Opinion: Housing prices are still surging, but a bubble doesn't seem likely - CNBC

The structural frame of a house is seen at The Collection at Morristown, a housing development by Lennar Corporation, in Morristown, New Jersey, November 13, 2021.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

Last week we learned that housing prices grew rapidly yet again in January.

The widely followed S&P CoreLogic 20-City Home Price Index was up 19.1% compared with January of last year — a blistering pace, especially considering that the growth was on top of the 11%-plus growth rate reported for January 2021.

It's highly anomalous for housing prices to rise over 32% in a span of two years, and so the trend is causing some economists to start worrying about a possible bubble.

In the chart below, you can see the acceleration in prices that has occurred over the past year and a half. The growth rates we are now seeing exceed those immediately preceding the Great Financial Crisis.

That's enough to make anyone a little nervous, especially now that mortgage rates have risen to nearly 5% from a low of around 2.7%.

S&P Dow Jones Indices

But there is one big difference between today's bull market in housing and the one that ended so badly more than a decade ago. Generally speaking, we are not seeing the kind of speculation that was so rampant back then.

We don't see "investors" buying multiple condos with the expectation of selling them at a large gain within a matter of months. And we don't see the critical ingredient that made this "flipping" activity possible, which was the ready availability of credit on very easy terms.

Fortunately for all of us, the trauma of the GFC was enough to teach banks and regulators a lesson they won't soon forget.

Shady lending practices, to include very small or even no down payments, adjustable-rate mortgages, mortgages without proper documentation, teaser rates, pay-option ARMs and inflated sales appraisals, are not contributing in any meaningful way to the strength in housing prices we are now seeing.

And more critically, there is only a very limited market for bonds backed by sub-prime or Alt-A mortgages, keeping origination activity for unqualified borrowers limited as well.

The strength we are seeing in today's housing market has a much more straightforward explanation.

Rather than speculation and easy credit, there has simply been a large mismatch between the supply of and demand for housing, and the mismatch is especially pronounced for lower-priced, entry-level homes.

On the supply side, it has become fairly obvious that new home construction has been far too low since the GFC.

It's understandable that homebuilders would be skittish in the years immediately following the collapse of the housing market. But the construction deficiencies have endured up through present day.

Some of the factors inhibiting building activity include a severe shortage of labor; supply-chain disruptions associated with trade wars and Covid; rapid inflation in raw materials; and land shortages driven by zoning restrictions and land-use regulations.

These headwinds to more rapid construction have only intensified, and so supply is likely to be constrained well into the future (which could support elevated housing prices). The chart below shows that at the current sales pace, there is only two months of supply available for sale.

National Association of Realtors

The growth in demand for housing, which has accelerated materially in just the past few years, is related to several factors as well.

The first and most obvious factor is that a large demographic segment, the Millennials, are reaching the age when folks typically buy homes. Some Millennials had deferred homeownership until now due to inadequate incomes or savings, but now that the job market has improved dramatically many are deciding to take the plunge.

A second factor is the trend toward "work from home", or "WFH", which many believe will be a lasting legacy of the COVID pandemic. Given that these sources of demand are highly unlikely to abruptly reverse, it seems that demand is likely to remain elevated well into the future.

All that said, today's bull market in housing would not have been possible without the artificial suppression of interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

This heavy dependence on ultra-low mortgage rates creates a problem now that mortgage rates are rising.

Housing affordability is determined by three things: household incomes, the cost and availability of financing (mortgage rates), and housing prices. All three of those inputs have been rising, but increases in the two that decrease affordability (housing prices and mortgage rates) are more than offsetting growth in the one that increases affordability (household incomes).

You can see in the chart below that housing affordability had already dropped quite significantly from the highs in 2012-2013 to the most recent reading for the fourth quarter of 2021. And a lot has happened since the end of last year.

We suspect that with the continued increase in home prices this year and the big surge in mortgage rates to nearly 5%, the affordability reading for the first quarter of 2022 is going to be much lower (even though household incomes have continued to grow).

National Association of Realtors

Higher home prices and strong demand are obviously good things for homebuilders.

As you can see in the chart below, homebuilder sentiment is quite elevated right now. But the increase in home prices and spike in mortgage rates, coupled with the relative dearth of listings, has led many prospective buyers to throw in the towel.

It's hard to argue with that. But it is critical to remember that if the number of listings remains as depressed as it is now, a much smaller number of willing buyers is needed to keep prices going up.

University of Michigan, National Association of Homebuilders

The housing sector is very important to the U.S. economy. Artificially suppressed interest rates undoubtedly pulled forward some home price appreciation, and the massive appreciation in home prices to date will, unfortunately, lock some prospective first-time buyers out of the market.

But it's hard to see any kind of crash similar to the GFC. Demand is simply too strong while supply is too limited.

— CNBC contributor Michael Farr is president of Farr, Miller & Washington, a wealth management firm based in Washington, D.C. Keith Davis is a partner at the firm.

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Opinion | Yes, Lynching Is Still a Thing - The New York Times

On a warm August night in 1955 on the outskirts of Money, Miss., about a hundred miles due north of Jackson, two men arrived with a flashlight and a gun at the house where Emmett Till was staying with his aunt and uncle.

Till was just 14 years old. He was visiting from Chicago. He had been accused of whistling at, flirting with or touching a white woman.

It was 2 o’clock on a Sunday morning. The men barged into the house, entered the room where Till slept, shined the flashlight in his face and asked, “You the niggah that did the talking down at Money?”

They forced the boy to get dressed, put him in a car and rode off with him, this over the pleadings of his uncle and aunt. One of the men asked the uncle how old he was. “Sixty-four,” the uncle answered. “Well,” the man responded, “if you know any of us here tonight, then you will never live to get to be 65.”

After hours of driving and just before daybreak, the men took Till to a tool shed and began to pistol-whip him. But, as one of the men would tell Look magazine the next year, Till was still defiant, yelling at one point: “You bastards, I’m not afraid of you. I’m as good as you are. I’ve ‘had’ white women. My grandmother was a white woman.”

(It is important to remember that these men are killers, and their word is suspect. The confession, and what it projects onto the Black boy they killed, must be viewed with caution and in context.)

The man told the magazine that he liked Black people (he used a slur, of course), as long as they were “in their place.” And as long as he lived and could, he said, he was going to keep them in their place. So when he heard Till “throw that poison at me” about white women, “I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you — just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’”

They forced the boy back in the car and drove him to a cotton ginning factory in another town. The sun had risen by the time they arrived. They stole the fan of a cotton gin, loaded it in the car and drove away.

They parked at a spot near the Tallahatchie River. They forced the boy to remove the heavy cotton gin fan from the car and to strip naked. They then shot him in the right side of his face, near his ear.

The boy dropped to the ground. The men tied his body with barbed wire to the cotton gin fan and pushed it into the river.

Three days later, Till’s body — bloated and disfigured — was fished out of the river several miles downstream.

Local authorities sent the boy’s body back to his mother, Mamie Till, in Chicago in a coffin that was nailed shut. She demanded that it be opened. The body reeked because it had already started to decompose. As his mother later recounted viewing the body for the first time:

“I saw that his tongue was choked out. I noticed that the right eye was lying on midway his cheek, I noticed that his nose had been broken like somebody took a meat chopper and chopped his nose in several places. As I kept looking, I saw a hole, which I presumed was a bullet hole and I could look through that hole and see daylight on the other side.”

Emmett Till had been lynched, without question, but there had been no mob that did the deed and there had been no hanging. There was a beating and shooting and heinous disposal of the body.

Both men were acquitted of murder, by the way.

Lynching was never only about hanging. It was about a motive and means of injury and death, and lynchings have always needed specific legislation to make them punishable. Finally, on Tuesday, after 100 years of failed efforts on the part of liberal legislators to get such provisions written into law, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act, which makes lynching a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

The wording of the bill doesn’t specify hanging, but instead defines a lynching as a hate crime that results in death or serious bodily injury.

Still, some Americans continue to demonstrate a fundamental ignorance about lynching. Take Fox News’s Jesse Watters, who asked why a hate crimes bill is a priority now, saying, “nobody has been lynched in America in decades.” This is patently false.

Ahmaud Arbery was lynched in 2020 when two men, joined by a third, chased him down while he was jogging, killed him in the street in broad daylight and stood over his body, not rendering aid, as he bled out.

You could also argue that George Floyd was lynched, a few months later, when officers held him down and Officer Derek Chauvin pressed the life out of him on a public street. In fact, I think that you could make a strong case that several high-profile police killings were in fact lynchings.

And who would debate that James Byrd Jr. was lynched in 1998 when three white men took him to the woods, beat him, urinated on him, tied his ankles to the back of their truck and dragged his body for three miles, the pavement sanding away at his flesh. An autopsy found that he most likely died only when he was decapitated by a culvert about halfway through the dragging.

I, too, wish that lynching was only an ugly feature of America’s past, but sadly that simply isn’t the case. Lynching is still a thing.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Opinion: Coercion and Institutionalization Won't Fix NY's Mental Health Crisis - City Limits

“We must reject policies that single out, scapegoat, and sweep away the rights of our neighbors with mental illness. “

Gov. Hocul’s Office

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announcing plans for subway policing and homeless outreach in February.

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I spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital on Long Island in 1970. I hadn’t slept or eaten in many days, had isolated myself for many more, and was increasingly suspicious of others. The medication and “therapy” groups left me empty and gave me little reason for hope. I thought my life as I knew it was lost forever.

Several years later, I went to work at the local state psychiatric center in Albany to try to give encouragement to people like me, who were essentially being told that their lives were over.

I worked as a mental health service provider for the next 18 years and as a mental health advocate for the last 30. I have seen New York’s mental health system at its worst and at its best.

I have seen us fail to provide the time and the will to find out how best to engage people in great need, only to place the blame on them and label them as “non-compliant.”

I’ve seen us give up on people because they wouldn’t accept medications without even trying to first address their most immediate needs, like food, shelter, and clothing. Now I’m seeing the state move to forcibly confine people in psychiatric wards because we haven’t found a way to get them to accept those same things.

I’ve seen people and politicians complain about and decry the “homeless mentally ill” and then fail to provide the specialized housing and supports necessary for people to voluntarily leave the streets and subways for help that they can trust, even as we have 2,500 empty supported housing units in New York City.

I’ve seen us fail time after time to skillfully engage and support BIPOC individuals with serious mental illnesses, as powerfully demonstrated by the finding that nearly 4 out of 5 Kendra’s Law coercive treatment orders are applied to Black and Brown people in New York City.

I’ve seen the sharp rise in public fears about the “violent mentally ill” even as the data is clear that the people I support are 11 times more likely to be victims of violence and five times more likely to be victims of murder.

We must reject policies that single out, scapegoat, and sweep away the rights of our neighbors with mental illness.

But I’m also seeing extraordinarily promising successes.

Just a few days ago, I saw New York’s Legislative Black, Brown, Puerto Rican and Asian Caucus reject the Hochul Administration’s proposal to expand the use of coercive treatment orders in favor of extending more and more appropriate services to those same communities.

I’m seeing programs send peer counselors out again and again to Queens tenements, White Plains bus stations, and Rochester homeless shelters to successfully and voluntarily engage people who would have otherwise been levied with Kendra’s Law orders that are supposed to be used as a last resort, but often aren’t.

I’m seeing the launch of crisis response models in New York State that offer a peer homeless outreach program in New York City, a center offering an array of crisis responses under one roof in Buffalo and the success that forensic peer team members are having in Westchester County.

I’m seeing the success of “low threshold” housing programs that take in and support people who were initially unwilling to stop using drugs or to start taking medications of choice.

Today, after many years of getting the wrong kinds of treatment, I deeply appreciate the medication, therapy, and peer support that I rely on because they were the right fit and introduced in the right way by the right people—and I had the choice to use them.

Years ago, a provider told me of how a worker had gone out again and again to unsuccessfully engage a person in severe need with a particular medication and treatment plan and asked me, shouldn’t we respect people’s right to refuse care? I answered, before you give up, send out someone else and offer them something better.

We must go forward and make these voluntary support and housing models available to all and stop any moves backward to the policies of coercion and institutionalization.

Harvey Rosenthal is CEO of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services.

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Finally, a road map to hold Trump accountable - CNN

Norman Eisen was former President Barack Obama's "ethics czar" from 2009 to 2011 and US ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. Fred Wertheimer is president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that works to strengthen US democracy. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)The resignation of two Manhattan prosecutors for their boss's failure to charge former President Donald Trump over potential financial crimes last month has reignited debate over whether he will ever be held accountable for his alleged misdeeds.

That matters not only looking back but also going forward because perhaps his most notorious outrage -- the big lie that he won the 2020 presidential election -- has not halted. It continues to drive hundreds of voter suppression and election sabotage bills and anti-democratic candidates across the country. And it has captured and corrupted a significant faction of the Republican Party.

Thankfully, Judge David Carter's decision on Monday, finding Trump "more likely than not" committed crimes, sets out a road map for finally imposing consequences for the big lie. It does so by tackling the thorniest legal issues regarding Trump, his enablers and the events in and around January 6, 2021 -- and showing how they can be addressed by prosecutors.

Perhaps the most daunting of these is the question of Trump's criminal intent. How can a prosecutor prove what Trump was thinking when he publicly claims good faith but refuses to testify, when those closest to him also resist or are hostile witnesses and when he does not use the prosecutor's best friend, email?

Intent is where the Manhattan District Attorney's financial case seemed to come a cropper. Whatever you think of the DA's failure to prosecute financial crime, and we strongly disagreed, Carter offered a powerful array of evidence about democracy crimes.

Carter applies precedent to show that "a person does not need to know their actions are wrong to break the law." Trump exceeded this threshold because he likely knew that right-wing lawyer John Eastman's plan to throw out electoral votes was illegal. Carter cites the January 6 House select committee's carefully compiled evidence that Trump was advised publicly and privately numerous times that there was absolutely no evidence of significant electoral fraud.

As the opinion notes, Trump's calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he famously asked the secretary to "give (him) a break" and "find 11,780 votes" (one vote more than Biden's margin of victory in that state) reveal the former President's goal: not to undertake any legitimate investigation, but simply to overturn the election. This is strong evidence of a "corrupt mindset," and it leads Carter to an eminently simple conclusion: "(t)he illegality of the plan was obvious."

By marshaling both private conversations and public writings about the plan to overturn the election's lack of evidentiary basis, Carter shows that prosecutors have at their disposal a wide array of forms of evidence probative of the former President's intent. Perhaps no one on earth has developed a lengthier evidentiary record than Trump -- and prosecutors can unlock that record to hold him accountable. This effectively contradicts those who say intent will be hard to prove and is a useful signpost for the upcoming January 6 committee hearings and report -- and for when the Justice Department receives the committee's full evidence and any criminal referrals.

The judge's analysis does not stop only at tackling the knotty issue of intent. He goes on to tackle the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding in Congress. This can be hard to prove (having worked on this issue during Trump's first impeachment, one of us knows this particularly well). But the judge's opinion shows the way.

Carter joins other federal judges in ruling that the congressional electoral count is an "official proceeding," and he rules that Trump likely attempted to obstruct or impede that official proceeding under Title 18 Section 1512 of the US Code. By synthesizing evidence from Twitter, the President's private schedule, remarks at the Ellipse rally and other sources, Carter traces Eastman and Trump's activity in the days leading up to January 6 and finds that these actions "more likely than not" constitute obstruction.

The judge also mapped another important possible crime: conspiracy to defraud the US under Title 18 Section 371. He did so as to Eastman and Trump, but in terms that by implication could apply broadly to many others in their circle. Here, the opinion notes that "(l)eading small meetings in the heart of the White House implies an agreement between the President and Dr. Eastman and a shared goal of advancing the electoral count plan."

The possible implications for the rest of Trump's enablers are obvious. Eastman is certainly not the only person alleged to have participated in calls or meetings relating to overturning the election. Tremors must have gone down the spines of former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and many more who were allegedly part of such conversations.

It is also worth noting that the judge ultimately ordered disclosure of only one document based on the "crime-fraud" exception to attorney-client privilege. That one document, however, is significant. It is an email chain that forwarded to Eastman a draft memo written for Giuliani. Carter notes that "this may have been the first time members of President Trump's team transformed a legal interpretation ... into a day-by-day plan of action." By recognizing that Eastman's theories weren't just legal musings but the action plan for "a coup in search of a legal theory," Carter knocks down one of the key phony arguments on which Eastman and Trump have relied.

This is obviously helpful to the committee in framing their hearings around this illicit conduct and in including strong criminal referrals to the Justice Department in its report. Because there is likely more evidence than what has already been disclosed, the committee should build on the judge's opinion, and then it is for the Justice Department to evaluate and determine whether the cases can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

In addition, neither we nor the committee should neglect the importance of all this to state prosecutors like Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia, who is investigating Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the election in that state. She must grapple with these issues of proving criminal intent, conspiracy and the like under Georgia law. And Willis has added a Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) expert to her team to advise in her investigation. The judge has made all that easier for her, and the committee should also keep her investigation in mind as they build on his work in their hearings and in their report. (They are reportedly already talking to her office, which is a promising sign.)

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Of course, some caveats do apply. The California federal case was a civil proceeding, and so involved a lower standard of proof than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard that will apply in a federal or state criminal case. Moreover, Eastman will undoubtedly appeal, which might delay matters. But his efforts are unlikely to be successful owing to the judge's very searching review of the record.

Indeed, there is only one part of his opinion to which we take exception. At the close, Carter writes that "(m)ore than a year after the attack on our Capitol, the public is still searching for accountability. This case cannot provide it." That is false modesty.

He might have said, "cannot directly provide it." Carter knows the limited implications of his decision. But he has expertly tackled the key legal issues that the public needs to understand, and that will need to be addressed by the January 6 committee in making any criminal referrals and ultimately by federal and state prosecutors in their own efforts to hold Trump accountable.

Hopefully, all will use the road map the judge has provided and do something about the underlying offenses. That matters for the sake of holding Trump and his enablers accountable, for stopping the ongoing big lie crime spree of the MAGA faction of the GOP and for protecting our democracy itself.

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Opinion | What if Putin Didn’t Miscalculate? - The New York Times

The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated.

He thought Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his troops. They didn’t. He thought he’d swiftly depose Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. He hasn’t. He thought he’d divide NATO. He’s united it. He thought he had sanction-proofed his economy. He’s wrecked it. He thought the Chinese would help him out. They’re hedging their bets. He thought his modernized military would make mincemeat of Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians are making mincemeat of his, at least on some fronts.

Putin’s miscalculations raise questions about his strategic judgment and mental state. Who, if anyone, is advising him? Has he lost contact with reality? Is he physically unwell? Mentally? Condoleezza Rice warns: “He’s not in control of his emotions. Something is wrong.” Russia’s sieges of Mariupol and Kharkiv — two heavily Russian-speaking cities that Putin claims to be “liberating” from Ukrainian oppression — resemble what the Nazis did to Warsaw, and what Putin himself did to Grozny.

Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that he’s no longer in control of events. They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he allegedly created for himself. Hence the almost universal scorn poured on Joe Biden for saying in Poland, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the benefit of vindicating the West’s strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively. And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving exit: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The Times’s Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.

Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?

“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).

Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.

If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.

It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.

This alternative analysis of Putin’s performance could be wrong. Then again, in war, politics and life, it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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SLU Debate Society provides a place for both civil and fun discourse - The Lion's Roar Newspaper

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Ian Stewart

Group President Fajr Fayed with Vice President Brooke Sonnier.

In a climate where civilized debate does not often occur, a new campus organization hopes to provide students opportunities for civil discussion.

The Debate Society was started by Political Science and History major Fajr Fayed. She was interested in forming a debate club after realizing there was not an existing student organization.

This realization prompted research for the creation of a debate group for other curious students. The debate club acts as a place where members can participate and learn how to debate one another in a civilized manner.  

“I think it’s very important to learn how to discuss certain topics while still remaining civil. You’re going to come across people who aren’t going to agree with you, no matter the topic,” Fajr said. 

Members like visual arts major Haley Villneuve believe that club teaches you skills that help to respect the opposing side. 

“In the club, we learn different debate styles and ways of respecting the other speaker. We are also taught how to put your thoughts together in a coherent argument, while also being able to listen to other people better,” Villneuve shared.  

The club starts off learning and using different debate formats such as the Lincoln Douglas debate format, where the affirmative side speaks first, then the negative gives their speech and is followed by cross examination and rebuttals. Once members are familiar with the format, they continue on with a practice debate.   

Students of all majors are encouraged to join the club in hopes of learning new and important life skills, along with forming connections with other students. 

Members of the club are taught different styles of debate, while respecting the opposing debater at the same time. Learning how to form an argument and expressing it in a coherent manner is critical in a debate setting.  

The club is currently in the process of expanding its number of members. They will be having a table at the Strawberry Jubilee event. Club officers are also looking into opportunities for participating in state and national tournaments with other schools.  

To learn more, you can follow the Debate Society Instagram for news and updates, @selu_debatesociety.

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OPINION: Keep The Smiths Name Out Your Mouth - Black Enterprise

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of BLACK ENTERPRISE. 

First of all, major congratulations to Will Packer and his all-Black production team for putting on an inclusive and entertaining show last night.

The 94th Academy Awards featured a trio of funny female hosts, a choir during the In Memoriam segment, and a performance by Beyoncé. An all-around win and another feather in Mr. Packer’s cap. Well done!

Of course, most people are still discussing the slap heard around the world delivered by Oscar-winning actor Will Smith to comedian Chris Rock after the latter made a joke in poor taste about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss. I’ve seen all the pearl-clutching around the interwebs since the unfortunate incident happened, and I want to take a few moments to implore many of you to take the advice Will gave Chris Rock a step further and simply keep the Smiths’ name out of your mouths. Periodt.

Will Smith hits at Chris Rock as Rock spoke on stage during the 94th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 27, 2022. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

First to all of you, to those who are embarrassed that Will did this at the Oscars, please spare us your hand-wringing. Chris made the joke at the Oscars. There is a time and a place for everything, and the best time and place for correction is usually at the time and place of the infraction. When will y’all let these respectability politics go!

If you really believe that white people hold the moral high ground, I feel sorry for you. Do you really think Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at The Oscars makes Black people look bad to people who didn’t already dislike Black people to begin with?

Just ask Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King who took to Twitter to remind folks that that tired narrative needs to take a back seat on your train of thought.

Anybody who thinks “Black people look bad” after the #Oscars already thought Black people look bad.

Respectability doesn’t cure racism.

Be Love, but please don’t think that a person who uses one moment to malign a whole group of people did not do so before that moment.

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) March 28, 2022

Truth be told and historically speaking, white folks have a long history of protecting their womenfolk (let that marinate)!

You out here worried about being dignified to impress people who would not invite you anyway! But you were fine with Jada Pinkett Smith being mocked for her appearance in front of an international audience. Those of you suggesting that Will should have been escorted out immediately, that Chis Rock should press charges, that Will should be arrested are the embarrassing ones.

We literally watched mostly white people storm the Capitol, defecate in the halls of justice, and go on a manhunt for the Speaker of the House and the Vice President of the United States with zip ties and most of them have gotten slaps on the wrist. And you want me to condemn Will Smith? I think not!

Secondly, for those of you who said he should have had that same energy for Regina Hall, August Alsina, Laverne Cox, or any of the many other people who have taken swipes at the Smiths’ over their ‘entanglement’ situation — could you be any more clueless?

The Smiths have taken the high road in that situation. They obviously wanted it to stay private, but Alsina was a party to the situation as well, and he had a right to tell his story. They addressed the rumors head-on and took their licks for TWO YEARS! Because they knew that by addressing it, they opened themselves up to commentary, they have never come for anyone for the teasing they have endured over that situation. This was an entirely different situation! This is his wife’s health and her self-image.

Many of you are too scared to be as transparent and open as Jada, and that’s why you keep those wigs, quick weaves, and frontals in your head, simultaneously covering and causing your bald spots and meager edges. Have some empathy and compassion for a Black woman who is coming to terms with living comfortably with a chronic disease.

I could go on and on, but I’ll simply end with how it saddens me to see the lack of empathy for Will and Jada. I know that many of you judge them for their marriage and parenting. You call them weird on Twitter and make memes out of their honesty. I feel bad for you.

Most of you have never known honor, love, respect, and admiration in a romantic relationship. You think it’s whack that they were honest with each other about seeing other people during a difficult time in their relationship, but you think it’s normal to tell lies and keep secrets. Some of you are right now trapped in mediocre or even miserable relationships because you can’t be honest about your needs and are too afraid of what people will think if you admit what you really want out loud. And you are threatened when others refuse to succumb to the same fear that keeps you silent in the face of disrespect and those Brazilian bundles glued to your head.

I’ll end with respect to Chris Rock for not further escalating the situation and having the absolute best response. After the second time Will told him to keep Jada’s name out of his mouth, he uttered the two words that should have put this matter to rest: I will.

Reneé Mack Jones is a Relationship Mediator, Speaker, the author of the Peace In My Home Planners for Busy Couples and the host of the upcoming podcast I’d Rather Die Alone.

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GVSU hosts Civil Discourse Symposium on bridging divides with radical empathy - Grand Valley Lanthorn

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Grand Valley State University’s Padnos/Sarosik Center for Civil Discourse held its first hybrid Civil Discourse Symposium since 2019: “Bridging Divides: Encouraging Dialogue with Radical Empathy.” The symposium, usually held every fall, was pushed back to March 24 this year due to COVID-19 and was open for all students, faculty, staff and the general public. 

Current GVSU professor, Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, was tasked with developing the framework for the past two years’ symposia with the help of Center for Civil Discourse Director Lisa Perhamus. 

Lowenstein invited former classmate and fellow Stanford University graduate Terri Givens, whose experiences at Stanford inspired the symposium’s theme of racial inequality and led her to develop a set of steps that could be followed to talk about the issue effectively. These six steps are outlined in her book “Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides,” which she presented at the symposium. 

“I read the book and was moved by how Dr. Givens was sharing experiences while she and I were both at Stanford at the very same time and how different those experiences were,” Kelly Lowenstein said. 

Kelly Lowenstein later explained the differences in treatment between Stanford’s white and Black student population that he had no knowledge of at the time of their occurrences. As a Black woman, Givens was posed between attending “regular” freshman orientation or attending an orientation specifically for Black students. This created an unnecessary conflict for Givens, who was forced to choose between the two orientations but didn’t want to. 

With the rising tensions of political and social issues, there are limited numbers of spaces in which students, staff and faculty can converse about issues they are passionate about or want to know more about. In order to foster discourse at GVSU, Givens was invited to discuss her theory of radical empathy as a tool to facilitate conversation between people of all backgrounds and beliefs. 

Givens explained to the crowd that being open to the experiences of others, specifically around race, is a way to make a meaningful difference in the world. That approach can also work on other concepts besides racial inequality. Givens added that creating this dialogue between people helps make a path to kickstart and create meaningful social change. 

“We’re in a period, and have been for a while now, where we’re trying to figure out how to talk with each other about hard issues in general,”  Kelly Lowenstein said. “Very specifically, since the murder of George Floyd, there has been a lot of reckoning around race.” 

Radical empathy is a concept that strongly encourages people to consider others’ points-of-view and feelings even if one’s perspectives and beliefs don’t coincide with the other person’s. This mindset serves as a bridge to create connections between racial divides and create conversations that will bring about positive and educational change. 

About 200 members of the GVSU community were able to attend the symposium, with about half attending in-person and the other half attending virtually. Participants were encouraged to ask questions, create connections and converse in small groups about the topics that were explored during the symposium. 

Perhamus, a professor at the College of Education and Community Innovation, observed the divides that are rampant in the country and the GVSU community. She noticed that students wanted a space to sit down and have a conversation, but that GVSU does not have that kind of space carved out and available for use. There’s not a lot of space for people to sit down and have civil and structured conversations with one another about important issues. 

Although the Center has not had time to plan out what the next step is for civil discourse at GVSU, they recognize the need to continue this conversation on the campus. Perhamus emphasized the importance of finding ways to offer more opportunities to foster conversations between divided parties, a sentiment which Kelly Lowenstein echoed.

“We’re at a point in our state, our country and our world where it can be very difficult for people to talk with each other in a vigorous, respectful and candid way about complicated issues that people can have very different opinions about,” Kelly Lowenstein said. “I’m optimistic that we played one small part in helping our community move forwards in that challenging process.”

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Research reveals overlooked impact of racial justice protests on public discourse - knkx.org

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New research from the Univ. of Washington and Indiana University shows how Black Lives Matter protests have shifted and impacted the conversation around social issues in recent years.

Researchers tracked spikes in search terms online since Black Lives Matter protests began in 2014. They found that not only did protests get people talking, but what people were talking about changed.

In 2014, people mainly looked up specific police killings or the names of particular victims like "Trayvon Martin." By 2016, people were searching for more structural concepts like "systemic racism".

“And then in 2020, during the George Floyd uprising, we see just everything that we're looking at is firing, people are looking up all these different terms like 'prison abolition,' “mass incarceration,” 'the new Jim Crow,' “redlining.'” said Indiana University researcher Zackary Dunivin.

It's digital evidence of how the way communities talk about these issues has significantly changed as a direct result of the protests. That evidence is an overlooked measure of the impact and success of the Black Lives Matter movement, said UW researcher Jelani Ince.

“Interest in search terms, increase in search terms, and not just in police victims but in these larger ideas from the movement about what’s affecting the Black community, is also part of the movement's agenda,” he said. “It’s showing that we have to think about, and maybe reimagine how we think about what change looks like.”

It’s not a concrete result like getting a law changed or changing a practice at an institution, said Dunivin, but those things can’t happen unless people know about the concepts behind them.

“That is in itself a victory,” Dunivin said. “To get people to talk about the things that you think are important is a victory, even if it's not getting everybody to agree.”

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Opinion | DeSantis Is Trump 2.0 - The New York Times

The greatest damage Donald Trump did may not be in the actions he took, but in the influence he had.

Donald Trump isn’t the brightest bulb. He’s tremendously talented as a room-reader and as a reflector of emotion, but he is no brilliant tactician, no wise sage, no erudite intellectual.

He runs on spectacle and fury. There is no grand vision or grand plan. His quest is to win the moment. His focus is too narrow to even consider the larger struggle.

But he did something, unleashed something, that is so much bigger than he is now or ever will be: He pushed the limits of acceptability, hostility, aggression and legality beyond where other politicians dared push them. And for the most part, he has not only survived it, but been rewarded for it.

Now, the danger is that Republicans won’t only try to imitate Trump but to one-up him.

Take Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

He is often described as a Trump ally, but covetousness is often born of communion. If “The Talented Mr. Ripley” had a political corollary, it might well be The Scheming Mr. DeSantis.

Whereas Trump’s rhetoric was poisonous, and he issued some incredibly harmful orders and his administration instituted some corrosive policies, he wasn’t able to codify much of it. Some of Trump’s most high-profile policies — though not all — have been reversed by the Biden administration.

DeSantis, along with some other Republican governors, is taking the next step, doing the thing that Trump couldn’t do much of: getting laws to his desk and signing them. They have taken what might once have been stigmas, realized that in the modern Republican Party they confer status, and converted them into statutes.

It was on the state level that Jim Crow was erected, and it is on the state level that Donald Crow is being erected.

Just take a look at the things that DeSantis has done since the 2020 elections.

He has signed a voter suppression law, during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” no less, that included more restrictions on drop boxes and granted new authority to partisan poll watchers.

He’s expected to sign the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which does far more damage than just tamping down classroom discussion. As my colleagues Amelia Nierenberg and Dana Goldstein have pointed out, it also has far-reaching implications for how mental health services are delivered to children, even those who may not be L.G.B.T.Q. One clause in the law reads:

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

As Nierenberg concludes, “The impact is clear enough: Instruction on gender and sexuality would be constrained in all grades.”

He has signed an anti-protesting law, which granted some civil protections to people who drove through protesters blocking a road. As The Orlando Sentinel reported in April 2021, when the bill was signed, the law “might have protected the white nationalist who ran over and killed counterprotester Heather Heyer during the Charlottesville tumult in 2017.” A judge blocked the legislation last fall.

Earlier this month, the Florida Legislature passed the “Stop WOKE Act,” another so-called anti-critical race theory law. This one invoked the idea that a lesson that may make a person “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” should be banned.

DeSantis, who has been a big proponent of the bill and signed an executive order to this effect, is expected to sign the bill.

DeSantis is even going further than his own Republican-controlled Legislature is willing to go on some issues. He threatened to veto a redistricting map drawn up by the Legislature that would most likely increase Republican seats. But it didn’t go far enough for DeSantis. He drew up his own map that would go further, reducing the Black and Hispanic voting power even more.

He has also proposed raising his own defense force. As CNN reported in December, he wants to “re-establish a World War II-era civilian military force that he, not the Pentagon, would control,” one that would “not be encumbered by the federal government.”

DeSantis has repeatedly claimed that he has no plans to run for president in 2024, but you always have to take politicians demurring in this way with a healthy dose of skepticism.

DeSantis is playing to the base that Trump exposed and unleashed, but unlike Trump, he is demonstrating to them what it looks like when their priorities have the durability of enacted law. He is trying to be for them what Trump was not: a competent legislative deal maker.

I don’t know whether DeSantis will run for president or if he could win, but he is the first version of what many of us fear: a Trump-like figure with less of the bombast (though DeSantis has plenty) and more of the killer skill to enact policy.

DeSantis is Trump 2.0.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Guest opinion: Woodside Town Council should stick with seven districts - The Almanac Online

I (Zoom) attended a Woodside Town Council special meeting on March 15. Should the town stay with seven districts, which had existed since the town's incorporation in 1956, or reduce the number of districts, and council members, to five?

Public discussion and written input made it abundantly clear that residents and constituents strongly favored staying with seven. That would require work by the council members, town staff, and/or their hired consultant to adjust some districts to have approximately the same number of people, within 10%, in each voting district. Logically, many constituents didn't want their district cut up or consolidated with an existing district that had different interests and more votes.

The consultant hired by the town provided conflicting information, had no understanding of Woodside districts or history and, absent such understanding and adequate guidance from the town, had created voluminous, inconsequential work and at best offered an array of maps, charts, graphs, and educated guesses about redistricting relative to "census blocks."

The Town Council was concerned about lawsuits against the town. The town attorney seemed to have some knowledge of, and spent unnecessary time on, the chance of lawsuits in the area of election "from" vs "by" district – which was previously resolved and not the subject of this meeting. Much of his time was parroting what the consultant said about redistricting, and speculating about what possible scenarios might, possibly, could, maybe result in the town being sued in their redistricting.

Even when it was pointed out by an attorney in the audience (with years of town committee experience) that such a suit was highly unlikely if they stayed with seven, the town attorney couldn't definitively address the subject.

Once public discussion ended the town council members "deliberated" – and in Woodside, unlike many other towns, there is no public discussion or correction of erroneous statements by council members allowed once the council cuts off public discussion to "deliberate" – so it didn't matter what residents had written, said, or would have said.

Council members acknowledged that their constituents overwhelmingly favored seven districts. Then, like one former president who didn't read or heed U.S. history or civics, several council members asserted their personal, unsupported opinions that reducing districts does not suppress the vote (even though people who don't believe they're heard are less likely to vote); would not lessen discussions/debates (and, in fact, five people would somehow create more debate?); and that a five-person council would listen to and represent all the people of Woodside just as well as seven.

Based on these comments, and those by council at the prior meeting (including that it was easier to divide a population of 5,000 by five) I anticipated the council might ignore their constituents in favor of the easiest resolve; and that this meeting and process was a charade, a "done deal" before this meeting ever took place. The Council had kicked this can down the road since November and now, armed with the excuse that they had conducted several meetings, had input from a consultant and attorney, and that an April deadline was fast approaching, they were not about to do the extra work to maintain the seven districts. And they hadn't finalized a map showing division of districts.

With that, they held their vote, all but two ignoring the desires of their constituents, and voted to move forward with reducing the number of districts and the size of future town councils. If this larger council can ignore their constituents so effectively, imagine what five will do? A sad statement about representative democracy and about Woodside.

Kevin Greenwood is a resident of the Woodside Hills neighborhood in Woodside.

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Opinion | Reading a book is a choice - The Washington Post

Censorship is, at its core, an issue of free speech. And the question faced by schools and school librarians is what “speech” should be included in their books.

In deciding its books, the school library must consider students’ level of development, as well as their needs and interests. The books in a library are there for all students to choose to check out or not. The school in general and its library in particular have the job of accommodating the rich variety in the community.

A child’s moral development is the responsibility of the parents. It is the parents’ responsibility to decide if a book is unsuitable for their child. They moderate what their child reads. The library considers all children, knowing that where one child is offended, the next child might find connection. And reading a book, any book, is a choice.

Jo Trafford, Portland, Maine

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Opinion: One for all, all for one - Concord Monitor

Jean Stimmell lives in Northwood. His blog can be found online at jeanstimmell.blogspot.com.

I was mesmerized by a scene I saw on TV at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A group of neighbors with rifles guarding a suburban street leading into Kyiv against approaching tanks, their faces illuminated by fires they had lit in trash cans to keep warm, fearless and immovable, belting out in unison the Ukrainian National Anthem.

When everything is on the line, we forget our differences and come together as one. Of course, we do. As social animals, it has been bred into us. That’s why we have survived as a species.

Although much less dire, I once was in a similar situation in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Our ship shuttled tanks, supplies and sometimes troops along the coast and up the rivers of Vietnam. Occasionally, we had a significant crew turnover when guys rotated home. On one such occasion, almost a quarter of the crew was new.

On our return trip from the Philippines, all hell broke loose in a crude kind of diversity training, representing as we did, a cross-section of the nation — East coast, highly educated, college dropouts and Midwestern kids who hadn’t finished high school; hip city slickers and country folks right off the farm. We had Native American, Hispanic and Black sailors, along with staunch segregationists from the south.

It started with some pushing and shoving, harsh words, and a few fistfights, but, after day after day at sea, a certain equilibrium was achieved. We had other things on our minds. Sometimes, we had to be offloaded by helicopter because of enemy ground fire. Once, shuttling around the Mekong Delta, the crew didn’t set foot on dry land for three months while garbage mounted up in the 120-degree heat, and we were reduced to saltwater showers.

We were a scruffy lot but did our jobs like well-oiled machines. If we got stuck on a sand bar in a river, we lowered landing boats to push us free. And it was up to us to defend our own perimeter when offloading cargo solo at desolate spots in the jungle.

On November 1, 1968, shortly after I had returned to civilian life, Vietcong divers partially sunk our ship on the My Tho River. According to the official records, the 25 killed in action in the mining of Westchester County were “the U.S. Navy’s greatest single-incident combat loss of life during the entire Vietnam War.”

The death toll could have been much worse! But reacting quickly, amidst the screams of the injured in pitch-black darkness, the crew rose to the occasion, pumping water into ballast tanks, preventing the ship from capsizing.

Staying alive in Vietnam was a mighty unifying force, putting on hold the cultural war raging back home in America. Today we are at war again — and I’m not talking about Russia, or our cultural polarization, which, while severe, is only a symptom of a deeper problem: the autocracy that rules our nation.

Like Russia, we have our own super-rich oligarchs. At the top of the list, according to Forbes, are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, who now own more wealth than half of our population.

Worse yet “ProPublica found [in most] recent years, Musk, Bezos, and many of their fellow billionaires paid zero federal income taxes even as their fortunes soared.”

Like oligarchs everywhere, their unlimited resources enable them to tip elections in their favor. Conversely, as confirmed by Pew research, the average citizen has virtually no influence. Dark money and the fossil fuel industry spare no expense in shifting the blame away from themselves for causing our nation’s massive inequality, and the existential dangers of climate change, by spreading propaganda, distrust and polarization.

These corporate titans now pit populists against progressives in the same manner that plantation owners pitted poor whites against Blacks, while the elite merrily made money off both groups. Today the war we must fight is against this rampant inequality and looming environmental disaster.

That’s the new war we must fight. Like the Ukrainians are doing, we must stand shoulder to shoulder to stop it. Our families and loved ones are on the line, along with all our fellow inhabitants of Space Ship Earth.

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