Hating on School Kids Has Consequences

On October 11, 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered all Japanese students to “Oriental schools” in the city. It was the Asian equivalent of “separate but equal schools” for blacks. The policy was pushed by labor unions that wanted to send Japanese workers back home. They organized a group that would seem popular today: The Exclusion League. Racial prejudice was at the heart of their grievance.

This local event blew up into an international crisis. The Japanese government was deeply insulted by the prejudice that accompanied the policy.

As reported by Raymond Leslie Buell in 1924, “School principals in San Francisco, the superintendent of the Los Angeles city schools, the state convention of school superintendents, President Jordan of Stanford and President Wheeler of the University of California— all, in one way or another, intimated their disapproval of this drastic action.” The Stanford University president went so far as to say that the exclusion measure would mean “war between the United States and Japan.”

In the short term, President Teddy Roosevelt jumped into the fray and tried to soothe a furious Japan. Nonetheless, the policy of racial segregation remained in place; the U.S. enacted a law to prevent more Japanese from coming to America; and Japanese Americans were treated with great disrespect (specifics in photo above).

The U.S. and Japan never came to a peaceful adjustment of their relationship after the San Francisco school fiasco. Mutual hatreds simmered for decades, leading up to the ruthless surprise attack by Japan on Americans at Pearl Harbor.

***

The context is different today but America is again a boiling pot of division. Laura Ingraham, who thrives on controversy and division, took to Twitter to insult David Hogg, a high school student who survived the Parkland school shooting. Like the labor leaders of the Exclusion League in San Francisco, she probably had a feel-good moment by taking out her mean-spirited frustrations on a school kid. But just as Japan eventually punched back over repeated insults and provocations, David Hogg tweeted a plea for a boycott by sponsors of Ingaham’s program. So far, he has been successful.

School kids look like easy prey in political battles. Sometimes, there are painful consequences for attacking them.

My Father, the "Imbecile"

Currently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R.-Ark.) has proposed a bill that would substantially limit immigration to people who speak fluent English.

Compare this idea to the Immigration Act of 1907:

In the Senate the bill was amended by the insertion of a literacy test, which provided for the exclusion from the United States of—

all persons over sixteen years or age and physically capable of reading who can not read the English language.... 

The law also excluded the following people from coming to America: "All idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons, and persons who have been insane within five years previous." 

The photo of my Dad was taken shortly after he immigrated illegally to the U.S. under false papers.

During the Korean War, my Dad received a letter from the Selective Service. He had been drafted to serve in the Army. Upon reporting, he took a written IQ test.

After the test was scored, he was told he could go—the Army did not want him. 

“Why?” he asked. 

He was told that he tested at the level of an imbecile, with an IQ of about 50.

Dad was furious. With help from a relative in New York City, he then wrote a personal letter to President Harry Truman, and addressed it simply to the White House.

Through staff, President Truman replied that my Dad was to take this note back to the Selective Service and retest. 

My Dad, whose English improved with intensive studying, passed.

Ironically, he was assigned to a military “intelligence unit” because of his knowledge of Eastern European languages.

Now, really, who is the imbecile? My Dad or Senator Cotton?

Have a Good (or good) Friday! Can Government Declare Today a Public Holiday?

The short answer is yes. The lead case is Cammack v. Waihee, a Ninth Circuit decision from 1991.

In 1941, the Territory of Hawaii enacted a bill declaring that Good Friday, the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, shall be “set apart and established as a territorial holiday.” The law was continued after Hawaii became a state.

The law appropriates no funds to carry out its purposes. The effect of the law is to close state and local government offices and schools. At the time, twelve other states had this law.

For some people, this creates an inconvenience. For others, it seems like official endorsement of the Christian faith.

The appeals court ruled that this state law is not a violation of the First Amendment prohibition against establishing a religion. The bottom line is this: “The (First Amendment) establishment clause, however, permits government some latitude in recognizing and accommodating the central role religion plays in our society.”

The case was decided by a 2-1 vote. Judge Dorothy W. Nelson disagreed. She reasoned: “In this case, the legislature sends the message to non-Christians that it finds Good Friday, and thus Christianity, to be a religion worth honoring, while their religion or non-religion is not of equal importance. In fact, the government promotes Western Christians above Eastern Christians, whose Easter and Good Friday almost always fall on different dates.”

However you view this outcome, have a Good Friday or a good Friday!

Ben Franklin’s Advice? Don’t Delete Facebook

I took a wrong turn in my research and stumbled on an 1891 publication of unpublished letters of Benjamin Franklin.

I’ve taken the liberty of reproducing a letter Franklin wrote to a longtime friend.

Franklin would have valued Facebook, warts and all, because he valued corresponding with friends.

….

UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. [The following are unpublished letters of Franklin to his friend, Samuel Rhoads, who was Mayor of Philadelphia in 1774.]

London July 8th 1765

Dear Friend.

I have before me your Favour of May 20th wherein you mention that you had not heard from me, which I, a little wonder at, as I wrote to you the 14th of February, and find that Letters to some other Friends of the same date were got to hand.

I congratulate you on Your Retirement, and your being able to divert yourself with farming ; 'tis an inexhaustible Source of perpetual Amusement. Your Country Seat is of a more secure kind than that in the Assembly : and I hope not so much in the Power of the Mob to jostle you out of. I say hope, for after what we have lately heard of your Mobs, one cannot say that any Property or Possession is Safe certainly.

I am much oblig'd to you for Spurring our Friends in their Correspondence. They have not been wanting…

Photo Credit: ImageClip.com and Intellectual Takeout

Bigotry Redux

In trying to make sense of the blind bigotry of our times, I am studying earlier periods of American xenophobia. One historian, Roy Garis, said in 1924, “The amazing thing about the immigration problem is the likeness of the arguments of one generation to the contentions of another.” He was thinking back to a firestorm of anti-Chinese attitudes in the 1880s. In 1924, Garris was responding to the newly passed National Origins Formula, a law that sharply reduced immigration from nations where people did not speak English, were not Christian, and were not Caucasian. His thoughts in 1924 apply today.

I found the House Committee report where the idea of this strict formula was explained and received by eager— and bigoted—lawmakers.

If you want a snapshot of this irrational fear of otherness, read this directly quoted excerpt from V.S. McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee (his company now is a media empire, consisting of 30 major newspapers). As you do, I pose a friendly challenge: Find a current nationality or religious group that is ridiculed like the Japanese were in this 1919 letter to Congress. Post your comparisons on Facebook or email me at mhl@illinois.edu.

THE JAPANESE AS IMMIGRANT AND CITIZEN

He is an undesirable immigrant for economic rather than for racial reasons, and the strongest of these reasons are creditable rather than discreditable to him. His standards of living are lower than ours; he will work longer hours for less money; he is thrifty, industrious, and ambitious; he is a competent farmer, truck gardener and orchardist; he can and does underbid American labor whenever necessary in any community, until he has driven it out; then his wages raise to American standards; ultimately he declines to work for wages, insisting on leasing where he can not buy the farm or orchard….

It is not in one industry, but in all, that they displace us. It has been repeatedly proved that our civilization does not survive in open competition with theirs—it can not unless we accept their standards of living. The Japanese is an undesirable citizen because he does not assimilate. He does not intermarry, nor is it desirable that he should. He does not become an American, save in very rare instances, always remaining a Japanese. Even when born in this country, and educated in our common schools, he is still compelled by Japanese law to attend Japanese school before and after the public school hours. He is taught by Japanese teachers, who usually speak no English, and who have neither knowledge of, nor sympathy with the principles of American Government and citizenship. He absorbs Japanese ideals and patriotism, and that contempt for all other nations, which is the spirit of every Japanese school text book.

Women Leading #RedforEd— What Does It Mean?

Arizona teachers do not have a union that can legally bargain for a labor agreement. But they have a First Amendment right to speech and assembly. Organizing under the banner #RedForEd, thousands of angry teachers flooded the Arizona capitol yesterday demanding a 20% hike in pay and benefits.

The most interesting part of the movement is that is that women are predominantly its leaders, organizers, and protesters. That’s because 76% of teachers are women, according to Department of Education statistics. 

But what does this mean more generally?

For perspective, consider the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S.

Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first women’s rights convention in the world: the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. These women were also intensely committed to abolishing slavery. Women from several countries met in England in 1840 at the World Anti-Slavery Convention.

In time, their efforts bore fruit. On August 26, 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution. It states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

The last push for women’s voting rights took a radical turn. In 1916, Alice Paul formed the National Woman's Party (NWP). A subset of this group— the Silent Sentinels— were arrested in 1917 while picketing the White House. Some went on a hunger strike.

Today, a large segment of women are politically energized. They reject the emerging political culture of disrespect, vulgarity, sexual exploitation, legal protection of assault weapons— and they won’t stand anymore for their own marginalization. The West Virginia teachers strike succeeded against long odds. Arizona teachers—a group not ever perceived as radical— are threatening to walk out of classes until their demands are met. Oklahoma teachers are following a similar course.

If #RedForEd is successful, it might be as transformational as the suffrage movement a century ago.

Do ICE Prison Contractors Exploit Detainees? Work for $1 a Day

Chao Chen is a Chinese citizen and lawful permanent resident living in the United States. He was locked up in a Tacoma detention center from 2014 to 2016 while he awaited removal proceedings. 

He had committed several criminal offenses, including assault, harassment and a gun violation (making him deportable); but he was pardoned by the governor. 

The Obama administration wasn’t satisfied and moved to deport him. In 2017, a judge vacated his removal order (allowing him to remain in the U.S.).

Chen, now out of detention, is suing the private prison company that held him for two years. His allegation: they underpaid him for his work. Chen participated in Geo's voluntary work program that gives detainees work assignments involving cleaning, maintenance and other tasks in exchange for a dollar a day.

He argues that he is owed the state’s minimum wage—far more than $1 dollar per day.

Chen has an uphill climb. Under federal wage and hour law, prisoners are exempt as employees, even if they work.

The situation is different where a private prison company forces inmates to work. The 10^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (Denver) last month allowed a lawsuit to go forward against the same company where mandatory work detainees allege they were forced to work. They accuse the company of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

More generally, pay for prison work has been declining since 2001. As noted by Wendy Sawyer in Prison Policy Initiative, “the average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs is now 86 cents, down from 93 cents reported in 2001. The average maximum daily wage for the same prison jobs has declined more significantly, from $4.73 in 2001 to $3.45 today.” For more, see https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/.

So what, you might think.

Consider what this means, according to Ms. Sawyer:

“In Colorado, for example, it costs an incarcerated woman two weeks’ wages to buy a box of tampons; maybe more if there’s a shortage. Saving up for a $10 phone card would take almost two weeks for an incarcerated person working in a Pennsylvania prison.”

Hate Groups, Then and Now, in Illinois: Mapping Segregation

Yes, the KKK is alive and well in Illinois. Chapters include Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Nashville, Illinois and related groups such the Aryan Nations Sadistic Souls MC in Canton, Illinois (near Peoria) and the newly unearthed White Rabbits in Ford County.

A research article sheds light on the KKK in Illinois: Edgar F. Raines, Jr., The Ku Klux Klan in Illinois, 1867-1875, Illinois Historical Journal (1985). Raines makes a point about southern Illinois counties that essentially holds true in much of rural Illinois, including areas just outside Champaign-Urbana.

“The local white gentry . . . were adamantly opposed to the introduction of more blacks into the region. Cultural change in Egypt thus began at the peripheries. Before 1860 the interior counties were the most homogeneous in terms of the ethnic origin and political preference of the inhabitants. Their relative isolation meant that they did not come into contact with ideas or lifestyles other than their own.”

In that vein, see this interactive map, titled “Mapping Segregation” produced by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/08/us/census-race-map.html). 

Using the cursor for Champaign County, the population is 71% white, 12% black, 5% Hispanic, 9% Asian and 2% other.

In adjacent Ford County, the population is 95% white, 2% Asian. 0.5% black, and 1.25 others. Ford County is home to the recently discovered white hate group known as the “White Rabbits.”

In Washington County, where the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Nashville, the population is 97% white.

Whether it’s the 1870s or 2010s, when a county is nearly all white, residents have little direct experience with people of different races and ethnicities. Hate is not an inevitable outcome—but as Raines noted, this type of homogeneity is conducive to bigotry.

Were U.S. Immigration Policies Racist? A Stunning Portrait

The Age of Trump is nothing new in American history. From the 1850s through the 1930s, white workers agitated over their concerns that foreigners competed unfairly against them in their labor markets.  

Labor unions organized successfully for passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Exclusion Act, Emergency Quota Act,  and National Origins Formula.  The Supreme Court validated these racist approaches to immigration, ruling in Takao Ozawa v. U.S. that Japanese were ineligible for citizenship because Japanese were not “free white persons” within the meaning of the Naturalization Act of 1906.  

U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind reached a similar result for an Indian Sikh, declaring that he was racially ineligible for citizenship.  

Following enactment of the National Origins Act in 1924 and continuing through 1927, immigration quotas were allocated to each European country at 2% of the number of foreign-born of each nationality in the U.S. census of 1890.  As a result, this formula allocated 85% of the quotas to northern and western European nations.

The table (above) is stunning evidence of our nation’s immigration preferences for white, northern Europeans. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

When President Trump made his “shithole country” remark, he referred specifically to Haiti, a nation that is 95% black. Norway’s population, the better immigration alternative in his view, is 92% white. Simply put, President Trump was restating an American immigration policy that was prevalent for nearly 100 years.  

If you have ancestry from China, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, India, Poland, Germany, Austria, Korea, Japan, Mexico—to name only some—you have a picture of how difficult life was in America for your ancestors.

(Source: U.S. Census records, here https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab04.html. To reduce the data to one short table, I pulled figures from regions and continents (not by countries). See U.S. Census Bureau, Table 4. Region and Country or Area of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population, With Geographic Detail Shown in Decennial Census Publications of 1930 or Earlier: 1850 to 1930 and 1960 to 1990 (U.S. Bureau of the Census).

Repeal the Second Amendment? How that Might Work

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is making news today by suggesting that the time has come to repeal the Second Amendment.

This proposal faces very long odds of success. But there is a precedent: the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages. 

The 18th Amendment reflected the political power of the temperance movement. As a practical matter, the amendment fostered a large underground economy around alcohol. The mob flourished under these conditions.

Eventually, a large majority of Americans opposed the Eighteenth Amendment. People organized for its repeal.

Tactically, there was a problem: Which method, among the two provided in the Constitution, should they use to repeal an amendment with a new amendment? 

Until that time, the only way that the Constitution was amended was to secure ratification by the state legislatures of three-fourths of the states. The temperance movement was firmly in control of these statehouses, similar the NRAs lock on state houses across the U.S. It was a feared interest group.

Thus, they tried the other approach provided in the Constitution: secure approval by state conventions. The 21st Amendment is the only constitutional amendment ratified by state conventions rather than by the state legislatures.

Here’s what happened: Congress formally proposed the repeal of prohibition on February 20, 1933. The bill passed by more than a two-thirds vote in the Senate and House. The legislation specifically called for state conventions— not state legislatures— to vote on repeal. Article V of the Constitution authorizes that method.

On December 5, 1933— less than a year after Congress acted— Utah became the 36^th state to hold a convention to repeal the 18^th Amendment. As a result, the 21^st Amendment became law.

It states: “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”

If the Second Amendment is going to be repealed, that method would be the most likely to succeed. One key takeaway from this historical example is that a constitutional amendment requires swift action. Another lesson is that it takes massive and coordinated grass roots political action.  

March of Tears: The Price of Cherokee Removal

A fascinating economic study by Matthew T. Gregg & David M. Wishart, titled “The Price of Cherokee Removal,” revisits one of the saddest chapters in U.S. history. These natives were forced off their lands and relocated to Oklahoma.

Gregg and Wishart note that Cherokees were quite European in their development. They had a banking system, and adopted Euro-American legal traditions such as a constitution and a bicameral legislature (in the 1820s).

Forced to sign the 1835 Treaty, the Cherokee nation received $5 million in exchange for their possessions and public domain that totaled 7,882,240 acres in parts of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

But according to Gregg and Wishart, these terms significantly underpaid the Cherokees for their losses.

Here are Gregg and Wishart’s concluding remarks, quoted:

While the humanitarian tragedy reflected in the Cherokee removal is widely emphasized in the literature, the extent of the tragedy has been understated because the economic consequences have not been examined thoroughly. It has been well-documented that economic development in the Cherokee Nation before removal manifested in a variety of ways including the production of food surpluses, expanded literacy in English and Cherokee, and a widening skill set among the population that included competent slaveowning planters, mechanics, as well as spinners and weavers.

Removal clearly interrupted the economic progress of the Cherokee Nation by reducing the level of human capital, undercompensating the Cherokees for ceded property, and by imposing other transaction costs, such as the need to make new farms on less fertile land in the uncertain political environment that characterized the post-removal period in the newly-coalesced Cherokee Nation.

Moreover, the financial stipulations in the removal treaty negotiated by the federal government imposed a large burden on American taxpayers. The approach we have taken to estimate the cost of Cherokee removal allows us to identify the differential burden of these costs on American taxpayers and the Cherokees.

Our research shows that the total social cost of removing the Cherokees was roughly $9.24 million in 1838 dollars. Though American taxpayers paid some 40% of these social costs, the largest cost of removal borne by the Cherokees was the uncompensated value of ceding their property to the U.S. government.

The next largest cost borne by the Cherokees was the value of lost agricultural production, followed by the death costs. Although the death costs are no less morally repugnant, their economic impact is relatively lower because an accurate estimate of the Cherokee death toll is less than the conventional estimate by more than 1000.

Foul Ball: GOP Spending Bill Cuts Pay for Minor League Baseball Players

On page 1,967 of the 2,200 page GOP spending bill, there is a new law that exempts minor league baseball players from the federal minimum wage law. When President Trump signed the bill yesterday (which he protested), this became law.

This means that minor league baseball teams no longer owe players a minimum wage. Instead of a minimum hourly wage rate, they’ll get a standard amount of $1,160 per month—about $13,920, if the figure were annualized (but it will work out to about half that amount because this work is seasonal).

A lawsuit filed in 2015 in behalf of minor-leaguers alleges that players work 60-70 hours per week, including playing six games a week, practice, workouts, and travel time.

No one is claiming “credit” for this sneaky law, so I’ll give some credit to the politically active Ricketts family. Tom Ricketts is the primary owner of the Chicago Cubs. Most of his family is active in conservative political circles (brother Pete is a Republican governor of Nebraska). Tom bought the Cubs in 2009 for about $900 million. Forbes estimates that the team is worth about $2.25 billion (2017).

More generally, it’s a hoax to say that the GOP is the working person’s party. 

The last time that the federal minimum wage law was passed to increase pay was 2007 (raising minimum wages to $7.25 in 2009). Repeated attempts by Democrats to raise the minimum wage have been thwarted by Republicans who have argued that the little guy would be hurt by the law. With unemployment below 5% since 2015, that argument is pure nonsense.

The baseball story tells a more general tale: the rising gap in income and wealth for rich and poor is determined by laws such as the federal minimum wage law—not just market forces. Tom Ricketts will pocket more money now, while his minor league minions make crumbs.

(Thanks to Sam for the tip on this story!)

Did Trump Father a “Stormy Child”? If So, He Has Company

Against my wife’s counsel—which is 99% right— I am putting out there my theory that Donald Trump is mysteriously silent about Stormy Daniels because he may have fathered a child with her (she has a 7 year-old daughter). 

Okay, I’m nuts—but this is theoretically possible when people have unprotected vaginal intercourse (and again, she has a young daughter), which has now been verified by a lie detector test. (Bill Clinton was smarter but disgusting in his own way.)

Why would this freak out The Donald? 

For one, this would mess up his family aristocracy. 

Second, he could be exposed to child support litigation that would pry open his tax returns-- especially if California was the jurisdiction. 

That’s the real rub, in my opinion.

But following my wife’s counsel, I now have to declare that I am totally bonkers.

Grover Cleveland was implicated in a violent 1873 sexual assault that resulted in the birth of an illegitimate son. He countered the claim by the mother, Maria Halpin, by having her committed to an insane asylum. Sounds Trumpian to me.

Thomas Jefferson fathered several children with his slave, Sally Hemmings.

Warren Harding did nothing as president, except sign into law a ruinous tariff bill. But he fathered Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, the love-child of a long-running affair.

William Harrison died after just a month in office, the result of pneumonia caught during his inauguration. His strength might have been dissipated by sleeping constantly with his slave, Dilsia. She bore six children with him. He sold four to a Georgia plantation.

Would The Donald do that? You be the judge.

Do You Know Your 7th Amendment Rights?

Lately, the First and Second Amendments have gotten a lot of attention.

We rarely think about the Seventh Amendment—but it’s important. 
It states: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

For decades, courts have used a ruling called “summary judgment” to decide whether a trial should proceed. (Think of it as a gate.)

Let’s use a simple example. Paula Jones sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment (she was a state employee when he allegedly harassed her in his role as governor). He moved for summary judgment, stating that a sitting president could not be sued in a civil trial. The trial court granted the motion. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed this ruling, in effect overruling the “summary judgment” ruling of the trial court. The result? He paid $850,000 to settle this ordinary sex discrimination lawsuit.

A study involving more than 5,000 cases found that courts in employment discrimination cases blocked about 25% of cases from going to trial by ruling in favor of the employer's motion to summarily dismiss these lawsuits (Eisenberg and Lanvers, 2008).

That may be changing.

A secretary for an auto parts maker, Sewon America Inc., applied for a job transfer. She was told to forget about it because the company preferred to fill the role with a Korean employee. She complained—and was fired.

The trial court dismissed her lawsuit, granting the employer’s motion for summary judgment. 
The court believed that since this was a lateral transfer, there was no injury under Title VII (the secretary is claiming race and national origin discrimination as well as retaliation). She said she had a right to a jury trial.  

Now a federal appeals court will take up this important issue.

She will argue that by the text of the Seventh Amendment, she was entitled to the judgment of “a reasonable jury.”

In essence, she is saying that courts are using this short-cut device for judicial economy and blatantly ignoring the express words of the Constitution.

In an age when the Second Amendment is so broadly interpreted to mean that individuals have a right to be armed like militia members with assault weapons, it will be interesting to see how the appeals court deals with her straight-forward “textual” approach to the Seventh Amendment.

We all have a stake in the outcome.

Save That Confederate Monument: But Explain It

Few people can match Nathan Bedford Forrest for his racial brutality and his racial reconciliation. Forrest was a Civil War lieutenant general. He was responsible for ordering his troops to massacre 200 Union soldiers—many black— at the surrender of Fort Pillow.

After the war, he became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. During his reign, he led the Klan on a campaign of midnight parades, known as “ghost masquerades,” that featured whipping and killing blacks and Republicans. His primary goal was to suppress the liberal-black vote—reason enough to keep his evil deeds alive in our memories.

By the early 1870s, the Klan’s violence sickened Forrest. He quit his post. Then he reached out to blacks for racial reconciliation. He started by hiring hundreds of blacks to his railroad after they failed to find jobs in a hostile economy.

Forgiveness was forthcoming.

On July 5, 1875, Forrest was invited to give a speech before the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a post-war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve the economic condition of blacks and to gain equal rights for all citizens. He accepted.

Forrest gave a friendly speech—and he unwittingly made a new controversy by accepting a bouquet from a young black woman, thanking her, and kissing her on the cheek as a token of reconciliation between the races. Forrest ignored his critics and spoke in encouragement of black advancement and of endeavoring to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans going forward.

Forrest was intensely criticized by the southern media.

The Macon newspaper condemned Forrest for his speech, describing the event as “the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree.” The Charlotte Observer wrote, “We have infinitely more respect for Longstreet, who fraternizes with negro men on public occasions, with the pay for the treason to his race in his pocket, than with Forrest, who equalize(s) with the negro women….”

His bust stands without any explanation in the Tennessee state capitol. Lt. Gen. Forrest’s disgrace and redemption are important stories for today. It’s never too late to put away hate; and it’s never too late to forgive.

Thank you to state senator Kerry Roberts for telling a high school class (and our interloping family) this important story.

McCabe Will Get Last Laugh: Here’s Why

Let’s assume that Attorney General Sessions had a right to fire Andrew McCabe for dishonesty—even though Sessions failed to disclose under oath that he met with Russians on at least two occasions.

The right to fire is not the right to humiliate. Employers who pile on during a termination face heavy damages.

In short, here are some likely “last laughs” that McCabe will have once he sues.

For openers, he’ll have discovery. He’ll be able to get documents and depose people such as Sessions and the president to establish motive for discrimination.

What kind of discrimination, you say? Federal, state and private sector pension laws prohibit discrimination. Yes, in public plans termination can also end a pension. But why did Sessions wait for the Friday night news dump to fire McCabe at the last possible moment? If this creates a “preponderance of evidence” (51%) of intent to exact some form of political revenge, the pension can be restored.

Our class looks at cases in the public and private sector where employers are just brutally mean. In one, a 61-year-old vice president was given a choice between resigning with three months’ severance or being demoted to a warehouse as a janitor with six-figure pay. He took the latter. He was then subjected to unrelenting harassment. He eventually was put in a psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for four years. $3.2 million dollars later, the employer learned that firing him would have cost nothing—but humiliating him was very expensive (emotional distress).

We study the case of a school janitor in a town of 800 people who was suspected of stealing from the school. He was arrested in the morning while kids were present, and marched out in handcuffs. The whole town knew. He couldn’t get a job there. The federal appeals court ruled that whether he stole or not, the district had no right to drive him out of the labor market by participating in this intentionally stigmatizing behavior.

That’s what we have here: an intentionally stigmatizing termination. Tonight and through the weekend, McCabe will be fodder for tweets and Fox News headlines. The damages will only pile up.

How The Ku Klux Klan Might Read “Keep America Great!” KIGY! & KAG!

By chance, I listened to President Trump’s speech on Saturday when he mentioned his new campaign theme for 2020. The way he said it jarred me: “Keep American Great, exclamation point.” Just as Make America Great Again became MAGA, I would think that Keep America Great! will morph into KAG!

Having researched the KKK, I have learned that the Klan has an underground vocabulary. The Southern Poverty Law Center—the best source for KKK information—lists the Klan’s secret vocabulary.

It includes this: “KIGY!: A password meaning "Klansman, I greet you!”

 

Is KAG! a shout out-- a presidential greeting-- to the Klan? There is no definitive way to know. Still, the exclamation point caught my attention immediately. Will it have the same effect on KKK members?
***

K words and K acronyms are used frequently by the KKK: Klaliff – vice president; Klokard – lecturer; Kludd – chaplain; Kligrapp – secretary; Klabee – treasurer; Kladd – "conductor", in charge of initiating new members; Klarogo – inner guard, serjeant-at-arms; Klexter – outer guard; Klokard (officers at the Province and Realm level); Klazik Head of the department of the realm; Klokann is a group of three Klokans (officers); Kloncilium is a supreme governing council; Kalendar: Klan calendar, which dates events from both the origin and its 1915 rebirth Anno Klan, and means "in the year of the Klan," and is usually written "AK"; Kardinal Kullors: White, crimson, gold and black. Secondary Kullors are grey, green and blue. The Imperial Wizard's Kullor is Skipper Blue; K.B.I.: Klan Bureau of Investigation; KIGY!: A password meaning "Klansman, I greet you!"; Klankfraft: The practices and beliefs of the Klan; Klanton: The jurisdiction of a Klavern; Klavern: A local unit or club; also called "den"; Kleagle: An organizer whose main function is to recruit new members. In some Klans, he gets a percentage of the initiation fees; Klectokon: Initiation fee; Klepeer: Delegate elected to Imperial Klonvokation; Klonkave: Secret Klavern meeting; Klonverse: Province convention; Kloran: Official book of Klan rituals; Klorero: Realm convention.

Revisiting Auschwitz: Its Bookkeeper Has Died in Prison

Oskar Gröning, the “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” died last week at age 96.

I pass along excerpts of his lengthy obituary in the New York Times. In doing so, I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting facts that I believe show clear guilt, and those that are mitigating. These are my judgments—the question is, how do you judge these facts? Feel free to post on FB or write privately to me at mhl@illinois.edu.

Guilt: Gröning volunteered to work in Auschwitz. While working at the death camp, he kept ledgers of money brought to Auschwitz by Jews on the pretense that they were being relocated for safety and a new life. His ledgers recorded currency taken in the form of Polish zlotys, Greek drachmas, French francs, Dutch guilders, Czech korunas, Italian lire, among others.

He led a privileged life in Auschwitz, dining on tinned sardines, bacon, vodka and rum. He admits that he knew that he received special treatment for his work.

Gröning admitted that he was present on two occasions when Jews were killed: when a camp guard smashed an abandoned baby’s head against the metal side of a truck; and when escaped Jews were cornered in a farmhouse and gassed. 

His defense? He didn’t kill; he observed the killings.

Mitigation: He was brainwashed at an early age to view Jews as enemies of the German people.

In court as a 94 year old defendant, Gröning said: “It is beyond question that I am morally complicit. This moral guilt I acknowledge here before the victims with regret and humility.”

But “as concerns guilt before the law,” he added, “you must decide.”

After Auschwitz, he never spoke of his experiences—that is, until a fellow stamp collector told Gröning that the Holocaust was a hoax. Gröning wrote a note to the man saying: “I saw everything — the gas chambers, the cremations, the selection process. One and a half million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. I was there.”

Later, he wrote an 87-page memoir about his experiences. In 2005, he recorded nine hours of taped interviews for a BBC documentary.

***

Gröning was accused as an accomplice in the murder of some 300,000 Hungarian Jews who had been transported to Auschwitz in 1944. This would have included my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. For me, his testimonials to history are more important than determining his guilt and incarcerating him. With deeply mixed emotions, I value his moral confession and bearing witness to the horrors of Auschwitz.

Two Illegal Immigrants, Mexican & Jewish: Same Voices

An illegal Mexican, Anthony Claude Acevedo, crossed the U.S. border— after he was deported— to join the U.S. Army during WWII. Mr. Acevedo died last month. After he enlisted, he was trained as a medic. In early 1945, he and hundreds of soldiers were captured by Nazis.

Similar to current thinking among America First “nationalists,” Nazis separated Jewish soldiers and this Mexican medic. The solidiers' experiences in a special POW camp for “undesirables” was horrifying, even by Nazi standards.

Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was unified, my father wrote to the Wall Street Journal. For a man who came illegally to the U.S.—on false papers and a false name (from Otto Lefkovits to Robert LeRoy), his written account is perfectly haunting. My dad learned English—and so did Mr. Acevedo, who chronicled the cruelty suffered by his American compatriots.

Anyone who takes a minute or two to read testimonies from Mr. LeRoy (just click on top photo for enlargement) and Mr. Acevedo (https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/03/08/health/world-war-ii-medic-anthony-acevedo-obit/index.html?__twitter_impression=true) will be fortified to speak out and act against the popular hate of our times.

(Technical note: Crossing the U.S. border without permission is termed "unlawful entry." It is unlawful but not criminal. Crossing the border after you are deported is a criminal offense, and so is presenting false documents to border officials. Here, both men were truly illegal aliens.)

How John Lennon and Yoko Ono “Created” DACA— Amazing Intrigue

Everyone seems to know about DACA—but where did this presidential authority come from, and is it valid? DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. See the words in red, “Deferred Action?” It comes from a president’s inherent powers under immigration law to defer deportation. It’s somewhat similar to a prosecutor’s discretion. Prosecutors often agree to a plea deal where the defendant takes responsibility for a lesser offense. "Deferred Action" means a person is deportable but the U.S. will hold off removal.

Until today, I never knew the origin of this power. A law review article by Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Law (2010), gives us the following explanation (which I quote in full):

The use of prosecutorial discretion and the “nonpriority program” specifically was revealed by INS in 1975 as a consequence of a lawsuit involving John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Before this time, the  nonpriority program was a secret operation of the INS. Leon Wildes represented the couple and has since written extensively about the nonpriority program.

As described by Wildes, John Lennon entered the United States in the summer of 1971 as a visitor and was thereafter placed in deportation proceedings for overstaying his visa. Lennon and his wife came to the United States in order to assume custody of Kyoko, Yoko Ono’s daughter from a previous marriage. While Lennon and Ono were awarded custody over Kyoko by the family court, their situation was complicated by the fact that the child’s father had kidnapped Kyoko and could not be found.

Because he believed he was charged with deportation for political reasons, Lennon requested for nonpriority status, among other forms of relief. Through his attorney, Lennon spent more than one year trying to gather information from INS about the nonpriority status program and related procedures. At the time, INS contended that data on the nonpriority status program was “not compiled.” Even when Lennon motioned his immigration judge to depose a member of the Government who was informed about the nonpriority status program, the immigration judge denied his request.

Ultimately, Lennon was able to obtain information through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) action. Specifically, information about the nonpriority program was available under the INS’s “Operations Instructions” which, until the Lennon lawsuit, remained private information on the INS “Blue Sheets.” As a consequence of the FOIA Action, and despite the numerous statutory exceptions to the publication of information, INS migrated information about the nonpriority program from the INS “Blue Sheets” to the published “White Sheets,” signifying the newly public nature and existence of the program.

The Evolution of Deferred Action: 1975-1997

In 1975, following the Lennon case, the INS issued guidance on deferred action under its "Operations Instructions." The governing section stated: "(ii) Deferred action. In every case where the district director determines that adverse action would be unconscionable because of the existence of appealing humanitarian factors, he shall recommend consideration for deferred action category." The Operations Instructions also listed factors that should be considered in determining whether a case should be designated for deferred action:

When determining whether a case should be recommended for deferred action category, consideration should include the following: (1) advanced or tender age; (2) many years' presence in the United States; (3) physical or mental condition requiring care or treatment in the United States; (4) family situation in the United States effect of expulsion; (5) criminal, immoral or subversive activities or affiliations recent conduct. If the district director’s recommendation is approved by the regional commissioner the alien shall be notified that no action will be taken by the Service to disturb his immigration status, or that his departure from the United States has been deferred indefinitely, whichever is appropriate.

***

If we think about President Obama’s use of DACA, he appears to have considered “tender age,” many years of presence in the U.S., effect of expulsion, and (lack of) criminal or subversive activities. In other words, he followed pre-existing guidelines.

How President Chester Arthur Viewed the Second Amendment (Very Narrowly)

I am researching every executive order since the first one was issued in 1826 by John Quincy Adams (it’s a project on how presidents regulate labor markets with respect to immigration and race).

The NRA peddles a fiction that the Constitutional fathers would have approved assault weapons. Opponents have duly pointed out that a musket took about 30 seconds to load with shot at that time.

This short order gives a nice sense of what the expectation was for gun ownership before the NRA strangled our legislatures.

This Executive Order was issued by President Arthur on March 30, 1882

TREASURY DEPARTMENT

To Collectors of Customs:

Under the provisions of section 1955, Revised Statutes, so much of Department instructions of July 3, 1875, approved by the President, as prohibits the importation and use of breech-loading rifles and suitable ammunition therefor into and within the limits of the Territory of Alaska is hereby amended and modified so as to permit emigrants who intend to become actual bona fide settlers upon the mainland to ship to the care of the collector of customs at Sitka, for their own personal protection and for the hunting of game, not exceeding one such rifle and suitable ammunition therefor to each male adult; also to permit actual bona fide residents of the mainland of Alaska (not including Indians or traders), upon application to the collector and with his approval, to order and ship for personal use such arms and ammunition to his care, not exceeding one rifle for each such person, and proper ammunition.

The sale of such arms and ammunition is prohibited except by persons about to leave the Territory, and then only to bona fide residents (excluding Indians and traders) upon application to and with the approval of the collector.

H. F. FRENCH, Acting Secretary.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

Look-a-Likes, Trump and Polk, Differ on Tariffs

President James Polk had a strong and successful presidency, including a victory in the Mexican-American War and annexation of Texas.

When he was elected in 1844, tariffs were a major issue. The Tariff of 1842 (also called the Black Tariff) set high tariff rates to protect Northern manufacturing. This hurt agricultural states in the South and Midwest.

Compare this to President Trump’s imminent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and emerging concern from Midwest and Southern states, where there is growing concern about retaliation against corn, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, and Kentucky bourbon.

Like departing Senior Economic Advisor, Gary Cohn, Polk believed that protective tariffs for American manufacturing were unfair to other economic activities.

Once he was elected, Polk directed his Treasury Secretary to draft a new and lower tariff. Polk then had a friendly congressman propose the lower tariff to strengthen the acceptance of the policy through legislation. In a razor-thin vote in the Senate, Congress approved the lower tariff schedule (leading to the Walker Tariff of 1846).

Lower tariffs led to economic growth. England—so upset with American industrial tariffs that it passed its “Corn Laws”— repealed their retaliatory tariff on American agricultural. A boom in Anglo-American trade resulted.

Our new tariffs appear to be on course to revisit the sad history around the Black Tariff of 1842.
...

Photo Credit: Chattering Teeth

Church Worker Fired for Facebook Posts About Safety. Church Pays $62,000 Settlement

Meet Shepherd’s Chapel Church, based in Gravette, Arkansas. They are spreading the gospel in radio and TV broadcasts on 150 stations.

Darrin Carnahan worked as a printer for this church. Darrin died recently from lung cancer. Prior to his death, he complained numerous times to his employer that the printing operation he ran for the business had poor ventilation.

Eventually, he posted his complaints on Facebook. After three negative posts about the church’s failure to address noxious fumes in his workplace, the church fired him. They didn’t give Darrin a reason; but they told Kimberly that’s what happens for “biting the hand that feeds you.”

Kimberly and Darrin viewed that as retaliation for complaining about unsafe working conditions. Retaliation for making a safety complaint is prohibited by OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Act). The federal agency, OSHA, sued in behalf of Darrin Carnahan. This lawsuit was filed under the Obama administration; and it was continued under the Trump administration.

Once the Trump administration pressed forward with the lawsuit, the church offered a $62,000 settlement ($32,500 in back wages, plus $30,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress).  Darrin wasn’t alive to accept it. His wife did.

Why Are Judges Hard to Hold Accountable?

In Nebraska, a supreme court justice hurriedly resigned in the past two weeks. The state judicial ethics board isn’t commenting on allegations that he was accused of misconduct “in line with the national #MeToo movement” (quoting Omaha World-Leader). Why is this supreme court justice given cover by the judicial ethics board? The board suggests that it’s to protect the judiciary against false accusations, and he has not had a hearing—but then why did he quit suddenly, and why is a state senator seeking to have him disbarred? Doesn’t the public have an interest in knowing more?

In Arkansas, former judge Joseph Boeckmann was recently sentenced to five years in prison. He had cut sentencing deals with scores of young men who were charged with criminal offenses. He gave them community service in return for sexual favors provided in the privacy of his chambers. His misconduct gives new meaning to the MeToo Movement. Why did he get away with this for so many years? Where was the state's judicial ethics board during this time?

In Cook County (Illinois), a circuit judge, Jessica Arong O’Brien, was convicted last month of a $1.4 million federal mortgage fraud scheme. She pocketed $325,000 illegally. She will be sentenced on July 6^th.  O'Brien remains in her position, collecting on her annual salary of $198,075 (as of February 28^th), though she faces a disbarment hearing in early April. As of today, no complaint has been filed to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board. Maybe they don't read the Chicago newspapers, or maybe they are waiting for someone to act on this. Don't they have  authority to start an inquiry upon the felony conviction of a sitting Illinois judge? If not, why not? And why is a convicted judge still drawing a high salary on the taxpayers' dime?

In Champaign County (Illinois), there is nothing new to report on an ethics complaint against Judge Robert Steigmann. In early August, the state judicial board charged him with a variety of ethical violations stemming from his use of office staff and stationery to solicit speaking gigs of $1,250 before health care and police organizations. He doesn't deny the factual allegations, just the interpretation of the rules. Illinois' judicial code bars the use of a judge’s office for private gain. It's now seven months and counting, with no ruling from the ethics board.