Dear Commons Community,

The autumn equinox is upon us, and with it, a shift to shorter days, longer nights and the astronomical start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere.  Autumn officially starts today at 8:43 am (EDT).

Equinoxes occur when Earth reaches a point in its orbit where the sun shines directly on the Equator. This happens twice a year, in March and in September, and is a result of Earth’s spinning on an axis that is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit. During an equinox, places around the globe experience nearly equal periods of day and night.

Happy Fall!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

According to the Pew Research Center, Americans owe about $1.6 trillion in student loans as of June 2024 – 42% more than what they owed a decade earlier. The increase has come as greater shares of young U.S. adults go to college and as the cost of higher education increases.

The basis for its conclusion is the  Center’s analysis of data from several sources, including the Federal Reserve Board’s 2023 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.  Here is a short summary.

One-in-four U.S. adults under 40 have student loan debt. This share drops to 14% among those ages 40 to 49 and to just 4% among those 50 and older.

Of course, not all Americans attend or graduate from college, so student loan debt is more common among the subset of people who have done so. Among adults under 40 who have at least a four-year college degree, for example, 36% have outstanding student loan debt.

Age differences reflect, in part, the fact that older adults have had more time to repay their loans. Still, other research has found that young adults are also more likely now than in the past to take out loans to pay for their education. In the 2018-2019 academic year, 28% of undergraduate students took out federal student loans. That’s up from 23% in 2001-2002, according to data from College Board – a nonprofit organization perhaps best known for its standardized admissions tests (like the SAT) that also documents trends in higher education.

The amount of student loan debt that Americans owe varies widely by their education level. Overall, the median borrower with outstanding student debt owed between $20,000 and $24,999 in 2023.

• Among borrowers who attended some college but don’t have a bachelor’s degree, the median owed was between $10,000 and $14,999 in 2023.
• The typical bachelor’s degree holder who borrowed owed between $20,000 and $24,999.
• Among borrowers with a postgraduate degree the median owed was between $40,000 and $49,999.

Looking at the same data another way, a quarter of borrowers without a bachelor’s degree owed at least $25,000 in 2023. About half of borrowers with a bachelor’s degree (49%) and an even higher share of those with a postgraduate education (71%) owed at least that much.

Adults with a postgraduate degree are especially likely to have a large amount of student loan debt. About a quarter of these advanced degree holders who borrowed (26%) owed $100,000 or more in 2023, compared with 9% of all borrowers. Overall, only 1% of all U.S. adults owed at least $100,000.

My colleague Patsy Moskal at the University of Central Florida alerted me to this study by the Pew Research Center.

Tony

Abortion Rights on Ballot in Ohio in November.  ABC News

Dear Commons Community,

Just two years ago, leading anti-abortion activists were euphoric as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, thus ending the nationwide right to abortion.

Now, with a presidential election fast approaching, their movement is disunited. Within their own ranks, there is second-guessing and finger-pointing, plus trepidation that Election Day might provide new proof that their cause is broadly unpopular.  As reported by The Associated Press.

A key reason for the wariness is the anti-abortion movement’s recent losing streak on abortion-related ballot measures in seven states, including conservative Kansas and Kentucky. Nine more states will consider constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights in the Nov. 5 election — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. In several of them, abortion opponents tried various unsuccessful strategies for blocking the measures.

“Pro-life people don’t wear rose-colored glasses; we know we have a huge task ahead of us,” Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, told the AP. “Because of the massive amounts of money being dumped into the ballot measures from those allied with the abortion industry and the Democratic Party, it’s an uphill battle.”

“We will continue to educate, to make people aware of the catastrophic result if these measures pass,” she added. “I have not seen flagging energy or any loss of determination among pro-life people.”

Texas is among the Republican-governed states that have enacted near-total abortion bans. Yet nationally, Texas Right to Life president John Seago said, the anti-abortion movement “is in a critical chapter right now.”

“Following a historic legal victory, we have realized that while we had enjoyed massive legislative and legal victories in the last decade, public opinion had not followed the same trajectory,” he added.

Troy Newman, who heads the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, recently published an online opinion piece assailing the movement he’s been a part of for 25 years.

“The tide has turned, and the pro-life message is now considered a political liability that could prevent President Trump’s victorious return to the White House,” Newman wrote.

“After evaluating the terrible mistakes of the pro-life movement over the last several years, I can only conclude that it is our fault,” Newman wrote. “We have had over 50 years to change the culture’s position on abortion only to have failed miserably.”

In an interview with the AP, Newman blamed those in his own ranks for the predicament — saying some anti-abortion leaders should have been more adamant in their positions. “We lose the minute we stop focusing on the babies,” he said.

Kristan Hawkins, leader of Students for Life of America, suggested via email that Newman’s views were ill-suited to the post-Roe era. She said the students in her organization were embracing the challenges of a state-by-state playing field.

But she acknowledged the magnitude of the challenges.

“I actually believe the biggest threat is ourselves — our mindsets — which will lead to decreased recruitment, training, and mobilization of our grassroots army of love,” she wrote recently in the conservative outlet Townhall.

“Look at the struggles we face this fall with several late-term abortion ballot referendums,” she added. “Most will likely be a political loss for our movement because, in most states, a politically sophisticated, organized, and well-funded state-wide movement is not present.”

Hawkins also acknowledged the anger among some anti-abortion activists over the inconsistent rhetoric on abortion coming from the Republican presidential ticket of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

“I’m not here to make apologies for the Campaign and their political miscalculations, which are dividing us and could very well lead to their defeat,” wrote Hawkins.

Trump nominated the Supreme Court members who were crucial to overturning Roe and called it “a beautiful thing to watch” as various states took different directions. He has been evasive on whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress approved one; his “leave it to the states” approach conveys acceptance of the current patchwork map in which abortion is widely available in at least half the states.

Eligible to vote in Florida, Trump has criticized as too restrictive a new state law banning abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy. But he said he would vote against the ballot measure that would make abortion legal until fetal viability.

Trump’s support for a state-by-state solution was a factor in the decision of Charles Camosy, an anti-abortion Catholic academic, to declare he now feels politically estranged.

“The Republican Party has rejected our point of view. Democrats are running a candidate ( Kamala Harris ) who has made abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign,” Camosy, a medical humanities professor at Creighton University School of Medicine, wrote recently in The Atlantic.

“Pro-lifers — those who believe that protecting vulnerable and unborn life should be a primary policy priority — now do not fit in either major political party.”

In an interview, Camosy said abortion-rights supporters were better prepared for the post-Roe era than their adversaries

“They were well-funded, they developed key relationships with the media,” Camosy said, while some Republican-controlled legislatures – in his view — went too far with stringent abortion bans.

“I see this moment as an opportunity,” Camosy wrote in The Atlantic. “Pro-life 3.0 must welcome people from multiple political and policy perspectives, working for both prenatal justice and social support for women and families.”

Some other anti-abortion activists have forcefully renounced Trump, including leaders of End Abortion Ohio.

“We call on God-fearing American voters to withhold their votes from Trump until he evidences genuine repentance for his pro-abortion stance,” said the group’s executive director, Nicholas Kallis.

Republicans and other Trump supporters should know by now that he has no commitments went it comes to policy. 

Tony

Enrico Fermi

Dear Commons Community,

Last month I read  Quantum Drama:  from the Bohr-Einstein Debate to the Riddle of Entanglement by Jim Baggot and John L. Heilbron.  Enrico Fermi was mentioned a number of times and while I certainly knew who he was, I did not know enough of his contribution to the development of atomic energy and the bomb.  I read The Pope of Physics… to fill in my understanding.  It did not disappoint. Segrè and Hoerlin have done a fine job with this biography and cover well Fermi’s early life, his family, his tireless devotion to physics research, his emigration from Italy to the United States, his development of  the first nuclear reactor, his contributions at Los Alamos, and his early death. Segrè and Hoerlin also write in an accessible style even when discussing technical subjects related to nuclear physics.

I enjoyed this book and recommend it without any hesitation!

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

————————

The New York Times

He’s the Bomb: An Enrico Fermi Biography

By Gregg Herken

Nov. 18, 2016

THE POPE OF PHYSICS
Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
By Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin
Illustrated. 351 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $30.

In a controversial lecture more than 50 years ago, the British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow suggested that natural scientists had “the future in their bones.” Snow was speaking in 1959, when the public still held scientists — particularly physicists — in a kind of awe, because of their role in the invention of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. But Snow might well have had in mind the Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi, the subject of a new scientific biography by the husband-and-wife team of Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin. Fermi’s “intuito fenomenale” — phenomenal intuition — and his near infallibility in predicting the results of experiments were characteristics that prompted colleagues at the University of Rome to designate him “the Pope.” One of his graduate students marveled: “Fermi had an inside track to God.”

The title stuck, for a different reason, when Fermi; his wife, Laura; and their two small children emigrated to America in December 1938, a move hastened by the racial purity laws of Mussolini’s ally, Nazi Germany. (Laura’s parents were Jewish; both would perish in the Holocaust.) In contrast to other scientists who fled European fascism, Fermi exuded an almost ethereal calm, and he remained unflappable in the face of both triumph and disaster. Lacking Einstein’s nimbus of white hair, Oppenheimer’s tortured introspection or Teller’s mercurial temperament, Fermi — “small, dark and frail-looking” as a child, according to his sister — more closely resembled a middle-aged Fiat mechanic than a mover of the universe. (His daughter Nella, growing up in the family, had a different perspective on her father: “It wasn’t that he lacked emotions, but that he lacked the ability to express them.”) By being equally adept at experimental work and theoretical physics, Fermi also differed from his contemporaries. “I could never learn to stay in bed late enough in the morning to be a theoretical physicist,” he joked.

Ironically, the one time that Fermi’s intuition failed him was the experiment for which he would win, in 1938, the Nobel Prize in Physics: the discovery of induced radiation from slow neutrons, a necessary first step toward unlocking the secrets of nuclear fission. But Fermi and his colleagues in Rome mistakenly believed that they had created the first transuranics, elements with an atomic number greater than that of uranium, element 92. (Some Italian journalists proposed that element 93 be called Mussolinium.) Had Fermi turned his intuition to the problem it is likely that fission would have been discovered in Italy in early 1935, and not nearly four years later in Germany. Were that the case, Segrè and Hoerlin point out, it is possible that Hitler would have had an atomic bomb to use during the Second World War. “Perhaps Fermi’s not discovering fission is one of the world’s greatest gifts of good fortune,” they write.

Nonetheless, Fermi was one of the first scientists to appreciate the world-changing potential of fission’s discovery. Looking out at downtown Manhattan from a Columbia University high-rise in the spring of 1939, he cupped his hands and quietly told colleagues there: “A little bomb like that and it would all disappear.”

Fermi will always be best remembered for overseeing the creation of the world’s first nuclear reactor, on a squash court under the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago late in 1942. He and his fellow scientists elected not to tell the university’s president, Robert Hutchins, about their dangerous experiment, lest Hutchins put an end to it. (The only safeguards against an uncontrolled atomic chain reaction that would have irradiated a significant part of Chicago was a scientist wielding an ax to cut the rope that held an emergency control rod suspended from the balcony, and a few other brave volunteers, whose job was to douse the runaway reactor with buckets of neutron-absorbing cadmium sulfate.) Fermi was either confident — or cavalier — enough to jest that, if things went drastically wrong, one should “run quick-like behind a big hill many miles away.” At the climactic moment, when the atomic chain reaction was about to become self-sustaining, Fermi announced a break for lunch, which also broke the tension mounting among his colleagues in the room. Afterward, a bottle of Chianti was produced and used to toast the achievement. A phone call to Washington announcing their success in code — “The Italian navigator has just landed in the new world” — ended with what was perhaps the last innocent, upbeat message to be associated with the dawn of the atomic age: “Everyone landed safe and happy.”

Perhaps understandably, the authors are most assured and informative when writing about Fermi’s contributions to science. Gino Segrè is a physics professor at the University of Pennsylvania; his famous uncle, Emilio, was Fermi’s first student in Rome. Hoerlin, a onetime professor at Penn, grew up in the “atomic city” of Los Alamos. But except for their account of the young Fermi as one of the precocious scientists known as the “Boys of Via Panisperna” — the location of the University of Rome’s physics department — there is little in the book that is new, and that has not already been covered in other works, like Richard Rhodes’s “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.”

This is too bad, because, arguably, Fermi’s intuito fenomenale extended into other realms, including politics. As a member, in June 1945, of the Scientific Panel of the so-called Interim Committee — a group of policy makers asked to advise on the use of the atomic bomb — Fermi did not depart from the panel’s recommendation that it saw “no acceptable alternative to direct military use.” Like his colleagues, Fermi averred that scientists had “no proprietary rights” to their creation. After the bomb was successfully tested in the New Mexican desert a month later, Fermi would describe his work at Los Alamos, where the weapon had been built, as simply “a labor of considerable scientific interest.” Just a few years later, however, while serving on another panel of experts asked to advise the United States government on whether to proceed with development of the hydrogen superbomb, Fermi joined with his longtime friend and fellow physics Nobel laureate, Isidor Rabi, in condemning the prospective H-bomb as a weapon “which in practical effect is almost one of genocide,” and “necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.” Having been determinedly apolitical throughout most of his career, Fermi on his deathbed confided to a young scientist, according to the authors, that he “lamented the relative lack of public policy involvement in his life.” He died of stomach cancer in November 1954, at age 53.

Since our efforts today at stopping the further spread of the bomb is likely to be looked upon in years to come as largely futile, there is a haunting episode, not included in the book, where Fermi’s phenomenal intuition may once again have come to the fore. In late April 1945 — more than two months before the test of the first atomic bomb — Secretary of War Henry Stimson, recently briefed by Los Alamos scientists, reported to President Truman on what the future held in store for the United States and the world. Having stood on the precipice and looked over the edge, Fermi and his fellow scientists judged it “extremely probable” that, in the future, nuclear weapons would “be constructed by smaller nations or even groups.” None can say we were not warned.

Trump and Mark Robinson. Photo illustration courtesy of Thomas Levinson.

Dear Commons Community,

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will not appear at former President Donald Trump ’s rally today in the battleground state following a CNN report about Robinson’s alleged inflammatory online posts. Robinson has been a constant presence at Trump campaign events in the state, but new salacious revelations about his past have changed that. As reported by The Associated Press.

Robinson allegedly wrote that he was a “Black Nazi” and that “slavery is not bad,” saying that he wished the institution would return so he could buy slaves. In another post, the socially conservative politician who has previously referred to “transgenderism” as “filth,” wrote about how much he enjoyed watching transgender porn. He also bragged about being a Peeping Tom, detailing a memory about watching girls in the shower when he was 14 years old. 

Robinson has been a frequent presence at Trump’s North Carolina campaign stops. The Republican nominee has referred to Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids” and long praised him. But in the wake of a CNN report, the Trump campaign issued a statement that didn’t mention Robinson and instead spoke generally about how North Carolina was key to the campaign’s efforts.  

Robinson’s campaign didn’t respond to a text yesterday seeking confirmation on his Saturday plans. The deadline in state law for Robinson to withdraw as the Republican candidate for governor passed late Thursday. State Republican leaders could have picked a replacement had a withdrawal occurred.

Robinson has denied writing the posts, which include racial and sexual comments. He said he wouldn’t be forced out of the race by “salacious tabloid lies.” While Robinson won his GOP gubernatorial primary in March, he’s been trailing in several recent polls to Democratic nominee Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general.

“Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story — those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he told supporters in a video released Thursday by his campaign. “You know my words. You know my character.”

State law says a gubernatorial nominee had until the day before the first absentee ballots requested by military and overseas voters are distributed to withdraw. They were distributed starting yesterday.

Robinson has a history of inflammatory comments that Stein has said made him too extreme to lead North Carolina. They already have contributed to the prospect that campaign struggles for Robinson could help Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris win the state’s 16 electoral votes.

Democrats jumped on Robinson and other Republicans after the report aired, showing on social media photos of Robinson with Trump or with other GOP candidates, attempting to tarnish them by association. Losing swing district races for a congressional seat and the General Assembly would endanger the GOP’s control of the U.S. House and retaining veto-proof majorities at the legislature.

“The fallout is going to be huge,” Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said Friday. “The Democrats are counting on this … having a big effect.” But Cooper said Republicans could limit problems to the governor’s race only if upward ticket-splitting trends among voters continue.

Harris’ campaign rolled out a new ad  it calls the first to link Trump to a down-ballot candidate. The commercial alternates between Trump’s praise for Robinson and the lieutenant governor’s comments which his critics have argued show his support for a statewide abortion ban without exceptions. Robinson’s campaign have said that’s not true.

The Democratic National Committee is also running billboards in three major North Carolina cities showing a photo of Robinson and Trump and comments Trump has said about him. And a fundraising appeal yesterday by Jeff Jackson, Democratic attorney general candidate, also includes a past video showing Republican opponent Dan Bishop saying he endorsed Robinson.

“Every North Carolinian when they go to vote ought to look at whether a candidate has done that, because that sends a strong message about who you are as a candidate,” Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a top Harris surrogate, said at a Friday news conference.

CNN’s story, which describes a series of comments that it said Robinson posted on the message board more than a decade ago, sent tremors through the state’s political class, particularly Republicans.

While the state Republican Party came to Robinson’s defense late Thursday pointing out he’s “categorically denied the allegations,” party Chairman Jason Simmons put out his own statement calling them “deeply troubling” and that Robinson “needs to explain them to the people of North Carolina.”

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who endorsed a Robinson rival in the primary, said on X that Thursday “was a tough day, but we must stay focused on the races we can win.” He didn’t mention the governor’s race.

Trump and Robinson are two birds of a feather!

Tony

Geoff Duncan

Dear Commons Community,

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) delivered a damning assessment of former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, declaring that: “He’s not God. He’s a loser.”

Duncan’s slam of the GOP nominee came during a CNN “NewsNight” panel discussion on Trump’s call for Republicans to force a government shutdown if Democrats fail to agree to laws to combat his fake voter fraud claims.

“I don’t know what I’m more mad at. I go back and forth minute to minute,” Duncan earlier admitted.

“Am I more mad at Donald Trump trying to sabotage good policy and good legislation to keep the trains on time?” he asked. “Or am I more mad that we’re at this epitome of stupidity again and half the people in that room couldn’t pass a high school economics class and don’t realize the damage that they’re doing just to try to prime up an extra 15 likes on Twitter?”

“It infuriates me to watch us get to this spot,” Duncan added. “If you really look at the mechanics of what’s going on, we’ve already budgeted the money and now we just don’t want to write the check for it. If we do that at home, we ultimately go to jail or get evicted or lose your car or your wife leaves you or something.”

Duncan faced Trump’s wrath following the 2020 election after he refused to help overturn the then-defeated incumbent’s loss to President Joe Biden.

Duncan initially endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign and has now publicly backed Kamala Harris for the White House.

“I think it’s important to reinforce the fact to Republicans around the country that just because you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, doesn’t mean you’re Democrat,” Duncan said on CNN last month. “It just means you’re a patriot. You’re doing your duty as an American to step up to the plate and reclaim this country’s future.”

Duncan tells it like it is!

Tony

Sean O’Brien (Associated Press Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse Donald Trump or Kamala Harris for president, saying neither candidate had sufficient support from the 1.3 million-member union. As reported by The Associated Press.

“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.”

The Teamsters’ rebuff reflected a labor union torn over issues of political identity and policy, one that mirrors a broader national divide. Vice President Harris has unmistakably backed organized labor, while former President Trump has appealed to many white blue-collar workers even as he has openly scorned unions at times. By not endorsing anyone, the Teamsters are essentially ceding some influence in November’s election as both candidates claimed to have support from its members.

Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt noted in an emailed statement that more than three dozen retired Teamsters spoke last month in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, having endorsed Harris. Their pensions were saved through the 2021 passage of the Butch Lewis Act that President Joe Biden and Harris championed.

“While Donald Trump says striking workers should be fired, Vice President Harris has literally walked the picket line and stood strong with organized labor for her entire career,” Hitt said. “The Vice President’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her — alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor.”

The Teamsters said Wednesday that internal polling of members showed Trump with an advantage over Harris, a fact that the Republican’s campaign immediately seized upon by sending out an email that said the “rank-and-file of the Teamsters Union supports Donald Trump for President.”

Trump called the Teamsters’ decision not to endorse “a great honor.”

“It’s a great honor,” he said. “They’re not going to endorse the Democrats. That’s a big thing.”

Harris met Monday with a panel of Teamsters, having long courted organized labor and made support for the middle class her central policy goal. Trump also met with a panel of Teamsters in January and even invited O’Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention, where the union leader railed against corporate greed.

In an interview Wednesday on Fox News, O’Brien said lack of an endorsement tells candidates that they have to back the Teamsters in the future. “This should be an eye opener for 2028,” he said. “If people want the support of the most powerful union in North America, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, start doing some things to support our members,” he said.

The Teamsters’ choice to not endorse came just weeks ahead of the Nov. 5 election, far later than endorsements by other large unions such as the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers and the United Auto Workers that have chosen to devote resources to getting out the vote for Harris.

With O’Brien facing a backlash from some Teamsters’ members after speaking at the Republican National Convention, it’s no surprise that the union decided not to make an endorsement, said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University.

Trump’s praise of Tesla CEO Elon Musk for firing workers who supposedly went on strike really made a Trump endorsement very unlikely, Wheaton said. “The members were not in total agreement,” he said.

Marick Masters, a business professor emeritus at Wayne State University in Detroit who follows labor issues, said the Teamsters lack of an endorsement suggests a realignment within the union’s membership.

For many workers, issues such as gun control, abortion and border security override Trump’s expressions of hostility to unions, Masters said.

The Teamsters detailed their objections to the candidates in a statement, starting with their objection to a contract implemented by Congress in 2022 on members working in the railroad sector.

The union wanted both candidates to commit to not deploying the Railway Labor Act to resolve contract disputes and avoid a shutdown of national infrastructure, but Harris and Trump both wanted to keep that option open even though the Teamsters said it would reduce its bargaining power.

Harris has pledged to sign the PRO Act, which would strengthen union protections and is something the Teamsters support. Trump, in his roundtable with the Teamsters, did not promise to veto a proposal to make it harder nationwide to unionize.

Other unions have shown trepidation about endorsing either presidential candidate. The United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America on Friday ultimately endorsed Harris with a caveat that “the manner in which party leaders engineered Biden’s replacement at the top of the ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris was thoroughly undemocratic,” union leadership said in a statement.

But the Teamsters lack of endorsement also suggests an indifference to the Biden-Harris administration, which signed into law a measure that saved the pensions of millions of union retirees, including many in the Teamsters.

As part of its 2021 pandemic aid, the administration included the Butch Lewis Act to save the underfunded pensions of more than 1 million union workers and retirees’ underfunded pensions. The act was named after a retired Ohio trucker and Teamsters union leader who spent the last years of his life fighting to prevent massive cuts to the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund.

I find this a surprising move on the part of the Teamsters that will have more ramifications for Harris than for Trump.

Tony

Source:  The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

As expected, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates yesterday by half a percentage point. This rate cut will have ramifications for consumers, savers, and the overall economy.  For consumers, it will mean lower interest rates on mortgages, car purchases, and credit-card debt. For savers, it will mean lower interest rates on CDs.  For the overall economy, here are six takeaways courtesy of The New York Times.

• The Fed’s decision lowers rates to about 4.9 percent, down from a more than two-decade high.
• Fed officials lowered interest rates because they are confident that inflation is coming back down to their 2 percent goal, and now they want to prevent the job market from softening further.
• Central bankers expect to cut interest rates more in the months to come, but they are not on a preset path, Mr. Powell said. They could speed up if the economy is weak and slow down if it’s strong.
• The Fed is keeping a wary eye on the uptick in unemployment, but for now it thinks the economy is basically strong.
• The Fed is feeling “growing confidence” that it can pull off the soft economic landing by lowering interest rates.
• In short, the Fed has pivoted to its rate cutting era, and there is more to come.

All in all, this should be good news for most Americans!

Tony

Courtesy of The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague David Bloomfieled alerted me to this story.

The number of New York City children missing school on a regular basis remains high, years after students returned to in-person learning following COVID-era lockdowns,  according to new figures released Monday.

Close to 35% of public school students were considered “chronically absent” during 2023-24, missing at least 10% of the school year, according to data from the Mayor’s Management Report. That’s roughly the same level as the year before, when 36% of students were chronically absent.  The absenteeism in New York City is higher than figures nationally (see graph above).

Before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism rates typically hovered around a quarter of students each year.

“These numbers should have started to come back to normal,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. “Persistent absenteeism has become routine for too many students and families. School attendance stopped being habitual; it stopped being routine.”

Chronic absenteeism soared during the pandemic, spiking at 41% during the 2021-22 school year — when many students were first returning to classrooms, and still spreading COVID-19 and following quarantine protocols. But even as vaccines became available and the health crisis faded from public view, student attendance was still spotty.

Sarah Part, a senior policy analyst at Advocates for Children, said she’s continued to see students missing school because of issues with school transportation — exacerbated by a local policy that forces some migrant families with children to move shelters every 60 days — and a spike in mental health problems that has young adults avoiding their schools.

“There really needs to be a concerted effort to focus on this issue,” said Part. “Because it’s kind of self-evident — students who are absent have fewer opportunities to learn. So anything else this administration is trying to do, students have to be in school to benefit from those initiatives, to have the kind of impact we want.”

Education officials are trying to lower the chronic absenteeism rate to a goal of 29%, according to the report — widely viewed as the Adams administration’s yearly report card.

“Schools conducted extensive outreach, collaborated with community partners, and followed up daily with students and families to increase attendance,” it read.

The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but has said it has a variety of programs aimed at targeting kids who are chronically absent.

During a press conference Monday, Mayor Adams focused on numbers that show more families signed up for childcare and more young people living in NYCHA buildings were connected with jobs.

“This is just a small sample of what we have done,” Adams said of the findings. “We have more to do, we know that, but we’re moving in the right direction.”

You can’t learn if you are not there.

Tony

MSNBC/Youtube Gints Ivuskans/Shutterstock

Dear Commons Community,

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday shared her reaction to the latest apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life over the weekend, denouncing the former president’s decision to blame Democrats for the potential attack.

A 58-year-old suspect has been charged with federal gun crimes over his effort to try to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee while he was playing golf at his West Palm Beach club on Sunday. Trump was unharmed.

In an interview with Katie Couric in Washington, D.C., as part of her book tour for the release of her new memoir, Clinton said she was horrified to learn of the news.

“This is such a terrible thing to happen twice in our country in a relative short period of time and it’s frightening to see violence being threatened and used in a political campaign,” Clinton said.

Just nine weeks ago, the former president was shot at during an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump  pinned the blame for the latest attempt on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his main rival in the presidential race, saying they are responsible for motivating the suspect to target him.

“The Rhetoric, Lies, as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC Debate, and all of the ridiculous lawsuits specifically designed to inflict damage on Joe’s, then Kamala’s, Political Opponent, ME, has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” he added.

Clinton said it was “regrettable” that Trump turned his assassination attempt, which she described as a “genuinely terrible event,” into a political attack against his Democratic rival.

“Everything that he talks about is about himself,” she said. “He doesn’t in any way try to reach out to people. He’s not interested in representing all of America and all of Americans and this is just another really regrettable incident of that.”

Clinton said Trump should have used the opportunity to call for calm and peace.

“If he were really a leader, he should be doing what he can to calm the waters, not try to just continue to throw red meat out there to get people riled up,” she said.

He is not a real leader. In fact, he is no leader at all!

Tony