Lunar eclipse on May 15, 2022. (Courtesy: Paul Nolte FugaFoto Low Altitude Imaging)

Dear Commons Community,

Tonight there will be  a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon.  

The spectacle will be visible in clear skies across North America and South America tonight and in Africa and Europe Wednesday morning.   According to NASA, the moon will enter Earth’s partial shadow at 8:41 PM EDT, but its  peak will occur at 10:44 p.m.

No special eye protection is needed to view a lunar eclipse. Viewers can stare at the moon with the naked eye or opt for binoculars and telescopes to get a closer look.

A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Earth passes between the sun and moon, casting a shadow that darkens a sliver of the moon and appears to take a bite out of it.

The supermoon will inch closer to Earth than usual and will appear a bit larger in the sky.

Here’s hoping for a clear sky!

Tony

Image:  Frederic Legrand – COMEO/ShutterStock Yin/Adobe Stock.

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Secret Service said yesterday it was aware of a post by billionaire Elon Musk on the X social media platform musing about an absence of assassination attempts on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk, who owns the platform, formerly known as Twitter, put up the post after a man suspected of planning to assassinate Republican former President Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach was arrested on Sunday.

A Trump supporter and the CEO of Tesla, Musk wrote on Sunday: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” a post he ended with an emoji of a face with a raised eyebrow. As reported by Reuters.

He was quickly criticized by X users from the left and right, who said they were concerned his words to nearly 200 million followers could incite violence against Biden and Harris.

Musk deleted the post but the Secret Service, tasked with protecting current and former presidents, vice presidents and other notable officials, took notice.

“The Secret Service is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” a spokesperson told Reuters in an email. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”

The spokesperson declined to specify whether the agency had reached out to Musk, who seemed to suggest in follow-up posts that he had been making a joke.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” he wrote. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

Harris, a Democrat running against Trump in the Nov. 5 presidential election, issued a statement on Sunday night as did Biden expressing relief and gratitude that Trump had not been harmed and condemning political violence.

The White House criticized Musk for his post.

“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said on Monday.

Musk is such an accomplished individual.  Amazing he made such a stupid comment and on social media.

Tony

Buyout by Campus at Penn State System

Dear Commons Community,

At Pennsylvania State University at New Kensington, forty percent of the staff and 10 percent of the faculty there have taken voluntary buyouts that were offered across the system’s regional campuses earlier this year. Among those leaving the campus, where enrollment has dropped by about a third over the past 10 years, were the registrar, the director of student affairs, all three employees in the business and finance office, and the chancellor.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Buyouts are intended to be a humane way to cut costs while avoiding layoffs and allowing employees a measure of agency in deciding when to leave a job. But they can hurt morale and have unintended consequences, like when more people — or different ones than expected — raise their hands to go. That’s what many faculty and staff think happened at New Kensington.

While buyouts are fairly common in higher education as a way to reduce costs, according to Robert Kelchen, a professor in educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, they are typically aimed at employees closer to retirement. “It’s not exactly the most strategic option, but it’s an option,” Kelchen said. “If the goal is to try to free up money or turn over the work force, it’s probably the best way to do it, but you have an issue of the people you really want to take the buyout may not take the buyout, or you have too many people take the buyout and a unit is effectively demolished.” In addition, he said, laws and union contracts mean colleges may have limited options for how they implement buyouts.

Across Penn State’s regional campuses (see chart above), about one in five eligible employees took the buyout, although the numbers varied significantly across the 20 institutions. Many left in June; the rest, who were asked to stay on to help ease the transition, will leave by the end of December.

This may also be a sign that unemployment is at an all-time low and that there are many opportunities to find new positions. It is a worker’s market.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Amazon is reverting to its pre-pandemic policy and will require corporate employees to be in the office five days a week starting next year, CEO Andy Jassy said yesterday.

Jassy said in a message shared with employees that the company’s leadership had been thinking in recent months about how to better “invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other” to deliver the best results for customers and the business.

The company decided that bringing employees back into Amazon offices five days a week instead of the three currently required was a way to address that issue, the CEO said.

“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy wrote in the memo, which Amazon also shared on its website. The policy takes effect on January 2, 2025.

Like many other companies, Amazon’s corporate employees worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the company saw massive gains from a boost in online shopping. In 2021, the tech giant implemented a policy that allowed leaders to determine how their teams worked.

In February 2023, Amazon asked all employees to come back to the office for three mandatory days, resulting in some protests from workers.

A few months later, Jassy said employees who were not happy about the change should learn to “disagree and commit.” He also issued somewhat of a subtle threat, saying it was “probably not going to work out” for those who refused to do so.

In his note yesterday, Jassy said the company has observed that it is easier for employees to “learn, model, practice and strengthen” Amazon’s culture and brainstorm when they’re together in person.

“If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits,” he said.

Most interesting change in policy that will be followed by other businesses and organizations.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The vast majority of people in this country  have not had time nor the inclination to read the 30-chapter, 920-page Project 2025 conservative manifesto published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.  Stever Rattner, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, had a piece yesterday explaining eight ways that Project 2025 would change our country.  Here is a summary of Rattner’s essay.

1. Project 2025’s tax system would greatly benefit the wealthy

The 2025 plan would condense seven tax brackets into just two, leading to higher tax rates for lower-income Americans and lower rates for the rich.

2. Millions of people would be at risk of losing health care coverage if there are lifetime Medicaid caps

Almost 95 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid in 2021. If lifetime caps are implemented, over 19 million people, or 5% of the country’s population, would be at risk of losing their health care coverage.

3. Eliminate Headstart

4. Phase Out Title I

Project 2025 would phase out the $18 billion currently allocated to Title I, a key source of education aid, and return funding responsibility to the states.

5. End Student Loan Forgiveness

President Joe Biden’s effort to reduce the burden of student debt on young Americans would be ended and existing borrowers would have to repay the loans per their existing terms.

6. Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act

The conservative manifesto seeks to repeal large parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is principally aimed at facilitating a shift toward renewable energy.

7. Ban the Abortion Pill

8. Bolster Presidential Power

Project 2025 would reclassify policy-related positions, remove civil service protections and make federal employees easier to fire.

Trump has disavowed any connection to Project 2025 but the fingerprints of his associates are all over it.

Tony

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. PHOTO: ABC News.

Dear Commons Community,

Ohio Republican Governor  Mike DeWine offered one of the most vociferous defenses of Haitian immigrants in Springfield as their presence in the city becomes a chief point of criticism from former President Donald Trump.

Speaking to ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, DeWine repeatedly noted that the immigrants are in Ohio legally and praised their work ethic, stridently debunking claims that they are eating neighbors’ pets — unsubstantiated conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and his allies.

“I think it’s unfortunate that this came up. Let me tell you what we do know, though. What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies,” DeWine said.

“What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there, and frankly, that’s helped the economy. Now, are there problems connected? Well, sure. When you go from a population of 58,000 and add 15,000 people onto that, you’re going to have some challenges and some problems. And we’re addressing those,” he added.

Conspiracy theories about the immigrants spread online have made their way to national politics, breaking through when Trump claimed in his debate with Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday that Haitians in Springfield were eating neighbors’ dogs and cats.

“Look, there’s a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all,” DeWine said on “This Week.”

The fallout spread beyond politics over the past week as bomb threats and other threats of violence were reported in Springfield — prompting a strong rebuke from DeWine.

“There are hate groups coming into Springfield. We don’t need these hate groups. I saw a piece of literature yesterday that the mayor told me about from purportedly the KKK. Look, Springfield is a good city. They are good people. They are welcoming people. We have challenges every day. We are working on those challenges,” DeWine said.

“This idea that we have hate groups coming in, this discussion just has to stop. We need to focus on moving forward and not dogs and cats being eaten. It’s just ridiculous,” he added.

DeWine last week announced the state would send more resources to Springfield. His office said local primary caregivers have been impacted due to an increased number of patients and lack of translation services. DeWine has authorized $2.5 million to go toward expanding primary care access for the city of Springfield, while calling for more federal help.

When pressed by Raddatz on how to square his defense of immigrants in Springfield with Trump’s comments about them, on top of recent incorrect claims at the debate that he in fact won the 2020 election, the Ohio governor said Americans trust Trump on the economy and other issues.

“I’ve said before we knew who the nominee was going to be, I would support the Republican nominee for president. I am a Republican. I think if you look at the economy, these are issues that I think the American people are most concerned about. I think that Donald Trump is the best choice,” he said.

“Look, there’s these are legitimate problems that we have on the border. I’m not minimizing that at all. And those are legitimate arguments where the vast majority the American people agree with Donald Trump, and not the vice president, [Kamala Harris],” he added. “But what’s going on in Springfield is just fundamentally different. These people are here legally. They came to work.

Amen!

Tony

Robert Caro, the author of  The Power Broker. Credit…Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

About twenty years ago, a new dean was appointed at the City University of New York.  He had spent his entire life and career on the West Coast.  He and I had lunch and I commented to him that if he wanted to understand New York, he should read Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. He immediately said to me, “Tony that is exactly what Chancellor [Matt] Goldstein said to me.”  Earlier this week, The New York Times had an article written by  Emma G. Fitzsimmons celebrating the 50th anniversary of Caro’s book.  Here is an extended excerpt.

Once you’ve read The Power Broker, it’s hard not to see the legacy of Robert Moses everywhere you look.

I read the book in 2016 when I reported on the Second Avenue subway, which opened then in Manhattan nearly a century after it was first proposed. I wanted to know why New York City stopped expanding the subway in the 1960s and learned about the car-loving reign of Moses, painstakingly detailed by Robert Caro over 1,246 pages.

As the book hits its 50th anniversary this month, it is still beloved in political circles and serves as a Rorschach test for diagnosing what ails the city and how to fix it.

Brad Lander, the city comptroller who is running for mayor against Eric Adams next year, read it in 1993 with a group of young planners and immediately took a daylong driving tour of places mentioned in the book “touching all five boroughs, and ending on Randall’s Island, where Moses collected the tolls that were the coin of his realm.”

His main takeaway? City planners must balance getting projects done with a “vision for the growth of our city that is built with its residents, not by paving over them.”

Another mayoral candidate, Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn, said that what stuck with him is that “local government can either be an immeasurable force for long-lasting good, or, with shortsightedness, lack of inclusion and arrogance, a tool for permanent harm.”

Janno Lieber, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that his lesson was that “anybody who shares Moses’s view that mass transit is the past and not the future will be proven wrong.”

Adams was less effusive, telling reporters recently that he read the book, but did not have “any feedback” on what it meant to him.

Scott Stringer, another mayoral challenger, said the book showed how “land use and zoning, without proper checks and balances, can have long-term, dire consequences for urban planning.”

Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens who is considering running for mayor, said she read the book from “the perspective of someone who grew up in the segregated city Moses designed.” She said she wondered sometimes why candidates put the book in the frame on video calls: “Is it there because you admire Caro or because you admire Moses?”

And who is the Robert Moses of today?

Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, was similarly ambitious and ruthless.

Lander named Dan Doctoroff, a top official under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as the leader who came the closest to Moses in his impact on the city: “But I’m pleased to say he evolved over the course of his career to focus far more on making it inclusive and sustainable.”

Justin Brannan, the powerful chair of the City Council’s finance committee, named Jacques Jiha, the director of the city’s Budget and Management Office under Adams, as a modern-day Moses. Jiha has overseen budget cuts to libraries and free preschool and reshaped city government.

Brannan said he read the book after growing up in Brooklyn in the shadow of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, a major Moses project, and he’s still holding out hope for a movie version directed by Oliver Stone, which was announced by HBO in 2011.

For now, there is a special exhibit at the New-York Historical Society and a podcast dissecting the book.

Some Caro fans are more fanatic than others, and we tend to find each other. Monica Klein, a Democratic political consultant, is part of a group chat dedicated to analyzing the book. They even have matching black baseball caps with red letters that say: “The Power Broker Book Club.”

This summer, when Gov. Kathy Hochul abruptly canceled congestion pricing — a plan that would have tolled cars entering Manhattan to pay for subway upgrades — Klein texted me: “Robert Moses is definitely cackling with glee right now.”

I grew up in the South Bronx in the 1950s and I saw first hand how Moses’ projects such as the Cross-Bronx Expressway completely destroyed stable, multi-generation neighborhoods one after another.  The Bronx has never recovered.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

Arizona’s Civil War-era ban on nearly all abortions officially is being repealed today.

Arizona has been whipsawed over recent months, starting with the Arizona Supreme Court deciding in April to let the state enforce the long-dormant 1864 law that criminalized all abortions except when a woman’s life was jeopardized. Then state lawmakers voted on a bill to repeal that law once and for all.

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed the bill in May, declaring it was just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona.  As reported by several news media outlets.

“I will continue doing everything in my power to protect reproductive freedoms, because I trust women to make the decisions that are best for them, and know politicians do not belong in the doctor’s office,” Hobbs said in a statement.

Abortion has sharply defined Arizona’s political arena since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. As the November general election approaches, the issue remains a focus of Democratic campaigns, and it will be up to Arizona voters to decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution.

It was after the state Supreme Court cleared the way for enforcement that Hobbs urged the state Legislature to take imminent action to undo the ban before it went into effect. Republican lawmakers, who hold a narrow majority in both chambers, derailed discussions about repealing the ban. At one point, the roadblocks resulted in chants of “Shame! Shame!” by outraged Democratic colleagues.

Emotions on the House floor and in the gallery ran high as House Democrats were able to garner the support of three Republicans to pass the repeal legislation two weeks later, sending the measure to the Senate for consideration. Two GOP senators joined with Democrats a week later to grant final approval.

Democrats were advocating for the repeal long before the Supreme Court issued its ruling. Even Hobbs called for action in her January State of the State address.

The battle in Arizona made national headlines again when Democratic state Sen. Eva Burch told fellow lawmakers in a floor speech in March that she was going to get an abortion because her pregnancy was no longer viable. She said in an interview that it was her chance to highlight that the laws passed by legislators in Arizona “actually do impact people in practice and not just in theory.”

In the weeks between the high court’s decision and Hobbs signing the repeal into law, Arizonans were in a state of confusion about whether the near-total ban would end up taking effect before the repeal was implemented.

A court order put the ban on hold, but questions lingered about whether doctors in the state could perform the procedure. California Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in on the issue in late May, signing legislation allowing Arizona doctors to receive temporary, emergency licenses to perform abortions in California.

With the territorial ban no longer in play, Arizona law allows abortions until 15 weeks. After that, there is an exception to save the life of the mother, but missing are exceptions for cases of rape or incest after the 15-week mark.

Arizona requires those seeking an abortion prior to the 15-week mark to have an ultrasound at least 24 hours before the procedure and to be given the opportunity to view it. Minors must have either parental consent or authorization from a state judge, except in cases of incest or when their life is at risk.

Abortion medication can only be provided through a qualified physician, and only licensed physicians can perform surgical abortions. Abortion providers and clinics also must record and report certain information about the abortions they perform to the department of health services.

Voters will have the ultimate say on whether to add the right to an abortion to the state constitution when they cast their ballots in the general election.

Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition leading the ballot measure campaign, was successful in securing the measure’s spot on the ballot. The Arizona Secretary of State verified 577,971 signatures that were collected as part of the citizen-led campaign, well over the 383,923 required from registered voters.

If voters approve the measure, abortions would be allowed until fetal viability — the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks. It also would allow abortions after that time in cases where the mother’s physical or mental health is in jeopardy.

Tony

 Dear Commons Community,

Pope Francis yesterday slammed both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris  for what he called anti-life policies on migration and abortion, and he advised American Catholics to choose who they think is the “lesser evil” in the upcoming U.S. elections.

“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,″ Francis said.  As reported by The Associated Press.

The Argentine Jesuit was asked to provide counsel to American Catholic voters during an airborne news conference while he flew back to Rome from his four-nation tour through Asia. Francis stressed that he is not an American and would not be voting.

Neither Republican candidate Donald Trump nor the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, was mentioned by name.

But Francis nevertheless expressed himself in stark terms when asked to weigh in on their positions on two hot-button issues in the U.S. election — abortion and migration — that are also of major concern to the Catholic Church.

Francis has made the plight of migrants a priority of his pontificate and speaks out emphatically and frequently about it. While strongly upholding church teaching forbidding abortion, Francis has not emphasized church doctrine as much as his predecessors.

Francis said migration is a right described in Scripture and that anyone who does not follow the Biblical call to welcome the stranger is committing a “grave sin.”

He was also blunt in speaking about abortion. “To have an abortion is to kill a human being. You may like the word or not, but it’s killing,” he said. “We have to see this clearly.”

Asked what voters should do at the polls, Francis recalled the civic duty to vote.

“One should vote, and choose the lesser evil,” he said. “Who is the lesser evil, the woman or man? I don’t know.

“Everyone in their conscience should think and do it,” he said.

The Harris and Trump campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

U.S. President Joe Biden, an observant Catholic, shares Harris’ strong support for abortion rights, a stance that prompted some Catholic bishops and other conservatives to call for him to be denied access to Communion.

After meeting Francis in person at the Vatican in October 2021, Biden came away saying the pope told him he was a “good Catholic” and should continue receiving Communion.

Francis, asked on previous occasions about some U.S. bishops who want to deny Communion to Biden over his support for abortion rights, has said bishops should be pastors, not politicians.

Friday’s news conference was not the first time Francis has weighed in on a U.S. election. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Francis was asked about Trump’s plan to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Francis declared then that anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants “is not Christian.”

In responding Friday, Francis recalled that he celebrated Mass at the U.S.-Mexico border and “there were so many shoes of the migrants who ended up badly there.”

Trump pledges massive deportations, just as he did in his first White House bid, when there was a vast gulf between his ambitions and the legal, financial and political realities of such an undertaking.

Pope Francis keeps with the teachings of his faith!

Tony