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UI Commencement 2017

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Videographer: Holly Hart/Heather Coit

Nick Offerman shares his words of wisdom with the UI Class of 2017 at Memorial Stadium on Saturday morning.

By all accounts, actor Nick Offerman's commencement address at the University of Illinois was a hit, even making a couple of top 10 lists of graduation speeches this spring.

He'd actually been invited last fall, along with a certain former president who ended up sending his regrets in March.

Here are a few behind-the-scenes details about the effort to bring Barack Obama to campus, courtesy of the state's Freedom of Information Act:

-- The formal invitation to Obama went out on Oct. 28, 2016.

"Dear Mr. President," Chancellor Robert Jones wrote. "When we polled students for suggestions for their speaker, you were their first choice. You were also their second, third and fourth choices. As teenagers, they watched you break down barriers to become the first African American to lead their nation.

"In your second run," the statement continued, "you were the one who brought most of them out to vote in their first election. They grew up with you as their President. To them, you represent the power and possibility of the American dream."

-- It was a personal invitation as well from Jones, the first black chancellor in the campus' 150-year history, who recounted his own journey from a sharecropper's son to administrator at several land-grant universities.

"I know firsthand how difficult it can be to choose a path that others believe to be impossible, or worse, one they say that you have no right to follow," he wrote "... There is no one who better exemplifies what can happen when education and opportunity come together than you."

-- The letter was given to UI alumnus Michael Strautmanis, vice president of the Obama Foundation in Chicago and former chief of staff for Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. He was to hand-deliver it to Obama, and he and Jones spoke several times by phone over the next few months, records show.

-- The UI submitted a more "pro forma" request online through Obama's new website, obamaoffice44.org, after the former president left office in January, just to cover all the bases, spokeswoman Robin Kaler said Monday. UI students also lobbied Strautmanis and Obama through letters and social media.

-- The campus never received an official response to the letter, according to Kaler. But on March 17, the commencement office got an email from obamaoffice44.org stating that the former president would not be available.

"Thank you for your interest in including President Obama in your university's commencement plans. President Obama will be focusing on work for his foundation in the coming weeks and months, and although he will not be able to attend your event, he truly appreciates your invitation."

-- The UI didn't announce this news, instead sending out a tweet a month later, on April 19, teasing the commencement speaker:

"May want to pick up extra tickets for Commencement this year ... (sharing who our #ILLINOIS2017 speaker is April 25!)"

-- Kaler said officials still felt there was an outside chance Obama could say yes, since they hadn't heard anything directly. Plus, "the idea was to do a little bit of teasing, since people thought it might be President Obama."

-- UI students guessed pretty quickly it was Offerman after tweets featuring his co-star on "Parks and Recreation," Amy Poehler, and his passion for woodworking. Faculty weren't quite so tuned in. Even after a tweet showing the university seal altered to read, "City of Pawnee," the fictional Indiana town where the TV series was set, "we still had faculty calling to say, 'Is President Obama the speaker?'" Kaler said. "You could tell who was on social media and who wasn't."

-- Offerman had also been invited last fall but didn't realize it, as the message had "gotten lost somewhere along the way," Kaler said. Jones re-invited him in the spring, and he accepted. Offerman also agreed to produce a video used in the official Twitter announcement on April 25.

-- Schedules are tricky with celebrities, who get hundreds of such requests, Kaler said. Efforts to bring filmmaker Ang Lee and movie critic Roger Ebert to commencement in past years faltered because the event conflicted with the Cannes Film Festival, Kaler said. And before Hillary Clinton spoke on campus in 1994, the UI had given up on that invitation and invited another speaker until it learned just a couple of weeks beforehand that she was coming.

Read more:
Inside the UI's commencement pitch to Obama - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

President Trump is winning on one key campaign promise, cutting regulations and virtually eliminating the release of new ones.

In fact, he has cut the output of costly regulations so deeply that a group that charts the federal government's output of rules has called the shift "historic."

American Action Forum told Secrets that Trump has cut the output of regulations to just 8 percent of the averages under former President Obama and other recent administrations.

What's more, the cost of the new regulations has dropped from an average of $26 billion to $33 million, or just 0.12 of the past average for the first five months of the year.

Sam Batkins, the director of regulatory policy for AAF, said in his report that "the Regulatory Freeze' that took effect on day one of the administration has persisted for roughly the first four months of President Trump's term. By virtually any measure, dating back through two Democratic presidents and one Republican president, the lack of regulatory output is historic."

In office, Trump ordered agencies to kill two old regulations for every one his team issued. But the new figures suggest that the administration has gone further. Departments like Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency have led the way.

Batkins based his study on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) recording of cabinet-level regulatory output from 1994 to 2017.

"Across the board, the results indicate a significant diminution in the number of regulations approved and a notable uptick in the number of withdrawn measures (previous rules from the Obama Administration no longer under consideration). For instance, during the period covered, the average administration reviewed 190 rules; the Trump administration reviewed 39. In the average year, there were 33 economically significant reviews; the Trump administration reviewed just 16. On average, there were 30.8 significant rules approved, not just reviewed; this administration has released 10," said his AAF study.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

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Historic: 90% cut in new regs, costs slashed to just 0.12% of Obama's - Washington Examiner

The nasty 70-year little boy in that big white house spake thusly about the economy last Thursday: Ive created a million jobs! I cleaned up the mess I inherited! There is no global warming but there are wire tapps in Trump Tower, and terrorists are emboldened by political correctness. And so on. We know the drill.

And then the jobs report came out Friday and made a liar of Donald Trump, yet again. We know that drill too.

And yet those of us who are real-world investors and must make sense of the economy outside the Land of Trumpian Make Believe have to decide whats going on. It is this: The jobs report showed we are at the zenith of the Obama economy, for good or ill. And that means the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates when it meets next week.

The point here isnt to rehash the argument over who did what to the economy save that for Facebook, and besides, Trump still has yet to make a lickspittle of meaningful policy 136 days in. Its to explain what the jobs report and other recent data tell us about where we are in the expansion, and what that means.

America created 138,000 jobs in May way below forecasts. Including downward revisions to growth estimates for March and April, Trumps actual record so far is that 594,000 jobs have been created in four months on his watch. Thats below the 208,000 monthly average in the last year of Barack Obama, when things slowed down because of Chinas wobbles, and a good bit below the 226,000 monthly in 2014 and 2015 combined.

Yet, theres pretty good news, too. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, and even including discouraged workers and involuntary part-timers its down to 8.4% where it was during the better times of the aughts, and only a little higher than during the 1990s boom. Wage growth isnt accelerating, as economists have expected, but with core inflation low workers still got a real wage increase of about a percentage point in the last 12 months, give or take fluctuations in gasoline.

Read: Slower U.S. job creation is usually a bad thing. This time, it might be a good sign

Beyond that, there are pretty good signals that weve shaken off the slight torpor that set in during the first quarter, when the economy grew at only a 1.2% annual rate. The Atlanta Feds GDPNow tracker says second-quarter growth will be around 3.4%. The New York Feds tracking forecast is a more modest 2.2%. But either one is OK and, averaged with the first quarter, suggests were growing at about last years pace or, possibly, the brisker clip that brought an average of 2.5% growth the two years before that.

Best of all, real family incomes have finally regained their web-era peaks, in perhaps the ultimate success of the last presidents drive to undo the damage of the 2008 financial crisis. According to Sentier Research, median family incomes reached 100.9% of their January 2000 level in April, finally rescaling the peak from which we descended so abruptly.

Read: Why workers arent getting bigger paychecks despite sizzling jobs market

So, we have jobs for just about everyone who wants them, at record inflation-adjusted incomes, but without much growth. And we have big weak spots, especially in manufacturing and in blue-collar communities stranded by factories struggles.

Thats why this is the zenith of Obamas economy the word means the time at which something is most powerful or successful. And this is it: This is as good as Obamas economy gets. The incomes news marks the completion of his medium-term goals. It doesnt mean Trump wont do better it doesnt even mean the economy is all that good. Its just as good as the economy gets until new technology or new policy breaks its mold.

That means the Fed will move next week to temper this cycle, hoping to lengthen it before the lack of labor-force growth, or much productivity improvement. creates inflation that reverses these hard-won gains.

The central banks job is to move near the top, and near the end, of economic cycles to make sure they dont create the problems that lead to inflation, or to the next recession. Both the triumphalists who thought Trump would bring surging growth, and those who thought he might bring something like doom have been proven wrong. Fiscal policy whether its tax cuts, regulatory changes, and like pretty much anything the White House might do these days is a shambles. Helps not on the way. So the monetary policy we all expected before the election, to raise rates but only gradually, is still the right one.

That means a hike next week of a quarter of a point, bringing the federal-funds rate target range to 1% to 1.25%. Couple that with a post-meeting statement that suggest it may be a while, and take more-tangible evidence of acceleration, before another hike happens and that will be about right. The Fed cant make this expansion stronger, but it can help make it longer.

Also read: The surprising threat to the American economy

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Opinion: President Trump, we're now at the zenith of the Obama economy - MarketWatch

New York Times

In High Style, Obama Returns to the World Stage New York Times Now that the internet has turned us all into middle-school kids shooting Snapchat spitballs and gossiping in homeroom about the burning issues of the day How come Melania pulled the got to fix my hair trick to get out of holding Donald's hand in Rome?

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In High Style, Obama Returns to the World Stage - New York Times

President Donald Trump signs a letter of initiative to privatize the nation's air traffic control system during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on June 5, 2017.(Photo: Pool, Getty Images)

President Trump blasted the Obama administration Monday for failing to modernize air-traffic control faster but the Federal Aviation Administration said it has made progress.

After billions and billions of tax dollars spent, and the many years of delays, were still stuck with an ancient, broken, antiquated, horrible system that doesnt work, Trump said in announcing his plan to move controllers from the FAA to a non-profit corporation. Other than that its quite good.

D.J. Gribbin, special assistant to the president for Infrastructure, said the corporation could borrow money to finance projects and avoid the cumbersomefederal procurement process.

Trump complained that the previous administration spent $7 billion on upgrading the system without much result.

Honestly, they didnt know what the hell they were doing, Trump said. A total waste of money.

The Government Accountability Office and the Transportation Departments inspector general have issued reports for years critical of FAA for falling behind schedule and going over-budget on the modernization program called NextGen.

But FAAAdministrator Michael Huerta has estimated that NextGen has already delivered $2.7 billion in benefits and is projected to provide $160 billion in benefits by 2030.

Much of the spending so far has built the foundation for GPS tracking with a network of stations to relay aircraft positions by satellite. Planes are required to install equipment to communicate with the network by 2020.

Airlines are already gliding to more efficient landings at some airports with new flight paths, rather than taking previous stair-step descents that burned more fuel.

Another facet of the program is to move from radio communications to text messages, for less confusion between controllers and pilots about complicated instructions. Controllers at 55 airports including Newark and Miami are already sending texts to pilots at a few airlines, such as United and UPS.

The proposal to create a separate, non-government air traffic control service provider is a step in a process that needs to involve all users of the airspace system and deliver benefits to the system as a whole, the FAA said Monday in a statement.

The top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, said FAA had huge procurement problems a decade ago, but is now making progress.

A decade ago, I would probably would have said, yeah, lets roll the dice, DeFazio said. But today the FAA is on a good path to procurement. The bottom line is this could be very disruptive.

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President Trump attacks Obama administration over air-traffic control - USA TODAY