Illustration by Jordan Awan for The New York Times; photograph by Roman Milert / EyeEm via Getty

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an opinion piece today commenting on the corporations that have been financing Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.  Alex Kingsbury, who is on the Times editorial board, states in it:

“In the year and a half since the attack, rivers of cash from once skittish donors have resumed flowing to election deniers. Sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes just a thousand. But it adds up. In the month of April alone, the last month for which data is available, Fortune 500 companies and trade organizations gave more than $1.4 million to members of Congress who voted not to certify the election results, according to an analysis by the transparency group Accountable.US. AT&T led the pack, giving $95,000 to election objectors…

We tend to think of the past and future threat to elections as coming from voters for Donald Trump and those whom they’d elect to office. But the success of these politicians also depends on money. And a lot of money from corporations like Boeing, Koch Industries, Home Depot, FedEx, UPS and General Dynamics has gone to politicians who reject the 2020 election results based on lies told by the former president, according to a tally kept by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW.

All told, as of this week, corporations and industry groups gave almost $32 million to the House and Senate members who voted to overturn the election and to the G.O.P. committees focused on the party’s congressional campaigns. The top 10 companies that gave money to those members, according to CREW’s analysis of campaign finance disclosures, are Koch Industries, Boeing, Home Depot, Valero Energy, Lockheed Martin, UPS, Raytheon, Marathon Petroleum, General Motors and FedEx. All of those companies, with the exception of Koch Industries and FedEx, once said they’d refrain from donating to politicians who voted to reject the election results.

Of the 249 companies that promised not to fund the 147 senators and representatives who voted against any of the results, fewer than half have stuck to their promise, according to CREW.”

Kingsbury also gives kudos to the 85 corporations that stuck to their guns and still refuse to fund the seditious, including Nike, PepsiCo, Lyft, Cisco, Prudential, Marriott, Target and Zillow. That’s what responsible corporate citizenship looks like. It’s also patriotic.

We’re going to need more patriotic companies for what’s coming. Not only are Republican lawmakers who refused to certify the election results still in office; their party is poised to make gains during the midterm elections. Their electoral fortunes represent not only an endorsement from voters who support their efforts to undermine our democracy; they also represent the explicit financial support of hundreds of corporations that pour money into their campaign coffers.”

He concludes:

“Money in politics is the way of the world, especially in this country. But as the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation has made clear, Mr. Trump’s attempted coup was orders of magnitude different from the normal rough-and-tumble of politics. Returning to the status quo where corporate money flowed to nearly every politician elected to office isn’t just unseemly; it is helping to fund a continuing attack on our democracy.”

Yes and shame on these corporate sponsors.

Excellent commentary that should be read!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

While families on tight budgets struggle to pay the sky-high price of gas,  five oil companies more than tripled their profits in the first quarter of 2022.  Here is an analysis courtesy of the CAP.

Since Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which disrupted the global supply of fossil fuels and caused oil and gas shortages worldwide, oil and gas giants have quietly enjoyed unprecedented record profits. While people across the United States have seen gas prices as high as $6 per gallon—stretching budgets thin and driving worsening inflation—the oil majors have been absolutely raking in money, lining CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets with profits.

It is hard to overstate how profitable the war in Ukraine and the resulting financial pain have been for oil executives. Companies already benefited from inflated gas prices in 2021 as the economy bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns—in fact, the top 25 companies made more than $205 billion in profits in 2021—but the recently announced first-quarter profits for 2022 are even more astounding.

The top five oil companies alone—Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips—brought in more than 300 percent more in profits than in the first quarter of 2021. That is a total of more than $35 billion in profits in just three months. In fact, these five companies’ first-quarter profits alone are equivalent to almost 28 percent of what Americans spent to fill up their gas tanks in the same time period.

Gas prices are too high for families on tight budgets, but Congress can take action now—including directing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate price gouging, adopting a “use-it-or-lose-it” policy for drilling on public lands, and implementing a windfall profits tax—to help tackle high prices while reducing the United States’ reliance on volatile fossil energy markets and addressing ever-worsening climate change.

Oil executives should not be able to profit off everyone else’s financial pain as their companies earn record profits. Congress must provide some relief to consumers—and hold oil companies accountable.

Oil and gas corporations—and the trade groups they fund to lobby on their behalf—would have people believe that they need access to more places to drill, better market signals, and fewer regulations in order to make the investments needed to help lower prices. But the truth is that they are flush with the cash that could be used to make those very investments—a fact they are not even trying to hide. For example, the CEO of Shell is on record admitting to profiteering off Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The performance we are seeing this quarter, of course, has been helped by the macro, and the macro has been impacted by the war in Ukraine. – Shell CEO Ben van Beurden

Instead of using this cash to make the investments needed to help lower the price of oil or to fulfill their climate pledges, companies are giving most of it back to their already extremely wealthy shareholders in the form of stock buybacks or giving it back to themselves in the form of executive bonuses. Last year, 28 of the top oil and gas CEOs raked in $394 million in compensation—a nearly $45 million increase since 2020.

So just how rich have these companies gotten during the first three months of 2022?*

• Shell’s profits were 280 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2021.
• Shell made $19.3 billion in total profits in 2021.
• Shell bought back $8.5 billion in stocks for wealthy shareholders.
• Shell cut 5,000 jobs from its workforce in 2021.
• Shell’s CEO has not been shy about admitting that Russia’s war on Ukraine helped the company’s profits, saying on a recent shareholder call that “well, you know, can I also say that the performance we are seeing this quarter, of course, has been helped by the macro, and the macro has been impacted by the war in Ukraine.”

• ExxonMobil’s profits were 320 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2021.
• ExxonMobil made $23 billion in total profits in 2021.
• ExxonMobil pledged to buy back $30 billion in stocks for wealthy shareholders through 2023.
• ExxonMobil cut 9,000 jobs from its workforce in 2021 to “cut costs.”
• Despite being one of the most profitable corporations in the United States, ExxonMobil paid an effective federal income tax rate of just more than 2 percent in 2021, and that is not for a lack of funds. ExxonMobil’s Chief Financial Officer Kathy Mikells underscored just how much the company expected to profit in the first quarter of 2022 and how that would benefit shareholders, saying in early March that “we expect to generate over $100 billion in excess cash flow beyond meeting our capital program and current dividend, and so I would say we have a very robust forward plan and we expect to have sustained excess cash flow and increasing shareholder distributions.”

• Chevron’s profits were 380 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2021.
• Chevron made $15.6 billion in total profits in 2021.
• Chevron plans to buy back $10 billion in stocks for wealthy shareholders by the end of 2022.
• Chevron cut its workforce by 5,000 jobs in 2021.
• Despite being one of the most profitable corporations in the United States, Chevron paid an effective federal income tax rate of less than 2 percent in 2021. Moreover, Chevron’s CEO has been upfront about the profits they are raking in, saying amidst rising gas prices in January that “the last two quarters have been the best two quarters the company has ever seen.”

• BP’s profits were 240 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2021.
• BP made $12.8 billion in total profits in 2021.
• BP expanded its stock buyback plan to $2.5 billion for wealthy shareholders in 2022.
• BP cut its workforce by 2,000 jobs in 2021.
• BP executives attributed their record profits to “exceptional oil and gas trading” conditions—conditions that included Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Americans suffering record-high gas prices.

• ConocoPhillips’ profits were 480 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2021.
• ConocoPhillips made $8 billion in total profits in 2021.
• ConocoPhillips plans to buy back $10 billion in stocks for wealthy shareholders in 2022.
• ConocoPhillips’ workforce numbers stayed essentially flat in 2021.
• ConocoPhillips’ has tripled its lobbying expenditures to lock in oil and gas development for decades to come at its proposed Willow project in the Western Arctic. The proposed project threatens to erase the climate benefits of renewables on public lands and waters and would require the installation of artificial “chillers” to refreeze the Arctic’s melting permafrost in order to build the infrastructure needed to drill for oil. The company has also been under fire for a recent gas leak that “led to the temporary removal of 300 personnel [and] alarmed residents in the nearby village of Nuiqsut.”

What Congress can do now

The United States needs to move to a 100 percent clean energy economy to ensure lower costs and true energy independence in the long term. But Congress can and must act right now to help families struggling with high gas prices and to hold accountable these oil and gas companies that are profiting off that pain. Congress should enact the following three policies:

1. Direct the FTC to investigate any possible price gouging activity by the major oil and gas companies. There are a number of existing bills in Congress that would authorize this, and the Biden administration called for it late last year.
2. Enact a use-it-or-lose-it policy for unused federal oil and gas leases and permits. Right now, oil and gas CEOs are sitting idle on 12 million acres of leased U.S. public lands and more than 9,000 approved but unused permits to drill. Oil and gas companies must either use or give up their unproductive public lands so they can be managed for better uses such as conservation, climate mitigation and adaptation, outdoor recreation, or renewable energy.
3. Implement a windfall profits tax to provide direct relief to consumers and align incentives for oil companies. This policy is popular—supported by more than 80 percent of voters in a recent poll—and would be designed to ensure that the tax is borne by wealthy shareholders rather than consumers.

A global pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, and a lack of incentives for subsidized companies to produce more oil supply has meant high costs for families—and big profits for Big Oil. U.S. reliance on fossil fuels is a national security threat. Fossil fuel prices are volatile by design, vulnerable to international conflicts, and allow large corporations to profiteer off war on the backs of American families. The United States cannot drill its way to energy independence; it must transition to homegrown, clean, renewable energy.

But Congress can act now to get the FTC to investigate any possible price gouging, require that companies use or give up public lands for more productive uses, and pass a windfall profits tax that ensures the American people get a share of Big Oil’s profits. As the summer driving season approaches, Big Oil cannot be allowed to continue to line its pockets while families suffer. It is past time for Congress to act.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has two articles this morning in its electronic edition highlighting the widening gap between men and women completing undergraduate degree programs.   The exodus of men away from college has been taking place for decades and accelerated during the pandemic. And it has enormous implications, for colleges and for society at large. Here is an excerpt from one of the articles.

For decades now, men have trailed women in college completion. Barely 40 percent of men earn a bachelor’s degree in four years, compared with just over half of women, federal data show. Even fewer Black and Hispanic men graduate on time — 21 percent and 32 percent, respectively.

But the pandemic, which has led to a disproportionate enrollment decline among male students, is expected to deepen the divide. Nationwide, male enrollment has fallen 8.6 percent over the past two years, while female enrollment has dropped by 6.5 percent, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. There were nearly three million more women enrolled in college this spring than men.

If this trend continues, it will have enormous consequences for the economy and society at large, affecting everything from unemployment rates to marriage patterns.

Yet it remains to be seen if colleges will respond to the growing gap in degree completion with the same urgency with which they’ve responded to recent enrollment losses. Historically, efforts to elevate men as an endangered class have met with resistance from both the right and the left, with conservatives accusing colleges of trying to “fix” men, and liberals arguing that men don’t need saving.

“People believe that men are already in positions of privilege, so why would we invest time and money in trying to help them?” said Charles Robbins, who created a male-student-success team at Stony Brook University a decade ago this month.

“While that basic premise is true,” Robbins continued, “the reality is that if there was any other cohort of students that was not doing well, everybody would be up in arms, asking, ‘Why aren’t we doing anything?’”

One reason men aren’t often seen as needing a leg up is because for most of the history of higher education, men earned a majority of the degrees.

In fact, as recently as 1972, men accounted for 56 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded by American colleges.

But by 1982, women were leading in bachelor’s-degree completion, a position they’ve held ever since. Women now account for more than 60 percent of the associate and master’s degrees awarded in the United States, 58 percent of the bachelor’s degrees, and 55 percent of the doctorates.

It’s not that fewer men are graduating college than 50 years ago. Graduation rates have risen for both sexes since the ’70s — they’ve just accelerated much more quickly for women. In 1970, 20 percent of men and 12 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 34 had a bachelor’s degree; in 2021, 36 percent of men and 46 percent of women had one.

This gender imbalance, which cuts across race and socioeconomic class, and is not unique to the United States, has been attributed to a variety of factors, both sociocultural and academic. Some trace the gap to the early grades, where boys lag in literacy skills and are much more likely than girls to be disciplined or referred to special education. Others point to gender stereotyping and cultural messaging, which tell young men (particularly white men) that they hold all the power and shouldn’t have to work hard — or seek help — to succeed.

“The message we give to women is: ‘You’re going to have to work really hard to overcome obstacles,’” said Keith Edwards, a consultant to colleges on male identity issues. “The message we give to men is: ‘If you have to go to class and study, there’s something wrong with you.’”

When Edwards was director of campus life at Macalester College, he interviewed male college students to learn about their experiences. They talked about studying on the sly, telling their friends they were headed for a hookup, then sneaking off to the library instead.

“They think, ‘All these other men are crushing it, but I am struggling,’” said Edwards. “It leads to a lot of mental-health issues.”

Popular portrayals of college life reinforce the message that school isn’t to be taken seriously, Edwards said. When he asks young men today what shaped their image of college, they immediately point to Animal House, a movie that was made before they were born. They picture John Belushi, in a “College” sweatshirt, chugging a bottle of Jack Daniels, then smashing it.

“Men arrive with the attitude that college is about partying, competitive heterosexual sex, not preparing for academics, and breaking the rules,” he said.

Colleges also come in for their share of the blame, with critics accusing them of creating environments that are hostile to young men. They argue that a focus on gender equity and sexual-assault prevention has led to the censoring of speech deemed “politically incorrect,” and to the treatment of young men as predators.

“I feel that college is not geared toward us,” said Thomas Efrem, a junior at the University of Washington who is part of the Brotherhood Initiative. “There’s a lot of rhetoric against the patriarchy — I get it, but it feels like people point the finger at us.”

Efrem said that when he tries to challenge the conventional wisdom around issues related to gender equality, offering research to support his points, professors and students shut him down.

“There’s a lot of narrative pushing, and I don’t like that,” he said.

Colleges have also come under fire for offering programs and seminars — some student-driven — aimed at freeing young men from the pressures and constraints of traditional masculinity, often referred to as “toxic masculinity.” To college’s conservative critics, such training amounts to emasculation, an attempt to “reprogram” college-aged men to behave more like college-aged women.

The notion that men are a privileged group that doesn’t need help getting through college is what Shaun Harper, an expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Southern California, has called the “Model Gender Majority Myth.” Like the “model-minority myth” affecting Asians, this line of thinking assumes that advantage is distributed evenly across a demographic group, in this case, men.

In the college context, the Model Gender Majority Myth refers to the fact that men of color tend to face higher barriers to graduation than their white counterparts.

Of course, most college leaders are well aware of these disparities, even if the general public isn’t. That’s why the limited number of student-success programs that exist for men typically focus on Black men, or men of color more broadly.

The University of Washington’s Brotherhood Initiative is one of the nation’s most comprehensive programs for men of color, offering two yearlong seminars, peer mentoring, internships and research opportunities, and social events to cohorts of 30 students each year.

Joe Lott, the associate professor who created the initiative in 2016 to provide a road map to college for his own young sons, said the program provides a community for men of color on the predominantly white campus, where just 3 percent of students are Black and 9 percent are Latino. It also equips them with the tools and support to navigate a campus where they may be seen as threatening or less capable than their white peers, Lott said.

“They’re in an environment that wasn’t created for them,” Lott said. “It is easy to internalize messages and act in a way that your environment tells you to act.”

When the program started, there was a ten-percentage-point graduation gap between underrepresented minority males at the University of Washington and their white peers. Six years later, that gap has nearly closed for program participants.

But cohort-based programs for men remain relatively rare on college campuses. More common are mentoring programs, which match young men with the role models many lack in an effort to make it easier for them to seek support.

“We joke about men not asking for directions because it’s true,” said William Cummings, a professor of humanities and cultural studies and chairman of the Status of Men Presidential Advisory Committee at the University of South Florida, which piloted a peer-mentoring program this year. “Women are the power users of all our services. Men just don’t seem to think they need help or are uncomfortable getting it.”

Mahmoud Youssef, a senior finance major who volunteered as a mentor this academic year, said he would have benefitted from the guidance of an upperclassman when he was a freshman. As an international student from Egypt, he struggled with registering for classes, identifying clubs to join, and even finding stores where he could purchase familiar foods.

Over the course of the year, Youssef helped his eight mentees work through an assortment of academic and personal issues. Most “just needed someone to listen to them, to release things from inside,” he said. Still, Youssef said he won’t seek help for himself, “unless I 100-percent need it.”

“I like to help others, but I don’t like to ask for help,” he admitted.

At USF, years of efforts to raise graduation rates have virtually eliminated completion gaps by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Yet the gender gap remains, with women nearly 25-percent more likely to graduate on time than men.

Even so, the mentoring program was a tough sell, especially since the most underperforming group on the Florida campus is white men.

“The fact that white men are not doing well at USF doesn’t cause too much concern,” among many faculty and staff members, said Cummings. Carmen Goldsmith, executive liaison to the vice president for student success, says white men are “even harder for people to get behind, because it’s an even more privileged group” than men in general.

Robbins, of Stony Brook University, faced similar pushback when he created his male-success team and began interviewing groups of men about their challenges.

“We needed to explain over and over again why it was important for half the population to be educated,” said Robbins, who is now the college’s executive director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power.

Campus leaders ultimately opted not to create a dedicated program for men, but to target existing resources toward them instead. They advertised student services in places where men tend to congregate, such as dining halls and sports arenas, and held pop-up advising sessions in the gym, offering degree-progress reports from the side of treadmills.

That outreach, along with efforts to educate faculty, staff, and student leaders about the factors holding men back, have helped narrow the graduation gap between male and female students from 17 to seven percentage points over the past six years.

But the ongoing pandemic, coupled with low unemployment rates and persistent doubts about the value of a college degree, have made retaining men in college harder than ever. This year, Compton College, in California, hired what it believes to be the nation’s first director of Black and males of color success, in part to help “reclaim” the more than 650 Black men who left between the fall of 2019 and fall of 2021, reducing Black male enrollment to just 269 students.”

Our colleges have to do more to attract and support male students especially those who are Black and Latino!

Tony

Brit Hume

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume suggested that many elected Republicans are secretly hoping that the Jan. 6 House select committee ruins Donald Trump’s chances of running for president again in 2024.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is presenting its findings in a series of hearings this month. In the second hearing on Monday, it laid out evidence that Trump and his inner circle knew his claims of a rigged election were false but pushed them widely anyway, utilizing them to raise millions of dollars while seeking to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.

During analysis on Monday’s “Special Report,” host Bret Baier asked Hume if the committee was trying to make a legal or political case against Trump.

“Well, I think they’re doing both,” Hume said.

“What strikes me about this, Bret, is that if they succeed ― either by damaging him or staining him such that he is either unable for legal or political reasons to run again ― they might end up finding out that they’ve done the Republican Party a great service,” he added.

“Because I think a great many Republicans think they can’t win with Trump at the head of the ticket again.

“They’re afraid of his supporters and don’t want to come out against him directly. But they’d like him to go away. If the effect of this committee is to make his possible candidacy go away, I think a great many Republicans would privately be very glad.”

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans ― Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), both of whom have loudly criticized Trump at risk to their own political careers.

Tim Miller, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and writer for The Bulwark, commented that Hume’s analysis was pretty close to the mark.

Hume’s commentary also attracted criticism from conservatives and Fox News viewers.   

Seventy percent of Americans wish Trump would just go away!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Over the weekend, The New York Times had an article which raised the question as to whether Joe Biden should run for reelection in 2024.  Based on a number of interviews, the article refers to dozens of Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters who expressed doubts about the president’s ability to take on another presidential bid.  Here is an excerpt.

“Midway through the 2022 primary season, many Democratic lawmakers and party officials are venting their frustrations with President Biden’s struggle to advance the bulk of his agenda, doubting his ability to rescue the party from a predicted midterm trouncing and increasingly viewing him as an anchor that should be cut loose in 2024.

As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.

Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.

“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” said Steve Simeonidis, a Democratic National Committee member from Miami. Mr. Biden, he said, “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”

….Even some of the earliest supporters of Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign are now questioning whether he can lead the party through another daunting election cycle against Mr. Trump.

Ann Hart, a Democratic Party co-chairwoman in Iowa’s Allamakee County, endorsed Mr. Biden ahead of the state’s 2020 caucuses and introduced him at a campaign stop in a neighboring county. Ms. Hart, a retired school principal, said she could not imagine how Mr. Biden manages the presidency at 79 years old.

“I get asked to run for things — are you kidding? I’m 64,” she said. “We need youth. So I kind of admire him wanting to take this on and I hope he’ll pass the torch.”

Shelia Huggins, a lawyer from Durham, N.C., who is a member of the Democratic National Committee, put it more bluntly.

“Democrats need fresh, bold leadership for the 2024 presidential race,” she said. “That can’t be Biden.”

Whether Biden runs again would likely depend upon who the front-runners are for the Republicans.  In any case, a critical issue looms for the Democratic Party. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd compared Donald Trump to Frankenstein’s creation in her column yesterday and concluded that the monster was the better of the two.  Here is an excerpt:

“I’m reading “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley for school and the monster is magnificent. He starts out with an elegance of mind and sweetness of temperament, reading Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and gathering firewood for a poor family. But his creator, Victor Frankenstein, abandons him and refuses him a mate to calm his loneliness. The creature finds no one who does not recoil in fear and disgust from his stitched-together appearance, his yellow skin and eyes, and black lips. Embittered, he seeks revenge on his creator and the world.

“Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded,” he laments. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.”

Before he disappears into the Arctic at the end of the book, he muses that once he had “high thoughts of honour,” until his “frightful catalogue” of malignant deeds piled up.

Shelley’s monster, unlike ours, has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc. He knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage. Our monster’s malignity stems from pure narcissistic psychopathy — and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.

It never for a moment crossed Donald Trump’s mind that an American president committing sedition would be a debilitating, corrosive thing for the country. It was just another way for the Emperor of Chaos to burnish his title.

We listened Thursday night to the frightful catalogue of Trump’s deeds. They are so beyond the pale, so hard to fathom, that in some ways, it’s all still sinking in.

The House Jan. 6 committee’s prime-time hearing was not about Trump as a bloviating buffoon who stumbled into the presidency. It was about Trump as a callous monster, and many will come away convinced that he should be criminally charged and put in jail. Lock him up!

The hearing drove home the fact that Trump was deadly serious about overthrowing the government. If his onetime lap dog Mike Pence was strung up on the gallows outside the Capitol for refusing to help Trump hold onto his office illegitimately, Trump said, so be it. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he remarked that day, chillingly, noting that his vice president “deserves it.”

….

It’s mind-boggling that so many people still embrace Trump when it’s so plain that he cares only about himself. He was quick to throw Ivanka off the sled on Friday, indicating her opinion did not count since she “was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. She had long since checked out.”

Let some conservatives dismiss the hearings as “A Snooze Fest.” Let Fox News churlishly refuse to run them.

The hearing was mesmerizing, describing a horror story with predatory Proud Boys and a monster at its center that even Mary Shelley could have appreciated. The ratings were boffo, with nearly 20 million viewers.

Caroline Edwards, the tough Capitol Police officer who suffered a concussion, was sprayed in her eyes and got back up to return to the fight, described a hellscape.

“I was slipping in people’s blood,” she recalled. “You know, I — I was catching people as they fell. I — you know, I was — it was carnage.”

In his dystopian Inaugural speech, Trump promised to end “American carnage.” Instead, he delivered it. Now he needs to be held accountable for his attempted coup — and not just in the court of public opinion.”

A monster indeed.  Watch the House January 6 Committee Hearings!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

For almost 40 years starting in the 1930s, as government researchers purposely let hundreds of Black men die of syphilis in Alabama so they could study the disease, the Milbank Memorial Fund in New York covered funeral expenses for the deceased. The payments were vital to survivors of the victims in a time and place ravaged by poverty and racism.

Altruistic as they might sound, the checks — $100 at most — were no simple act of charity: They were part of an almost unimaginable scheme. To get the money, widows or other loved ones had to consent to letting doctors slice open the bodies of the dead men for autopsies that would detail the ravages of a disease the victims were told was “bad blood.”

Fifty years after the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study was revealed to the public and halted, the Milbank Memorial Fund, publicly apologized Saturday to descendants of the study’s victims. As reported by The Associated Press.

“It was wrong. We are ashamed of our role. We are deeply sorry,” said the president of the fund, Christopher F. Koller.

The apology and an accompanying monetary donation to a descendants’ group, the Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation, were presented during a ceremony in Tuskegee at a gathering of children and other relatives of men who were part of the study.

Endowed in 1905 by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, part of a wealthy and well-connected New York family, the fund was one of the nation’s first private foundations. The nonprofit philanthropy had some $90 million in assets in 2019, according to tax records, and an office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. With an early focus on child welfare and public health, today it concentrates on health policy at the state level.

Koller said there’s no easy way to explain how its leaders in the 1930s decided to make the payments, or to justify what happened. Generations later, some Black people in the United States still fear government health care because of what’s called the “Tuskegee effect.”

“The upshot of this was real harm,” Koller told the Associated Press in an interview before the apology ceremony. “It was one more example of ways that men in the study were deceived. And we are dealing as individuals, as a region, as a country, with the impact of that deceit.”

Lillie Tyson Head’s late father Freddie Lee Tyson was part of the study. She’s now president of the Voices group. She called the apology “a wonderful gesture and a wonderful thing” even if it comes 25 years after the U.S. government apologized for the study to its final survivors, who have all since died.

“It’s really something that could be used as an example of how apologies can be powerful in making reparations and restorative justice be real,” said Head.

Despite her leadership of the descendants group, Head said she didn’t even know about Milbank’s role in the study until Koller called her one day last fall. The payments have been discussed in academic studies and a couple books, but the descendants were unaware, she said.

“It really was something that caught me off guard,” she said. Head’s father left the study after becoming suspicious of the research, years before it ended, and didn’t receive any of the Milbank money, she said, but hundreds of others did.

Other prominent organizations, universities including Harvard and Georgetown and the state of California have acknowledged their ties to racism and slavery. Historian Susan M. Reverby, who wrote a book about the study, researched the Milbank Fund’s participation at the fund’s request. She said its apology could be an example for other groups with ties to systemic racism.

’“It’s really important because at a time when the nation is so divided, how we come to terms with our racism is so complicated,” she said. “Confronting it is difficult, and they didn’t have to do this. I think it’s a really good example of history as restorative justice.”

Starting in 1932, government medical workers in rural Alabama withheld treatment from unsuspecting Black men infected with syphilis so doctors could track the disease and dissect their bodies afterward. About 620 men were studied, and roughly 430 of them had syphilis. Reverby’s study said Milbank recorded giving a total of $20,150 for about 234 autopsies.

Revealed by The Associated Press in 1972, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement from which descendants are still seeking the remaining funds, described in court records as “relatively small.”

The Milbank Memorial Fund got involved in 1935 after the U.S. surgeon general at the time, Hugh Cumming, sought the money, which was crucial in persuading families to agree to the autopsies, Reverby found. The decision to approve the funding was made by a group of white men with close ties to federal health officials but little understanding of conditions in Alabama or the cultural norms of Black Southerners, to whom dignified burials were very important, Koller said.

“One of the lessons for us is you get bad decisions if … your perspectives are not particularly diverse and you don’t pay attention to conflicts of interest,” Koller said.

The payments became less important as the Depression ended and more Black families could afford burial insurance, Reverby said. Initially named as a defendant, Milbank was dismissed as a target of the men’s lawsuit and the organization put the episode behind it.

Years later, books including Reverby’s “Examining Tuskegee, The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy,” published in 2009, detailed the fund’s involvement. But it wasn’t until after Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police that discussions among the Milbank staff — which is now much more diverse — prompted the fund’s leaders to reexamine its role, Koller said.

“Both staff and board felt like we had to face up to this in a way that we had not before,” he said.

Besides delivering a public apology to a gathering of descendants, the fund decided to donate an undisclosed amount to the Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation, Koller said.

The money will make scholarships available to the descendants, Head said. The group also plans a memorial at Tuskegee University, which served as a conduit for the payments and was the location of a hospital where medical workers saw the men.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is one of the saddest chapters in medical research in our country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A scathing editorial in yesterday’s New York Post lashed former President Donald Trump for “obsessing” over the 2020 presidential election, and urged Republicans to abandon him and move on.

“Trump has become a prisoner of his own ego,” slammed the conservative newspaper controlled by long-time Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch. “He can’t admit his tweeting and narcissism turned off millions. He won’t stop insisting that 2020 was ‘stolen’ even though he’s offered no proof that it’s true.”

Respected officials like former Attorney General Bill Barr call his rants “nonsense,” the editorial added. “This isn’t just about Liz Cheney. Mitch McConnell, Betsy DeVos, Mark Meadows — they all knew Trump was delusional. His own daughter and son-in-law testified it was bull.”

Trump’s response? “He insults Barr, and dismisses Ivanka as ‘checked out.’ He clings to more fantastical theories,” the newspaper complained.

The former president could have quietly kept a low profile following the bombshell hearing Thursday by the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating the insurrection.

Instead, the editorial noted, “Donald Trump, the King Lear of Mar-a-Lago, decided to tweet — er, Truth — yet another statement confirming that he refuses to accept reality. ‘January 6th was not simply a protest,’ he wrote, ‘it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.’”

It “wasn’t, of course. It was a national shame — one that neither Democrats nor Trump can stop obsessing over. It’s time for Republicans to move on,” the Post snapped back.

“Meanwhile, reports that Trump was pleased that the Jan. 6 crowd chanted for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged — a truly reprehensible sentiment — makes him unworthy for the office. Trump can’t look past 2020. Let him remain there,” the editorial concluded.

A New York Post  editorial blasting Trump does not get published without Rupert Murdoch’s blessing. Can Fox News  be far behind?

The entire editorial is below.

Tony

Donald Trump, Democrats are obsessed with 2020 — GOP should look to the future.

By

New York Post Editorial Board

June 10, 2022  

The Jan. 6 Commission is a Democratic campaign ad, a thinly veiled partisan exercise — aired in primetime, with the cooperation of a liberal press — to bolster a failed Joe Biden presidency.

But rather than ignore it or look to the future, Donald Trump, the King Lear of Mar-a-Lago, decided to tweet — er, Truth — yet another statement confirming that he refuses to accept reality. “January 6th was not simply a protest,” he wrote, “it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”

It wasn’t, of course. It was a national shame. One that neither Democrats nor Trump can stop obsessing over. It’s time for Republicans to move on.

This isn’t 2016, when the country was sleepwalking toward a Hillary Clinton coronation, and Trump was the only one pugnacious enough to say it doesn’t have to be this way.

He refused to accept that the southern border should be lawless and that China should be allowed to steal jobs. He knew, unapologetically, that the economy flourished under low taxes and little government interference. He pulled off one of the most jaw-dropping upsets in American political history, and — though the liberal media will never admit it — oversaw a term of mostly peace and prosperity.

But Trump has become a prisoner of his own ego. He can’t admit his tweeting and narcissism turned off millions. He won’t stop insisting that 2020 was “stolen” even though he’s offered no proof that it’s true.

Respected officials like former Attorney General Bill Barr call his rants “nonsense.” This isn’t just about Liz Cheney. Mitch McConnell, Betsy DeVos, Mark Meadows — they all knew Trump was delusional. His own daughter and son-in-law testified it was bull.

Trump’s response? He insults Barr, and dismisses Ivanka as “checked out.” He clings to more fantastical theories, such as Dinesh D’Souza’s debunked “2,000 Mules,” even as recounts in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin confirm Trump lost.

Meanwhile, reports that Trump was pleased that the Jan. 6 crowd chanted for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged — a truly reprehensible sentiment — makes him unworthy for the office. Trump can’t look past 2020. Let him remain there.

Look forward! The 2024 field is rich. You have Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley … the list goes on. All candidates who embrace conservative policies without the preoccupations of the Don.

Consider: Even if Trump, at 78, managed to win the presidency in 2024, who would work for him, now that he’s betrayed every competent person on his former staff?

The motivations of the Democrats are purely political, but that doesn’t make the events of January 6 right. The best argument Trump’s people can cling to is that the Capitol building wasn’t properly secured. The committee would look far less partisan by scrutinizing these claims. But what’s the logic? You knew Trump was going to incite a mob, so you should have brought in more troops? Trump himself doesn’t deny that he wished the rioters had succeeded in overturning the election.

Donald Trump lost in 2020. Joe Biden is a disaster as president. Both are true. The nation has been through enough pain and mismanagement for a generation. We need a fresh start.