Koch Industries. And Trump remains a leading contender to win the 2024 Republican nomination, which suggests the party’s Putin-friendly faction may not remain on the fringe.”

The Democrats should try to exploit the Putin fringe of the G.O.P. in the 2022 elections.

Tony