The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT —
"[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
President Trump slapped down Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC chief, saying his emphasis on masks and his projected vaccine timeline were wrong. It was perhaps the starkest example of Mr. Trump rejecting the advice of public health officials and the facts they provide.
President Trump rebuked the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, saying that Dr. Robert R. Redfield offered “incorrect information” when he told a Senate panel earlier in the day that a coronavirus vaccine was unlikely to be widely available before the middle of next year.
“I saw the statement — I called him,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a news briefing at the White House. “I said, ‘What did you mean by that?’ And I think he just made a mistake.”
The president also said that Dr. Redfield was wrong to say that a mask is more effective than a vaccine.
“The mask is not as important as the vaccine,” the president asserted, adding, “The mask, perhaps, helps.
“When I called up Robert today, I said, ‘What’s with the mask?’” Mr. Trump said. “He said, ‘I think I answered that question incorrectly.’ I think maybe he had misunderstood it,” he added.
Dr. Redfield had told senators that even if a vaccine were available now, vaccinating enough Americans for widespread immunity could take six to nine months. He estimated that one could be available for limited use by the end of the year, and for wider distribution by the middle of 2021, echoing a timeline that other top health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, had used in recent weeks.
. . .
But Mr. Trump asserted several times that his C.D.C. chief was wrong. “I got the impression that he didn’t realize he said what he might have said,” the president said. Asked whether he still had “confidence” in Dr. Redfield, Mr. Trump said, “I do.”
The president has repeatedly claimed that a vaccine could be available before Election Day, a timeline that most health experts say is unrealistic, prompting concerns that the Food and Drug Administration might give emergency authorization to a vaccine before it has been fully vetted for safety and effectiveness. Nine pharmaceutical companies have pledged to “stand with science” and to not push through any product that didn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.
. . .
Mr. Trump said at a town-hall-style event on Tuesday night that a vaccine could be ready within “three weeks, four weeks.”....
Is academe dominated by liberals? Most people think so. And why wouldn’t they? It’s what we hear all the time on social media, in newspaper and magazine articles, and even in academe itself. Conservatives routinely call out higher education’s “liberal bias,” and sometimes insist that something should be done to ensure that conservative voices are heard within the ivory tower.
Some 59 percent of Republicans now say that colleges have a negative effect on the country. Recently, this complaint went all the way to the White House, as President Trump announced his intention to re-examine universities’ nonprofit status, claiming that they are all about “Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education.” Back in the 1970s, the famous Powell memo called upon conservatives to develop think tanks to counter the liberal bias of American universities.
But is the claim true? Are conservatives underrepresented in academic life? The answer depends in part on how one defines “liberal.”
The most comprehensive study to date of American faculty politics found a much more centrist professoriate than is alleged in conservative discourse. In that 2006 study, the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons found that some 44 percent of professors described themselves as “extremely liberal” (9 percent) or “liberal” (35 percent); 46 percent described themselves in centrist terms (18 percent as “slightly liberal,” 17 percent as “middle of the road,” and 11 percent as “slightly conservative”); 8 percent described themselves as “conservative” and 1 percent as “extremely conservative.” In other words, liberals outnumber conservatives, but the largest cohort of faculty — 46 percent — are moderates, spanning the terrain between center-left and center-right.
Political views vary by discipline. Gross and Simmons found the highest concentrations of conservative faculty in business and health sciences (25 percent and 21 percent respectively). Computer science and engineering have a high proportion of moderates (78 percent) with a symmetrical split of liberals and conservatives (11 percent each).
These disciplinary differences matter, because students are not uniformly distributed across the disciplines. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the two most popular majors are business and health sciences — the same fields with the highest concentrations of conservative faculty members….
University of Chicago English says it's only admitting Black studies Ph.D. candidates for 2021 admissions cycle, citing Black Lives Matter and the field's complicated history with regard to race.
Departments have been having quiet conversations since the start of the pandemic about how graduate admissions will be affected: Will there be money to support new graduate students in COVID-19-reduced budgets? Even if there is money, is it ethical to admit new Ph.D. students amid widespread faculty hiring freezes?
With the arrival of the 2021 graduate admissions cycle, these conversations are now becoming public. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s history department, for example, recently said that it is accepting no new graduate students for fall 2021.
The English department at the University of Chicago made a similar decision, with a twist: the program will admit only those graduate students who plan to work in Black studies….
Some Democrats and some Republicans don't fit neatly into their expected boxes on the issue.
Campaigning at Florida Memorial University last week, Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris emphasized the importance of going to college, including historically Black colleges and universities like the one where she was speaking.
“It is the place where we nurture young people to see who they are and their role as part of leadership of our nation in whatever profession they choose,” she said.
And she said that she and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would make going to college free for most students.
That went over well, because what’s not to like about free, right?
But less than two months before the election, one of the divisions between Biden and his Republican opponent, President Donald Trump, is over the Democratic plan to make attendance free at two-year colleges, as well as for those whose families make less than $125,000 at public four-year colleges, as well as public and private HBCUs....
From Rough& Tumble
✅ California’s Proposition 15 Would Raise Taxes On Businesses While Supporting Schools, Local Governments -- California voters will decide this fall whether to approve Proposition 15, a major change to the state’s historic property tax law that would raise taxes on large businesses, while providing up to $11.5 billion per year to fund public schools, community colleges and local governments. Chris NicholsCapital Public Radio -- 9/16/20
✅ COVID deaths among young people: Diverse communities hit hardest -- Although a small proportion of people under the age of 21 are dying from complications associated with COVID-19 in the U.S., a disproportionate number of these deaths are in communities of color, according to a new report issued by the CDC Tuesday. Al Saracevic in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/16/20
✅ Coronavirus: California jobless claims are “startlingly high,” researchers say -- California unemployment claims are at “startlingly high” levels and the brutal trends in jobless filings point to a “mixed” recovery for the state’s suddenly wobbly economy amid the coronavirus, a report Tuesday from University of California researchers has found. George Avalos in the San Jose Mercury$ -- 9/16/20
✅ LAPD Chief Moore points to pandemic as driving factor in increased gun violence, killings -- Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday that the COVID-19 pandemic has helped drive gun violence and increase killings in the city this year, including by spurring economic despair and interpersonal dramas while undercutting efforts to interrupt cycles of retaliation. Kevin Rector in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/16/20
✅ San Diego legislators want Gov. Newsom to sign high school ethnic studies bill -- San Diego legislators and others are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would require ethnic studies for high school students, a bill that has sat on his desk for two weeks.... Kristen Taketa in the San Diego Union-Tribune$ -- 9/16/20
✅ Biden campaign manager on Trump's return to rallies: 'People will die' -- Joe Biden’s campaign manager attacked President Donald Trump and his team for the packed rallies they've recently resumed, warning that "people will die" because of the acute risk of coronavirus transmission at the largely maskless events. Caitlin OpryskoPolitico -- 9/16/20
✅ QAnon Followers Attack SF's Scott Wiener Over Sex Offender Law -- You might think the claim that California has legalized pedophilia wouldn’t pass the smell test with most people. Not in 2020, when certain Republican politicians have seized on the passage of a law regarding sex offenders as an opportunity to rally QAnon believers, a growing and active group of conspiracy theorists. Rachael MyrowKQED-- 9/15/20
Orange County might be picking another fight with Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state’s coronavirus restrictions after Supervisor Don Wagner hinted that county officials might not enforce the guidelines.
The state’s reopening guidelines under a four-tiered system announced earlier this month allows numerous retailers to continue operating at limited capacities.
When OC moved to Tier Two last Tuesday, it allowed restaurants, gyms, churches and movie theaters to resume indoor operations at limited building capacities.
“This board, back in May, unanimously approved our business reopening — our business opening guidelines,” Wagner said at Tuesday’s public supervisors meeting.
“I raise that because we are hearing about other counties — San Diego county is considering whether it passes or not, but it’s considering a resolution today … to indicate there will not be enforcement in San Diego county of the state’s mask mandate,” Wagner said.
On Monday, San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond said he’s going to push San Diego to not enforce any of the coronavirus guidelines, including masks. He said the guidelines shift too much and are too difficult to follow for struggling business owners.
Wagner said OC is pretty much there.
“I want to make sure our public knows that we essentially got there in May. Do what is in the guidelines and what the industry recommends in respect to protecting yourselves, your employees and your customers,” he said.
Yet, Wagner noted the state rules still apply.
“The state rules are still going to apply. There’s nothing we can do about those. Nevertheless those guidelines are there.”
The reopening guidelines adopted earlier in the year don’t specifically address the use of masks. Instead, the guidelines offer seven bullet points of general advice to businesses, like “have a plan in place” if a large number of workers get infected.
Instead of offering specifics, the guidelines point to a slew of documents from the California Department of Public Health, which spell out masks for workers and customers in nearly all businesses.
Wagner, along with Supervisor Chairwoman Michelle Steel criticized OC’s previous mask mandate from former health officer Dr. Nichole Quick, which was issued during the Memorial Day Weekend reopenings.
After receiving threats over the mask order, Quick abruptly resigned in early June.
A few days later, Dr. Clayton Chau — now the permanent health officer — walked the order back.
Virus infections eventually soared after the mask mandate was repealed until another Gov. order closed down larger venues back in July. Deaths continue to steadily increase from those spikes.
. . .
UC Irvine epidemiologist Andrew Noymer predicted there will be 2,000 virus deaths by the end of the year. [There's about 1100 now.]
Hospitalizations remain plateaued around 200…. [continue reading]
Georges Gaudy's poster shows us the logo of the 3 rifles held by an elegant woman on a bike. C. 1900
✅ Californians are testing positive for COVID-19 at the lowest rate on record -- As the Golden State faces a triple threat of respiratory risks — destructive wildfires, toxic air quality and a deadly pandemic — there is a faint glimmer of hope. Laura J. Nelson in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/15/20
✅ In California, Trump continues to deny climate change is real: ‘It will start getting cooler’ -- As wildfires raging through the West force millions of voters to confront the consequences of a warming planet, the presidential race became intensely focused Monday on climate change.... Evan Halper, Noah Bierman in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/15/20
✅ Climate Scientists Reject Trump’s Prediction “It’ll Start Getting Cooler” In California -- Scientists, and many Californians enduring this summer’s smoky and sweltering heat, wish President Donald Trump’s latest prediction — that “it’ll start getting cooler, just watch” — would come true. The problem? There’s nothing to back it up. Chris Nichols PolitiFact California via Capital Public Radio -- 9/15/20
✅ Trump visit punctuates growing divide over main cause of historic wildfires in Western states -- California seems helpless to break a cycle of catastrophic wildfires as it suffers another year of massive destruction, and the fault lines over climate change and forest management are growing as the fall campaign season gets underway. Colby BermelPolitico -- 9/15/20
✅ Jerry Brown on a California Exodus: ‘Tell Me: Where Are You Going to Go?’ -- Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, could barely make out the mountains in the distance from his ranch in the city of Williams on Sunday. Every few minutes, he picked up his phone to check the latest air quality reading. “Unhealthy,” he said. Mr. Brown, who served over 45 years in state government and politics, has been warning about this day for years. Adam Nagourney in the New York Times$ -- 9/15/20
✅ L.A. deputies tackled and arrested a reporter. Her videos contradict their claims about the incident -- As Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies tackled Josie Huang to the street on Saturday night, the reporter for NPR affiliate KPCC screamed repeatedly she was a journalist. Deputies arrested her anyway, leaving her with scrapes, bruises, a five-hour stay in custody — and an obstruction charge that carries up to a year in jail. Tim Elfrink in the Washington Post$ -- 9/15/20
✅ Appeals court says Trump can deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants; challenge certain -- A federal appeals court decided 2 to 1 Monday that the Trump administration may deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who previously received temporary protected status for humanitarian reasons. Maura Dolan in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/15/20
✅ Top Trump health appointee Michael Caputo warns of armed insurrection after election -- A top communications official for the administration’s coronavirus response urged President Trump’s supporters to prepare for an armed insurrection after a contested election and accused government scientists of “sedition” in a Facebook Live chat that he described in detail to The Washington Post on Monday. Yasmeen Abutaleb, Lena H. Sun, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind S. Helderman in the Washington Post$ Sharon LaFraniere in the New York Times$ -- 9/15/20
…Graduate students have been refusing to teach classes, hold discussion sections and do some research since the strike began Sept. 8. The union has also asked faculty members and undergraduates to not hold or attend class in solidarity with the strike….
Not only have we always been distracted; we have always been unhappy about it. Here’s Part 1 of a new series on distraction in the college classroom, and what to do about it.
…And it sounds a bit like the n-word. The resemblance isn’t exact: The first vowel is a long “a” rather than a short “i,” and there’s no “r” sound at the end. It’s more like “nay-ga.” But it’s similar enough that, when it’s said rapidly and repeatedly, and heard out of context, an English speaker could mistake it for the racist slur. That is how several of Patton’s students apparently heard it in a class on August 20, and they complained to the administration. The complaint led to Patton’s removal from the course.
When a video of Patton saying the word was posted online, the general reaction wasn’t outrage at Patton but bafflement at how what he said could have prompted his ouster….
✅Skelton: How politics and police unions stopped bills to hold bad cops accountable -- It wasn’t good government. But it was probably good politics. George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/14/20
✅Warmer. Burning. Epidemic-challenged. Expensive. The California Dream has become the California Compromise -- California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived. Heather Kelly, Reed Albergotti, Brady Dennis and Scott Wilson in the Washington Post$ --
✅Trump’s California visit to spotlight political divides over climate change, coronavirus -- Ahead of President Trump’s visit to wildfire-ravaged California on Monday, Democrats charged over the weekend that his disregard for basic science had contributed to the worsening annual conflagrations, as well as to the still-uncontrolled spread of COVID-19. Laura King in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/14/20
✅‘Shameful, dangerous and irresponsible’: Nevada governor lashes Trump for indoor rally against state rules -- Shortly before President Trump took the stage on Sunday night in Henderson, Nev., for his first indoor rally in months, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted the president for flouting the state’s coronavirus restrictions by packing hundreds of supporters, many without masks, into a building. Timothy Bella in the Washington Post$ -- 9/14/20
… In one of the videos, the professor, Gary Shank, says, “I’m giving you permission to use the word, OK? Because we’re using the word in a pedagogical sense. What’s the one word about race that we’re not allowed to use?”
“I’ll give you a hint. It starts with ‘N.’ … It’s even hard to say, OK? But, I’ll tell you the word, and again, I’m not using it any way other than to demonstrate a point. Fair enough?”….
JOB rolling papers are a popular brand of cigarette paper produced by Republic Tobacco in Perpignan, France.
✅Black at UC Berkeley: Professor Tyrone Hayes on discrimination in academia -- In a nation where Black people make up fewer than 5% of full-time college and university professors, UC Berkeley biology professor Tyrone Hayes stands as an exception. But the road has been hard and even at Cal, with its long history at the center of social justice movements, he’s still fighting for equal treatment. Ethan Baron in the San Jose Mercury$ -- 9/13/20
✅Willie Brown: Six reasons Joe Biden is likely to win the election -- The polls are beginning to show a consistent trend that has Joe Biden waxing President Trump’s wig. Willie Brown in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/13/20
✅Why Are We in the West So Weird? A Theory —NYT In a groundbreaking new book, “The WEIRDest People in the World,” an anthropologist argues that people from Western countries have a unique psychology
Agrisetteis a variety ofbeeroriginating from the mining regions along the border of France and Belgium. The Gay Grisette is a musical comedy by George Dance with music by Carl Kiefert, first staged in 1898
✅If California won't enact a plastic waste overhaul, will anyone? —Politico SAN FRANCISCO — The plastic waste revolution died in the California Legislature this year. Environmentalists have pinned their hopes on the nation's most populous state ever since China rejected American recyclables two years ago, literally dropping the problem on the public's doorstep by forcing cities to raise garbage fees and ban more plastics from recycling bins. California's working solution: Transform the entire recycling chain by cracking down on America's love affair with single-use plastic materials that have reliably contained meals, snacks and beverages for decades. Such legislation would seem a slam dunk in California, where Democrats have unprecedented supermajority control of the Legislature and have long made the state a national leader on recycling and climate change. But intense lobbying from container manufacturers, retailers and the plastics industry — coupled with legislative mismanagement — doomed the proposal for the second straight year. If California can't solve plastic waste, who can?....
✅Plastic waste cuts probably headed to California ballot as advocates give up on Legislature -- After the California Legislature killed bills designed to combat plastic pollution for the second year in a row, environmentalists say they’ve concluded the fight might be unwinnable at the heavily lobbied state Capitol. Instead, they’ve resolved to take the battle to voters, with an initiative aimed at the 2022 ballot. Dustin Gardiner in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/13/20
School in the United States is nowhere near normal this fall. Most students are not walking through schoolhouse doors, sitting at desks next to their classmates or meeting their new teachers face to face. They’re at home, trying to learn through screens. (This is even more likely to be the case if the students live in cities or suburbs.) If they’re lucky, they have a laptop or a tablet and a fast internet connection — the bare minimum that remote education requires. If not, they may be cut off from school through no fault of their own or of their families. According to the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a nonpartisan research group, students in high-poverty districts are the most likely to start the year with fully remote learning.
The debate over what form school should take this fall foundered amid political division and uncertainty....
Women remain largely shut out of management jobs, and many take part-time work, deSpite policies that the prime minister said would elevate their standing in society.
It’s not too late to bolster our democracy’s resilience and pull back from the brink.
—WashPo
[N.B.]
From Rough&Tumble
Bourgeoiswas anabsinthe brand during the Belle Epoque
✅Neighborhood group wins round in suit with UC Berkeley over impact of rising student population -- The California Supreme Court is allowing a neighborhood group to sue UC Berkeley for allegedly failing to consider and reduce the local impacts of an enrollment increase of more than 8,000 since 2005. Bob Egelko in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/13/20
✅Trump to Visit California After Criticism Over Silence on Wildfires -- After weeks of public silence about the wildfires devastating the West Coast, President Trump scheduled a visit to California on Monday, where he will join local and federal fire and emergency officials for a briefing on the crisis. Annie Karni in the New York Times$ -- 9/13/20
✅‘Terrible role-modeling’: How California lawmakers flouted pandemic safety practices -- As the end-of-session frenzy gripped the state Legislature in late August, pandemic no-nos spiked: Lawmakers gathered indoors in large numbers and huddled closely, let their masks slip below their noses, smooshed together for photos and shouted “Aye!” and “No!” when voting in the Senate, potentially spraying virus-laden particles at their colleagues. Samantha Young, Rachel Bluth in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/12/20
✅Trump visa restrictions add obstacle to California winery harvest season: no international interns -- Around this time every year, thousands of young winemakers-in-training from countries like Australia, Chile, South Africa and Italy descend on the Bay Area to participate in a long-standing, international wine industry tradition: the harvest internship. Esther Mobley in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/12/20
