Mediaboss Marketing

Winston W. Wiley| Telegram & Gazette

Happy Hannukah to the Jewish community as the 8-day observance of the Festival of Lights begins at sunset Sunday.

The winters religious and cultural holidays are always an exciting way to close out the year. They bring the needed space and environment for reflection and to connect with family and friends before embarking on the adventures of the coming year.

But I have to admit Im one of those people put off by Christmas encroaching on the fall season earlier and earlier every year. I dont want to hear Christmas songs, see Christmas displays or watch Christmas movies before the time is right. The period feels like a season unto itself and foreign when it strays too deep into other seasons.

Despite Christmas music blaring in area stores and advertisements on TV airwaves since at least two weeks before Halloween, the leftover Thanksgiving turkey signals the winter holiday season is underway in earnest. Christmas lights and decorations began dotting homes and businesses in early November and multiplied in neighborhoods across the city as the month progressed. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, starts the shopping frenzy that primes the economic engine of Christmas commercialism and Cyber Monday promises to rev it into high gear.

Such are the superficial trappings of Christmas. But, lets focus on the more substantive ones, the ones that symbolize the true meaning and spirit of the season and the ones that every year we manage to undermine through our disregard for one another.

In that spirit, I have a challenge for Worcester area residents. Lets try harder this year to emulate the person whose birthwere supposed to be observing. With political divisions growing wider and deeper by the day, the pandemic raging with no apparent end in sight, gas and consumer price increases straining household budgets and supply chain issues threatening to upend parents efforts to deliver on those coveted toys, lets strive to give our fellow Americans the gifts of civility and compassion. If a world at war could suspend hostilities for a Christmas truce in 1914, surely one month of peace among neighbors is possible.

I was struck by a Letter to the Editor I read the other day in which Scott Davis recounts a recent experience with a stranger at a Westborough coffee and sandwich shop. He said he held the door for a woman who had reached the entrance about the same time. Once through the first door, she offered to hold the second door to let Davis go so he would not lose his rightful place in line. He insisted she go ahead. When he finally reached the counter to place his order, he was pleasantly surprised to find she had left money with the cashier toward his order.

Kindness is contagious, but we seem to be mired in the opposite. With everything else happening, the mad pace of the holiday season is unlikely to help matters.

Here are a couple of ideas to consider and triggers to watch out for to help smooth some rough patches.

Recognize the annual War on Christmas battle cry for what it is: a myth. Christmas remains the countys favorite national holiday, celebrated by more than 85 percent of the nation. Among the obvious holidays in the Happy Holidays greeting, Christmas is the elephant in the room. What has been mischaracterized as a war is little more than a marketing strategy to be more inclusive and boost the bottomlines of corporations, not necessarily in that order.

And when individuals use the generic greeting, we mean no disrespect. Im specific only with people I know or when I have a reasonably good idea which holiday they observe. Most people I know would rather be greeted with a sincere, Happy Holidays, than an insincere Merry Christmas. If every Merry Christmas utterance is nothing more than a shot fired in a mini-battle against political correctness, than the greeting is really more for the well-wishers benefit than the person being wished well.

Santa Claus is another area of potential conflict in the Christmas culture wars. Can St. Nick be Black? Disney and Mondelez International seem to think so. Disney plans to feature a Black Santa Claus in Christmas celebrations at both its Disneyworld and Disneyland resorts this year. Mondelez, parent company of Nabisco and maker of the worlds most popular cookie, features a Black Santa in a U.S. television advertisement for Oreos.

Santa Claus is a concept, not a person, whose giving and caring qualities are found in people all over the world.

Were pretty good at the giving, as evidenced by the tons of gifts exchanged every year. Lets work a little harder at the caring. If we can get through this holiday season on our best behavior, a year-round Christmas season might be a good thing.

Go here to see the original:
Winston W. Wiley: Were pretty good at giving, but need to work harder at caring - Worcester Telegram

Happy Thanksgiving, folks! Today is legitimately a great day for sports. Were going to use this as our thread for erything, so feel free to chime in the NFL games, Bama Hoops, and some great evening college football (and both games should be great ones).

All schedules below are in Gods Right and Proper Central Standard Time:

Bears at Lions (11:30 Fox) Matt Nagy is allegedly fired after this game, win or lose. Maybe Da Bears will show some signs of life against the NFLs only winless team?

Raiders at Cowboys (3:30 CBS) I heard you like some Bama? The Raiders have about 81 Alabama players on their roster. Thats worth it, right?

Buffalo at New Orleans (7:20 NBC) Two defensive teams with some curious, bad losses and outright flirting with .500 and both were early Super Bowl contenders. Sigh, Buffalo gonna Buffalo.

No. 10 Alabama vs. Iona (4:30 ESPN) If the Ruggs-less Raiders make you sad, then definitely tune in to this one which you should do anyway. Rick Pitinos Iona Gaels are a far more athletic team this year than the one that Alabama faced just 8 months ago in the NCAA Tournament. The Tide havent quite gelled on defense yet, and the halfcourt offense needs more work, so this road trip is by no means a gimme, no matter that ranking beside Alabamas name. Another good quality opponent to test the Tide before it begins a brutal stretch against the likes of Gonzaga, Baylor, Houston, and Memphis. If you missed Parkers primer on the ESPN Invitational, and want a thorough preview, check that out here.

Turkey Day Classic (Tuskegee at Alabama State) ESPN+ 2:00 One of the most heated HBCU rivalries in all the land, and one of its oldest. This is the 97th meeting between the two central Alabama schools, less than 40 miles apart. The animus is very real. e

Fresno State at San Jose State (2:00 Fox/FSN) The surprising Fresno State Bulldogs have already claimed UCLAs pelt, damn near beat Oregon, are in play for the MWC title, and have been in and out of the Top 25 all year. Not bad for a team that was predicted to finish last in its division. Their opposite number was last years MWC surprise, also predicted to finish last, but also nearly winning its conference title and being ranked throughout the year. But this season has seen far more difficulties, as the Spartans have slid back towards a .500ish team with several close losses. Still, SJSU is a dangerous team, with one of the MWCs best secondaries, playing at home vs. a Fresno team that can and has turned it over in droves. This will be a very close contest, no matter the record. And, hey, enjoy DeBoer (FSU) and Brennan (SJSU) now theyll almost certainly be at bigger gigs soon.

Egg Bowl (6:30 ESPN) You cant hype this one much more than its being hyped, and for good reason: Lane Kiffin vs. Mike Leach, both teams ranked, Ole Miss at No. 10, both looking at major bowls. And, my god, the hate. The Iron Bowl, the Red River Rivalry, Cocktail Party, and The Game (OSU/Michigan) may get a lot more press, but I honestly dont think Ive ever seen two teams and two fanbases that legtimately hate one another every day, all day (with such a stark difference in the student body and everyday fan), as much as State and Ole Miss do. There are culture wars, then theres this disaster of loathing.Its always good for the improbableAnd, if youre around on Twitter, Egg Bowl meltdowns are amazing.

Dig in!

Visit link:
Thanksgiving Sports Schedule and Open Thread Bama Hoops, Egg Bowl, and NFL on tap today - Roll 'Bama Roll

Disney generated major headlines with the recent announcement that Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in California are both debuting black Santa Clauses to greet park guests, for the first time ever. Disney quietly started (forgive the term) integrating the new black Santas into the parks without any formal announcement for an understandable reason (that it took this long). However, while Disney didn't ring any holiday bells to signal this milestone change in its policy, Disney parkgoers have done the job for them all too well, by sharing their surprise and delight about Black Santa's Disney park debut on social media.

Of course, Twitter being Twiter, not everyone is happy and supportive about the change...

Some fans are simply experiencing unbridled joy at this inclusionary move.

Honestly, Orlando, Florida IS a weird place for a black Santa Claus to hang his hat...

With Black Santa now appearing in Disney parks, there's a whole new demographic of customers who will be looking to make a holiday season appearance there.

That's some pretty stark math when you really look at it...

This is sad because it's probably true. Culture wars never rest. Not anymore.

Some people have made Black Santa Claus a part of their holiday rituals for years now...

This seems... a little paranoid. (Or IS IT?...)

Give credit where credit's (been) due. Disney made singer Brandy a live-action black princess back in the '90s (see: Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella). They've been trying!

View original post here:
Disney Fans Respond to New Diverse Santa Claus Being Added to Theme Parks - Comicbook.com

Five Democrats plan to block the confirmation of Saule Omarova, President Bidens nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, who is widely seen as a tough-on-banks pick at an agency that has long been captured by Wall Street.

Three of the DemocratsSens. Jon Tester (D-MT), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ)voted for a 2018 bank deregulation bill that Omarova criticized at the time. By opposing Bidens pick to regulate major banks, they are joining hands with the bank lobby, which has led an unusually intense opposition campaign against the Cornell law professor. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) have also indicated they would vote against Omarova.

Following the news, which was reported the day before Thanksgiving by Axios, several progressives proposed a solution: The White House could name Omarova first deputy comptroller, a position that does not require confirmation.

Omarova could replace Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu, effectively putting her in charge of the agency, since Biden would not need to nominate a Senate-confirmed comptroller to the top job, said Yevgeny Shrago, a policy analyst with the advocacy group Public Citizen.

The move has recent precedent. Two comptrollers under President Trumps, Keith Noreika and Brian Brooks, were never confirmed, but led the agency as acting comptrollers. Hsu has served as Acting Comptroller for more than six months.

Biden should do the same with Omarova, Shrago said. She could be selected as deputy comptroller, making her acting director with all the powers of a full chair.

Noreika and Brooks were very active, despite their nominal status as temps. Noreika weakened the Community Reinvestment Act, reduced penalties on banks for violating fair lending laws and undermined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus efforts to reform payday lending. Famously fintech-friendly Brooks encouraged cryptocurrency companies to apply for national banking charters and cleared the way for banks to provide services to issuers of stablecoins.

Omarova could run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) indefinitely as acting comptroller, according to Jeff Hauser of The Center for Economic and Policy Research. While the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 limits how long some acting officials can remain in a position, it does not apply here, Hauser said. Instead, the National Bank Act gives the Treasury Secretary full authority to designate a first deputy without a fixed limit. John Walsh was acting Comptroller of the Currency from 2010 until 2012longer than the 210 day maximum in the Vacancies Actproviding further recent precedent for the move.

Even if the White House did subsequently nominate and confirm a comptroller, Omarova could still wield considerable power as the OCCs second-in-command. It wouldnt be the first time the White House found a workaround after a favored pick proved to be a lightning rod in confirmation.

Neera Tanden withdrew from consideration following searing confirmation hearings after she was tapped for budget director. But Tanden, who is the extremely online former president of a liberal think tank, may now have more influence as a senior advisor to the White House, where she has been assigned the gnarly job of generating support for Build Back Better agenda.

Other examples abound. In 2015, after Elizabeth Warren successfully resisted the nomination of investment banker Antonio Weiss for a top job at the Treasury, Barack Obama gave Weiss a non-confirmable position as a senior counselor at Treasury, from which he was given wide latitude to design Puerto Ricos punitive debt restructuring.

Hsu, the Acting Comptroller since May 10, came to the OCC from the Federal Reserve, which has become a top supplier of regulators to the Biden administration. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other top Treasury officials come from the central bank, which some progressives say is more conservative and cosier with Wall Street than Democrat-led regulatory agencies.

I am very worried about having Fed group-think among the banking regulators, Todd Phillips, bank regulation director at the Center for American Progress, tweeted on Wednesday.

Nothing is stopping them from designating Omarova as Acting Comptroller, he added.

The news that Omarova is unlikely to overcome opposition in the Senate comes days after Biden reappointed Jerome Powell, a Trump-appointed Republican, to serve as chair of the Federal Reserve, over the objections of progressives.

Supporters of Omarova questioned why the White House did not strike a deal with the senators who opposed her pick. Tester, who was a prominent backer of Powell, was also among Omarovas loudest critics.

Banking committee chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) fought for Omarova, but is simultaneously engaged in a fight to put Lisa Cook on the Feds Board of Governors and is negotiating for additional housing funding in Build Back Better, two goals which may have detracted from pushing through Omarova.

Culture wars over the candidates personal background may also deserve blame.

OMAROVAS CONFIRMATION SANK into a brawling match over her identity, and a meta-argument over whether her identity was relevant to the debate.

A newsletter by the Bank Policy Institutes chief executive called attention to Omarova's birth in Kazakhstan and to her college scholarship, which was called the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. At the hearing, Republicans debated the appropriateness of referring to her personal background. I don't know whether to call you professor or comrade, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said.

Democrats happily accepted those terms of the debate, responding indignantly to Republican red-baiting and emphasizing, by way of contrast, Omarovas historic status as a female immigrant.

In his opening comments and in a key press release issued on the morning of the Senate hearing, Brown led with the historic nature of Omarovas candidacy. Professor Omarova will be the first woman, first person of color, and first immigrant to serve as the Comptroller of the Currency, Brown said before mentioning any substantive reason she had been picked for the job.

An eleventh-hour press release by Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) also blessed her tripartite minority status (woman, immigrant, and person of color, which is how liberal Americans describe Omarovas roots in Kazakhstan). In response to Axios reporting that her nomination was in trouble, a White House official told the outlet that it continues to strongly support her historic nomination. Others drew parallels between Omarovas grilling and the fact that Lael Brainard was not awarded the top job after being considered for Fed Chair. (She was nominated instead for the vice chair position.)

The amount of sexist double standards in these nomination efforts this year has been pretty staggering, Todd Tucker, a political scientist at the Roosevelt Institute, remarked following Omarovas hearing.

Now that the identity-centered campaign for Omarova has failed, it may be worth looking back on its limitations.

If you speak with law professors and financial regulators, you will hear that Omarova is indeed a historically unprecedented nominee for comptrollernot because of her physical appearance, but because she is an unusually sharp and plainspoken critic of the bank industry.

She led research into physical commodity trading by big banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, publishing detailed and original research into their buying up of assets like oil, gas and metals from distressed firms.

Omarovas pioneering work on reining in Wall Street abusesas well as her criticism of Tester and Warners deregulatory agendawas the real reason moderates scuttled her nomination. But that dispute was buried in a blitz of coverage focused on her alleged victimization.

If confirmed, Omarova would be the first woman, the first immigrant and the first person of color to lead the 158-year-old agency, the Washington Post dutifully recites in its story on the hearing, which focuses on Kennedys offensive comments. Only the last two paragraphs of the story mention that partisan sniping is likely less consequential to her fate than the decision-making by a pair of moderate Democrats who resent her past objections to their deregulation of banks.

By shrilly and insistently proclaiming over objections that Omarova is eminently qualified, Democrats and liberal media outlets ended up protesting too much.

In that ear-splitting environment, it was easy for bank-friendly moderates to step in, brows furrowed, and in one smooth motion condemn the ad hominems while raising reasonable-sounding concerns about her record. Given progressives screeching and largely irrelevant defense of Omarova, you could be forgiven for missing that those concerns are counterfeit.

Read the rest here:
Here's How Biden Could Override the Democrats Protecting Wall Street - The American Prospect

I am proud that no one at UWA was made redundant, she said.

We used the negotiated collective jobs framework approach, buying time until the end of 2021 so that a better plan could be considered, consulted and mapped for the future.

But she did not welcome the culture wars that broke out between universities and their leaders when they couldnt agree on a national framework to save jobs with the National Tertiary Education Union.

When you take a VC job, the most important thing to do above all else is to leave things better than you find them.

We ended up catastrophizing; universities deciding their sovereignty was being challenged, as if. And that certainly wasnt by the NTEU, she said.

She criticised the federal governments Groundhog Day of budgetary cuts and regulatory changes.

The reductionist view of our elected leaders is demoralising and at risk is our place in the world as funding is cut and an increasingly narrow of what a university education is takes a grip, Professor den Hollander said.

Universities can contribute much more to our nation than simply ensuring graduates get jobs within six months of their graduation.

She said the great moral challenges of climate change and the Indigenous voice to Parliament had not gone away, which remained significant for the nation and the higher education sector.

The surge of support for Black Lives Matter, the increased homeless numbers, the deaths in aged care and the trending violence against women are red signals; signals that were not getting it right and that there are divisions that will bring us down if we do not stand up.

That is the job of universities; to reflect the society, to educate, to speak and write the truth and also to provide some of the solutions.

Loading

As a specialist in digital technologies, Professor den Hollander created profound changes to Deakins tuition and research more than a decade ago by founding it in a digital origin and creating better access for distance education, which helped it roar up the rankings.

She said delivering such change was very rough in the beginning and you cannot shy away from the discussion and the battles, labelling it the hardest job in the university sector.

When you take a VC job in fact, any leadership role the most important thing to do above all else is to leave things better than you find them that is the measure of our success, and it is our individual legacy.

She pointed to the importance of having a strong culture that backs strategy: UWA staff did that and my part in that I will cherish.

And in an almost call to arms, she told academics that the university sector was now in harms way.

Years of successive cuts and malignant disinterest are paying out, she said.

Inclusion and a right to education are now in question, as is our capacity to contribute ideas and to speak the truth.

Our social licence is being questioned and this will need our full attention.

Murdoch Universitys senate election, which closes on December 10, will be telling about what motivates those invested in higher education to vote.

Loading

The alumni seat held by Abby Agrawal is being hotly contested by 10 others, including a retired fisheries science professor who opposed the dissolution of face-to-face lectures at Murdoch, and a corporate watchdog lawyer and the former guild president, who only recently left the university.

Law graduate and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigator, Alex Bellotti, has called for the end of bad press about the university and to hold the senior leadership to account.

Murdochs current approach to management and pedagogy is a disservice to everyone involved, causing Murdoch to achieve the unenviable rank as the states worst-performing public university for research, teaching and impact in the influential Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Mr Bellotti said.

We as alumni must take a stand and declare enough is enough, before Murdochs reputation (and by extension our degrees reputation) is further eroded by the discontinuance of leading areas of research and teaching, cost cuts masquerading as contemporary pedagogy or unproductive legal campaigns against whistleblowers.

Former CSIRO marine biologist and Murdoch Professor Emeritus, Neil Loneragan, agreed that since 2012 major and harmful restructures have impacted the reputation and the morale of staff.

In nominating for an alumni position on senate, I bring both senior inside experience and an outside perspective on which priorities are likely to ensure the greatest value and quality of Murdoch University for WAs public good and the alumni community, he said in his election profile.

If elected, I would uphold the values of fairness, respect, equity and transparency in planning and decision-making to ensure the reputation of the university and the value of the Murdoch degree.

But among the most sweeping changes is the universitys academic council, where academic representation is being increased from 19 seats to 25 out of 50, with an additional two seats for heads of school added and two more seats for students, while ex-officio seats are being rolled back from 21 to 17, in a reversal of the national trend.

Loading

It sends the balance of power over academia back into the hands of its grass-roots representatives, which was conceded after a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency review found Murdoch was at risk of failing to comply over its academic council adequately identifying, mitigating and maintaining oversight of material risks that impact teaching and learning quality at Murdoch.

Based on research, recommended practice and benchmarking, the composition of Murdoch Universitys academic council has been adjusted where elected members now make up the clear majority, a university spokesperson said.

The university has also added the direct election of academic members to many subordinate committees, thus broadening participation in academic governance across the university.

Dr Michael Tomlinson, who was a governance and compliance consultant at TEQSA until January 2020, said academic councils or boards used to be central to the decision-making structures of universities, where academic policies and strategies were debated and decisions made to accredit courses.

But their position has been gradually eroded and more decisions have been made by management over the years, he said.

This was a trend in all universities both here and overseas.

Dr Tomlinson said the changes at Murdoch should allow more collective oversight of managerial proposals.

This is more difficult to achieve if the academic council is dominated by ex-officio appointees from management, who will naturally tend to support a management agenda, he said.

In some respects these collegial bodies can be internal watchdogs ensuring that academic standards are maintained and corners are not cut in the pursuit of entrepreneurial goals.

Murdoch academic and whistleblower Gerd Schroeder-Turk said it was great to see the university bucking the trend over academic representation on boards, councils and committees as it was key to the greater public good of educating future generations.

The recent changes make me optimistic and will strengthen Murdoch University as it continues its proud and strong contribution and service to our society, he said.

I believe that empowered and happy staff are the best guarantee of great outcomes for a university. Increasing elected membership positions on committees does just that.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the days most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.

Read the original:
Is Murdoch University changing its culture? An executive and governance shakeup is afoot - WAtoday