Ever Forward

Dear Commons Community,

In 2019,  my wife and I visited France and had the privilege of visiting the American D-Day Memorial sites in Normandy – Utah Beach, Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the American Memorial Cemetery – where there are more than 9,000 American casualties buried.

Ever Forward is the bronze statue that sits at the entrance to Omaha Beach.  It shows an American soldier helping a wounded comrade.

The Memorial Cemetery is a place of serenity with its thousands of crosses.  At 5:00 pm every evening, taps are played to remember our honored dead (see video below).

Today, I especially remember my two uncles John and Anthony DeMichele, both of whom were in Normandy in World War II.

Tony

James and Marilyn Simons

Dear Commons Community,

Stony Brook University received a donation of $500 million on Thursday from a foundation formed by an alumnus and a former faculty member, making it the recipient of one of the largest gifts to a university in American history.

The donation, which will go toward the school’s endowment, will also trigger another $200 million injection of public funds under a donation matching program passed as part of the New York State budget in April. The school said it hopes the gift will spur other donations that could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Gifts of that size are rare for universities, and especially so for public institutions like Stony Brook, which is a university center of the State University of New York. The donation plus the state matching funds amount to nearly twice the amount of Stony Brook’s current endowment of $370 million, the university president, Maurie McInnis, said in an interview.

The donation was made by the Simons Foundation, which was formed in 1994 by Jim Simons, a former Stony Brook math professor who later made billions as a hedge fund manager, and his wife Marilyn Simons, who received her bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Stony Brook. 

The university has long been known as an engine of social mobility, enrolling students from poor and working class backgrounds and propelling many of them to the middle and upper classes of American life. But that role has been challenged in recent years by rising tuition costs at Stony Brook and across the country.

Ms. McInnis said more than 50 percent of Stony Brook students had their tuition fully covered by financial aid and state grants, but that many struggled with the ancillary costs of attending university.  As reported by The New York Times.

“What our students struggle with are all the other costs related to going to college whether that is trying to afford room and board, or if they are commuters it can be commuting costs, it can be textbook costs,” she said. “Investing in our students is one of the ways that we might expend this money in the future.”

But the effects of the gift will not be immediate, she cautioned. Stony Brook will receive the full $500 million sum over the course of seven years. It will also aim to raise a further $200 million from other donors in the next three years to qualify for the maximum amount of state matching funds.

Mr. and Mrs. Simons have made other large gifts to Stony Brook in the past that, when combined with the gift on Thursday, amount to roughly $1.2 billion, said Ms. McInnis. She said Mr. Simons joined the faculty in 1968, when the university was only five years old.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. and Mrs. Simons said the state’s new endowment matching program convinced them to make a large unrestricted gift now. They also said the $500 million donation was an opportunity to express their gratitude to the university, which Mrs. Simons said “was transformative in my life.”

She grew up in a working class household, graduated from the university in 1974, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics. She said she hoped the gift would help people from “underserved communities” to thrive at the school.

“I was really grateful when the opportunity opened up for me to attend Stony Brook for college,” Mrs. Simons said. “I commuted to the school with my brother and my cousin. They went off to lay brick and I went to my calculus class.”

Mr. Simons, who has appeared several times on Forbes ranking of the wealthiest people in the world, is a prominent mathematician in addition to his work as a hedge fund manager. He said he formulated one of his most widely-cited mathematical innovations, the Chern-Simons form, while teaching at the university.

That innovation, which he called “probably my best idea,” has been used by physicists to contribute to the development of quantum field theory. He also met his wife during his time at the school.

“All of that was because I worked at Stony Brook,” he said. “So I am very fond of the university.”

Public higher education needs more people like Mr. and Mrs. Simons!

Tony

Chuck Todd and Kristen Welker

Dear Commons Community,

Chuck Todd announced yesterday that he’ll be leaving “Meet the Press” after a decade of moderating the NBC political panel show, to be replaced in the coming months by Kristen Welker.

Todd, 51, told viewers that “I’ve watched too many friends and family let work consume them before it was too late” and that he’d promised his family he wouldn’t do that.

Todd has been a target for critics, including Donald Trump, during a polarized time, and there were rumors that his time at the show would be short when its executive producer was reassigned at the end of last summer, but NBC gave no indication this was anything other than Todd’s decision. It’s unclear when Todd’s last show will be, but he told viewers that this would be his final summer.

“I leave feeling concerned about this moment in history but reassured by the standards we’ve set here,” Todd said. “We didn’t tolerate propagandists, and this network and program never will.”

Welker, a former chief White House correspondent, has been at NBC News in Washington since 2011 and has been Todd’s chief fill-in for the past three years. She drew praise for moderating the final presidential debate between Trump, a Republican, and Joe Biden, a Democrat, in 2020.

Her “sharp questioning of lawmakers is a masterclass in political interviews,” said Rebecca Blumenstein, NBC News president of editorial, in a memo announcing Welker’s elevation on Sunday.

Now Welker, 46, will be thrust into what promises to be another contentious presidential election cycle.

“Meet the Press” has aired since 1947, led by first host Martha Rountree. Its peak came in the years that Tim Russert moderated, from 1991 until his death in 2008, with its footing less certain since then. Tom Brokaw briefly filled in after Russert’s death, and David Gregory replaced him until being forced out in favor of Todd.

Welker will be the first Black moderator of “Meet the Press” and the first woman since Rountree left in 1953.

Todd said that he was proud of expanding the “Meet the Press” brand to a daily show, which initially aired on MSNBC but was shifted to streaming, along with podcasts and newsletters, even a film festival.

“He transformed the brand into a vital modern-day franchise, expanding its footprint to an array of new mediums, and kept ‘Meet the Press’ at the forefront of political discourse,” Blumenstein said.

Todd alluded to his critics in announcing his exit.

“If you do this job seeking popularity, you are doing this job incorrectly,” he said. “I take the attacks from partisans as compliments. And I take the genuine compliments with a grain of salt when they come from partisans.”

The goal of each show, he said, is to “make you mad, make you think, shake your head in disapproval at some point and nod your head in approval at others.”

In the just-concluded television season, “Meet the Press” was third in viewers after CBS’ “Face the Nation” and ABC’s “This Week,” each of them averaging between 2.5 million and 2.9 million viewers, the Nielsen ratings company said.

We wish Mr. Todd and Ms. Welker good luck!

Tony

Credit: Ursa Major

Dear Commons Community,

Farhad Manjoo, has a column in today’s New York Times entitled, “It’s the End of Computer Programming as We Know It.” 

He comments that with the rise of artificial intelligence programs that can write code, the days of computer programming might be over.  Here is an excerept:

“Wasn’t it odd that the machines needed us humans to learn their maddeningly precise secret languages to get the most out of them? If they’re so smart, shouldn’t they try to understand what we’re saying, rather than us learning how to talk to them?

Now that may finally be happening. In a kind of poetic irony, software engineering is looking like one of the fields that could be most thoroughly altered by the rise of artificial intelligence. Over the next few years, A.I. could transform computer programming from a rarefied, highly compensated occupation into a widely accessible skill that people can easily pick up and use as part of their jobs across a wide variety of fields. This won’t necessarily be terrible for computer programmers — the world will still need people with advanced coding skills — but it will be great for the rest of us. Computers that we can all “program,” computers that don’t require specialized training to adjust and improve their functionality and that don’t speak in code: That future is rapidly becoming the present.

A.I. tools based on large language models — like OpenAI Codex, from the company that brought you ChatGPT, or AlphaCode, from Google’s DeepMind division — have already begun to change the way many professional coders do their jobs. At the moment, these tools work mainly as assistants — they can find bugs, write explanations for snippets of poorly documented code and offer suggestions for code to perform routine tasks (not unlike how Gmail offers ideas for email replies — “Sounds good”; “Got it”).

But A.I. coders are quickly getting smart enough to rival human coders. Last year, DeepMind reported in the journal Science that when AlphaCode’s programs were evaluated against answers submitted by human participants in coding competitions, its performance “approximately corresponds to a novice programmer with a few months to a year of training.”

“Programming will be obsolete,” Matt Welsh, a former engineer at Google and Apple, predicted recently. Welsh now runs an A.I. start-up, but his prediction, while perhaps self-serving, doesn’t sound implausible!

I started computer programming in the late 1960s, I tend to agree with Welsh and Manjoo!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, David Bloomfield was interviewed recently on Spectrum News NY 1  commenting on admissions into New York City’s special high schools such as Stuyvesant and the Bronx High School of Science. Here is an excerpt.

“Just seven Black students were offered a seat at Stuyvesant High School next year, out of 762 spots.
Last year, the number was 11. The year before, eight.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” said David Bloomfield, education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. “This is Groundhog Day. I’ve been writing about this for years. The demographics don’t move because the system is made for a group of students who will be tutored for years before sitting for the test.”

Stuyvesant is one of eight specialized high schools in New York City, all of which use a high-stakes exam, the SHSAT, as the only criteria for admission. For years, critics like Bloomfield have argued the test has resulted in the city’s top school failing to reflect the system’s overall demographics.

Citywide, 24% of students are Black, 41% are Hispanic, 17% are Asian and 15% are white. But among the students being offered seats to the eight specialized high schools, just 3% are Black, 6.7% are Hispanic, 53% are Asian and 27% are white.

“Let’s forget about the racial discrimination involved. It is educationally immoral to use a standardized test rank ordered by infinitesimal score differences for admissions to these schools,” Bloomfield said.

Pushes to end the use of the exam, required at some of the schools under state law, went nowhere under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Mayor Eric Adams has signaled no interest in doing away with it, which is opposed by some Asian Americans who feel targeted by efforts to diversify the school.

The schools garner great attention but serve about 4,000 students, a tiny fraction of the city’s high schoolers.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Churchill Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby,  will suspend racing and examine its safety measures after 12 horses died at the track in recent months, Churchill Downs Incorporated (CDI) announced yesterday.

In a statement, CDI said the move was made due to an “unusual number of horse injuries over the previous month resulting in 12 equine fatalities.” Some of those deaths came in the lead-up to the Kentucky Derby. Churchill Downs suspended trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. and pulled one of his horses, Lord Miles, from the Kentucky Derby after two horses trained by Joseph died days before the event.

Bill Carstanjen, the CEO of CDI, called the deaths “deeply upsetting and absolutely unacceptable.” He also said:

“What has happened at our track is deeply upsetting and absolutely unacceptable. Despite our best efforts to identify a cause for the recent horse injuries, and though no issues have been linked to our racing surfaces or environment at Churchill Downs, we need to take more time to conduct a top-to-bottom review of all of the details and circumstances so that we can further strengthen our surface, safety and integrity protocols.”

CDI said it was unable to find a reason or pattern that would explain the deaths. It said the track will be shut down out of “an abundance of caution.”

I do not follow horse racing but I like watching the Kentucky Derby.  All these deaths at Churchill Downs is sad and  disturbing.

Tony

Source:  Bureau of Labor Statistics

Dear Commons Community,

The May jobs report released yesterday showed the US economy remains strong with more than 300,000 jobs created last month, while the unemployment rate rose to 3.7%.

The US economy added 339,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last month, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed. This marks the 14th-straight month that job creation came in above what Wall Street economists had expected and the largest monthly increase since January.

Friday’s report comes less than two weeks before the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting, with investors still expecting the central bank will pause its rate hiking campaign despite the labor market’s surprising resilience. Data from the CME Group on Friday showed there remains a 70% chance the Fed leaves rate unchanged in a range of 5%-5.25%.  As reported by Yahoo and other media.

We do not believe today’s report was strong enough to meet the bar for the Fed to hike in June, but raises the risk that the Fed could hike in July,” Morgan Stanley’s chief US economist Ellen Zetner wrote in a note to clients on Friday. “While payroll numbers were undeniably strong, the FOMC will also be focused on the unemployment rate.”

Here are the key numbers from the report compared to estimates from Bloomberg:

• Nonfarm payrolls: +339,000 vs. +195,000
• Unemployment rate: 3.7% vs. 3.5%
• Average hourly earnings, month-on-month: +0.3% vs. +0.3%
• Average hourly earnings, year-on-year: +4.3% vs. +4.4%
• Average weekly hours worked: 34.3 vs. 34.4

Employment gains for the last two months were revised higher. Updated data revealed 294,000 jobs were created during April, 41,000 more than previously reported. March’s job gains were also revised higher — to 217,000 from 165,000 — making job growth over that two month stretch higher than previously reported by 93,000.

By industry, the largest increases in Friday’s data were seen in business and services which added 64,000 jobs.

In Government, 56,000 jobs were added last month. Health care also drove labor gains with 52,000 job additions in May. Leisure and hospitality added 48,000 jobs, with 33,000 of those roles coming in the food services and drinking places category.

Construction added 25,000 jobs in May, a 7,000 role increase from its 12-month average.

In a statement, President Biden said, “Today is a good day for the American economy and American workers.”

Friday’s jobs report comes as recent strong economic data reports had some economists calling for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates in June. An upward revision to first-quarter economic growth, an increase in April job openings, and consistently sticky inflation had all weighed on Fed futures markets heading into yesterday’s jobs report.

People working and gainfully employed is a good thing!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision yesterday siding with an employer who had sued a union for damages after workers went on strike, potentially opening the door to more strike-related lawsuits against unions.

In an 8-1 decision, the majority ruled that federal law does not preempt a lawsuit the employer filed against the union in state court, alleging workers had destroyed property with their work stoppage. The Supreme Court ruling strikes down a lower court’s decision and keeps alive the employer’s lawsuit against the union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The dissent came from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote that the majority “eagerly insert[ed] itself into this conflict” rather than “modestly standing down” and that the ruling threatens to “erode the right to strike.”

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien blasted the ruling.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

“Today’s shameful ruling is simply one more reminder that the American people cannot rely on their government or their courts to protect them,” O’Brien said.

The case centered on a 2017 dispute between Glacier Northwest, a ready-mix concrete company, and its unionized truck drivers who went on strike. Glacier Northwest accused the union of timing the walkout so that freshly mixed concrete would harden and be ruined — a claim that the union denied. The company filed a lawsuit in Washington state court seeking damages from the Teamsters related to the spoiled concrete.

The state’s Supreme Court had ruled that the workers’ strike was arguably protected by federal labor law and therefore the dispute should be handled by the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that referees such conflicts. Glacier Northwest appealed that decision and fought to have its claims against the union heard in state court.

In the majority’s opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote that the state Supreme Court had made a mistake by blocking the lawsuit. She said the union had failed to take “reasonable precautions” to make sure the concrete would not harden.

“In this instance, the Union’s choice to call a strike after its drivers had loaded a large amount of wet concrete into Glacier’s delivery trucks strongly suggests that it failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s property,” Barrett wrote.

Because the union endangered the company’s property,” she added, federal labor law “does not arguably protect its conduct.”

Charlotte Garden, a labor law professor at the University of Minnesota, said the decision “could have been worse” for unions. But she warned the case could open the door to more strike-related claims from employers.

“The Court’s articulation of when a union must take ‘reasonable precautions’ to protect the employer’s perishable product will mean more lawsuits against striking unions,” Garden said on Twitter.

Some progressive groups said Thursday that the majority’s decision undermines workers’ right to strike.

“It’s no coincidence that this move to kneecap workers comes in a year when they have organized in greater and greater numbers to secure safer and more equitable labor conditions,” Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of the group Take Back the Court, said in a statement. “Given a choice between workers and wealthy corporations, the Roberts Courts will consistently side with corporate interests.”

But the decision did not strike all labor supporters as a worst-case scenario considering the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, said she was pleased the decision “doesn’t change labor law and leaves the right to strike intact.”

“We shouldn’t forget why this case landed in front of the Supreme Court in the first place: because corporations are trying to shut down our right to strike,” Henry said in a statement.

This was an 8-1 decision and cannot be construed as simply the will of the conservative majority on the Court.

Tony

U.S. Senate Vote on Debt Ceiling (June 1, 2023)

Dear Commons Community,

Fending off a U.S. default, the Senate gave final approval last night to a debt ceiling and budget cuts package, to wrap up work on the bipartisan deal and send it to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law before the fast-approaching deadline.

The compromise package negotiated between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy leaves neither Republicans nor Democrats fully pleased with the outcome. But the result, after weeks of hard-fought budget negotiations and compromises, shelves the volatile debt ceiling issue  until 2025 after the next presidential election.

Approval in the Senate on a bipartisan vote, 63-36, somewhat reflected the overwhelming House tally the day before, relying on centrists in both parties to pull the Biden-McCarthy package to passage — though Democrats led the tally in both chambers.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said ahead of voting that the bill’s passage means “America can breathe a sigh of relief.”

Afterward he said, “We’ve saved the country from the scourge of default.”

Biden said in a statement following passage that senators from both parties “demonstrated once more that America is a nation that pays its bills and meets its obligations — and always will be.”

He said he would sign the bill into law as soon as possible. “No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake: this bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people,” the president said. The White House said he would address the nation about the matter at 7 p.m. EDT Friday.

Fast action was vital if Washington hoped to meet next Monday’s deadline, when Treasury has said the U.S. will start running short of cash to pay its bills, risking a devastating default. Raising the nation’s debt limit, now $31.4 trillion, would ensure Treasury could borrow to pay already incurred U.S. debts.

In the end, the debt ceiling showdown was a familiar high-stakes battle in Congress, a fight taken on by McCarthy and powered by a hard-right House Republican majority confronting the Democratic president with a new era of divided government in Washington.

Refusing a once routine vote to allow a the nation’s debt limit to be lifted without concessions, McCarthy brought Biden’s White House to the negotiating table to strike an agreement that forces spending cutbacks aimed at curbing the nation’s deficits.

Overall, the 99-page bill restricts spending for the next two years, suspends the debt ceiling into January 2025 and changes some policies, including imposing new work requirements for older Americans receiving food aid and greenlighting an Appalachian natural gas line that many Democrats oppose.

It bolsters funds for defense and veterans, cuts back new money for Internal Revenue Service agents and rejects Biden’s call to roll back Trump-era tax breaks on corporations and the wealthy to help cover the nation’s deficits. It imposes automatic 1% cuts if Congress fails approve its annual spending bills.

After the House overwhelmingly approved the package late Wednesday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell signaled he too wanted to waste no time ensuring it became law.

Touting its budget cuts, McConnell said Thursday, “The Senate has a chance to make that important progress a reality.”

Having remained largely on the sidelines during much of the Biden-McCarthy negotiations, several senators insisted on debate over their ideas to reshape the package. But making any changes at this stage would almost certainly derail the compromise and none were approved.

Instead, senators dragged through rounds of voting late into the night rejecting the various amendments, but making their preferences clear. Conservative Republican senators wanted to include further cut spending, while Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia sought to remove the Mountain Valley Pipeline approval.

Thank you to the President, the House of Representatives and the Senate for their willingness to work together!

Tony

                                                          Rand Study Results

Dear Commons Community,

A Rand  survey released yesterday shows 54 percent of teachers think students would be unsafe with educators carrying guns, 20 percent say carrying guns would make students safer and 26 percent believe it wouldn’t significantly impact safety.

There have been 36 school shootings in the U.S. during the 2022-23 school year, according to a The Washington Post.

Arming teachers is one solution to the gun violence that has been largely supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.

States are also split on the issue: 20, run by both Democrats and Republicans, allow educators to carry firearms on campus, with some having more strict requirements than others.

In Delaware, educators can carry a gun with no restrictions. In Oregon, teachers need a concealed carry permit to bring a gun on school grounds.

At least 17 states don’t allow educators to carry guns at all.

However, despite the concerns around mass shootings, teachers listed bullying as their top safety concern for students. As reported by The Hill.

“Even with the unfortunate regularity of gun violence in U.S. schools, which often drives the policy debate around school safety, only five percent of teachers overall selected gun violence as their largest safety concern,” said Heather Schwartz, a report author and senior policy researcher at RAND.

“Despite the prevalence of anti-bullying programs, everyday school violence is a concern for teachers. Bullying, not active shooters, was teachers’ most common top safety concern, followed by fights and drugs,” she added.

The survey was conducted in October and November among 974 educators. Its margin of error ranged from 1 percent to 7 percent.

Below are key findings and recommendations from the Rand survey!

Tony

Key Findings

Recommendations