Dear Commons Community,

Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, said yesterday that he expects to be charged soon in a state criminal case in New York City.

Bannon, 68, plans to turn himself in today.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that the state criminal case would resemble an earlier attempted federal prosecution, in which Bannon was accused of duping donors who gave money to fund a wall on the U.S. southern border.

That federal case ended abruptly, before trial, when Trump pardoned Bannon.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment.

In a statement, Bannon said District Attorney Alvin Bragg “has now decided to pursue phony charges against me 60 days before the midterm election,” accusing the Democratic prosecutor of targeting him because he and his radio show are popular among Trump’s Republican supporters.

“The Southern Disrict of New York (SDNY) did the exact same thing in August 2020 to try to take me out of the election,” Bannon said, referring to his arrest months before Trump’s re-election loss.

Federal agents pulled Bannon from a luxury yacht off the Connecticut coast and arrested him on charges he pocketed more than $1 million in wall donations.

“It didn’t work then, it certainly won’t work now,” the former White House strategist said. “This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

Bannon, who had pleaded not guilty, was dropped from the federal case when Trump pardoned him on his last day in office in January 2021.

Two other men involved in the “We Build the Wall” project pleaded guilty in April. They had been scheduled to be sentenced this week, but that was recently postponed to December. A third defendant’s trial ended in a mistrial in June after jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict.

A president can only pardon federal crimes, not state offenses, but that doesn’t mean state-level prosecutors have carte blanche to try similar cases.

In 2019, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. brought state mortgage fraud charges against Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in what was widely seen as an attempt to hedge against a possible pardon.

But a judge threw the case out on double jeopardy grounds, finding that it was too similar to a federal case that resulted in Manafort’s conviction. (Manafort was later pardoned by Trump).

While Manafort’s New York case was pending, New York eased its double jeopardy protections, ensuring that state-level prosecutors could pursue charges against anyone granted a presidential pardon for similar federal crimes.

Bannon’s case differs because he was dropped from the federal case in its early stages. In most cases, double jeopardy is only a factor when a person has been convicted or acquitted of a crime.

In another case not covered by Trump’s pardon, Bannon was convicted in July on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He is scheduled to be sentenced in October and faces up to two years in federal prison.

Bannon is a user and charlatan – just like Trump!

Tony

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss

Dear Commons Community,

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has become the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, succeeding her fellow Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson.

Truss, 47, said it had been an “honor to be elected,” and thanked her party for organizing “one of the longest job interviews in history” — the election that she won.

At Balmoral Castle in Scotland on Tuesday afternoon, Truss officially took office after Queen Elizabeth II asked her to form a new government in her name — a ceremony that has taken place between incoming prime ministers and the monarch for centuries.

Truss takes the helm at a unique time in British history, with Russia’s war against Ukraine raging in Europe’s east and post-Brexit policies to navigate at home.  Here is background on the new Prime Minister courtesy of Sky News and Yahoo News.

The beginning

Mary Elizabeth Truss was born in 1975 in Oxford, England. According to Sky News, her mother worked as a nurse and her father was a lecturer in mathematics. Truss has described her parents as very liberal, calling them “to the left of Labour.” While she was still young, her family moved to Leeds, a less affluent city in the north of England. Truss attended state-run schools in England and Scotland, unlike Johnson and many other former prime ministers who attended the elite private school Eton College.

Liberal Democrat

As a student at Oxford University, Truss was a member of the Liberal Democrats and headed the university association affiliated with the party. She even campaigned against the monarchy, as shown in a video clip filmed in 1994. Two years later, after graduating, she left to join the Conservative Party.

Life in politics

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Elizabeth Truss arrives at the Houses of Parliament in London on March 28, 2019. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Truss would spend 10 years in the telecommunications sector before turning to politics. She was first elected in 2006 as a councillor in the London borough of Greenwich and became a member of parliament for Southwest Norfolk in 2010. Before she stood as a candidate, members of her local association attempted to revoke her nomination after learning that she was alleged to have had an affair with a married Conservative lawmaker.

She was given her first junior post two years later when she was appointed secretary of state in the Department for Education. In 2014, Truss was named to a senior post, leading the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Truss backed former Prime Minister David Cameron on the side of remaining in the EU in what became to be known as “Brexit.” When Theresa May took over Cameron’s position as leader, Truss was selected as justice secretary, and later was the first woman in 1,000 years to hold the position of Lord Chancellor, the top economic official in the country. In 2019, as International Trade Secretary, Truss struck deals with New Zealand, Australia and Japan in an attempt to move Britain forward in the post-EU era.

Last September, Truss moved into the position of foreign secretary in a Johnson Cabinet reshuffle. The foreign secretary who preceded her, Dominic Raab, had came under severe scrutiny for his handling of Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Raab had been vacationing in Greece when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, and he had asked a deputy to handle an urgent call regarding the evacuation of Afghan interpreters. Truss is now one of the Conservatives’ longest-serving Cabinet ministers sitting in Parliament.

‘Liz for Leader’

Liz Truss launches her campaign to become prime minister on July 14 in London. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

On July 7, hours after Johnson announced his resignation as prime minister, Truss cut short her attendance at a G-20 event in Indonesia and announced her bid for the leadership race. At home, Truss has promised to cut taxes immediately, as well as to “keep corporation tax competitive.” She has also vowed to “unlock the huge opportunities of Brexit, with bold reforms.” As foreign secretary dealing with Brexit, Truss has created controversy over her hard-line stance.

A European Union official told the iNews on Sept. 1 that the EU would refuse to negotiate any changes in the Brexit deal on Northern Ireland if Truss carries through on a proposal to give ministers power to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. The Protocol, which Johnson concluded with the EU, was intended to avoid excessive disruption between EU-member Ireland and British Northern Ireland.

Truss has also said that if she is appointed prime minister, she will declare China an official threat for the first time. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, she and Johnson have sharply condemned the Kremlin. In July, she told the BBC that “all of Ukraine that has been invaded by Russia is illegally occupied.”

U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss meets with President Ignazio Cassis of Switzerland at the Ukraine Recovery Conference on July 4. (Michael Buholzer/AFP via Getty Images)

On Aug. 26, Truss sparked tensions after she said the “jury’s out” on whether France is a friend or foe to Britain. President Emmanuel Macron of France responded that it was a “problem” if the U.K. was unwilling to call itself a friend.

As for U.K. relations with the U.S., the Financial Times suggested earlier this week that Truss had questioned the alliance, which has prevailed since World War II. Others doubt that she will maintain that stance.

“U.K. and U.S. relations are extremely important. It’s way, way bigger than any individual personality, including Liz Truss,” David Lawrence, a research fellow in the U.K. in the World Initiative at Chatham House, told Yahoo News. “I suspect that, like every single British prime minister before her, she’ll be incredibly keen to foster a good, close relationship.”

Liz Truss delivers an acceptance speech after being announced the winner of the Conservative Party leadership contest on Monday. (Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

56th Prime Minister

In her victory speech, Truss announced a new “bold plan” to cut taxes and deliver on the country’s energy crisis. She said that she would expand Britain’s economy and deal with the issues the U.K.’s National Health Service is undergoing after years of strain due to the pandemic. “We will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver,” she told a crowd of her fellow party members at Westminster on Monday afternoon.

She also thanked her “friend” Johnson. “You are admired from Kyiv to Carlisle,” Truss said.

Truss is the third woman to become U.K. prime minister, following in the steps of Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. She will be the 15th prime minister of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.

We wish her luck!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The drugstore giant CVS Health  announced yesterday that it would acquire Signify Health, which runs a network of doctors making house calls, for roughly $8 billion in a deal that cements the pharmacy chain’s move away from its retail roots.

The deal, if approved by shareholders and regulators, would give CVS, which has nearly 10,000 stores nationwide, a new avenue to reach its customers: at home.

Pharmacies like CVS have been searching for new ways to strengthen ties with their large customer base, particularly as consumers increasingly head online for the everyday items that used to draw them into stores. In Signify, CVS is acquiring a company that offers analytics and technology to help a network of 10,000 doctors provide in-home health care to 2.5 million patients across the United States. Signify has a focus on those on Medicare and in underserved communities.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Their interest is to take over the home,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in San Diego, who noted that any care provided to patients at home, rather than in the hospital, lightens the financial load on insurance companies, including Aetna, the insurance business that CVS owns. Signify contracts with insurance providers, including Aetna.

“If you’re looking at it from Aetna’s standpoint, this is a way to save big, big expenditures for their people they cover,” Dr. Topol said.

Daily business updates  The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.

CVS has been whittling down its store base as it has pushed further into health care. The retailer said last year that it would close roughly 900 stores over three years. Its executives told analysts last month that the chain was looking at deals as a way to tack on new health services and ways to deliver those services‚ including in the home.

Karen S. Lynch, the chief executive of CVS, reiterated that strategy in a statement on Monday. “Signify Health will play a critical role in advancing our health care services strategy and gives us a platform to accelerate our growth in value-based care,” she said.

CVS has roughly 40,000 physicians, pharmacists, nurses and nurse practitioners, as well as 1,100 MinuteClinic locations, which offer care ranging from vaccinations to physicals.

The pharmacy giant will pay Signify $30.50 per share in cash. Signify’s shares jumped almost 7 percent in after-hours trading; CVS’s stock rose less than 1 percent. The two companies said they expected the deal to close in the second half of 2023, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.

“We are both building an integrated experience that supports a more proactive, preventive and holistic approach to patient care, and I look forward to executing on our shared vision for the future of care delivery,” the chief executive of Signify, Kyle Armbrester, said in a statement on Monday.

CVS’s move toward health care began in earnest nearly a decade ago, with its $21 billion acquisition of pharmacy benefits manager Caremark Rx. It acquired more than 1,000 of Target’s pharmacies in 2015 and the health insurer Aetna for $69 billion in 2018.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in 2019 that it expected national health spending to reach $6 trillion by 2027, consuming a larger share of gross domestic spending, as baby boomers aged and the price of services rose. But many Americans still do not get care, in part because of the costs and inconvenience.

The pandemic changed the way people seek medical attention and how companies think about providing it, as many patients sought new alternatives to traditional hospital care. CVS and other retailers like Walmart played a key role in the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccination campaign, and the White House also started a “test to treat” program to allow patients to test for the virus and obtain a prescription for antiviral pills at the same retail location if they tested positive.

Change across health care has lead to deal-making in the industry. Amazon announced in July that it planned to acquire One Medical, a chain of primary care clinics around the country, for $3.9 billion. Walgreens has announced a string of deals, including most recently an acquisition of Carecentrix, another company that provides services in the home.

And CVS is looking to carve out its own position as the deal-making heats up.

“CVS doesn’t want to sell us just prescriptions and toothpaste; it wants to be our primary care provider,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “With stores that are convenient to many of us, it is going to be a big player.”

 I get my prescription drugs and flu shots with CVS.  I have a fine GP whose practice is 35 miles away and who doesn’t make house calls.  I might consider CVS in an emergency.

Good move on their part!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has become involved with school board elections, and backing candidates who support his views on culture war fights, sexuality and COVID-19 restrictions in schools.  Rarely do we see major political figures trying to leave their imprint on such small local elections but Desantis is doing it effectively.  Here is an an analysis courtesy of the Associated Press.

“In her 24 years as a school board member in Florida, Marta Perez proposed a Bible study class for students, opposed a measure to boost anti-racism curricula after the killing of George Floyd and spoke out against adopting a textbook that included pictures of contraceptive methods that she considered inappropriate for her 13-year-old granddaughter.

Her long record of supporting conservative causes, however, wasn’t enough to save her job after she wound up as a target of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Perez lost her school board seat in Miami-Dade last week to a former teacher who was among a slate of candidates endorsed by DeSantis.

Perez believes she drew DeSantis’ ire by voting for a school mask mandate a year into the pandemic, when Florida was in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19. DeSantis opposes such policies.

“What it showed is that I was not in lockstep with the governor. I did not obey the governor, and that is unforgivable,” said Perez, who is 71.

More than almost any other national figure, DeSantis has led the charge in turning culture war fights over anti-racism policies, sexuality and COVID-19 restrictions in schools into national issues. More recently, he has inserted himself into school board races as he seeks to expand his sphere of influence and animate conservatives while running for reelection and considering a 2024 presidential bid.

Of the 30 candidates endorsed by DeSantis in the Aug. 23 elections, 19 won, five lost and six are headed to runoffs.

“We got involved to help candidates who were fighting the machine, fighting the lock-downers, fighting the forced-maskers, fighting the people that want to indoctrinate our kids,” DeSantis said in a victory speech on election night as the crowd cheered and clapped. “Parents are sick of the nonsense when it comes to education. We want the schools to educate kids.”

School board races are nonpartisan, but the governor’s involvement helped flip at least three Florida school boards from a liberal majority to a conservative majority. Five of his picks defeated incumbents affiliated with the Democratic Party, while others ran for open seats and at least two beat Republicans, including Perez, according to results posted by counties.

“He is trying to build this as part of his political brand,” said Sarah Reckhow, who teaches American politics and public policy at Michigan State University and specializes in education.

Reckhow noted that parents and others grew more aware of the role and importance of school board members during the COVID-19 pandemic, when districts were determining how and when children would return to the classrooms.

As calls for mandates and mask-wearing waned, the school debate shifted to how children are learning about race, gender and sexual orientation. In Virginia’s gubernatorial election last year, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent in part by seizing on parental frustrations about school closures and references to race in classrooms. The Texas Republican Party began endorsing candidates in nonpartisan school board races earlier this year.

DeSantis took it a step forward. He appeared at a summit held by the conservative group Moms for Liberty in July and built a roster of school board candidates starting with a questionnaire in which he asked them to sign a certificate to pledge their support to him.

DeSantis also traveled around the state in support of his picks. His Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, followed suit, endorsing a much smaller slate of his own. Of the seven Crist endorsed, two incumbents won, two challengers lost and three candidates are heading to runoffs, including one against a DeSantis pick.

But it’s DeSantis’ wider efforts that have propelled him to the forefront of the culture wars.

Earlier this year, he championed a law that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that bans lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, and he promoted a law called the “Stop WOKE Act” that prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and bars the notion that people’s status as privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by their race or gender. A judge later ruled that the “WOKE” law was an unconstitutional violation of free speech.

If the primary results are any indication, DeSantis’ education measures seem to be resonating with Florida voters.

The race for the school board seat in Miami-Dade between Perez and DeSantis’ candidate, Monica Colucci, was one of the most contested, totaling about $400,000 in campaign contributions and more tied to political committees. Similar two-candidate school board races in Miami had drawn about half the money in recent elections.

DeSantis’ sway in conservative circles is so pronounced that both Perez and Colucci used photos of him in their campaign materials. But it was Colucci, who worked in the DeSantis administration from 2019 to 2020 as a special assistant to Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez, who won his coveted endorsement.

This summer, DeSantis’ political committee donated $150,000 to Nunez’s political committee, which in turn made several payments totaling more than $350,000 to a consulting firm working for Colucci’s campaign.

Nunez appeared alongside Colucci for events, ads and Spanish-language interviews. During a local TV interview with Colucci, Nunez said she has known her for years and answered most of the questions, with Colucci speaking less than a minute during the 10-minute segment.

Colucci’s political consultant said she was not available for an interview because she went away with her family after the election, and later said she would not be available until later in the year.

Jennifer Jenkins, a progressive Democrat and school board member in Brevard County who defeated a conservative incumbent in 2020, said she thinks DeSantis’ push to add school board members who are friendly to his administration is an effort to further his agenda and keep his critics at bay.

“If he gets more seats, that’s more loyal Republicans,” Jenkins said.

Perez has been critical of DeSantis before. When he had been in office less than two months, she told a newspaper that the governor’s plans to expand scholarship programs that divert public school money to private institutions concerned her because she saw the public education system as “the equalizer” and “what has made the American system work.”

“In some things, you must serve the public in the best way you know how, and it does not mean you need to agree with every single decision,” she told The Associated Press.

DeSantis campaign spokeswoman Lindsey Curnutte, asked why the governor got involved in the Miami-Dade contest, said he “made key endorsements in school board races and is supporting strong conservative candidates” who will uphold his agenda of student success and parental rights in education.

Perez, a registered Republican who voted for DeSantis in 2018, said her run-in with the governor doesn’t change her opinion of the GOP overall, although it has soured her on DeSantis.”

We might not like it but I think DeSantis is being wise showing such interest in local school board elections. While characterized by very small turnouts, parents are passionate about education policies in their children’s schools.

Tony

Credit…Illustration by Chloe Scheffe

Dear Commons Community,

John N. Friedman, an economist at Brown, whose work focuses on how to use big data to improve life outcomes, has a guest essay today reminding us that education is the primary vehicle for social mobility in the country.  Relying on “big data” studies, he reviews how the benefits of school can improve the lot of those who are born poor and in the lower echelons of our society.  Below is the entire essay. 

It says a lot!

Tony

The New York Times

School Is for Social Mobility

Sept. 1, 2022

By John N. Friedman

America is often hailed as a land of opportunity, a place where all children, no matter their family background, have the chance to succeed. Data measuring how low-income children tend to fare in adulthood, however, suggest this may be more myth than reality.

Less than one in 13 children born into poverty in the United States will go on to hold a high-income job in adulthood; the odds are far longer for Black men born into poverty, at one in 40.

Education is the solution to this lack of mobility. There are still many ways in which the current education system generates its own inequities, and many of these have been exacerbated by Covid-19 closures. But the pandemic also revealed a potential path forward by galvanizing support for education funding at levels rarely seen before. With the right level of investment, education can not only provide more pathways out of poverty for individuals, but also restore the equality of opportunity that is supposed to lie at America’s core.

It is certainly not a new idea that education can change a child’s life trajectory. Almost everyone has some formative school memory — a teacher with whom everything made sense, an art project that opened new doors or a sports championship that bonded teammates for life.

But what is new is the torrent of research studies using “big data” to show the power of education for shaping children’s trajectories, especially over the long term. In one study, for example, my co-authors and I found that students who were randomly assigned to higher-quality classrooms earned substantially more 20 years later, about $320,000 over their lifetimes. And it’s not only the early grades that matter; research suggests the quality of education in later grades may be even more important for long-term outcomes, as children’s brains don’t lock in key neural pathways for advanced reasoning skills until well into their teenage years.

Education changes lives in ways that go far beyond economic gains. The data show clearly that children who get better schooling are healthier and happier adults, more civically engaged and less likely to commit crimes. Schools not only teach students academic skills but also noncognitive skills, like grit and teamwork, which are increasingly important for generating social mobility. Even the friendships that students form at school can be life-altering forces for social mobility, because children who grow up in more socially connected communities are much more likely to rise up out of poverty.

Conversely, limited social mobility hurts not just these children but all of society. We are leaving a vast amount of untapped talent on the table by investing unequally in our children, and it’s at all of our expense.

Researchers have also used big data to uncover many specific education reforms that could lead to huge improvements. For instance, the evidence is clear that teachers are critical; my co-authors and I found that, when better teachers arrive at a school, the students in their classrooms earn around $50,000 more over each of their lifetimes. This adds up to $1.25 million for a class of 25 in just a single year of teaching.

Smaller classes and increased tutoring also lead to long-term gains for students. Charter schools have revealed a range of effective approaches as well, often to the benefit of some of society’s most disadvantaged children. Children also benefit from longer school days, greater access to special education and less aggressive cutoffs for holding students back a grade.

Given this rich body of evidence, why doesn’t our K-12 system already propel more low-income students to success? A big reason continues to be inadequate funding. Because schools raise a large share of revenue through local property taxes, high-income students often attend well-resourced schools while low-income students attend schools with more limited resources. Decades of reforms have made some progress reducing these funding gaps within certain states, but huge gaps remain both between states and between schools within districts. Even with additional resources, schools often do not invest in proven reforms like the ones I mentioned above, choosing other, less data-driven proposals or even using additional resources to reduce local property taxes rather than increase spending on education.

If our education system does not currently support equality of opportunity, would investing more simply throw good money after bad? No. Many studies show the gains in social mobility when states like Michigan and New Mexico have reduced funding disparities to invest more in disadvantaged students. These reforms have gone in the right direction, but we need much more: With many students facing larger barriers to success as a result of factors outside the educational system, even equality of average funding levels may not be sufficient to generate equality of opportunity.

The Covid pandemic highlighted and magnified the deep inequities in our education system. Many high-income students were able to limit their learning losses, but on average, low-income students stayed remote longer and lost more ground for each week of remote school. By one estimate, high-poverty schools in districts that were mostly remote experienced 50 percent more achievement loss than low-poverty ones during the 2020-21 school year alone.

But Covid also triggered a momentous policy response. K-12 schools received nearly $200 billion in funding across three federal stimulus bills, much of which was aimed at combating learning loss. This money also began to address structural barriers by supporting increased internet and device access in low-income communities, both urban and rural, and in other ways.

Educators also displayed extraordinary creativity in finding new methods to teach students and help them catch back up. For instance, teachers and school leaders are using technology to support kids by prioritizing learning acceleration over remediation. New research shows students cover twice as much ground if they keep moving forward, completing targeted review as needed to master new material, rather than simply repeating lessons they missed because of Covid.

The sad fact is that the learning gaps opened up by Covid are a small fraction of those that already existed before the pandemic, when, in some school districts, low-income students were two, three and even four grade levels behind. If the pandemic motivated $200 billion in spending, then we should be investing trillions over the next decade to address the broader inequality in our system. While many of these gaps are caused by disparities that exist outside the school system, education remains our best shot at narrowing them.

If politics is the art of the possible, perhaps the biggest silver lining of these past two years has been to redefine what is possible. It will take this kind of extensive effort — investing year after year with the same level of urgency that we used to confront the pandemic — to transform our schools into the engines of social mobility that they can be.

Raisa and Mikhail Gorbachev

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her column reminisces about encounters with Mikhail Gorbachev, who died earlier this week.  She mentions his visits to Reykjavik, Washington, D.C., Malta, the Twin Cities, all with a goal to try to establish peace.  Here is an excerpt..

“In 1988, Gorbachev visited New York to address the United Nations.

Just as he had in D.C., Gorbachev showed flair. (He studied drama as a young man.) He ordered the driver of his limo to screech to a halt on Broadway in front of the Winter Garden Theater, where the musical “Cats” was playing. Standing beneath a neon Coca-Cola sign with Raisa, Gorbachev raised his arms in a “Rocky”-like victory sign.

Looking down the block, he could see an electronic billboard in the middle of Times Square flashing a red hammer and sickle and the message “Welcome, General Secretary Gorbachev.” A vodka truck drove around acting as a Welcome Wagon (not realizing that the Soviet leader was trying — vainly — to curb the Russians’ deep thirst for vodka)…

My favorite summit encounter with Gorbachev was in Malta. President George H.W. Bush had planned a summit at sea, alternating meetings between American and Soviet naval vessels, so that the two men could put their feet up and get to know each other.

But in a huge embarrassment, a storm trapped Bush and his team overnight on the American cruiser.

Top Bush advisers came out to meet the press wearing patches for seasickness. Bush’s spokesman Marlin Fitzwater did his best to spin it, acting as if being stuck at sea was a good thing. He issued a news release painting his boss as Captain Ahab, saying, “The president seemed energized by the intensity of the storm.”

In the end, Bush and Gorbachev talked perestroika in a truncated summit, whose impact Bush described, in his distinctive personal-pronoun-less, verb-less Bushspeak as: “Grandkids. All of that. Very important.”

It drove Bush crazy that he was described as cautious and Gorbachev was described as bold. But the dynamic between the two men worked.

The modest Bush, the clever James Baker and the stalwart Brent Scowcroft held Gorbachev’s hand and did not gloat as he made his breathtaking leaps to open the Iron Curtain and let the Berlin Wall fall. Gorbachev warned Communist leaders not to use force against their own people.

The following year, I covered the Gorbachevs in Minneapolis, where they dazzled the heartland. When they left, the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies serenaded them at the airport with “Moscow Nights,” and the crowd excitedly waved “Gorby-chiefs,” commemorative handkerchiefs.

Gorbachev was more popular in America than at home, and he was on the cusp of winning the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Cold War. He was going back to Moscow, where many — like the K.G.B. agent Vladimir Putin — reviled him for setting the Soviet Union on the path to dissolution and for his attempts to clean up corruption.

Gorbachev seemed reluctant to leave the Twin Cities. As the young people sang to him, he pressed his face against the airplane window and then, as the plane took off, his hands. The next year, he would be out of power. Not long after, Putin would come into power and throw the world into the brutal and bloody chaos that Gorbachev had tried to prevent. In the end, Gorbachev would have to watch Putin torch his dreams.”

May he rest in peace!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Serena Williams, the icon, the legend, the greatest of all time, lost in the third round round of the US Open, marking her final match as a professional tennis player.

Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic beat Williams last night in a thrilling battle, 7-5, 6-7 (7-4), 6-1, at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The three-hour match had a wild, lengthy comeback that ended with a heated tiebreak in the second set before Tomljanovic finally closed out the match in the third, ending what will go down as one of the best, and most-watched, matches of the tournament.

The 24,000 fans who packed Arthur Ashe Stadium shouted and cheered Serena’s every point as she fought against an opponent who was 11 years younger.

“It’s been the most incredible ride and journey I’ve ever been on in my life,” Williams, wiping tears, said on court after the match.

The loss spelled the end of a 27-year career that forever changed the world’s perception and understanding of women — especially Black women — in sports. The highlight reels will show that Williams went kicking and screaming, saving five match points, blasting away to the end, making every stroke count as the match passed the three-hour mark.

“I don’t give up,” Williams said. “Definitely wasn’t giving up tonight.”

Williams has been the hottest ticket in New York this week and that continued last night in a match that was witnessed by some of the biggest names in sports and pop culture. And for long spells Williams delivered what they came for — the power and ferocity, the precision and passion for the game that have characterized her career for a quarter of a century.

Williams got emotional on her way off the court. She cried “happy tears, I guess” in her on-court postmatch interview as she thanked her parents and her sister, Venus.

“Thank you so much, you guys were amazing today. I wish I played a little bit better. Thank you daddy, I know you’re watching. Thanks mom,” Williams said on the court. “I just thank everyone that’s here, that’s been on my side so many years, decades. Oh my gosh, literally decades. But it all started with my parents, and they deserve everything, so I’m really grateful for them.

“These are happy tears, I guess! I don’t know. And I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you Venus.”

“I’m feeling really sorry, just because I love Serena just as much as you guys do and what she’s done for me, for the sport of tennis is incredible,” Tomljanovic said after her win. “I never thought that I’d have a chance to play her in her last match when I remember watching her as a kid in all those finals. This is a surreal moment for me.” 

Here is a recap of what Williams career has meant courtesy of Yahoo Sports.

Williams is more than this one loss

A loss like this isn’t how Williams wanted to end her career, but this is not what she’ll be remembered for. Her career is too incredible, too important for any one moment to define her.

Williams first picked up a tennis racket at age 3 (though she says it was 18 months), and in a way, her fate was sealed from there. As the younger sister of fellow tennis legend Venus Williams, she spent time watching Venus play, and succeed, and fail, all while she waited in the shadows, learning everything she could from what she saw.

Venus came into the spotlight first, but Serena followed close behind. She officially arrived in 1999, winning the US Open, then in 2002-2003 achieved a feat that is now called the Serena Slam: Holding all four Grand Slam titles at the same time over two calendar years. She won the 2002 French Open, the 2002 Wimbledon title, the 2002 US Open, and the 2003 Australian Open. In each of those finals, she had to beat her own sister to win the trophy. Williams would again win the Serena Slam in 2014-2015.

She never managed to achieve a calendar Slam (winning all four majors in the same year), but she became the first tennis player in history to achieve a Career Golden Slam (winning all four majors and the Olympic gold medal) in singles and doubles. Williams is so dominant in singles that her doubles career, playing alongside Venus, is often forgotten. As a doubles team, they remain undefeated in Grand Slam finals, winning 14 and never losing a single one.

In all, Williams spent 319 weeks as the WTA’s No. 1 tennis player in the world. Only Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova spent more time at the top than she did. While she often chose to focus on Grand Slams instead of playing extensively on the WTA tour, she still won 73 singles titles, which ranks her fifth all-time in women’s tennis history. She captured 23 Grand Slam titles, the most in the Open Era, and one behind Margaret Court for the all-time record.

Breaking boundaries led to support and criticism

While Williams was good, there was more to her than that, making headlines and turning heads in a way that transcended tennis and athletics in general. She was daring and bold, not caring about the norms for female tennis players. She wore outfits that no one had ever seen on a tennis court, sporting bright colors, catsuits and tutus. She wore her hair any way she wanted, in braids, beads, straight and natural. She showed off her body with pride, refusing to hide the muscles she worked so hard for. She became a fashion icon, appearing by herself on the cover of Vogue, designing multiple clothing lines, and becoming a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.

At the same time, there were few athletes who inspired such passion from the public — both for and against her. She was criticized for her hair and tennis outfits. She was criticized for being too muscular and too loud when she played. She was criticized for bringing the discussion of race into tennis. Williams wasn’t a perfect player, and she’s not a perfect human, so some criticisms were earned — like when she was called out for being too selfish and combative after her extended on-court argument with the chair umpire during the 2018 US Open women’s final against Naomi Osaka, which she lost.

Even that example has a racist twist. Following that match, an Australian newspaper printed a racist cartoon of Williams, using racial stereotypes to portray her as an overly muscular and animalistic with with an ape-like face and huge lips, while Osaka was drawn as a blonde white woman. Some of Williams’ criticisms were fair and earned, but some of it, from both inside and outside tennis, stemmed from her being a Black woman who dared to challenge the white female norms of the sport.

Williams’ legacy is immense

Williams was so good for so long that for the past several years, she has been competing against players who started playing tennis because they saw her do it. They are the Serena Generation, playing in their own way and own style, but carrying part of Williams with them every time they play.

That is why her legacy will only grow. The Serena Generation isn’t static because her history in the sport will continue to influence young girls and women around the world, whether they’re playing tennis or not. And the women who were inspired by Williams will inspire a generation of their own, carrying her into the future long after she stopped competing. Venus and Serena walked so players like Coco Gauff could run. And Gauff is running so others in the future can fly.

Williams was dominant for such a long time, and in individual sport that is as much about mental preparedness and performance as it is about the physical side. The only real comparison you can make is Tiger Woods, who also played in a solo sport. Both were wildly successful in a way that transcended sports. Both challenged the white norms and largely white history of their sports. And both fell just short of a historical mark in their sports; Williams will retire one major title short of tying Margaret Court’s 24 Grand Slam titles, and Woods remains three major titles behind Jack Nicklaus for the all-time record.

But if falling short doesn’t define Woods’ legacy, it certainly doesn’t define Williams’. Whether you look at her career as a whole or on the micro level, she did things that no one predicted or expected. For example, even after over a decade of excellence, no one could have imagined that she would have (or could have) won the 2017 Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant. Then, she missed a full year of competition after an emergency C-section caused her to develop a pulmonary embolism that kept her bedridden for six weeks. Not many expected her to emerge from that with the same strength and drive that she used to have, but she did it anyway, coming back in 2018 to make the finals in four Grand Slams and the semifinals in two others.

Now, having done (nearly) everything she ever wanted to do in tennis, she moves on. To concentrate on her venture capital company, to expand her family, and do whatever the hell she wants to. She’s earned it.

There is no one like Serena Williams, and there won’t be anyone like her again. She didn’t just change the sport of tennis; she changed the world.

Congratulations to a true champion!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mental health is emerging as one of the top reasons many college students are considering dropping out of college, according to a recently released report by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation..

Earlier this week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy urged college administrators at a mental-health round-table, hosted by the American Council on Education, in Washington, D.C., to hire more counselors and establish programs where students can help each other cope with mental-health struggles. He also stressed the importance of collecting data to see which students on campus are using mental-health resources.

One of the goals of the round-table was to destigmatize talking openly about anxiety, depression, and other mental issues and to get political leaders to spend more money on colleges’ efforts to provide students with counseling services.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“We have this really powerful and unique window of opportunity right now to talk to the country about mental health, and to actually take action on mental health, in a way that we haven’t had in the last few decades,” Murthy said.

In addition to Murthy, the event’s speakers included Ted Mitchell, president of ACE; Hollie M. Chessman, director of research at the council; Jamie Merisotis, president and chief executive of Lumina; and Zainab Okolo, a strategy officer at Lumina.

Students struggled with mental health before the pandemic, but those problems escalated after they spent almost a year in isolation and away from the typical supports universities can provide. Now, many of those students are seriously considering dropping out of college because they can’t handle the stress and anxiety, mental-health advocates say. More than 1.3 million students have dropped out of college since the beginning of the pandemic.

More than three-quarters of bachelor’s degree students who have considered dropping out in the past six months cite emotional stress as the reason (see Table above), according to the Gallup-Lumina report released in April. That’s a 34-percent increase from its previous report in 2020.

We tend to fund things in crisis mode, as opposed to providing the sustained funding that we need.

At the beginning of 2021, three-fourths of students in bachelor’s programs and two-thirds of adults seeking associate degrees had considered taking a break from college due to emotional stress, according to the report.

More than 70 percent of college presidents have consistently identified mental health as a top concern for their students over the past 18 months, according to ACE. That figure was up from 41 percent in April 2020. From 2015 to 2020, the percentage of students experiencing anxiety went up by 10 percent, the percentage of students experiencing depression increased by 12 percent, and the percentage of students experiencing suicidal thoughts has gone up by more than 3 percent, according to ACE.

College affordability was the other factor driving students to drop out, the Gallup-Lumina report said.

In May, the U.S. Department of Education strongly encouraged colleges to use their money from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund to support student, faculty, and staff mental health. The department also extended the length of time colleges have to spend the emergency-relief grants to June 30, 2023.

While colleges have been able to use some of that funding to bolster counseling services for students, Murthy said that a one-time infusion of funds is not sustainable.

“We tend to fund things in crisis mode, as opposed to providing the sustained funding that we need,” he said. “Periodic injections of support are important, but we’ve got to continue that investment long term.”

Murthy also discussed the lingering effects of trauma, from physical to emotional abuse, and how that can show up in the classroom.

“You might be sitting next to somebody in chemistry class who looks like they come from a similar background as you, but they may have gone through some serious experiences in the past,” he said. “That may affect how they interact with you.”

He also asked the faculty members and student-service advocates in attendance to make sure that they’re taking care of themselves while supporting students.

“My guess is that many people in this room have sacrificed so much for the communities you’re seeking to serve that it may have even come at a personal cost,” Murthy said.

Panelists emphasized the need to reach students of color, low-income students, and college athletes, who often face disproportionate mental-health challenges.

Many college students don’t find out that they have a mental-health condition until they’re diagnosed in college and have access to counseling services for the first time.

Bipolar disorder, anxiety, and depression are the top three mental illnesses that students are diagnosed with in college, says Okolo, who has been a therapist for 12 years.

Identifying that they have a mental illness and finding help can be difficult, she said.

She stressed the significance of insuring that counseling centers are diverse, culturally sensitive, and bilingual.

“We must acknowledge that if we’re having students come on our campus to engage and stretch their minds, that anything to do with the mind, and anything that’s challenging them, must be something that we prioritize,” Okolo said.

Important advice was given at this roundtable.!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday’s job market report for last month delivered good news on the economy.

Job growth was solid — not too hot, not too cold. And more Americans began looking for work, which could ease worker shortages over time and defuse some of the inflationary pressures that the Federal Reserve has made its No. 1 mission.

Employers added 315,000 jobs, roughly what economists had expected, down from an average 487,000 a month over the past year. The unemployment rate reached 3.7%, its highest level since February. But it rose for a healthy reason: Hundreds of thousands of people returned to the job market, and some didn’t find work right away, which boosted the government’s count of unemployed people.  As analyzed by the Associated Press.

The American economy has been a puzzle this year. Economic growth fell the first half of 2022, which, by some informal definitions, signals a recession.

But the job market is still surprisingly robust. Businesses remain desperate to find workers. They’ve posted more than 11 million job openings, meaning there are nearly two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.

And inflation, which began to accelerate alarmingly in the spring of last year, remains close to a 40-year high. That’s a sign that consumers’ appetite for goods and services is still strong enough to allow businesses to raise prices.

The relentless rise in consumer prices has forced the Fed to raise interest rates aggressively to try to slow hiring and wage increases and drive down inflation. It’s aiming to pull off a so-called soft landing — raising borrowing costs enough to slow growth and curb inflation without tipping the United States into a recession.

So far, so good.

“Today’s report answers the persistent recession question, at least for today: We are not in a recession,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “The U.S. labor market remains strong with employers adding jobs and labor supply coming back online… The sun is still shining on the U.S. labor market.’’

Here are five takeaways from the August jobs report:

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MAKING THE FED’S TASK EASIER

Friday’s report from the government suggests that the Fed may find it a little easier to bring the economy in for a soft landing. Key to that daunting task is seeing hiring ease a bit — enough, anyway, to reduce the pressure on employers to raise pay. When they hand out raises, businesses typically increase prices for their customers to offset their higher labor costs, thereby feeding inflation.

Not only did August’s job creation decelerate from July’s breakneck pace — 526,000 added jobs — but the Labor Department also revised down its earlier estimate of the gains for June and July by a combined 107,000. In addition, average hourly pay rose just 0.3% last month from July, the lowest month-to-month gain since April.

“If the Fed were to design the (jobs) report, this is the kind of report they would have designed,” said Megan Greene, chief economist at the Kroll Institute.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has made it clear — notably at a hawkish speech last week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming — that the central bank expects to impose further large rate hikes to try to tame inflation. And he warned that the Fed’s continued tightening of credit will cause pain for many households and businesses as it slows the economy and potentially lead to job losses. The Fed has raised its benchmark short-term interest rate four times this year, including by a hefty three-quarters of a percentage point in both June and July.

Investors are anxiously anticipating what the Fed will do when it next meets Sept. 20-21.

“The slower pace of payroll gains in August, together with a big rebound in the labor force, and the more modest increase in wages, would seem to favor a smaller (half-point) rate hike from the Fed,” said Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

Still, Fed policymakers will be watching to see whether inflation decelerated last month. One major barometer will be the government’s report on consumer prices for August, to be issued Sept. 13.

___

HUH? HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT IS GOOD NEWS?

Normally, an uptick the joblessness would be sobering news, even cause for worry. Not now.

The unemployment rate rose last month to 3.7% from 3.5%, which had tied a 50-year low. But the increase in August was welcome: The number of Americans either working or looking for work surged by 786,000 in August, the biggest one-month jump since January. And their share of the population — the so-called labor force participation rate — rose to 62.4% last month, its highest level since March.

To be counted as unemployed, people have to be actively seeking a job. So when they stay on the sidelines, as many have since COVID-19 struck, their absence from the labor force means they don’t show up as unemployed. And the jobless rate can look artificially low.

Last month, the number of Americans who told the Labor Department they had jobs rose by 442,000. And the number who said they were unemployed also rose, by 344,000. That suggests that many people who started looking for a job didn’t find one right away.

“The labor participation rate went up, and I would love to see that number continue to climb even if that means a 3.7%, 3.8%, 3.9% unemployment rate,” said Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. “You have potentially 11 million open jobs. Having more people entering the workforce is good for the economy.’’

The idea is that the more Americans there are who are looking for work, the less pressure there is on employers to raise wages to attract applicants, increase prices and contribute to inflation.

___

BROAD JOB GAINS

Last month’s jobs gains were spread broadly across industries. Retailers added 44,000. Healthcare gained 48,000, including nearly 15,000 at hospitals.

Factories added 22,000 jobs despite a slowing global economy, a consumer shift away from manufactured goods and toward services like restaurant meals and a stronger dollar that makes U.S.-made goods pricier overseas.

But hiring in leisure and hospitality slowed sharply in August — to 31,000, including just 18,000 at bars and restaurants. Both gains were the weakest since December 2020.

___

FEWER HOURS

The average workweek slipped slightly last month to 34.5 hours. Those figures haven’t changed much this year even as employers have complained about a worker shortage.

So why aren’t they assigning more hours to the workers they have on hand?

Labor Secretary Walsh suspects that employees, especially in high-paying occupations, are more conscious of striking a balance between their work and their personal lives and balk at putting in ever more hours on the job. Employers are wary, having seen “people quitting their jobs because their work-life balance was off,” Walsh suggested.

An increase in employees working from home, or splitting time between home and the workplace, may also limit the number of hours worked.

In the leisure and hospitality business, which includes restaurants and hotels, average hours worked peaked in April 2021 and has fallen more or less steadily since then. Thomas Feltmate, senior economist at TD Economics, said the drop might reflect a “softening in consumer demand in recent months for discretionary recreational services.”

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BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT

An increase in the unemployment rate of Black Americans last month couldn’t be explained by an influx into the labor force.

The number of Black people working or looking for work fell by 51,000. And their labor participation rate dipped from 62% in July to 61.8% last month, the lowest point since December. The number of Black Americans reporting that they had jobs fell by 131,000 last month. And the number saying they were unemployed rose by 79,000.

The Black jobless rate rose from 6% in July to 6.4% in August, the highest level since February.

It isn’t entirely clear what caused the uptick in Black unemployment, the second straight increase. The Labor Department’s racial breakdown of employment numbers can be volatile from month to month. But the number of Black Americans in the labor force — and their participation rate — has now dropped for three straight months.

Good information on the economy!

Tony