Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Spring semester week 1

Mitt Romney finally drew a line in the sand against Donald Trump


Chris Cillizza

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 4:12 PM ET, Wed February 5, 2020

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(CNN)The easy thing for Mitt Romney to do would have been to side with the rest of his Republican colleagues and vote to acquit President Donald Trump on the two articles of impeachment against him.
Sure, it would have earned him the disapproval of liberals on Twitter. And a few op-eds might condemn him. But a vote to acquit would have minimal actual political consequences for Romney.
 
Which makes it all the more remarkable that Romney announced, in a stirring and emotional speech on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, that he would break with his party and vote to convict Trump on abuse of power -- a genuinely stunning moment in a process in which the ultimate outcome (a Trump acquittal) has long been known.
Romney acknowledged that he was purposely choosing the harder path in choosing the way he did. As he put it:
    Watch Romney's emotional explanation of his vote to convict
    Watch Romney's emotional explanation of his vote to convict 08:16
    "I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced. I am sure to hear abuse from the President and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?"
    He's right. Politically speaking, this may well be the wrong decision for him -- even though he isn't up for another term until 2024 and Utah, despite being quite conservative, isn't exactly Trump country.
    "Mitt Romney is forever bitter that he will never be POTUS," tweeted Donald Trump Jr. about the Utah senator's decision. "He was too weak to beat the Democrats then so he's joining them now. He's now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled from the @GOP." The Republican National Committee blasted out a press release to reporters with the subject line: "Mitt Romney turns his back on Utah." (Reminder: Romney was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012.)
    Many of Romney's colleagues -- clearly worried about angering the likes of the President and his always-loyal, never-questioning base -- found increasingly hard-to-explain ways to justify their decision to avoid the political consequences of a vote to remove the president.
    Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said that Trump had acted inappropriately but that, at the end of the day, his conduct wasn't impeachable. Ditto Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who along with Romney voted to call witnesses, made the outlandish claim that "the President has learned from this case" and that Trump "will be much more cautious in the future."
    Romney says Trump is 'guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust' in emotional floor speech
    Romney says Trump is 'guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust' in emotional floor speech
    Within hours, when asked about Collins' comments, Trump reiterated that his July 25, 2019, call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was "perfect" -- making clear he had learned absolutely nothing from the impeachment proceedings.
    Romney took a different course, making clear in his speech that this was about doing what he believed to be morally right, not politically right. These lines from his floor speech Wednesday powerfully make that point:
    "Many demand that, in their words, 'I stand with the team.' I can assure you that that thought has been very much on my mind. I support a great deal of what the President has done. I have voted with him 80% of the time. But my promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and biases aside. Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history's rebuke and the censure of my own conscience."
    There are things that matter more, Romney was telling his party, than political calculation or the cult of personality that Trump has built over these past 3+ years. There are decisions that transcend the zero-sum game of politics. There are votes that are remembered in history. And this is one of those votes.
    To be clear: Romney will not lead a revolt against Trump -- on this impeachment vote or more generally. He will be the lone Republican senator to vote to convict Trump on either article of impeachment. Romney will face down the disapprobation of the President and his minions alone.
    Which makes what he did all the more remarkable. He knew what voting to convict Trump would mean -- for him, his family and his political future. And he did it anyway.
      "I am a profoundly religious person," Romney said, choking up as he sought to get the words out. "I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong."
      No, he was not.
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      spring semester current event week 1


      PRO/CON: Should college athletes play for free?


      A group of people on a court.
      Jessica Shepard (23) of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish attempts a shot while defended by Teaira McCowan (15) and Victoria Vivians (35) of the Mississippi State Lady Bulldogs during the fourth quarter in the championship game of the 2018 NCAA Women's Final Four at Nationwide Arena on April 1, 2018, in Columbus, Ohio. Notre Dame defeated Mississippi State 61-58. Photo by: Andy Lyons/Getty Images 
      By William H. Noack and Don Kusler, Tribune Company
      Published:
      Word Count:1300
      Recommended for:Middle School - High School
      Text Level:12

      PRO: Paying college athletes would cause more problems

      In its recent report on college basketball, the special commission headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made several long overdue recommendations aimed at dealing with the sport's "crisis of accountability." But, wisely, it stopped short of suggesting that players be paid.
      In largely keeping intact the NCAA's core rule of amateurism, the 14-member commission reaffirmed the notion that while compensating players might sound attractive in this era of huge professional contracts, it would only lead to ever more problems down the road.
      The commission's focus was on basketball, but its findings could apply to college football as well. The report has been criticized by some, but it is at least a sincere and concerted effort to improve the troubled landscape of college athletics.
      While few would deny that money is playing too large a role in collegiate sports today, it's difficult to see how the situation could be made better by introducing even more money in the form of payments to players. And if amateurism breaks down at the college level, what's to stop money from flowing to athletes even younger than college age?
      It's not as though today's scholarship athlete is not getting something for his or her services rendered. A year at college today can be worth $50,000 or more. Add to that apparel and a host of other freebies that college athletes receive and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
      Much of the current clamor for athlete compensation has sprung from the incredible popularity of college football and basketball on television, and the revenues these sports produce. But most of that revenue goes back to the universities where it's used to support a long list of sports and academic pursuits.
      Yes, the football or basketball coach is very well paid at many major universities. But everything from the campus library to the chemistry department to classroom construction benefits from the money generated by the sport. In effect, televised college sports are a product, and that product is in wide demand today.
      The Rice commission made many recommendations, but three stand out among the others:
      — The NBA needs to scrap its so-called one-and-done rule. This would enable elite players to enter the NBA draft out of high school. The current rule requires players to be 19 years old or a year out of high school, and has made programs like Kentucky and Duke a one-year stopover for players on their way to the NBA.
      — The NCAA should create an independent investigative arm for handling major rules-infractions cases. For too long the NCAA has been too slow and basically toothless in its adjudications. That needs to stop.
      — Make the punishments severe enough to discourage cheating. "Currently, the rewards for violating the rules far outweigh the risks," Rice said.
      All of the changes will have to be adopted by the NCAA membership in order to take effect.
      The commission was formed in response to allegations by federal prosecutors last year of a scheme involving agents, financial advisers and shoe company executives to bribe the families of top high school players to sign with certain college programs. The allegations have already had the effect of forcing out Louisville's Hall of Fame coach, Rick Pitino.
      It's doubtful that the Rice commission recommendations will clean up all that ails college athletics.
      The NCAA has a long history of moving with glacial slowness. But it's at least a start.
      In not recommending that athletes be paid, the commission affirmed the values of amateurism and an education for the nearly 99 percent of college basketball players who don't go on to the NBA.
      ABOUT THE WRITER: William H. Noack played basketball at Michigan State in the 1960s and is currently a business consultant in the Washington, D.C., area.

      CON: College athletes should be justly compensated for their hard work

      College athletics at the highest levels is a profitable entertainment business and too many athletes sweating and producing for the industry are exploited and under compensated.
      The system needs to change and an appropriate compensation arrangement should be enacted.
      Under the guise of amateurism, student athletes work long hours each day. They work what is often the equivalent of a full-time job on top of trying to successfully navigate college.
      Now, it is true that the vast majority of the 450,000 plus college athletes are not money makers for their institutions or the peripheral industry.
      The compensation that they receive in the form of continued pursuit of their passions and in help with getting a degree is and should be the shining example of a successful system.
      Those success stories are harder to find though when taking a closer look at the two big money-making sports, football and basketball.
      In these sports, even by the NCAA's own bloated and incomplete methodology, the student aspect of the student athlete's work falls measurably short of that of their peers in other college sports.
      It is in these two marquee sports that the profits and power lead to a host of problems for athletes and their families. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow to universities, coaches, agents, apparel companies and media, among others, and that wealth is produced by worker athletes.
      All this money is not floating around because of the pursuit of education, but because athlete workers produce value.
      Improprieties in recruiting are, frankly, the norm and are centered on money. The need for money among many budding college athletes and their families as well as the thirst for money among universities, coaches, sport agents and sporting goods companies drive these violations and the resulting exploitation.
      Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently led a group in investigating problems related to scandalous behavior in college basketball.
      While some aspects of the group's recommendations might have some positive impact, the overall effort seemed to simply reinforce the NCAA's long held position that student athletes, although treated like employees in a profitable business model, should operate under the NCAA's definition of amateurism and not be afforded established norms around compensation and protections.
      In fact, the NCAA so rampantly defends its definition of amateurism that it has actively sought to shut down entrepreneurial efforts of athletes in college even when those money-making activities have no tangible connection to the sport or the university.
      This is a stark contrast to the NCAA's blinded approach to enforcement of such things as recruiting and academic violations.
      Even the "pay" via education provided many top athletes can often not add up to meaningful compensation as universities shuffle their money makers through light course loads or, in some cases, no course load at all, leading to meaningless degrees.
      It is past time for change to come and for the militant approach to amateurism to be loosened.
      The NCAA should continue and accelerate efforts to make the academic portion of student athlete compensation whole.
      A few positive recommendations from the Rice report include establishing a fund to pay for degree completion for athletes who depart college and allowing underclassmen who are unsuccessful in getting drafted to re-enter school. Education quality control should be enforced more rigorously as well.
      Those seeking to augment their finances, for example, through unrelated activities should be able to do so and those athletes whose obvious skill has value through the sale of their likeness should have the same right to profit from that skill as the universities, the NCAA and, indeed, the entire sports industry does.
      The sooner the NCAA closes the cracks in the academic compensation, and rightfully shares the value of top athletes with the athletes themselves, the better for all involved.
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      spring semester current event week 1

      People Keep Getting Killed in El Salvador After They're Deported From the U.S.


      At least 138 people deported from the U.S. have been subsequently murdered in El Salvador.

      By Paul Blest
      Feb 5 2020, 11:39am
      At least 138 people deported from the United States to El Salvador since 2013 have subsequently been murdered, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday.
      Over 200,000 people were deported from the United States and Mexico to El Salvador between 2014 and 2018, according to the report. And although the level of violence due to gang activity has resulted in asylum recognition rates as high as 75 percent in other Central American countries, the U.S. granted asylum to just 18 percent of El Salvadorans who applied for it from 2014 to 2018, the report said.



      In addition to the 138 confirmed cases of murder, the report also identified over 70 cases in which deportees were “subjected to sexual violence, torture, and other harm,” or who simply went missing when they returned to the country. Human Rights Watch stressed there was no official tally of those killed or injured, however, and said that the actual casualty toll is “likely greater.”
      “U.S. authorities have knowingly put Salvadorans in harm’s way by sending them to face murder and attacks on their safety,” HRW’s Alison Parker, a co-author of the report, said in a statement. “Salvadorans are facing murder, rape, and other violence after deportation in shockingly high numbers, while the U.S. government narrows Salvadorans’ access to asylum and turns a blind eye to the deadly results of its callous policies.”
      El Salvador has had some of the highest homicide rates in the world in recent years, although the Central American nation saw a promising drop in 2019. Much of the violence is the result of gang activity, on behalf of groups such as MS-13 and Barrio 18.
      HRW estimates that of the 1.2 million Salvadorans currently living in the United States, as many as three-quarters are undocumented or have a just temporary authorization to live here.
      The Trump administration previously tried to end Salvadorans’ participation in the program, and in 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled out domestic abuse and gang violence as legitimate causes to grant asylum.
      Last year, the U.S. and El Salvador signed an agreement in which the U.S. vowed to help El Salvador improve its security and anti-gang efforts in exchange for requiring asylum seekers passing through El Salvador to seek asylum in that country first. As part of the deal, the U.S. also extended the temporary protected status of Salvadorans through the end of 2020.

      The HRW recommended that the Trump administration reverse some of its most far-reaching immigration restrictions, such as the Migration Protection Protocols, the “asylum bans,” and the aforementioned Asylum Cooperation Agreements, which were also signed with Guatemala and Honduras.
      The group also urged Congress to make protections for TPS and DACA recipients permanent, and to freeze funding for DHS, ICE, and CBP “unless and until abusive policies and practices that separate families, employ unnecessary detention, violate due process rights, and violate the right to seek asylum are stopped.”
      “Instead of closing the door to the thousands of Salvadorans fleeing their homeland, the United States should provide them with full and fair asylum procedures and dignified treatment,” Parker said. “Before deporting Salvadorans, U.S. authorities should take into account the extraordinary risks of harm they may face upon return.”
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      spring semester current event week 1

      News by VICE

      ‘Of Course We're Panicking:’ Here's What It’s Like Inside Wuhan’s Coronavirus Quarantine Zone


      Hospitals don‘t have enough beds or medical supplies, and people are afraid.

      By David Gilbert
      Feb 5 2020, 10:36am
      Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.
      It took two weeks for doctors to confirm that Wang’s mother had coronavirus.
      She started showing signs of the illness on Jan. 22, the same day China locked down the entire city of Wuhan, where she lives with 12 million other people. Four days later, doctors said both her lungs had become infected with pneumonia, but they still didn’t know why. They apparently didn’t have enough diagnostic tools.

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      Every day for those two weeks, Wang’s family woke at 6 a.m. to eat breakfast before walking for two hours to get to the hospital. The facility refused to admit his mother because they didn’t have enough beds, and Wang had to move his wife and child to another apartment because he was worried they would become infected too.
      “It used to take us about half an hour to walk to the hospital, but now it would take us two hours because it’s hard for her to walk. My father has started coughing too now,” said Wang, a factory worker who asked to use a pseudonym over fear of reprisals from the Chinese government.
      Once there, they waited for up to 10 hours each day, exposing themselves to hundreds of other patients, doctors, and nurses in cramped and chaotic surroundings. Finally, on Wednesday, the hospital admitted Wang’s mother for coronavirus treatment.
      “Of course we’re panicking. The virus is spreading fast. And a lot of people couldn’t get admitted to hospitals.”
      As the coronavirus death toll climbs toward 500 and global infections surpass 24,500, the Chinese government has begun to admit some “shortcomings” in its initial response to the outbreak. But Beijing claims it now has the situation under control and is taking proactive steps to contain the outbreak. Officials have created the world’s biggest quarantine zone by locking down Wuhan and 13 other cities in Hubei province, where up to 60 million people remain trapped. The cities have also severely restricted transportation into and out of the cities and built two huge hospitals in the span of two weeks.
      But people inside the quarantine zone who spoke to VICE News and leaked details in online accounts reveal an atmosphere of fear and anger at the government’s delayed response and censoring of critical voices.
      “Of course we’re panicking,” said a female activist living in Hubei. “The virus is spreading fast. And a lot of people couldn’t get admitted to hospitals. There are people in favor of the government’s decision to quarantine and others who are against the idea. But everybody is scared.”
      The activist declined to be named after she said national security officers told her not to conduct any media interviews.

      The beginning of the outbreak

      The coronavirus outbreak was first reported in early December in Wuhan, but the government didn’t officially announce the crisis until Jan. 19, despite doctors raising concerns about a possible epidemic in late December.
      At that point, three people were already dead, and the virus had spread outside of Wuhan.
      But as government officials in Beijing finally revealed the scale of the outbreak publicly, authorities hosted a banquet to celebrate the Lunar New Year in Wuhan, where 10,000 families shared dishes like spicy duck necks and braised prawns.
      “The dire situation at the moment is a direct result from the Hubei politicians’ trying to hide the truth for the sake of their political career,” the female activist said. “I think the government is now working hard on it, but it is already too late. There’s no way we can meet the needs of patients with such a lack of medical staff.”
      In the Wuhan and Hubei Lianghui, for example, annual meetings of the city and provincial governments happened between Jan. 6 and Jan. 17. A week before the meetings began, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission had issued a warning about a pneumonia-like epidemic spreading within the region. Interestingly, no new coronavirus cases were reported during the meetings, an anomaly the government has attributed to a lack of testing kits.
      Inside the Hubei lockdown zone, supplies of food and other essentials are still relatively plentiful, according to the activist, and the streets of Wuhan are very quiet. But a lack of resources means that people simply don’t believe they will receive the treatment they need.
      “The doctors are working very hard, but they can’t solve the crisis. They don’t have enough people, medical supplies, or masks,” the activist said.
      The government’s decision to ban all buses and trains from operating in the city may be intended to limit the spread of the virus, but for those without their own transport, daily life has become very difficult.
      “We have to walk because all public transportation has been shut down, and I don’t have a car,” Wang said. “Taxies are not running either. I would borrow a car from friends but a lot of them are suffering from the same situation, and they need the car for their own family.”
      And not only Chinese nationals are trapped in Hubei.
      Dozens of countries have been chartering planes to get their citizens out of the lockdown zone, but a group of 80 Pakistani students in Huangshi, a city of 2.5 million people about 50 miles from Wuhan, say their government has forgotten them.
      Kashir Sanhu, one of the students studying medicine at Hubei Polytechnic University, told VICE News that their appeals to Islamabad have fallen on deaf ears. Although the government has begun to repatriate some students from other parts of China, those in Hubei remain isolated.
      “We made some video messages and sent it to our media,” Sanhu said. “Our government listened, but they said because none of us had been infected, why should they bring us home?”

      Censorship

      The Chinese government has been eager to control the narrative around the coronavirus outbreak in recent weeks. The state-controlled media has been pumping out time-lapse videos accompanied with stirring music that show just how quickly the first of two 1,000-bed hospitals in Wuhan were built.
      At the same time, the government has looked to silence negative voices on social media that would criticize the government’s actions.
      “I did try to get my story out,” Wang said. “You can look at my Weibo. I post updates every day. I also tried to get paid engagement on social media like Weibo or Douyin [the Chinese version of TikTok], so more people see my posts. But the platforms rejected my requests and returned my payment. They said my messages were too negative to spread.”
      Neither Weibo nor Douyin responded to requests for comment.
      Censorship is a common complaint among internet users in China, where the government operates a zero-tolerance policy on any content critical of the government. But the outcry about the response to the coronavirus outbreak has been so large that the government is struggling to silence all the voices.
      Australian political cartoonist Badiucao is publishing a diary translated from a first-hand account given to him by a Wuhan resident, which details the daily reality of life in Wuhan.
      Some residents have also been able to post their videos to YouTube, despite China banning the platform. In the videos, they detail daily life inside the lockdown zone.
      “It’s all lies,” one woman says on a video where she warns viewers not to trust the government.
      The woman said her mother waited from 10 a.m. until 2 a.m. the following morning in the hospital when she finally saw a doctor. She added that a healthy person would have come into contact with so many infected people during that time, they would have become sick themselves anyway.
      Online groups are also crowdsourcing and highlighting information from social media accounts in Hubei to translate and share on other platforms. It’s a bid to preserve the information in case Beijing’s censors delete it.
      Almost two weeks have passed since authorities locked down Wuhan, and there’s no indication of when the city’s travel restrictions will be lifted as the number of deaths and infections continue to rise rapidly.
      Until then, Wang will have to continue to make his daily trip to the hospital, putting his own life in danger.
      “I’d rather not go to the hospital and take care of ourselves at home because we could easily get infected in the hospital,” Wang said. “We interact with hundreds of people. I have no idea if the person next to me carries the virus or not, [but] I don’t have the energy to worry about myself right now. I just want to save my mother’s life.”
      Cover: People wearing face masks walk at a shopping district in Beijing on February 5, 2020. The number of patients who have been infected with a new coronavirus has reached to 24,000 and the death toll has been confirmed 490 so far as of February 5th in China.The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images )
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