EXCLUSIVE: "The president's words were reckless," Mike Pence tells @DavidMuir of Trump’s words on Jan. 6, saying they "endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building."

Watch more on @ABCWorldNews, tomorrow on @GMA, and stream on @hulu. https://t.co/LCA0vICJWS pic.twitter.com/ECPrqUAZVk

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) November 13, 2022

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview with ABC’s David Muir said that “The president’s [Trump’s] words were reckless,” on Jan. 6, and they “endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.”

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I arrived in Orlando yesterday afternoon having spent the weekend in St. Augustine.  We are here for the OLC ACCELERATE Conference which starts today and goes through Thursday.  Last night we had dinner with my good colleague and friend, Chuck Dziuban and his wife, Judy.  I had not seen Chuck for almost three years since we both were being cautious due to the pandemic.  It was great catching up with him. 

Chuck and I  have a session on Wednesday morning with our  co-author Patsy Moskal.  The session will focus on research for our upcoming book on data analytics and adaptive learning.

If you are at the conference, I would love to see you.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning has an article begging the question of whether Pennsylvania has too many college campuses given the size of it student population. This comes after Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (Passhe) recently consolidated six of its campuses into two after a decade of low enrollments enrollment and financial pressures. The article makes the point that while some factors — like declining enrollment, anemic state investment, and a dwindling pipeline of high-school graduates — affecting institutions in the Keystone state are also common elsewhere, there’s also a distinctly Pennsylvanian force at play: The state has a large number of colleges relative to its traditional-age student population.  Here is an excerpt.

A Chronicle analysis of the higher-ed landscape in Pennsylvania reveals that 149 four-year public, four-year private, and two-year institutions served undergraduates in 2020. That’s 7,570 18- to 24-year-old Pennsylvanians for every college.

In comparison, two states that share Pennsylvania’s borders have more 18- to 24-year-olds per college, which roughly translates to a less-crowded landscape. (The more people there are per college, the less crowded the landscape is with institutions.)

Ohio had 8,882 18- to 24-year-olds for each of the state’s 120 colleges in 2020. New York had 7,655 people of traditional college age for each of its 228 colleges. The national average for the same types of colleges in The Chronicle’s analysis is 10,444 per campus.

“We’re in a state with a very large private sector of higher education, so the competition for students is fierce, with a declining number of Pennsylvanians,” said Joni Finney, former director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

More than 60 percent of the institutions in The Chronicle’s analysis are four-year private nonprofit colleges. Of this group, more than 72 percent derive at least half of their freshman class from within the state. About three institutions in 10, in The Chronicle’s sample, are four-year public colleges. The rest are community colleges. (For-profit, two-year private, and graduate-student-only colleges were excluded from the analysis).

Two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s counties are home to at least one college. The top three counties by number of colleges are among the state’s most populous. Philadelphia County has 16 institutions; Montgomery County, adjacent to Philadelphia, has 12; and Allegheny County, dominated by Pittsburgh, has 11.

This situation is not sustainable and will likely lead to further consolidations in the future.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Democrats successfully defended their narrow grip on the U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterm elections   Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s (D-Nev.) win over Republican Adam Laxalt in Nevada clinched the 50th vote for Democrats after days of uncertainty over thousands of mail-in ballots. Georgia’s Senate race, whose impact may be felt more strongly in 2024, will be determined by a Dec. 6 runoff election. As reported by CNN and other media.

Republicans hoped that voter dissatisfaction with Democratic policies and high inflation would usher in a “red wave,” carrying them to victory in both chambers of Congress. While they did make gains in some states like Florida and New York, Republican candidates, many of them extremists who were backed by former President Donald Trump, underperformed elsewhere around country.

Preliminary exit polls showed that fewer than a third of voters saw inflation as the defining issue of the election, with the survival of democracy and abortion rights weighing just as heavily in their minds. Attacking Democrats over crime also didn’t appear to be the winning strategy that Republicans had envisioned.

Democrats made the future of democracy a key issue in the closing days of the race. They argued that the scores of GOP election deniers on the ballot this year presented a critical threat that ought to be rejected before the next presidential election, especially with twice-impeached former President Donald Trump teasing another run for the White House.

Although many election deniers lost their races Tuesday, more than 160 who have either denied or cast doubts on Biden’s presidential win in 2020 will be in Congress in 2023.

With a majority in the Senate, Democrats can accomplish several things.

First, they’ll have an easier time filling vacancies in Biden’s cabinet and have another two years to reshape the federal courts. Biden’s team has been remarkably stable, especially compared to Trump’s. But several department heads are expected to depart in the coming months, and he’ll now have a better chance of confirming their replacements.

In the first half of his term, Biden also confirmed a record number of judges, a group more diverse than any prior president’s. A GOP-controlled Senate would have put a stop to that streak ― and likely would have ended any possibility of an appointment to the Supreme Court, should a vacancy arise.

Second, Democrats will hold a stronger hand in coming negotiations with a GOP-controlled House over must-pass fiscal measures such as government spending and the debt limit.

Republicans have already indicated that they will refuse to support a debt ceiling increase without extracting major policy concessions from Democrats, such as cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The 2011 debt ceiling fight resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. A default on the debt would be disastrous.

A growing number of lawmakers want to see Democrats raise the debt ceiling in the lame-duck session of Congress this year, removing the threat of an economic armageddon for the rest of Biden’s term. They would need the support of all 50 members of the current Senate Democratic caucus to do so, however.

The next debt ceiling deadline will come sometime next year, though the precise date is uncertain because incoming tax revenue can be unpredictable from month to month.

Finally, Democrats now face a slightly easier path in 2024, when they will contend with a particularly brutal map. Democrats will have to defend seven seats in states former President Donald Trump won at least once, with only two pick-up opportunities. Republicans are hoping to run up the margins in that election, with even some early talk of potentially reaching a filibuster-proof majority.

If Democrats are able to defend Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) seat in the upcoming Georgia runoff, they’ll be better positioned for the next election.

Congratulations Democrats!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Twitter users claimed irony was dead after far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted about the need for “candidate quality” in the GOP.

In a lengthy thread that the Donald Trump loyalist shared on Elon Musk’s social media platform Friday, Greene explained why she “truly” believes “one of the most important paths to saving America is by having as many strong Republican governors as possible” and “keeping them in place.”

“How about candidate quality, individual campaign work ethic & ability, and their campaign strategies,” Greene wrote in one message.

The call for “candidate quality” was too much for folks online, given how Greene has been stripped of her House committee assignments for liking social media posts calling for the murder of prominent Democrats.

Greene’s personal profile has also been suspended from Twitter for violating its COVID misinformation policies and she has previously peddled racist and antisemitic conspiracies, likened House mask mandates to the Holocaust and tried to cast doubt on evolution.

Irony is dead indeed.  Greene is possibly the worst congressperson in the history of the country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I are in St. Augustine, Florida, for two days and are on our way to Orlando for the OLC ACCELERATE Conference.  If you are at the Conference, I will be doing a presentation with Patsy Moskal and Chuck Dziuban on our upcoming book on research on data analytics and adaptive learning.

If you are at the conference, our session is on Wednesday morning.

We are staying at the Augustin Inn on a small quaint street in St. Augustine’s historic district.  We had dinner last night at the Columbia Restaurant which has been serving Spanish-Cuban food since 1905.

Hope to see you at the Conference!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Stocks mounted their biggest rally since 2020 after October’s reading of consumer prices raised investor hopes that inflation has peaked.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1,201.43 points, or 3.7%, to 33,715.37 for its biggest one-day gain since stocks were emerging from the depths of the pandemic bear market. The S&P 500 jumped 5.54% to 3,956.37 in its biggest rally since April 2020. The Nasdaq Composite surged 7.35%, its best since March 2020, closing at 11,114.15.  As reported by CNBC.

October’s consumer price index rose just 0.4% for the month and 7.7% from a year ago, its lowest annual increase since January and a slowdown from the 8.2% annual pace in the prior month. Economists were expecting increases of 0.6% and 7.9%, according to Dow Jones. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core CPI increased 0.3% for the month and 6.3% on an annual basis, also less than expected.

Treasury yields plunged after the CPI report, with the 10-year Treasury yield falling roughly 30 basis points to 3.81% as traders bet the Federal Reserve would slow its aggressive tightening campaign that’s weighed on markets all year. The yield on the 2-year Treasury dropped about 30 basis points to 4.32% (1 basis point equals 0.01%). The U.S. dollar, another recent pressure point for stocks, tumbled to its worst day since 2009 versus a basket of other currencies.

“Interest rates are still running everything in markets,” said Exencial Wealth’s Tim Courtney. “With today’s CPI number coming down, the market is now betting pretty clearly that they think the interest rate [rises] are coming close to an end. So, you see those interest rate sensitive stocks doing really, really well.”

Tech stocks that have been hardest hit by the rise in inflation and surging interest rates led the gains Thursday. Shares of Amazon were up about 12.2%. Apple and Microsoft each advanced more than 8%. Shares of Meta rallied more than 10%. Tesla jumped 7%.

Thursday’s advance rekindled the comeback rally that began in mid-October but stalled in recent weeks. The Dow touched its highest since August on Thursday and the S&P 500 rose above the 3,900 threshold, which has been a key resistance level for the market.

Good economic news!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees yesterday.

The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Zuckerberg as well said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic ended.

“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

Meta, like other social media companies, enjoyed a financial boost during the pandemic lockdown era because more people stayed home and scrolled on their phones and computers. But as the lockdowns ended and people started going outside again, revenue growth began to falter.

An economic slowdown and a grim outlook for online advertising — by far Meta’s biggest revenue source — have contributed to Meta’s woes. This summer, Meta posted its first quarterly revenue decline in history, followed by another, bigger decline in the fall.

Some of the pain is company-specific, while some is tied to broader economic and technological forces.

Last week, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, part of a chaotic overhaul as Musk took the helm. He tweeted that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day,” though did not provide details about the losses.

Meta has worried investors by pouring over $10 billion a year into the “metaverse” as it shifts its focus away from social media. Zuckerberg predicts the metaverse, an immersive digital universe, will eventually replace smartphones as the primary way people use technology.

Meta and its advertisers are bracing for a potential recession. There’s also the challenge of Apple’s privacy tools, which make it more difficult for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snap to track people without their consent and target ads to them.

Competition from TikTok is also an a growing threat as younger people flock to the video sharing app over Instagram, which Meta also owns.

“We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint,” Zuckerberg said. ”We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go.”

Zuckerberg told employees  that they will receive an email letting them know if they are among those being let go. Access to most company systems will be cut off for people losing their jobs, he said, due to the sensitive nature of that information.

“We’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell,” Zuckerberg said.

Former employees will receive 16 weeks of base pay, plus two additional weeks for every year with the company, Zuckerberg said. Health insurance for those employees and their families will continue for six months.

Meta is in trouble!

Tony