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Only 36% of Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center, believe colleges and universities have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country, versus 58% who say they have a negative effect. Among Democrats, those figures are 72% and 19%, respectively. That finding represents a crisis.

For it to be a crisis does not depend on you having any conservative sympathies. For this to be a crisis requires only that you recognize that the GOP is one of two major political parties in American life, and that Republicans lack of faith in higher education will have practical consequences.

Further, it helps if you recognize that, in the present era, Republicans dominate American governance, with control of the House, Senate, presidency and crucially for our purposes, a significant majority of the countrys statehouses and governors mansions. They also have built a machine for state-level political elections that ensures that they will likely control many state legislatures for years to come.

As an academic, I am increasingly convinced that a mass defunding of public higher education is coming to an unprecedented degree and at an unprecedented scale. People enjoy telling me that this has already occurred that state support of our public universities has already declined precipitously. But things can always get worse, much worse.

And given the endless controversies on college campuses in which conservative speakers get shut out and conservative students feel silenced, the public relations work is being done for the enemies of public education by those within the institutions themselves.

Whos to blame for the fact that so few Republicans see the value in universities? The conservative media must accept some responsibility for encouraging its audiences to doubt expertise; so must those in the mainstream media who amplify every leftist kerfuffle on campus and make it seem as though trigger warnings are now at the center of college life.

But academics are at fault, too, because weve pushed mainstream conservatism out of our institutions. Sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons have found that about half of professors identify as liberal, versus only 14% who identify as Republican. (At the time of their study, in 2006, only a fifth of American adults described themselves as liberal.)

In Whats Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Michael Berube describes and defends a philosophy of non-coercion and intellectual pluralism that isnt just an intellectual curiosity, but an actual ethos that he and other professors live by. I grew up believing that most professors lived by that ethos. I dont anymore. And when I suggest its a problem that academics are so overwhelmingly liberal, I get astonished reactions. You actually think conservatives should feel welcome on campus?

In my network of professional academics, almost no one recognizes that our lopsided liberalism presents a threat to academia itself. Many would reply to the Pew Research Centers findings with glee. They would tell you that they dont want the support of Republicans. My fellow academics wont grapple with the simple, pragmatic realities of political power and how it threatens vulnerable institutions whose funding is in doubt. Thats because there is no professional or social incentive in the academy to think strategically or to engage with the world beyond campus.

Instead, all of the incentives point toward affirming ones position in the aristocracy of the academy. There are no repercussions to ignoring how the university and its subsidiary departments function in our broader society, at least not in the humanities and, for the most part, not in the social sciences either.

Universities make up a powerful lobbying bloc, and they have proved to be durable institutions. I dont think youll see many flagship institutions shuttered soon. But an acceleration of the deprofessionalization of the university teaching corps through part-time adjuncts? Shuttering departments such as Womens Studies or similar? Passing harsh restrictions on campus groups and how they can organize? Thats coming, and our own behavior as academics will make it easier for reactionary power, every step of the way.

Our public universities are under massive pressure and at immense risk, and those who should be defenders of public universities still dont understand that theyve created the conditions for their destruction.

Fredrik deBoer is a writer and academic at Brooklyn College in the City University of New York.

"The Tick" cast talks about the humor behind the series and the fan pressure that comes with a cult classic.

"The Tick" cast talks about the humor behind the series and the fan pressure that comes with a cult classic.

Melissa Benoist, David Harewood, Mehcad Brooks, Jeremy Jordan, Chris Wood, Katie McGrath, Odette Annable, plus two EPs:Jessica Queller, Robert Rovner talk "Supergirl" at Comic-Con 2017.

Melissa Benoist, David Harewood, Mehcad Brooks, Jeremy Jordan, Chris Wood, Katie McGrath, Odette Annable, plus two EPs:Jessica Queller, Robert Rovner talk "Supergirl" at Comic-Con 2017.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook.

Continued here:
Republicans don't trust higher ed. That's a problem for liberal academics - Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump stands next to Sen. Bob Corker during a campaign event at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts on July 5, 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Getty Images

Its almost as if Congressional Republicans think there might be something to all this Trump-Russia stuff.

Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs.

In an almost unheard-of-these-days moment of bipartisanship and over White House objections, the Senate passed a bill 97-2 last month that would limit President Trumps ability to lift sanctions on Russia. The House is likely to overwhelmingly pass its own version of the bill this week. The New York Times reports today that, after fighting it, the White House has signaled it will now accept the bill, which also places new sanctions on Iran and North Korea, two major adminsitration priorities. It could hardly do otherwise given the bill's likely veto-proof support and the current political environment.

The official line is that the White House has been satisfied by a few changes in the House version, including the addition of North Korea and some tweaks requested by U.S. energy companies. But thats not exactly convincing, since the new version leaves in place the provision that the White House objected to in the first place, which Trumps legislative affairs director Marc Short called an unusual precedent of delegating foreign policy to 535 members of Congress.

The bill will sign into law the sanctions that Barack Obama imposed by executive order over Russias annexation of Crimea, support for armed separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and meddling in the 2016 election. It will also impose a number of new sanctions related to Ukraine and human rights abuses. And while many sanctions laws give the president power to waive them in the name of the national interest, this law would require the president to certify that Russia has demonstrably changed its behavior in order to lift sanctions related to Ukraine and cyberattacks.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had pleaded with Congress to craft the bill to give the president the flexibility to adjust sanctions to meet the needs of what is always an evolving diplomatic situation," but so far, Congress has not done so.

Under normal circumstances, Tillerson would have a point. Its far easier to get new sanctions passed in Congress than it is to lift them. (See: Cuba) But with this president, in these circumstances, Congress isnt taking any chances.

This is fairly remarkable: Two GOP-controlled houses of Congress have passed a bill over Trumps objections, that curtails his authority, and does so in part by codifying Barack Obamas executive orders into law. This is worth keeping in mind the next time a Republican senator dismisses the latest Russia revelation as a nothing burger or irrelevant, or insists that the real issue is leaks from the intelligence community. Republicans may not be willing to criticize the administration in public, but they dont quite seem to trust him either.

Last week, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker insisted that the language curtailing the administrations ability to lift sanctions is going to stay in this bill. (Corker also used the new sanctions as political cover, deflecting questions about Donald Trumps Jr.s e-mails earlier this month by bringing up progress on the sanctions bill, which he sponsored. Talk to others about politics. Talk to me about policy, Corker high-mindedly told reporters.)

Corker is thought of as a Tillerson ally and described him in the same interview as a good friend whose partnership he values, but the secretary of states lobbying clearly wasnt enough. While he may not be anxious to discuss them, Corkers concerns about the administration appear to be such that hes willing to limit his good friends ability to cut deals with Moscow.

Despite their seemingly limitless capacity to defend Trump publicly, GOP members of Congress clearly have some private concerns. Perhaps they could share them.

Read more from the original source:
One Sign That Republicans Aren't Entirely Unconcerned About Trump's Russia Connections - Slate Magazine (blog)

A Republican-aligned super PAC is trying to knock down Democrats official effort Monday to rebrand themselves as a better deal -- launching an ad campaign that targets House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and argues her party remains mired in the same, old liberal ideas.

The Congressional Leadership Fund is behind the digital ad campaign, which is titled Resistance and targets Pelosis San Francisco congressional district and 12 other Democrat-leaning districts that President Trump won last fall.

All 435 House seats are up for reelection in 2018.

The Democrats are the party of the resistance, the narrator says in the 33-second ad that includes images of window-smashing and other protester-driven violence surrounding the inauguration.

Radical extremists who destroy buildings, burn cars and divide America. Hollywood celebrities who are blinded by their hatred of the president. Nancy Pelosi and the Washington Democrats answer to them.

SCHUMER TELLS CLINTON, 'BLAME YOURSELF'

On Monday, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will lead an event in Virginia to announce the better deal agenda, following party leaders acknowledging they lost to Trump in large part because voters didn't know what the party stood for.

They intentionally are heading outside Washington to host the event in the district of GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock, whom they hope to defeat next year.

The new message -- formally titled A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future -- follows months of internal debate and analysis of polling and focus groups. (After an earlier and abbreviated version leaked on Thursday, Twitter users mocked the similarity to the slogan for Papa John's pizza, "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza.")

Schumer acknowledged on Sunday that Democrats were partially to blame for Americans not knowing what the party stands for.

"When you lose an election with someone who has, say, 40 percent popularity, you look in the mirror and say what did we do wrong? he said on ABCs This Week. And the number one thing that we did wrong is we didn't have -- we didn't tell people what we stood for."

However, Congressional Leadership Fund leaders say the message continues to advance the same, old liberal ideas including single-payer health care, tax increases and military cuts, despite all of the poll testing.

The simple truth is that a Democrat is someone who is beholden to Nancy Pelosi, wants to raise your taxes, is blinded by their hatred of the president, and regularly loses elections, said Cory Bliss, the political action committees executive director.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

See the original post:
Republicans dismiss Dems' 'better deal' with ad targeting Pelosi - Fox News

By Jared Bernstein By Jared Bernstein July 24 at 6:00 AM

Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of the new book 'The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity.'

Last week, four A-list Republican economists published a validator document to support the contention that economic plans by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans will boost the real GDP growth rate from 2 percent to 3 percent.

This is the sort of piece you get when policymakers, having put forth a plan that they say will accomplish something, ask their allies on the outside to publish a document validating their claim (I dont know if thats the origin of this particular piece). Such documents do not necessarily argue that 2 + 2 = 5; validators can be honest or phony, and an honest validation doc can be a useful tool, one that helps the media, for example, to assess the credibility of the underlying claim.

For reasons Ill share in a moment, the piece is unconvincing. But when Steve Liesman and I discussed it on CNBC the other day, he posed an interesting challenge. Steve granted my rap about why these guys are wrong. But whats wrong with trying? he asked. Shouldnt Democrats also be for faster growth (assume for the purposes of this discussion that such growth is environmentally sustainable)?

Its a fair question.

The fundamental problem with the study is its lack of evidence to back up the authors claims. As regards the administrations vague agenda to boost the growth rate by half, the authors merely assert (my italics): We believe it can. We judge that such a policy package, in part by encouraging firms to expand by bringing new investment to production, can help raise trend labor productivity growth to around 2.3 percent per year in the non-farm business economy and perhaps higher

The piece offers no evidence to support such beliefs or judgments. They instead assert that high marginal tax rates, especially those on capital formation and business enterprises, costly new labor market and other regulations, high debt-financed government spending (largely to fund income transfer payments), and the lack of a clear monetary strategy have discouraged real business investment and reduced both the supply of and the demand for labor.

But theres no such simple, empirical relationship between high marginal rates and investment, productivity, or GDP growth, either over time in the United States or across countries (see scatterplots here and on page 256here). President Bill Clinton raised high-end tax rates in the 1990s and productivity boomed later in the decade (2.5 percent per year, 1995 to 2000); President George W. Bush lowered top rates and, a few years later, productivity growth started to slow. To be clear, Im not saying that higher taxes boost growth. Instead, Im strongly warning you to reject simplistic claims either way.

That lack of a clear monetary strategy bit is a swipe at the Fed, again offered without evidence. In fact, as I show in this recent testimony, the Feds aggressive response to the Great Recession was effective in lowering key interest rates in the economy and thereby helping to pull the recovery forward.

A more credible attempt at calibrating the growth effects from the Trump budget comes from the recent Congressional Budget Office evaluation. As opposed to more than tripling the rate of productivity growth, the budget office finds that (my bold) average growth in inflation-adjusted GDP over the 20182027 period would be about 0.1 percentage point higher under the presidents proposals than under CBOs baseline.And they get that small increment to growth only by accepting team Trumps promise that theyll offset their tax cuts with increases to be named later (the old magic asterisk approach).

But heres where Liesmans challenge comes in. Democrats should not take the above to imply that better policies cant lead to at least somewhat faster growth, and most important, growth that reaches the poor and the middle class.

Its tempting for progressives to conclude that if Trump is pushing it, we must push against it. But being against Trump doesnt mean were against growth. To the contrary, Democrats need their own growth agenda, one thats evidence-based and inclusive. The rap on Democrats is that they care only about redistribution, never about growth. Thats demonstrably false, and progressives shouldnt let ourselves be painted into that corner.

(We could, for the record, point out that growth has, in fact, done better under Democrats, but sorry, I just dont think theres much of a substantive argument there.)

So, whats a pro-growth Democratic agenda? Funny you should ask, because congressional Democrats are rolling out their Better Deal agenda this week. As I understand it, its a plan to increase jobs and pay, reduce the cost of some of the more expensive parts of the lives of moderate-income families (e.g., prescription drugs, higher ed, child care), and to help workers whove been stuck on the job-market sidelines by boosting apprenticeships (earn while you learn), and incentivizing companies to train and then hire workers whose skills need an upgrade.

Im not here to write a validator paper on their agenda, although Ill let you know what I think as I learn more about it. I can tell you that these measures have a much better chance of reaching those who need an economic boost than trickle-down tax cuts. In terms of growth, improved quality of the labor force is an input into faster productivity growth; family-friendly labor policies have been shown to significantly boost labor supply, especially of working moms.

Whats more, such ideas exist at that rarefied intersection of good politics and good policy. Republicans claim to be at that intersection, but as the health-care debate revealed, theyre way on the other side of town. That leaves a vacancy the other side needs to fill.

View post:
The Republicans' growth plan doesn't add up. That's an opening for Democrats. - Washington Post

President Donald Trump delivers remarks on health care during a lunch with members of Congress in the State Dining Room of the White House on Wednesday.

Getty Images

President Donald Trump didnt end his weekend on a cheerful note. In an unusual pair of Sunday afternoon tweets, the president hit out at Republican lawmakers, saying some who owe their positions to his candidacys coattails are leaving him on his own. As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians! Trump wrote shortly after 4 p.m.

Six minutes later, the commander in chief followed up with another tweet: It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.

Trump wrote his two tweets about an hour after he returned to the White House from the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. Its unclear exactly what got the president so worked up on Sunday afternoon, but his pair of tweets came shortly after his new press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Trump would sign a bill that severely curtails his ability to lift Russian sanctions unilaterally. Earlier in the day, Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications chief, said the president still had not made up his mind about whether Russia attempted to interfere in last years presidential election.

Read the rest here:
Trump Angrily Lashes Out at Republicans for Failing to Protect Their President - Slate Magazine (blog)