It’s 1866 All Over Again

Yesterday, Michael Cohen stated under oath that President Trump is “a racist.” Rep. Mark Meadows “displayed” a black woman who works for the President to prove that this allegation is unfair. Within hours, Twitter was trending videos of Rep. Meadows in a 2012 campaign talk, saying “send Obama home to Kenya.”

That happened yesterday.

Today, I pass along these comments by Sen. Garrett Davis of Kentucky, made on the Senate floor on Feb. 1, 1866. He was opposing constitutional amendments to provide equal civil right for all people, regardless of race, and to approve birthright citizenship. Sen. Davis lost his arguments in subsequent votes… or did he?

“I hold:

1.       Two centuries ago, and upward, the continent of North America was settled and taken possession of by the Governments and people of Europe, English, Irish, Scotch, French, Netherlanders, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese, all of the white race.

2.       The negro, or any other race, had no ownership, proprietary power or government in their respective settlements—all was exclusively with the particular European nationality that had made that settlement….

7.  No negro was made free, or had any addition whatever to his privileges by the Articles of Confederation, or the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United states; nor were the rights and liberties of any free negro added by to by either of those instruments. The condition of both free and slave negro, in every State, continued precisely the same after the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution that it had been before.

8. Naturalization is the admission by Government of a foreigner to the privileges, or a portion of the privileges, of a citizen. Before the present Constitution this power was exercised by each State for itself, which produced diverse and discordant systems. For the purpose of uniformity the power of naturalization was by the States surrendered to the Government of the United States by the Constitution. That the power was delegated and reserved to the extent that States had exercised. That they had exercised it only to naturalize foreigners, and foreigners of the European nationalities; and the United States receiving from them this power as they always had exercised it were also limited to foreigners of the European branches of the Caucasian race.

9. That the fundamental, original, and universal principle upon which our system of government rests, is that it was founded by and for white men; and that it has always belonged to and managed by white men; and that to preserve and administer it now and forever is the right and mission and mission of white men. When a negro or Chinaman is attempted to be obtruded into it, the sufficient cause to repel him is that he is a negro or Chinamen.

Feb. 1, 1866, 1866 Cong. Globe 575, 39th Cong., 1st Sess, available here http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=070/llcg070.db&recNum=680

Preview of 2036 Election: The “Right” to Basic Income versus the Biblical View of Work

Photo Credit: Fossbytes

I chose today— a seemingly historic day, comparable to John Dean’s pivotal Watergate testimony— to offer a serious look into a different and in some ways more serious political debate in our nation's future.

AI (artificial intelligence) and robots are rapidly deskilling many kinds of work.

An Oxford University report from 2013 predicted that 35 percent of the U.K.’s workforce could be replaced soon by new technology. The British Royal Society of Arts echoed this finding, stating: “Machines are becoming more sophisticated and this can only mean the displacement of workers and the driving down of wages.”

McKinsey—a global leader in consulting—recently concluded: “Over the next ten to 15 years, the adoption of automation and AI technologies will transform the workplace as people increasingly interact with ever-smarter machines. These technologies, and that human-machine interaction, will bring numerous benefits in the form of higher productivity, GDP growth, improved corporate performance, and new prosperity, but they will also change the skills required of human workers.”

They add: “There will be a shift in demand toward higher cognitive skills. Our research also finds a shift from activities that require only basic cognitive skills to those that use higher cognitive skills. Demand for higher cognitive skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, decision making, and complex information processing, will grow through 2030, by 19 percent in the United States and by 14 percent in Europe, from sizable bases today. However, work activities that require only basic cognitive skills, such as basic literacy and numeracy, will decline as automation advances.”

Finland, grappling with the early phases of this job displacement, enacted a “universal income” policy. Unlike unemployment, it was meant to guarantee everyone a minimum standard of living—and allow society to proceed with diffusing job-killing technology.

This ended in December 2017, when the Finnish parliament introduced legislation requiring jobless people to work at least 18 hours every three months to qualify for unemployment benefits.

Point: Technology will accentuate workplace winners and losers, likely creating more losers as defined by loss of job or lower returns on individual skills—in other words, more commoditization of labor (called "crappy jobs" today).

Democrats will likely push for basic income.

Perhaps some Republicans will join—those who are aligned with big businesses and who recognize the reality that large-scale job loss is disruptive for a democracy.

But Republicans might also make biblical arguments—arguments I find pertinent to the meaning of our lives as we go about doing our “work.”

So, here are some biblical insights about the innate value of work:

Photo Credit: Seedtime.com

Deuteronomy 15:7-11

Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. 11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.

Proverbs 14:23  

23 All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

Proverbs 10:4  

4 Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Genesis 2:1-3

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

***

Hopefully, our nation will be wiser and more unified, and we will have more honest political leaders than today. 
This campaign question will go to the core meaning of our society. 

Judge Dies After He Rules But Before Court Issues Decision: Is His Ruling Valid?

In a stunning development this morning, the Supreme Court answered “no.” And it’s a big deal.

On a 5-4 vote, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a California teacher could pursue a wage bias claim. A California math specialist sued for sex discrimination, alleging that employer discriminated by requiring the teacher to disclose her salary history before hiring her. The Ninth Circuit, in this 5-4 vote, created a new precedent: Under the Equal Pay Act, a salary history question is  discriminatory (women usually have a less favorable salary history than men).

Judge Stephen Reinhardt concluded that such pay-setting policies violate the act because they can perpetuate sex-based pay gaps when women change jobs.

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a terse ruling that the Ninth Circuit should not have released the opinion because the judge who wrote it died before the decision was released. 

The math consultant, Aileen Rizo, was hired in 2009 at a starting salary of $62,133. She says she learned in a lunchroom conversation three years later that her three male colleagues all started at salaries more than $10,000 higher even though they do the same job.

***

Okay, Supreme Court. Where are you going to draw this line? 

Suppose a judge is temporarily disabled from the time of deciding and issuing a ruling—for example, Justice Ginsburg during cancer treatment? Valid or invalid ruling? 

Suppose a judge retires from the time of deciding and issuing a ruling? Valid or invalid ruling? 

Suppose the judge is permanently disabled in the form of a stroke from the time of ruling and issuing a ruling? Valid or invalid?

Suppose someone kills a Supreme Court justice, thought to be the swing vote in a key case, to also kill the ruling? Valid or invalid ruling?

The idea that a judge must be alive the day that the clerk of the court formally posts the ruling is, in my opinion, wrong.

And while we’re on this topic, does the ruling imply that people who die after they vote but before an elected official is sworn in have their votes invalidated?

The Court said today that said judges “are appointed for life, not for eternity.” That is a dramatic and embarrassing overstatement of what happened in this case.

In “A Wicked World,” Does the Law Impose a Duty to Save a Life?

No.

In our next class, we will cover a case involving Loomis, a company with armed guards that picks up money at banks. One guard goes into the bank. The other guard must remain always in the truck.

The facts? A guard goes into a bank. The branch manager runs out with a knife-wielding man chasing her. She screams at the guard in the truck: “Help me!” He does. The situation is resolved with no harm done. The guard is fired, however, for breaking a cardinal rule.

Sure, Loomis looks like a bad guy here. But they argued that whenever the second guard abandons the truck, a worse situation can arise. And anyway, they are the employer—they can set policies.

In Gardner v. Loomis, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the employer could not fire this guard for trying to save a life. (The case is here: https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1996/63060-7-1.html) 

All that is interesting. But there is more we will discuss. The law of torts generally dos not compel people to save anyone’s life. 

I am reprinting here a summary from Prosser, The Law of Torts.

Duty to Aid One in Peril

The law has persistently refused to recognize a duty to the moral obligation of common decency and common humanity to come to the aid of another human being who is danger….

Some of the decisions have been shocking in the extreme. The expert swimmer, with a boat and a rope at hand, who sees another drowning before his eyes, is not required to do anything at all about it, but may sit on the dock, smoke his cigarette, and watch the man drown.”

He cites more cases like this, including three awful ones. He concludes: "It would be hard to find a more unappetizing trio of cases." (One case involved a bystander who incited a person to jump in a lake [person drowned]; another was standing by a pool while a child drowned; a third involved a man who rented a canoe to a drunk person and watched as he downed.]

Prof. Prosser concluded: “Such decisions are revolting to any moral sense.”

“The remedy in such cases is left to the ‘higher law’ and the “voice of conscience, which, in a wicked world, would seem to be singularly ineffective to prevent the harm or compensate the victim.”

PHOTO CREDIT: UDEMY

Tribute to Prof. Craig Olson: On High School Teachers, Women With Health Insurance, and MLB Farm Systems

My colleague, Prof. Craig Olson, passed away on Monday. He was one of the nation's leading labor economists. In tribute, I share some of his research.

Lesson 1: Higher Pay for High School Teachers Correlates to Higher Earnings for Students 17 Years After Graduation

Olson, C. A., & Ackerman, Deena. (2000). High school inputs and labor market outcomes for male workers in their mid-thirties: new data and new estimates from Wisconsin. Madison: University of Wisconsin--Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty.

This study presents new evidence on the relationship between high school inputs measured at the time male respondents attended high school and the earnings of these same individuals when they were in their mid-thirties. To accomplish this task, we matched newly coded data on the characteristics of Wisconsin high schools in 1954–57 to the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey. Our estimates show a significant relationship between the characteristics of teachers and the earnings of their students 17 years after graduation. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in the average teacher salary in a district increases the earnings of students by 0.33 percent. The magnitude of this effect is larger than estimates reported in previous research and many times larger than the impact of increasing parents’ income by a comparable amount. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp120500.pdf

Implication: Higher pay for teachers is a long-term investment in America’s human capital.

Lesson 2: Women Accept a 20% Discount in Wages to Take Jobs with Health Insurance Benefits

Olson, C. A. (2002). Do workers accept lower wages in exchange for health benefits? Journal of Labor Economics, 20(2).

This study tests this prediction for employer-provided health insurance by modeling the wages of married women employed full-time in the labor market. Husband’s union status, husband’s firm size, and husband’s health coverage through his job are used as instruments for his wife's own employer health insurance benefits. The estimates suggest wives with own employer health insurance accept a wage about 20% lower than what they would have received working in a job without benefits. Implication: Women who are married to men who have no union or no health insurance accept a 20% wage discount compared to women in the same jobs who are married to union members or men in nonunion firms with no health insurance.

Lesson 3: Teams That Were Early Adopters of Farm Systems Won More Games Than Nonadopters

Olson, C. A., & Schwab, Andreas. (2000). The performance effects of human resource practices: The case of interclub networks in professional baseball, 1919-1940. Industrial Relations, 39(4), 553-577. https://doi.org/10.1111/0019-8676.00184

We use a panel data set of the win/lose records for the population of 16 major league clubs for the seasons from 1919 through 1940 to test hypotheses about the effect of human resource practices on organizational performance. The results suggest that the reserve team practice had no significant impact on organizational performance. In contrast, the more complex farm‐team system, pioneered by Branch Rickey of the St. Louis Cardinals, improved organizational performance and diffused rapidly throughout the league. We estimate that by 4 years after its creation, the farm‐team system improved a team's win rate by 0.068 points relative to nonadopters of the farm‐team system and teams with less than 4 years of prior experience with a farm‐team system. The results also show that the farm‐team effect was not confined to St. Louis but also was experienced by later adopters.

Implication: Investing extra money, and more money than your competitors, to develop talent pays off in the long-run.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/0019-8676.00184

Robert Kraft’s Sex Offenses Shine Light on Human Trafficking, Illegal Immigration

Move over, Jusse Smollett: You’ve been outdone in one news cycle by the pious and sycophantic Trump supporter, Robert Kraft. As owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, Kraft will be fitting symbol of how wealthy men finance the sex trade in America—a trade that has strong overtones of illegal immigration. (Walking across a U.S. border is not a crime, it is "unlawful entry." Walking across a border with a sex slave is a federal crime.)

Kraft has reportedly been charged with two counts of solicitation at a luxury spa. He has been caught on film, so the slow-motion replay of his offense will be quite interesting, if this goes to trial.

This tees-up today’s post on sexual labor.

Here is what the International Labour Organization—a group that tracks a variety of exploitative and degrading labor practices—reports:

Globally, there are 40.3 million victims of human trafficking globally.

81% of them are trapped in forced labor.

25% of them are children.

75% are women and girls.

This is estimated to be a $150 billion industry worldwide. (That’s where men such as Robert Kraft play such a damaging role.)

Polaris Project Map of Human Trafficking in the U.S.

Here in the U.S., the General Accounting Office—a research arm of Congress—issued a lengthy report on human trafficking in December 2018:

December 4, 2018

Congressional Committees

Trafficking in persons, or human trafficking, is a longstanding and pervasive problem throughout the world, as traffickers buy, sell, and transport victims across national boundaries (editorial comment: no wall will abate this problem … migrants now at the border are mostly families seeking aysulum).

Victims are often held against their will in slave-like conditions or forced to work in the commercial sex trade, garment factories, fishing boats, agriculture, domestic service, and other types of servitude.

In addition to inflicting grave damage upon its victims, trafficking in persons is a multi-billion dollar industry that undermines government authority, distorts markets, fuels organized criminal groups and gangs, enriches transnational criminals and terrorists, and imposes social and public health costs. The Department of State (State) noted in its June 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report that terrorist organizations also use trafficking in persons to recruit adherents and finance their operations. Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 to combat trafficking in persons, and has reauthorized this act four times.

The act, as amended, defines severe forms of trafficking in persons as (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act is under age 18; or (2) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

The Right Turns to Libel Law: How a Racist Radio Host Fared in His Defamation Lawsuit

James Edwards is the creator and host of “The Political Cesspool” radio show and website. His program in on the Liberty News Radio Network. He published these principles on the show’s website:

“The Political Cesspool Radio Program stands for the The Dispossessed Majority. We represent a philosophy that is pro-White.”

“We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”

“America would not be a prosperous land of opportunity if the founding stock were not Europeans.... You can’t have a First World nation with a Third World population.”

Edwards frequently has guests such as David Duke and others with connections to white nationalist views on his show. Duke has written for The Political Cesspool’s blog, including, a post that discussed the “Jewish extremist takeover of America.”

Edwards has a strong ideological viewpoint, he voices this viewpoint on the show, and he highlights this through several of the show’s frequent guests, including Duke and Sam Dickson, Jr. (who has represented Ku Klux Klan members in court in the past.) Both have been on the radio show dozens of times.

On March 17, 2016, The Detroit News published an opinion piece by Bankole Thompson in its “Think” section. The piece was titled, “Jewish leaders fear Trump presidency.” The piece centered on concerns expressed by Detroit-area Jewish leaders regarding the involvement of white supremacists during the 2016 presidential campaign. In the piece, Thompson made the following assertion:

Of particular note to some in the Jewish community is the unprecedented support the Trump campaign has received among white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and its leaders like James Edwards, David Duke and Thomas Robb, the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas.

I underlined “its leaders” because that was the crux of Edwards’ defamation lawsuit against the newspaper. He is not a formal leader of any white supremacist group, so technically, the statement is false—and if it’s false, it can be defamatory (leading to damages).

A Michigan court dismissed the lawsuit. In pertinent part, the court said:

Edwards is correct in the narrow sense that one meaning of “leader” includes being “[t]he foremost or most eminent member” of a group. Thus, one plausible inference could be that Edwards, like Duke and Robb, had an official role with the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, Edwards is incorrect in a more fundamental sense because the term can be used and understood more broadly—e.g., a leader may be someone who “guides others in action or opinion,” “one who takes the lead in any ... movement,” “one who is ‘followed’ by disciples or adherents,” or “in [a] wider sense, a person of eminent position and influence.” None of these latter meanings necessarily implies official affiliation with a particular group.

Considering the multiple meanings that “leader” can have, we do not read the sentence to imply necessarily that Edwards must have held some official, designated leadership role in the Ku Klux Klan.

The court added this key conclusion:

Mindful of Aesop’s lesson, “A man is known by the company he keeps,” we hold that Edwards cannot make claims of defamation or invasion of privacy and affirm summary disposition in favor of defendants.

***

Why is this important? Pay attention to Nick Sandmann’s (Sandmann is pictured above) $250 million libel lawsuit against the Washington Post. (Editorial comment: The larger one’s claims for damages, the more likely it means it’s a publicity stunt.) Pay attention to Justice Clarence Thomas’s highly unusual opinion this week, seeking to open the floodgates of libel lawsuits against newspapers (Editorial comment: He was, and continues to be, hounded by media that sided with Anita Hill, and did not offer Thomas any “himpathy”.) Pay attention to President Trump’s similar call to open the floodgates for more libel lawsuits. One final editorial comment for the right: Treat the First Amendment with the same regard as the Second Amendment. If you are going to protect a person’s right to accumulate weapons for a mass shooting, don’t let painful, even untruthful, words mushroom into $250 million lawsuits.

A Reply to “Klan Needs to Ride Again”

An Alabama newspaper— Democrat Reporter— has published an editorial under this title. (https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/02/18/alabama-newspaper-ku-klux-klan-to-night-ride-again-linden-democrat-reporter-goodloe-sutton/2910436002/).

Perhaps this is a ploy to sell more papers. Regardless, many voices should speak out. I offer a brief excerpt from by research article, “Targeting White Supreme in Workplace.”

The main sponsor of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act was a Vermont Republican, Luke Poland.

In a lengthy floor speech advocating passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, Rep. Poland expressed his concern that the Klan had reimposed a new type of slavery:

“Laws were passed in many if not all the late rebel States whereby the negroes were hampered and shackled in every possible way. In the ownership of land, in the making of contracts, and a thousand ways, they were forbidden the free exercise of all rights which are supposed to belong to all free men in all free Governments.”

Rep. Poland went further, however, in explaining why the free labor of blacks was a threat to a large segment of poor whites in the South:

“A large number of men had lived in idleness, and the fruits of idleness had ripened. The country was full of dissipated horse-racing, cock-fighting, roystering fellows, many of whom by the war had become desperate and dangerous men. The liberation of the slaves had deprived them of their means of living, and they were reduced to the desperate and disagreeable duty of *141 earning it for themselves. That this class, under the circumstances, could tolerate equal rights, civil and political, in a negro could hardly be expected.”

Connecting this wave of white terrorism to a broad effort to re-impose some semblance of a master-slave relationship, Rep. Poland also explained that a previous civil rights law was “utterly insufficient against their more intelligent and powerful oppressors, and the colored people were likely to continue as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ to their old owners and taskmasters.”

…

For perspective, here is a current excerpt from the White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (photo on top appears on their website). Their website says (http://www.wckkkk.org/who.html):

WHO- The White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a group of men and women (families) that share a common belief in religion and race. We are not the Knights of the White Kamellia, Ku Klux Klan. Neither do we have any affiliation to this organization.

WHAT- An organization of White Christians dedicated to the truth and education in a world of lies and ignorance.

WHERE- The White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is based in Texas, but with membership spread throughout many other states.

WHEN- The original White Camelia was organized in 1867, two years after the original Ku Klux Klan was formed in Puluski, Tennessee. It has been reported that the White Camelia became larger than the original Ku Klux Klan in membership and power.

WHY- The White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan believes that White Christian ideals are under attack by anti-white and anti-Christ forces. We believe our race, country and our Christian way of life is being systematically destroyed.

HOW TO JOIN- Requirements for membership are simple. You must be 100% White, have an open mind to learn Christian Identity and be willing to follow Klan rules and regulations.

Can Congress Neutralize A Trump Court? Yes (To Some Degree)

Today, the Supreme Court granted expedited review of a major case involving President Trump’s ploy to rig the census by asking a question about citizenship (to undercount the unlawful immigrant population and create more House seats for Republicans).

The path of this case is highly unusual: It’s a fast track from a trial court straight to the top.

And here’s the point: Congress, in enacting the Judiciary Act, has sole constitutional power to set the “lanes” that lead to the Supreme Court.

In other words, Congress can cut-off jurisdiction to deprive the Supreme Court of any say on a case, or issue, or statute.

Sen. Jesse Helms— a Senate version of Rep. Steve King in the 1980s and 1990s— fiercely opposed school integration—the result of Brown v. Board of Education.

He would attach riders to major spending bills, for example, where he would propose to amend the Judiciary Act by denying the Supreme Court jurisdiction to hear any busing case (busing was used to integrate segregated schools). He wanted to prevent a liberal Court from using new cases and controversies to expand Brown.

He failed— but his passion for this strategy offers a useful lesson for liberals today.

Suppose that in 2021 Democrats control all branches but not the Court.

Congress could pass law curtailing jurisdiction to hear Roe v. Wade challenges. Or pass a jurisdiction law to prevent the Court from deciding cases such as the census, or key immigration cases.

What’s needed? 218 House votes. 60 Senate votes (to invoke cloture). A president’s signature.

It’s not easy—but it’s much more achievable than packing the Court or waiting for Brett Kavanaugh to retire.

ADDENDUM: History suggests that when some justices fear a congressional curtailment of their jurisdiction, they “self-correct” the Court to avoid making big constitutional waves.

Our Immigration Law in 400 Words

It’s called the Immigration and Nationality Act. It was passed in 1965. It overhauled 90 years of statutes and court rulings that massively restricted immigration from everywhere except the U.K. and northern Europe. The 1965 law changed immigration from white to all races.

The law has had a major impact on our population (see chart, orange line for percent of overall population). We bottomed at 5% foreign-born (early 1970s) to almost 14% today. Source: Migration Policy Institute.

The law creates these “buckets”:

Refugees are admitted if “unable or unwilling to return to that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on his or her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Example: Syrians opposed to Assad (2012-2016, after two years of vetting in refugee camps).

Asylum: Asylees are similar to refugees. These are often dissident individuals or groups with a reasonable fear of persecution (death, torture, incarceration for status or viewpoints). Example (1980s): Soviet Jews.

Diversity: Our law creates a lottery system that admits people from every country in the world. These numbers are very small. Source: Government Accounting Office.

Employment: Temporary workers are admitted with several visas. The total in 2015 was about 800,000. Some work short-term: H-2A for temporary, seasonal workers. Think of field workers, picking or planting crops.

Some are long-term: H-1B “specialty occupations,” which often means IT or computer workers. They stay 3 years; are eligible to renew another 3 years, and often petition to adjust status to green card (lawful permanent resident). They make up 500,000 in an IT workforce that has 4.6 million Americans (about 12%).

A small percentage are permanent green card holders. Example: Melania Trump, who was admitted as a world-class fashion model on an EB-2 visa for exceptional skill, accomplishment, and ability (legitimate).

Context: In January 2018, a bipartisan bill would have provided the administration with $25 billion for a wall in exchange for legalizing 1.8 million DACA “Dreamers” and granting them a path to citizenship. The president said no. He wanted reductions in legal immigration. Today, he will be presented a funding bill for $1.3 billion in border security. The legal immigration system— in other words, the INA— remains completely intact. 
(About 11 million people are in the U.S. without legal immigration, meaning they are here without using any legal process under the INA. 
In contrasts, international students, tourists (about 30 million/year), and similar are here as part of this law.)

A Student from China Writes on Foxxconn

I chair our School’s admissions committee. 

I read many applications.

I am sharing observations from an accomplished undergraduate student in China who is studying business and human resource management. 

This excerpt is from his personal statement.

My reason? 

He is reflecting on a company that is getting massive tax breaks from Wisconsin ($4.8 billion) to build an immense manufacturing plant near Kenosha, Wisconsin.

This young man is unwittingly telling taxpayers in Wisconsin and President Trump that we are being duped. He is right.

“Foxconn had had a spate of suicides at their China factories due to low pay and harsh working conditions. In 2010, there were 18 attempted suicides by Foxconn employees resulting in 14 deaths. From the perspective of Supply Chain Management, I believed that automation and digitalization would increase Foxconn’s production efficiency and improve the ‘level of harmonization’ by replacing people with robots and computers. 

However, it would also require much investment and probably lead to large-scale unemployment. As a result, Foxconn was essentially facing a contradiction between its business and its social values. Meanwhile, how would the company elevate the skill levels of the remaining workers after the internal reforms, and where would the unemployed go? 

Such difficult questions were worthy of thorough consideration for both HR researchers and practitioners. That being the case, Human Resource Management had to take some major responsibility toward ‘reconciling the contradiction.’”

Liberation Day for No. 46288 (Feb. 11, 1945: Bunzlau Concentration Camp)

ROBERT LEROY, 80

Holocaust survivor spent life working to end hatred

By Glenn Jeffers

Tribune staff reporter

Published April 12, 2005

The 1945 quarter Robert LeRoy wore around his neck meant more than 25 cents. It reminded him of humble beginnings.

It reminded him of the day he stepped off a steamer in 1949, one of the few members of his family to survive the Holocaust. That quarter was all the money Mr. LeRoy had.

It was a first step toward building a new life, first with his Elgin-based construction company, then through charitable deeds and talks to children about the dangers of hatred.

Mr. LeRoy, 80, died Saturday, April 9, from complications from pneumonia and congestive heart failure in his Elgin home. But before that, he took a hard life and 25 cents and made a wonderful, generous life for his family, said his wife, Carol.

"He believed that he had survived for a reason, and that reason was his children and his grandchildren and to give back to the community," she said.

It was 1944 when the Nazis rounded up Mr. LeRoy, then a 19-year-old named Otto Lefkovits, and his family in his hometown of Nyirmada, Hungary.

They were taken to Auschwitz, where Mr. LeRoy and three of his siblings were separated from the rest of his family.

Mr. LeRoy was shipped to Bunzlau, where he built aircraft decoys to fool Allied bombardiers. His mother, father and a brother, Mr. LeRoy recalled, were led into a showering area.

"No one knew it was a gas chamber," Mr. LeRoy said in a Tribune interview in February.

The man once known as No. 46288 spent more than a year suffering through repeated beatings and starvation before the Germans abandoned the camp and Russian tanks broke through the walls in 1945.

Mr. LeRoy would come to mark that day— Feb. 11— as the end of his imprisonment. But it also spawned a 60-year journey to understand why he had survived and 26 members of his family had not.

"You ask yourself, `Why am I singled out?'" Mr. LeRoy had said. "`Why did they do this to us? Why did they give us a horrible fate?' No one could answer."

Mr. LeRoy immigrated to the United States. He spent two years in the Army before he was discharged in 1953. He then moved west.

After marrying the former Carol Schultz, Mr. LeRoy and his bride moved to Elgin, where they started a construction and remodeling business. He said he owed those skills to a very unlikely instructor.

"Hitler," he said. "I learned to push a wheelbarrow."

But images from Bunzlau haunted Mr. LeRoy, sometimes in his dreams, other times when he was awake. He would cry sometimes when he walked into a shower, his wife said.

He'd combat those memories by surrounding himself with family, Carol LeRoy said.

"I don't think there was a day he didn't think about it and miss his family," she said.

But when LeRoy heard about a Northwestern University professor who claimed in the 1970s that the Holocaust never occurred, he began a crusade to educate people on the horrors of the Holocaust. His target: children.

Mr. LeRoy believed children could be taught not to hate. And for the next 30-plus years, he taught that message to children in grade school and high school.

Even after he retired from construction in 1989, Mr. LeRoy continued the talks.

They helped answer those questions that plagued him. He survived to help others, be it with lessons or with the ambulance his family bought and sent to Israel back in 2001.

"I have no doubt he made a very strong impact," his wife said. "Not just here, but in Israel, in Hungary, in Champaign, in anyone who ever heard him speak."

State of the (Labor) Union Address

My Fellow World Citizens:

Labor unions continued to decline by key measures the past year. 2018 was a good year, however, for billionaires (J.B. Pritzker, Illinois Democratic Governor; Donald Trump, Republican President; Howard Schultz, Independent …).

The union membership rate was 10.5 percent in 2018, down by 0.2 percentage point from 2017. In 1983, that figure was 20.1%.

In 2018, the Supreme Court weakened the ability of unions to require members to pay dues to support bargaining-related activities.

On a positive note, in states where teachers cannot legally bargain with school districts— West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona— teachers walked out en masse and "bargained" with their Republican legislatures. They won large pay increases and more funding for books and other educational resources. So far, this First Amendment right has not been extinguished (though bills have been introduced to this effect in Oklahoma).

The federal minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 per hour. It’s been at that level since 2007. If the minimum wage had kept up with its highest value, adjusted for inflation (i.e., the 1968 rate), the minimum wage would be $11.62 per hour.

Meanwhile, there are 540 billionaires in the United States, with a combined net worth of $2.399 trillion. That’s a 2016 figure. Given the robust economy for the super-rich, that number may have grown.

Finally, consider the destabilizing effects of inequality of wealth. The American blue collar worker, bereft of collective bargaining, has largely turned to a billionaire to make life more secure. In France, another super-rich president pushed through legislation to make it easier for employers to fire workers. France is besieged by violent protests from “yellow vest” working class people who are deeply alienated. In Hungary, under the rule of authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, a law was recently enacted to allow employers to defer payment of 800 hours of overtime for two years to workers.

Unions are down. Wealth inequality is increasing. Social conflict is intensifying, as is political instability. Unless some balance is restored, these unsettling trends will directly affect a growing number of Americans. The next affected group: federal workers, many of whom are represented by unions.

What Does “Illini Nation” Mean?

What does “Illini Nation” mean?

I was jarred into thinking about this as I have been working on research involving birthright citizenship.

The U.S. has birthright citizenship, also called jus soli (right of soil). This means anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen. It originates with Emperor Caracalla in Rome in 212 AD.

Our nation isn’t alone but we’re unusual. Why do we have it?

Black people in the U.S. could not be citizens until after the Civil War. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 14^th Amendment of 1868 enacted birthright citizenship. It allowed all blacks—whether free or born into slavery— to become citizens immediately as long as they born in the U.S. From there, they acquired voting rights— immediately, with the Fifteenth Amendment.

Congress had an intense debate: One side said this right should be limited to blacks but not foreigners. 

Others said even the children of foreigners—and here they meant the children of Chinese and Mexican workers—should be citizens by birth. The second group prevailed, led by an Illinois senator.

Most other nations have jus sanguinis—citizenship by blood, which means by descent. It fits with nations that define citizenship as an ethnic, racial, or religious group.

I’ve concluded that “Illini Nation” has birthright citizenship, not hereditary citizenship. 

Perhaps Notre Dame, which is 85% Catholic, is close to hereditary.

But for us, we all have a first day when we stepped on our campus—some of us as students, or student-athletes, or faculty, or administrators, or members of the community who attend a football game.

So, what’s the difference between “Illini Nation” and other schools? 

It’s equality. 

We are united by physical places on our soil where we come together—Memorial Stadium and SFC, Foellinger Auditorium, the Union, Kam’s, ATO or Tri-Delts, Allen Hall—these places are to us as Gallia, Hispania, Syria, Arabia, Macedenia, and so on were to Romans. 

Whether you’re Red Grange’s great-grandson, a first generation college student from Chicago playing on our basketball team, a Native American student, a DACA-student, a faculty member who earned a Ph.D. at Yale, a freshman from Downers Grove— the list goes on— we’re all citizens here. We can live in “Littyville” without distinction of race, creed, color, religion, or political belief.

Go Illini!

Grandparents Grew Up in a White (84%) USA: For Millennials, Only 56% Are White

We all know that America’s demographics are changing. This research excerpt is remarkable, nonetheless.

The Pew Foundation studied four generations of living Americans. See the grainy photo of the chart (above, click to enlarge), comparing “Silents/Greatest” (born before 1940), “Boomers” (born 1946-1961), “Gen Xers” (born 1965-1980), and “Millennials”(born 1981-1996).

Here is a summary of the findings by Richard Fry, et al., How Millennials Today Compare with Their Grandparents 50 Years Ago, Pew Research Center (March 16, 2018), available in http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/16/how-millennials-compare-with-their-grandparents/.

“Millennials are much more likely to be racial or ethnic minorities than were members of the Silent Generation. Fifty years ago, America was less racially and ethnically diverse than it is today. Large-scale immigration from Asia and Latin America, the rise of racial intermarriage and differences in fertility patterns across racial and ethnic groups have contributed to Millennials being more racially and ethnically diverse than prior generations. In 2017, fewer than six-in-ten Millennials (56%) were non-Hispanic whites, compared with more than eight-in-ten (84%) Silents. The share who are Hispanic is five times as large among Millennials as among Silents (21% vs. 4%), and the share who are Asian has also increased. However, the share who are black has remained roughly the same.”