Trump's followers do take him literally - CNN

Thiel's simple observation seemed like a handy way to explain how the press misunderstood Trump and his loyalists. However, it failed to describe what was a more complex dynamic. In truth, Trump was often quite serious about outrageous things he said, including banning Muslims seeking to come to the US and building a wall to rival the one erected by the ancient Chinese.

If things didn't work out well, then he could seek cover in the don't-take-me-literally explanation, but his intent was often obscure. And so many in Trump's base do take him literally that when he told a huge crowd in Washington on January 6 that he would walk to the Capitol to protest against Congress certifying the 2020 election, his aides feared that many expected him to follow through.

"There's no way we are going to the Capitol," said chief of staff Mark Meadows when the Secret Service warned him against it. When Meadows asked Trump about his promise to walk to the Capitol he said, "I didn't mean it literally." This exchange, revealed in Michael Wolff's new book "Landslide," illustrates the difficulties presented by Trump's weird approach to both his oratory and his responsibilities.

For four years, Trump's followers had shown that they hang on to every word and do take him quite literally, even when he says implausible things about serious matters like the Covid-19 pandemic and the security of the election system. Despite the suffering and division caused by his statements on these issues and more, Trump hadn't altered his behavior to account for the fact that he was president of the United States and his words mattered. Instead, he continued blabbing, assuming he could declare that he didn't really mean it if things went horribly wrong.

As Wolff notes in an excerpt published by New York Magazine, Trump's most ardent supporters are more like obsessed fans of rock-and-roll idols than voters who might put a candidate's bumper sticker on their cars a week before Election Day. Decades in the public eye and speeches resembling an insult comic's performance had turned Trump into a star. And, as Wolff writes, "Stars like him needed fans, but this did not mean that a fan was not a strange thing to be. The more devoted the fan, the odder the fan."

Many in the crowd that heeded Trump's call to gather in Washington were, to put it mildly, from the odder end of the fan base. Gathered at the Capitol to somehow stop the process that would affirm Joe Biden's election to the presidency, the group included men and women in combat gear, several who brought weapons, and one even dressed like a self-proclaimed shaman. In Trump's speech that day -- or better put, performance -- he wound up the crowd with false claims of election fraud and calls for them to, "Save our democracy."

After asserting, also falsely, that Congress or Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election result, Trump said, "We're going to walk down, (to the Capitol) and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down." Moments later he said his followers must act, "Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."

What followed Trump's remarks was a massive protest that quickly devolved into a bloody assault on the Capitol. Rioting Trump loyalists overwhelmed police, smashing their way into the building and sending senators, member of Congress, and the vice president scurrying for safety. The attack would claim five lives in total and result in more than 140 police officers being injured. Damage to American democracy, and the country's standing in the world, was, if incalculable, nevertheless substantial.

As anyone could predict, Trump denied having any responsibility for what happened on January 6 -- even though he had created the false controversy over the election, fanned the flames of outrage for two months, and then promised he would be with the mob as it marched on the Capitol. His claim that "I didn't mean it literally," shows that after a full term in office, during which his loyalists proved they believed and acted on much of what he said, the President was stubbornly committed to the fantasies he creates and to denying reality.

In truth, Trump's words have helped drive millions to accept dangerous conspiracy theories and to embrace him as a leader who should be believed over the evidence available from both expert sources and their own life experience. How else to explain why, as hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens died of Covid-19, so many accepted the president's claims that the threat was overblown and politicized by his opponents.

In the case of the pandemic, and then the election result, a Trump offended by reality offered fantasies that he seemed to think would serve him better. This is something he has done for decades while making outrageous claims about his wealth and peddling stories about the beautiful women who threw themselves at him. That he continued this as President suggests that he had never accepted the real burden of his office and that his words, even when he wasn't being literal, had consequences.

Trump's way of saying he didn't mean something "literally" is similar to the way some people say "I was only joking" when they say something awful. It's a technique used by those who would absolve themselves of responsibility and simultaneously suggest those who didn't understand were, themselves, wrong and deficient.

The don't-take-me-literally defense may work for a bad-boy rock star but it doesn't work for anyone in a position of responsibility. That Trump was unable to learn this lesson only confirms that he wasn't ever suited to be president or, as he is now, the leader of the Republican Party. It also makes it imperative that we take him seriously at all times, because his devoted followers will.

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Bill Cosby’s Conviction Is Overturned: Read the Court’s Opinion - The New York Times

unconditional promise of non-prosecution, and when the defendant relies upon that guarantee to the detriment of his constitutional right not to testify, the principle of fundamental fairness that undergirds due process of law in our criminal justice system demands that the promise be enforced. explained in Commonwealth v. Clancy, 192 A.3d 44 (Pa. 2018), prosecutors inhabit three distinct and equally critical roles: they are officers of the court, advocates for victims, and administrators of justice. Id. at 52. As the Commonwealth’s representatives, prosecutors are duty-bound to pursue “equal and impartial justice,” Appeal of Nicely, 18 A. 737, 738 (Pa. 1889), and “to serve the public interest.” Clancy, 192 A.3d 52. Their obligation is “not merely to convict,” but rather to “seek justice within the bounds of the law.” Commonwealth v. Starks, 387 A.2d 829, 831 (Pa. 1978). For the reasons detailed below, we hold that, when a prosecutor makes an Prosecutors are more than mere participants in our criminal justice system. As we As an “administrator of justice,” the prosecutor has the power to decide whether to initiate formal criminal proceedings, to select those criminal charges which will be filed against the accused, to negotiate plea bargains, to withdraw charges where appropriate, and, ultimately, to prosecute or dismiss charges at trial. See, e.g., 16 P.S. § 1402(a) (“The district attorney shall sign all bills of indictment and conduct in court all criminal and other prosecutions . . . .”); Pa.R.Crim.P. 507 (establishing the prosecutor’s power to require that police officers seek approval from the district attorney prior to filing criminal complaints); Pa.R.Crim.P. 585 (power to move for nolle prosequi); see also ABA Standards §§ 3-4.2, 3-4.4. The extent of the powers enjoyed by the prosecutor was discussed most eloquently by United States Attorney General (and later Supreme Court Justice) Robert H. Jackson. In his historic address to the nation’s United States Attorneys, gathered in 1940 at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., Jackson observed that “[t]he prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous.” Robert H. Jackson, The Federal Prosecutor, 31 AM. INST. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 3, 3 (1940). In fact, the prosecutor is afforded such great deference that this Court and the Supreme Court of the United States seldom interfere with a prosecutor’s charging decision. See, e.g., United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 693 (1974) (noting that “the Executive Branch has exclusive authority and absolute discretion to decide whether [J-100-2020] - 52

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Read the Pa. Supreme Court’s opinion in the Bill Cosby trial - The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned Bill Cosby’s 2018 sexual assault conviction. Here, you can read the opinions of the justices in full.

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Opinion: I'm Nigerian. I'm Vaccinated. Europe Won't Let Me In - NPR

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Covishield is the brand name used for the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine manufactured in India's Serum Institute, administered to millions of people, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. It's not on the list of approved vaccines for the European Union — although the AstraZeneca version made in the United Kingdom and at European sites is. Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images

Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images

I'm fully vaccinated. I want to travel to Europe. And fully vaccinated visitors are welcome.

But I can't get in.

That's because the vaccine I received is not on Europe's list of four approved vaccines: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Oxford-AstraZeneca, but only the version manufactured in the United Kingdom or Europe and known as Vaxzevria. The version that's much more widely used around the world, which is made by the Serum Institute of India and branded as Covishield, is not on the list of vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency. And that's the vaccine I got — along with hundreds of millions of other people, mostly in lower- and middle-income countries.

This exclusion is spelled out in the rules for the COVID Digital Green Pass, being launched on July 1 to help ease travel within Europe for vaccinated travelers. Covishield is not included.

In January, I wrote about being invisible in the global COVID-19 vaccine campaign. I was disillusioned and did not know when I would receive my first dose of the vaccine because richer Western nations were buying up most of available vaccines. At the same period, only 25 doses of any COVID-19 vaccine had been administered across Africa with a population of more than 1.2 billion.

However, through the COVAX vaccine distribution program, Nigeria received its first batch of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines on March 2. Three weeks later, on March 23, I received my first dose. I was elated.

Two months later, on May 25, I completed my COVID-19 vaccination with dose #2. I felt on top of the world. I felt I was ready to travel to any country because I was protected by the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

In the wake of the Green Pass announcement, there is growing uproar about the exclusion of Covishield.

The Serum Institute, which is the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world, has shared this response to the Green Pass rules:

I realise that a lot of Indians who have taken COVISHIELD are facing issues with travel to the E.U., I assure everyone, I have taken this up at the highest levels and hope to resolve this matter soon, both with regulators and at a diplomatic level with countries.

— Adar Poonawalla (@adarpoonawalla) June 28, 2021

But in the meantime, my situation has not changed. Once again, I feel invisible.

COVID-19 vaccine nationalism has taken different dimensions, all to the detriment of people from poorer countries. COVAX, the vaccine distribution program co-led by the World Health Organization, has distributed more than 89 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. More than 90% of which are manufactured in India, so none of these individuals will be able to travel to Europe any time soon either.

Why would a vaccine using the same recipe from the same pharmaceutical firm not be accorded similar respect simply because it is manufactured in India rather than in a rich European country?

This news comes at a time when Africa is still in dire need of vaccines. The COVAX facility will only provide enough for just 20% of Africans. Right now, fewer than 2% of Africans have so far been vaccinated. With the exception of the vaccine donations promised by President Biden, African leaders often come up against brick walls as they scramble for ways to buy more vaccines.

Those brick walls are part of a deliberate global architecture of unfairness, said Strive Masiyiwa (a Zimbabwean billionaire and African Union special envoy to the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team), speaking at the Milken Institute's "Future of Health Summit" to explore global coordination and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. It's another example of vaccine nationalism, described as a catastrophic moral failure.by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization.

The ramifications of the inequity of the COVID Digital Green Pass are far-reaching. As cities begin to reopen globally, many Africans and others from lower and middle income countries are planning on traveling to Europe to attend conferences, visit relatives, resume school or just have a vacation. These individuals may have booked their air tickets, made hotel reservations, paid school fees. They have received their full doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and were confident they were protected from COVID-19 infection. They followed the vaccination guidelines approved by the World Health Organization. They should be celebrated.

Last week, I spoke on decolonizing global health at a virtual meeting, organized by the London International Development Centre and four United Kingdom universities. After a successful meeting, I began to think that such invitations to speak would soon become in-person and I may have to travel. But if I cannot, will I miss out on these opportunities and in-person connections?

And what are my options? Do I and other recipients of the Serum Institute vaccine now have to take two new doses of other COVID-19 vaccines, or the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine approved by the European Union?

Is it even safe for someone to take four doses of COVID-19 vaccines? Is it right?

My Igbo tribe in Nigeria would describe this latest COVID-19 vaccine inequity and denial of entry to fully vaccinated Africans, Indians and others like myself as pushing someone and then dictating where the person falls.

I am tired, weary, pained, disappointed and let down by the consistent inequity people like me have faced during this COVID-19 pandemic. This can no longer be allowed to go on. It must stop.

The European Union must revise this new guideline. They must view everyone who has been fully vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as the same. As equals. Period!

Ifeanyi Nsofor is the director of policy and advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch and is a senior New Voices fellow at the Aspen Institute.

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'The discourse is wide-open' — Robert Storr reflects on a life in art - Yale News

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As dean of the Yale School of Art, Robert Storr was a regular presence in the school’s studios and classrooms, teaching the fundamentals of painting and drawing every semester while also conducting graduate seminars and participating in critiques of students’ work. A practicing visual artist, he enjoyed helping his students hone their craft. And he valued what they taught him in the process.

“I learned so many things,” said Storr, who retires from Yale on June 30 after leading the School of Art from 2006 to 2016 and serving as professor of painting and printmaking in the five years since he stepped down as dean.

Through teaching, he gained insight into the way students perceived the school’s academic program and what parts of it required strengthening. Students provided him a window into the zeitgeist, helping him to keep abreast of new currents and ideas. Occasionally, they taught him tricks of the painterly trade, such as new methods for layering paint or priming canvases.

“These are very gifted young men and women, and some of them knew how to do things that I wanted to try,” Storr said. “But it wasn’t so much about the craft, although the craft was important. It was about the way the students think about things; how they assimilate the general discourse and how they do so differently than me due to differences in our backgrounds, generational experiences, and individual needs. It was a reminder that the discourse is wide-open at all times and in all directions, which is something teachers, scholars, and artists should never forget.”

Rob moves through the world as Whitman did, believing he has something to learn from everybody.

Sam Messer ’82 M.F.A.

Storr arrived at Yale in 2006 as a prominent art-world figure whose experience bridged the artist’s studio, museum galleries, and academia. He came to campus from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where he was the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art. Prior to that, from 1990 to 2002, he was a curator and later senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, organizing numerous major exhibitions as well as reinstallations of the museum’s permanent collection.

A few years before becoming dean, he was named director of visual arts for the 2007 Venice Biennale, making him the first American to organize the grand international exhibition where critics, curators, artists, and a cosmopolitan cross section of art enthusiasts converge every two years to assess the state of contemporary art.

Soon after coming to the School of Art, Storr realized that its program needed updating. 

“We needed to innovate to provide our students the skills and knowledge to enter a fast-evolving art world,” he said. “The program needed to become more international, more culturally diverse, and more diverse in terms of artistic mediums.”

He didn’t try to overhaul the program overnight. It was a long endeavor — one that provoked resistance at times — but gradually people embraced the need for change, he said.

“I was transparent about my ideas, and I never gave up,” he said.

A diversity of perspectives

Storr devoted his deanship to diversifying the school’s faculty, student body, and curriculum. He expanded the course offerings beyond the traditional disciplines, blending new forms, formats, and technologies — such as video and digital imaging — into the curricula of the school’s four departments: painting and printmaking, photography, sculpture, and design. His successful fundraising efforts enabled the school to expand financial aid and provided much-needed resources and stability amid the 2008 global financial crisis.

He created an in-house exhibition series that presented artwork from around the globe in the school’s Green Hall galleries as well as a gallery at 32 Edgewood Ave., which opened in 2009 adjacent to a new studio building for the school’s sculpture program.

“The art world is no longer centered in New York or, for that matter, anywhere in particular,” Storr said when the new gallery opened. “[The new gallery] will break out of the North-American/East-Coast-centered view of the art world, bringing to our students, staff, and the public ‘breaking news’ from a diversity of international artists.”

We needed to innovate to provide our students the skills and knowledge to enter a fast-evolving art world.

Robert Storr

The exhibition series provided students firsthand experience in exhibiting art in a manner that fulfills its potential to express meaning both socially and aesthetically. The exhibition’s openings and associated events encouraged dialogue with noted artists, critics, and thinkers from the United States and abroad. Those events were attended by literary and artistic luminaries, including Salman Rushdie, Fran Liebowitz, and Jasper Johns. Working with Emily Coates of Yale College’s Theater and Performance Studies program, Storr organized workshops with famed choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer and performance artist Marina Abramovic, as well as a 2014 installation by celebrated dancer and choreographer Deborah Hay.

He recruited talented artists of color to serve as critics on the school’s teaching staff and oversaw the appointments of Rochelle Feinstein and Anoka Faruqee ’94 B.A. to direct the school’s Painting and Printmaking Department, the first and second women to hold the position, respectively. He led the recruitment of multi-media and performance artist Martin Kersels to direct the Sculpture Department.

Storr’s initiatives made a difference, deepening and broadening the school’s profile and visibility while increasing diversity, said Faruqee.

“Rob has had a significant impact on countless individual artists within the programs, many of whom are now leaders within the field of contemporary art,” she said. “Through his seminars, studio visits, and presence within critiques, he brought keen observation and analysis that could only be brought by someone who is a simultaneously an artist, a writer, a curator, and an educator.”

Something to learn from everyone

Sam Messer ’82 M.F.A., professor adjunct emeritus at the School of Art and an associate dean there during Storr’s tenure, had his first phone call with Storr, then the new dean, while walking in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. The conversation was awkward until Messer offhandedly mentioned Walt Whitman, he said. The two instantly bonded over their mutual admiration for the great poet. 

“Once I mentioned Whitman, everything was fine. We understood each other in a human way,” Messer said. “Rob moves through the world as Whitman did, believing he has something to learn from everybody.”

Storr advocated new modes of thinking and teaching about art, broadening the school’s perspective beyond the traditional European-based approach that had dominated its curriculum. He strove to expand and inform the perspectives through which faculty and students approached their work.

“People needed to read more widely both in art history and in critical theory and cultural studies,” Storr said. “They needed to critique work from a broader base of knowledge.”

Messer emphasized Storr’s learnedness, saying that the former dean’s vast book collection has overwhelmed bookcases and turned the rooms of his New York City home into labyrinths.

“He’s the most knowledgeable, intellectual person I know, but he doesn’t live that way,” he said. “He takes his reading and research and filters it through his lived experience.”

While not inclined to suffer fools lightly, Storr was always willing to consider different points of view, Messer said.

“If someone disagreed with him, he’d try to understand where they were coming from,” Messer said. “He would point them in a direction to learn more and fill the gaps in their understanding. To me, that’s the the best kind of teaching.”

Robert Storr teaching class (Photo by Michael Marsland)

Storr brought a close eye and took a thoughtful approach to critiquing students’ work, Faruqee said.

“Students consistently remarked on how he noticed each detail of form, material, and gesture, and then placed it within the larger context of a global art history with succinct eloquence,” she said. “His exchange with students has been invaluable: probing, insightful, and generative.”

A gem of the university

While filling his roles as teacher and administrator, and in addition to painting and exhibiting his own work, Storr continued to write, publishing a steady stream of essays, criticism, and scholarship. His latest book, “Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting” (Laurence King Publishing), published in 2020, is an authoritative survey of the Canadian-American painter, printmaker, muralist, and draftsman.

The first volume of his “Writing on Art” (Heni, London) was also published last year, with a second volume coming this fall. The two volumes form a trilogy of sorts with a 2017 collection of interviews Storr conducted with contemporary artists.

In 2016, Storr received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to support the writing of a memoir — a project he plans to complete following his retirement from Yale.

Aside from composing his memoir, Storr said he plans to retreat to his studios in New Haven and Brooklyn and spend most of his days painting.

“I won’t take another curating or academic job,” he said. “That chapter is over.”

He offered best wishes to Kymberly Pinder, who was appointed dean of the School of Art on June 1 and will officially assume the role on July 1.

“I do think that the School of Art is one of the gems of this university, but it takes constant effort on the part of those in it as well as the university’s full commitment to the arts to retain its sparkle,” he said. “It is a difficult challenge all around, but seeing students engaged in their work and excited about the school’s program is deeply satisfying.”

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OPINION: All or nothing | Opinion | corsicanadailysun.com - Corsicana Daily Sun

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OPINION: All or nothing | Opinion | corsicanadailysun.com  Corsicana Daily Sun

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Bigotry is not an opinion | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshall Independent

To the editor:

I’m response to Trudy’s letter (Trudy Madetzke, June 29)

When or how are Christian kids not supported?

I’ve never encountered a student who was afraid their parents would kick them out over the weekend for coming out as Christian. I have never had a student request a counselor appointment because they are struggling to be accepted as Christians, never have they hesitated to ask me for help to fundraise for a mission trip, to share that they celebrate events such as confirmation, weddings, baptisms, or other religious celebrations.

Christians don’t come to school on any of their religious holidays (that cannot be said for our students of any other faith), they have Wednesday evenings off from activities, they are served non meat options every Friday during lent, they are allowed to pray, they hold FCA meetings in the school (where student leaders are required to sign homophobic contracts which is likely not in compliance with school policy).

Christians are the most supported and welcomed students in schools across America but especially in small, conservative areas such as Marshall. Their free speech is and always has been upheld.

Being gay isn’t a religion nor is it ant-religion. Bigotry isn’t an opinion. There are not two sides. Gay kids exist. That’s it. Quit viewing their existence as an attack on your religion.

Any kid can (and often does) pray, post Bible quotes inside their lockers, share their favorite verse, etc. the existence of queer kids doesn’t change that.

Drop the hate you spew or at least quit calling it Christianity. It’s time to move on.

Karrie Alberts

Marshall

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Opinion: Oregon should foster our culture of volunteer service - OregonLive

Kevin Frazier

Frazier is a second-year law student at the UC Berkeley School of Law temporarily living in San Francisco and the editor of The Oregon Way, an online publication.

Gaps in the social safety net and tears in our civic fabric cannot be filled nor patched by the government alone. The well-being of our neighbors and the caliber of our public sphere are the responsibility of every Oregonian, not just their representatives.

The good news is that Oregonians are among the most service-oriented Americans. The bad news is that there’s no expansive platform connecting service opportunities across the state for Oregonians of all ages, skills, and geographies.

If state leaders build a platform for service, Oregonians will come. According to volunteer rankings compiled by AmeriCorps, Oregon has the third highest rate of volunteerism (43.2%). Similarly, 44.3% of Portlanders volunteer (5th among other major U.S. cities). While there are some sites, like Hands on Greater Portland, that help connect people with volunteer opportunities, many acts of service are generally acts of self-starters: folks willing and able to seek out opportunities to assist their neighbors.

To maximize the impact of Oregon’s volunteers and inspire others to serve, the state needs to learn from states like California and Iowa. California set a nationwide model for formalizing service opportunities. The state has created new service opportunities for students of all incomes, interests, and backgrounds, sending young Californians around the state and allowing them to earn tuition breaks at state schools.

Like Oregon, California is a state with growing income inequality and a seemingly intractable urban-rural divide. By sending San Francisco youngsters to the Central Valley, and vice versa, the state is taking a proactive approach to meeting needs and strengthening the state’s civic fabric. Imagine how much a teen in Portland could learn from working on projects with community leaders in Pilot River. It’s these sorts of transformative experiences that can change how Oregonians see one another and approach problem solving opportunities.

Creating opportunities is one thing; inspiring Oregonians to make the most of those opportunities is another challenge. That’s where Oregon ought to learn from Iowa. Based on research identifying 50 hours of volunteering per year as a sort of “tipping point” that creates a habit of service among individuals, Iowa started the “What’s Your 50?” campaign. This specific, tangible goal has helped Iowa continue to be among the most service-oriented states.

Oregon should go even further than Iowa in challenging Oregonians to step up for one another.

Though businesses can generally deduct a portion of charitable donations from their tax bills, new tax breaks should be developed specifically around service opportunities. What if Oregon businesses were granted tax cuts for proof of their employees volunteering more than 100 hours in a year? Small businesses could receive a similar cut by creating service opportunities for community members or donating a certain percentage of their proceeds to local nonprofits.

What if the gamification lessons we’ve learned from COVID-19 vaccination efforts were applied to volunteering? For every 10 hours volunteered, Oregonians could receive prizes and/or recognition for their service.

What if employers were encouraged to prioritize employment of young Oregonians who took a gap year after high school to spend a year serving others? This would help young Oregonians enter their next chapter of life with a more stable financial foundation and a greater appreciation for the state’s diversity, in all its forms.

Oregonians don’t need to be reminded of the power of service, but they need help incorporating it more easily into their lives from a young age. The lesson for Oregon is clear: government actions alone can’t solve every problem; the sooner we invest in service, the sooner we can patch our social safety net and stitch our civic fabric.

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Submit your essay of 500-600 words on a highly topical issue or a theme of particular relevance to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and the Portland area to commentary@oregonian.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification.

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Opinion: Plummeting projects shows Portland’s broken housing policy - OregonLive

Gerard C.S. Mildner

Mildner is an associate professor of real estate finance at Portland State University. He lives in Beaverton.

The Oregonian/OregonLive’s recent coverage of Portland’s problematic inclusionary zoning policy (“Latest debate on Portland’s ‘inclusionary zoning’ policy centers on affordable family apartments”, June 3) should alert citizens that the city’s housing policy is in shambles. Housing production in the city has collapsed in recent years, despite record home prices and rents. Portland remains attractive to migrants from California, yet our excessive regulation of new development has caused existing housing to become ever more unaffordable.

Inclusionary zoning is a policy that the Legislature unleashed in 2016 at the behest of the city of Portland. The city quickly abused its new powers by requiring developers of buildings of 20 units or greater to provide deep subsidies lasting 99 years for subsidized units, while offering meager incentives lasting no more than 10 years.

The policy has taken five years to reach its full impact as the city (correctly) allowed projects already in the development pipeline to avoid this extortionate policy. However, housing permits in the city fell from 5,094 housing units in 2019 to 1,779 units in 2020, a decline of 65%.

Since apartment projects typically take three to four years from conception to completion, the decline in permits cannot be blamed on the pandemic, labor shortages or rising material prices. Rather, it is a direct result of city and state policy – an outcome that economists had warned could occur. We’ve chosen to tax new housing development to produce social welfare outcomes, rather than placing the cost of social policy on the city’s general fund.

The city’s leaders have pushed a model that we should accommodate the region’s housing needs with high-density development. That policy has been abetted by tight regional restrictions on suburban development, and high demand for apartment living following the Great Recession of 2008-2009. With the loss of employment from that recession, young adults delayed marriage and family formation, and the market for downtown and near-downtown apartments was strong. We saw corridors like Southeast Division and Williams-Vancouver in North Portland erupt with new five-story apartment buildings.

The challenge of the “grow up, not out” pro-density strategy is that higher density costs more to build. In rough terms, 5-story apartments built of wood over a concrete platform cost 50% more per square foot than 2-story wood construction. And beyond 5-stories, developers must use steel and concrete construction that costs an additional 50% more per square foot.

Once the additional burden of inclusionary zoning became effective, developers stopped proposing new projects and the apartment pipeline dried up. And as the pandemic recession of 2020-21 hit us, demand soared for single family housing, which the region was completely unprepared.

The city has placed additional burdens on housing developers ­– mind-numbing delays caused by permitting processes and design review; requirements for tenant relocation fees and year-long eviction delays for non-payment of rent. These policies have demoralized the small landlord community in the city and contributed to Portland dropping in popularity in an Urban Land Institute real estate investor survey from #3 to #66 in a sample of 80 U.S. cities.

Remedying this problem will either take a great deal of humility in City Hall (a rare commodity) or action by the state Legislature to remove powers that the city has abused in the past five years.

As a state, we rely upon a strong central city to establish our reputation, create employment opportunities and build multi-family housing for young adults, young families and seniors. When the city abandons that role to create a welfare state that’s divorced from economic reality, the state is duty-bound to intervene.

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How the next generation is reshaping political discourse - MIT Technology Review

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Last summer, my friend Jessica Rosberger texted me with an idea. “I think I may have something,” she began. We were about to graduate from high school and had spent the last three months of senior year taking classes at home because of the covid-19 pandemic, and lately we’d been following the news of racial justice protests around the US in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.   

An hour and a half later, we published Jessica’s idea as an online petition. In it, we argued that former attorney general William Barr, who graduated from our high school and was given the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011, had violated the school’s core values with his involvement in the violent removal of protesters from Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020. We hoped our petition would encourage the school’s alumni council to rethink Barr’s award.

Jessica and I coordinated over Google Docs, talked with reporters and alumni over Zoom, and shared the petition on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. By July, it had more than 8,700 signatures, was cited in an op-ed in the Washington Post, and propelled us to a virtual meeting with the alumni council.

It was my first taste of the power of using the internet and social media as political tools. Unfortunately, it’s a feeling that’s still too rare, even for my generation—young citizens’ opinions are rarely consulted in social or political matters, even though digital platforms have provided us with a voice and a way of expressing it earlier in life (an estimated 81% of teenagers 13 to 17 are now active on at least one social media site). That may stem from a feeling that our voices don’t matter because we cannot vote until we turn 18. But most of us will be able to by the next presidential election in 2024, if not sooner.

Digital platforms have the potential to redefine civic engagement and allow the opinions of both young and old people to play a deeper role in policymaking. As my generation speaks out online, the lawmakers who are shaping our future will need to figure out how best to listen to those of us who will live in it. Otherwise, young people’s enthusiasm for politics could dry up. At a time when our trust in government is nearing historic lows, the future of political participation is at stake.

Digital democracy

The idea that some combination of technology and a new generation is redefining politics is not new—the same thing happened with the radio, and later with television. But social media, in particular, has brought unique changes. That means my generation has a special role to play in figuring out how these platforms get used.  

The ways young people use such tools are already changing the look of political campaigns and grassroots organizing. Many nonprofits and other groups are now recruiting more and more young people to play larger roles within their organizations. 

The key to making sure young people stay engaged is including them in more political conversations, says Beth Simone Noveck, director of New York University’s Governance Lab and New Jersey’s first chief innovation officer. Noveck leads a project called CrowdLaw, which studies ways lawmakers can use technology to incorporate the opinions of citizens, especially young ones, into the legislative process. She also heads a GovLab program called ReinventED, which centers on using technology to engage students, educators, and caregivers, especially from marginalized communities, in efforts to solve education issues.

Exercises completed by ReinventED show that students’ priorities even in the midst of a pandemic lean toward solving real-world problems and improving nontraditional academic subjects. Policymakers, on the other hand, are more concerned with public health and school reopening plans.

At a time when our trust in government is nearing historic lows, the future of political participation is at stake.

“The people who are most expert in education—mainly students and teachers, and to a lesser extent the parents of those students—are rarely, if ever, consulted in how we design our schools,” Noveck says. “My hope is that by using tools like this, by laying bare what people really care about, that can help to change the direction of what we’re focusing on.” 

Digital platforms, however, may be a double-edged sword. Participating in online movements may not translate into offline engagement—some experts warn it could have the opposite effect. “On social media, you can get a burst of interest, sometimes a burst of activity, because it’s so easy to feel like you’ve participated just by clicking a link or retweeting something or using a hashtag,” says Nicholas Carr, a sociology professor at Williams College. “What’s unclear is whether social media will help or hurt the ability of activists to sustain interests in a long-term campaign of change.”

Instead, the result may be “slacktivism,” a term coined during the rise of the internet for the practice of publicly supporting a cause in ways that take little effort, often to make yourself look good. “That can diminish or even demean the seriousness of political discourse in a way that can kind of hinder our ability to solve big problems,” says Carr.

People who engage in this performative activism are still spreading political messages, though, says William Golub, a junior at Stanford University who volunteered with the texting team on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign last year. “I think that there certainly are people who will just post about something on social media and that’s the end of the chain, but lots of those people are people who wouldn’t have done anything at all,” he says. 

Staying engaged

After we met with the alumni council last July, months passed, and Jessica and I hadn’t received any updates on Barr’s award. Frustrated, we published an open letter to the council on Medium in early September. The council responded two days later with a public update stating that it would share its decision once its written report was complete.

My voice is just as important as the voices of people much older, and technology can help make it heard. But people must be willing to listen.

“Ultimately,” read the report released two months later, “we would not recommend revoking the Award bestowed on then-former Attorney General Barr in 2011.” (Barr held the post from 1991 to 1993, and again in 2019–2020.) The council said this decision was based on community feedback, the “complex” process of revocation and precedent, and the lack of “undisputed information available” regarding Barr’s involvement at Lafayette Square. 

It was devastating. I felt as though the council, whose youngest member graduated from high school in 2002, had dismissed our efforts.

And yet, I can see now that our work wasn’t in vain. Our school’s student-run newspaper published an in-depth analysis of the report, admonishing the council for its decision. Jessica and I received emails from our former teachers, who said our petition had sparked classroom discussions about topics ranging from Barr’s actions to political engagement more broadly. And the council contacted Jessica and me directly, thanking us “for taking an active role in alumni affairs and for your early dedication, as alumnae, to the legacy of the school.”

Even though the final decision was not what I had hoped for, the experience taught me that my voice is just as important as the voices of people much older, and that technology can help make it heard. But people must be willing to listen.

Kiara Royer is a sophomore at Williams College majoring in history and political science.

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A sphere that explodes in your mouth is just one of the wild drinks this experimental coffee shop is bringing to Milwaukee - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Opinion | When it comes to love, focus on yourself over society - University of Pittsburgh The Pitt News

Do you find yourself being the third wheel on your friends’ dates? Do you find yourself watching rom-coms on Valentine’s Day? Do you find dating apps to be unbeneficial?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, I promise it’s okay. It took me a while to grasp this idea, but it is totally normal — you are not a loser.

Movie plots dramatize how to get into a relationship — the main character likes their crush, asks them out on a date, confesses their love and then they become a couple — right? Well, things aren’t always so easy in real life. I’m not desperate to find a significant other and everyone tells me that the time will come when it comes, but when the people back home ask where’s your significant other every FaceTime call, it starts to add pressure to join the dating scene.

A Washington Post article, “It’s not just you: New data shows more than half of young people in America don’t have a romantic partner,” describes how people would like to find the love of their lives, but do not for numerous reasons. Just over half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 said they do not have a steady romantic partner. It is an old tall tale for people to be married with children by the age of 30. The world is evolving and people are breaking the stereotypes and finding love for themselves on their own time. Never being in a relationship can seem unusual and sad — but actually, it is not.

Everyone has reasons for not being in a relationship. Age is a factor to make you feel pressure to rush into a relationship. According to Pew Research, singles are younger on average. The median age of single adults who have never been in a relationship is 24, compared to 35 among those who have been in a relationship. Most single people either choose to be single or are not actively seeking a relationship or dates, instead focusing on their career, friends and family. It can feel like time is ticking away when you are single and older, but you have all the time in the world to choose someone — taking your time to figure out your wants and needs.

Social media, family and friends can add pressure to people who have never been in a relationship. Seeing celebrities post their significant other or listening to songs about heartbreak can take a toll on someone who has never shared their love romantically with another person. I have a playlist called “in my feelings of a non-existent relationship” — trust me, I know the feeling. Family and friends can invade your personal life trying to figure out when the love of your life will be coming home for Thanksgiving dinner or your friend’s birthday party.

I’m an extremely hopeless romantic who is still waiting for Prince Charming to knock on the front door or bump into me at the coffee shop — I blame this on my younger self’s addiction to reading hours of fanfiction. But those fanfiction fantasies have been replaced with life’s reality. Being 20 years old for four months now has me overthinking in the love department. People I went to high school with either have a child, are engaged or are going on dates. Cheerleading and academics were my main focuses during my middle and high school years and have continued to be throughout college. I told myself the reason I’m single is because I am too busy to try and date. Being single has been fine so far, but the older I get, the more I have realized how nice it would be to build a relationship with someone who has similar interests, morals and values.

It’s okay to take a lot of time to find the right person — it doesn’t mean you’ll be alone forever. Whether you have set standards, had crushes but never told them or are scared of commitment  — as I am — you’re smart for trying to look out for the good and bad within people using the relationships around you and figuring out your likes and dislikes.

And it’s okay if you have never been in a relationship. Just be you, let time run its course and don’t let society boss around your love life. 

Ashanti McLaurin primarily writes about Black culture, human injustices and gives life advice. Write to her at [email protected].

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The Manhattan DA could complicate Trump's future - CNN

The District Attorney for the County of New York is reportedly preparing to charge the Trump Organization, and perhaps certain of its executives, in connection with allegedly valuable fringe benefits provided to company employees. The defense lawyers were reportedly trying to talk the prosecutors out of it.

We urge the DA to follow the evidence wherever it may lead in this initial set of charges, and the ones that may follow, even if that brings the prosecution to Trump himself.

In a new Brookings report, we offer a roadmap for what may lie ahead, including for the ex-president. Any analysis must begin with the likely soon-to-be-filed charges. If the recent news coverage is accurate, they will likely be narrowly focused on the company's provision of fringe benefits to executives without the payment of proper payroll or other taxes on them. Those charges may be filed against not only the Trump Organization for a tax avoidance scheme, but also against any individual executive who knowingly failed to record or report those benefits as taxable income.

But we believe it is unlikely that the DA will begin and end its prosecution with a focus on fringe benefits alone. Prosecutors often initially bring a narrow set of charges. Then, over time, they may supersede with additional charges as the case develops, broadening their focus and working their way up the corporate ladder.

There are many reasons why the DA might do this here, including, perhaps, to apply pressure on Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. The DA reportedly has been trying to get him to testify against Trump -- so far without success. Weisselberg could be charged if, for example, he directed a tax avoidance scheme to benefit the company and/or if he himself personally benefited from unreported fringe benefits.

In our experience, the threat of charges against a would-be cooperator can be quite persuasive, but actually filing an indictment plainly raises the stakes. We each have prosecuted or defended individuals in that spot. It is uncomfortable for the defendant.

And any tax fraud case eventually could include other schemes, depending on how the evidence develops. According to reports, prosecutors are looking at allegations that conservation easements may have been improperly taken, that certain income may have been misreported as consulting fees and that now-infamous "hush money" payments may have been illicitly obscured as "legal expenses."

If any or all of those efforts served to reduce the tax liabilities of the company, and perhaps those of its officers or employees, additional charges should be forthcoming. Many of the same operative facts potentially could be charged as the separate offense of falsifying business records. According to the New York Times, other potentially chargeable offenses could also include insurance fraud and a scheme to defraud lenders or others.

That brings us to Trump himself. His penchant for micromanagement is well known. Photographs of him smiling and signing huge stacks of tax forms related to his family business have been widely distributed. It also has been reported that Trump allegedly signed checks to reimburse the hush money payments and was likewise intimately involved in other operations of his company now under scrutiny. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The fact that Trump likely will not be named in the first case or cases to be filed does not mean he can rest easy. We may well see more charging decisions before DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. leaves office at the end of this year. We do not, of course, know whether Trump will be among those charged -- if anyone is. If the evidence does not merit it, he should not be. But given the known facts and the law, we believe Trump is at substantial risk.

Whether the case remains narrow or, as we suspect, it ultimately expands to include broader charges, we want to be clear that this is unlikely to be a slam-dunk case for the prosecution.

Our report includes an extended treatment of possible defenses. The Trump Organization and any executives charged could point to the passage of time, with some of the conduct appearing to fall outside the applicable statute of limitations period. They may argue a lack of criminal intent, including that they reasonably relied on the advice of professionals, such as accountants and lawyers, and therefore acted without the required intent to defraud.

And any charged individuals may attempt to argue unfair or selective prosecution for political reasons in court -- or, as Trump has already done, in the court of public opinion. While rarely a sound defense under the law, the defense would need only one sympathetic juror to secure a hung jury and a mistrial.

But there are potentially powerful rejoinders to each of those points. Statutes of limitations can be extended in New York where there are ongoing conspiracies; prosecutors are permitted to count from the date of the most recent of the series of bad acts, allowing older, related conduct -- otherwise outside the limitations period -- to be swept in. Limitations periods are also extended where a potential defendant was out of the jurisdiction during the statutory period, as Trump was when occupying the White House.

Furthermore, if a defendant can be shown to have known an action is plainly wrong, or subverted professionals, all the advice in the world will not shield him or her. And the rejoinder to claims of political persecution is the principle that in America, the laws apply equally to everyone, no matter how powerful.

So far, we have been impressed with the dogged persistence of the DA, and we hope the prosecutors keep it up to get to the truth about Trump, whatever it may be. Vance and his team have fought through years of litigation to investigate Trump, including two ultimately successful trips to the US Supreme Court.

Having now teamed up with investigators from the New York Attorney General's Office, the DA appears poised to file the first -- but perhaps not the last -- set of charges. The prosecution should continue pressing forward with its investigation of Trump for the most fundamental of American ideas: that no one is above the law, not even former presidents.

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Opinion | The country is on fire, and the biggest obstacle to action is the GOP - The Washington Post

In the Pacific Northwest, where high temperatures this time of year are usually in the 70s, residents who never had much need for air conditioning are suffering through an almost apocalyptic heat wave: On Monday it reached 107 in Seattle, 115 in Portland, Ore., and 117 in Salem, Ore.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., members of both parties came together to hammer out a bipartisan infrastructure deal. But to get Republicans to agree to it, President Biden and the Democrats had to set aside almost everything they have proposed to do about climate change.

That’s about as clear a summation of American climate politics in 2021 as you could ask for: the effects of climate change becoming more vivid all the time, Democrats eager to move aggressively on the crisis, and the Republican Party working hard to make sure the federal government does as little as possible.

That isn’t to say that the politics are simple. Not every Republican is a deranged climate denier bringing snowballs to the Senate floor to try to prove that climate change is a hoax. The GOP has a diversity of opinion on climate. But while some individual Republicans want to do something, they butt up against a party consensus that emphatically rejects meaningful action, and incentives that push ambitious members of their party toward the most retrograde positions.

The infrastructure debate is still unresolved, and even if the bipartisan bill contains only a few provisions that would help alleviate climate change, the more ambitious agenda Biden has laid out could still be a part of whatever Senate Democrats pass via a simple majority reconciliation vote. That could include a new clean electricity standard for power companies, tax incentives for renewables, new research money to develop clean technology, funds to retrofit buildings and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.

A reconciliation bill won’t just copy and paste everything Biden has proposed. Since there are no Democratic votes in the Senate to spare, it will ultimately be up to Sen. Joe Manchin III — a Democrat from the coal state of West Virginia, who once aired an ad in which he fired a bullet through a cap-and-trade bill — to decide what the bill does and doesn’t contain.

But the real impediment to action is still the Republican Party.

That’s despite the fact that there are Republicans who sincerely want to devise a climate agenda. There’s now a Conservative Climate Caucus in the House (though it wants to make sure that fossil fuels are "a major part of the global solution”). House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has a climate agenda, though it too seems mostly focused on continued use of fossil fuels while doing things like planting trees to mitigate emissions produced by the continued burning of oil and gas.

That means there may be common ground on some things; it’s not as though liberals will object to planting trees. And slowly getting agreement here and there might make it more likely that some Republicans will eventually sign on to more meaningful efforts.

And in some areas change can happen without movement on policy. For instance, the coal industry is dying (as of last year, there were just 43,000 jobs left in the entire industry), and before long even Republicans may stop lying to people in Appalachia about how they’ll bring all the old coal jobs back.

But in the meantime, there’s a Republican policy consensus on climate change, and a Republican political consensus on climate change. The first is bad. The second is worse.

The GOP policy consensus goes something like this: Climate change might be happening, but we shouldn’t do much about it, and whatever we do must not hurt the fossil fuel industry.

Every mention of climate in the party’s most recent platform is about why we shouldn’t care about or act on climate (“Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue”). Your average Republican member of Congress may say something like “Sure, the climate’s changing, but it always changes,” then pivot to the importance of fossil fuel jobs.

And the GOP political consensus goes like this: Opposing action on climate change is an excellent way to show that you hate liberals, which is the single most important key to success in this party.

That’s why Republicans have turned the Green New Deal — a proposal that is nowhere near to becoming law — into an all-purpose object of fear and blame. So when an unexpected snowstorm knocked out power in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) went on Fox News to declare that the failure of the state’s electricity distribution system "shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”

The Green New Deal is also to blame for the hangnail Abbott got later that day, and the fact that the Texas Rangers are dead last in the American League West.

When Republicans start their 2024 presidential primaries, they won’t be competing to see who has the most effective climate plan. They’ll toss off meaningless bromides about “free-market solutions,” then try to outdo one another on who hates liberals and their radical enviro-hippie ideas the most.

Which means that for the foreseeable future, progress on climate will come only when Democrats gain power, then manage to use it. Perhaps watching it get so hot in the Northwest that roads are buckling and power cables are melting will concentrate their minds.

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