"The Entire Dynamic Has Changed" Far-Right Groups Becoming Increasingly Visible On Campus

The “Unite the Right” rally at the University of Virginia last week was only the beginning...

As far-right groups find fertile ground for recruiting on campus, campuses are bracing for a flood of speaking events and demonstrations organized by white nationalist groups, according to the Associated Press, as many schools have determined that they can"t, or at least shouldn"t, expel members of hate groups on campus. Leaders of these groups say they will no longer limit their efforts to social media or to flyers posted around campus, but intend to hold public demonstrations to bring the movement “into the sun.”

"It seems like what might have been a little in the shadows has come into full sun, and now it"s out there and exposed for everyone to see," said Sue Riseling, a former police chief at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is executive director of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

As the AP reports, the young men who participated in Saturday’s rally marched through the Univeristy of Virginia’s campus holding torches and chanting racist slogans. Then the next morning some of them suited up with helmets and shields and clashed with counter-protesters, until 20-year-old James Alex Fields drove his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 26. The shift toward white nationalist and other far-right groups operating more openly began last year, when racist flyers popped up on college campuses at an unprecedented rate, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The group counted 161 white supremacist "flyering incidents" on 110 college campuses between September and June.

Nicholas Fuentes

These incidents will likely only become more common as leaders of pro-white groups say it’s a cheap and easy way to gin up media coverage.

“Matthew Heimbach, the 26-year-old leader of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party, admits that dropping leaflets on campuses is a cheap way to generate media coverage.

As a student at Towson University in Maryland, Heimbach made headlines for forming a "White Student Union" and scrawling messages like "white pride" in chalk on campus sidewalks. His college years are behind him, but Heimbach still views colleges as promising venues to expand his group"s ranks. College students are running four of his group"s chapters, he said.

"The entire dynamic has changed," Heimbach said. ‘I used to be the youngest person at white nationalist meetings by 20 or 30 years.’”

Many colleges are learning first hand that while they can condemn the violence during last weekend’s rally, expelling students because of their membership in a pro-white group would be something of a violation.  

“Scores of schools publicly denounced the violence in Virginia this week, including some that learned they enroll students who attended the "Unite the Right" rally.

The University of Nevada, Reno, said it stands against bigotry and racism but concluded there"s "no constitutional or legal reason" to expel Peter Cvjetanovic, a 20-year-old student and school employee who attended the rally, as an online petition demanded.

Other schools, including Washington State University, condemned the rally but didn"t specifically address their students who attended it.

Campus leaders say they walk a fine line when trying to combat messages from hate groups. Many strive to protect speech even if it"s offensive but also recognize hate speech can make students feel unsafe. Some schools have sought to counter extremist messages with town halls and events promoting diversity. Others try to avoid drawing attention to hate speech.”

And some schools are simply refusing to dwell on the issue when hate groups spread leaflets around campus, arguing that’s what the extremists want them to do.

“After flyers promoting white supremacy were posted at Purdue University last school year, Purdue President Mitch Daniels refused to dwell on the incident.

"This is a transparent effort to bait people into overreacting, thereby giving a small fringe group attention it does not deserve, and that we decline to do," Daniels said in a statement at the time.”

Nicholas Fuentes, a student who attended the “Unite the Right” rally, said he’d like to transfer to the University of Auburn from Boston University because he believes it will be more tolerant of his right-wing beliefs. “I"m ready to return to my base, return to my roots, to rally the troops and see what I can do down there," Fuentes said in an interview this week.”

*  *  *

Universities can continue to ban events by conservative speakers who they fear might incite violence, but the message is clear: conservative students will be protected from expulsion at most college campuses, but when it comes to the wrath of their Antifa-loving peers, well, that’s a different question entirely.

AFL-CIO President Quits President's Mfg Council, Accuses Trump Of "Tolerating Domestic Terrorism"

Having previously lost Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier from the president’s manufacturing council, followed by Under Armour’s Kevin Plank and Intel Corp.’s Brian Krzanich, who both also said on Monday that they were also stepping down, and followed by the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, Scott Paul, who said on Tuesday that he was quitting the group as it was “the right thing for me to do" moments ago the president of the AFL-CIO also resigned from the Presidential Council on Manufacturing, claiming that Trump "tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism" and stating that "President Trump"s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America"s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups."

I cannot sit on a council for a President that tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism; I resign, effective immediately. pic.twitter.com/ip6F2nsoog

— Richard L. Trumka (@RichardTrumka) August 15, 2017

The full statement by Trumka is below:

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on his and Thea Lee"s resignation from President Trump, council on manufacturing:

We cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism. President Trump"s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America"s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups.

It"s clear that President Trump"s Manufacturing Council was never an effective means for delivering real policy that lifts working families and his remarks today were the last straw. We joined this council with the intent to be a voice for working people and real hope that it would result in positive economic policy, but it has become yet another broken promise on the President"s record. From hollow councils to bad policy and embracing bigotry, the actions of this administration have consistently failed working people.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump said the CEOs quitting his advisory council aren’t taking their jobs seriously, and said some are producing offshore: "They’re not taking their job seriously as it pertains to this country,” the president said of the executives at a press conference at Trump Tower in New York Tuesday afternoon. “If you look at some of those people that you’re talking about, they’re outside of the country, they’re having a lot of their product made outside, if you look at Merck as an example."

Earlier on Tuesday morning on Twitter Trump said "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”

James Post, professor of management emeritus for the Questrom School of Business at Boston University told Bloomberg that “the value of the advisory council goes down when respected members leave over issues of principle. Whereas the president could have claimed to learn from the council, now it seems that he only listens when they agree with his opinion."

At the this rate, there will be no council left in just a few more hours.

North Korea Or Iran - Ron Paul Asks "Who Will Trump Attack First?"

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosprity,

President Trump seems to be impatiently racing toward at least one disastrous war. Maybe two. The big question is who will be first? North Korea or Iran?

Over the past several days President Trump has sent two nuclear-capable B-1 bombers over the Korean peninsula to send a clear message that he is ready to attack North Korea. On Saturday he blamed China for North Korea’s refusal to cease its missile tests. He Tweeted: “I am very disappointed in China… they do nothing for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue.”

One press report from an unnamed Pentagon source claimed that President Trump “is to order a military strike against North Korea within a year,” after this weekend’s North Korean test of a longer-range missile.

Iran, which along with North Korea and Russia will face new sanctions imposed by Congress and expected to be signed into law by Trump, is also in President Trump’s crosshairs. He was reportedly furious over his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s certifying that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear deal – even though Iran was in compliance – and he seems determined to push a confrontation.

Twice in the past week the US military has fired at Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf. On Tuesday an Iranian military ship in the Persian Gulf was warned off by machine gun blasts from a US Naval vessel. Then on Friday the US Navy fired warning flares toward another Iranian ship operating in the Persian Gulf.

Imagine if the US Navy had encountered Iranian warships in the Gulf of Mexico firing machine guns at them when they approached the Iranians.

Facing new sanctions, the Iranian government announced that it will not end ballistic missile testing even under US pressure. The missile program is not a violation of the P5+1 Iran deal unless it is specifically designed to carry nuclear weapons.

So whom will Trump attack first? Let’s hope nobody, but with continuing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans over the unproven “Russiagate” allegations, it increasingly looks like he will seek relief by starting a “nice little war.” If he does so, however, his presidency will likely be over and he may end up blundering into a much bigger war in the process.

Although Trump’s bombastic rhetoric on Iran and North Korea has been pretty consistent, the American people voted Trump because he was seen as the less likely of the two candidates to get the US into a major war.

A recent study by the Boston University and the University of Minnesota concluded that Trump won the most votes in parts of the country with the highest military casualties. Those most directly suffering the costs of war were attracted to the candidate they saw as less likely to take the US into another major war. These are the Americans living in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that surprised the pundits by voting for Trump over Hillary.

Will Trump’s legacy be blustering us into one or two wars that will make Iraq and Afghanistan look like cakewalks by comparison? Millions dead? It’s time to make our voices known before it’s too late!

New Study Suggests War Lust May Have Cost Hillary Clinton The Election

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Late last week, I came across a fascinating article published at Mondoweiss highlighting a recent study positing that Hilary Clinton may have lost the election to Donald Trump partly as a result of her well documented lust for imperial war and aggression.

Here are a few excerpts from the piece:

An important new study has come out showing that Clinton paid for this arrogance: professors argue that Clinton lost the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in last year’s presidential election because they had some of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and voters there saw Clinton as the pro-war candidate.

 

By contrast, her pro-war positions did not hurt her in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, the study says; because those states were relatively unscathed by the Middle East wars.

 

The study is titled “Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?” Authors Francis Shen, associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Dougas Kriner, a political science professor at Boston University, strike a populist note.

And here are the authors themselves on the moral hazard at work here. The people who decide are not suffering as much.

 

America has been at war continuously for over 15 years, but few Americans seem to notice. This is because the vast majority of citizens have no direct connection to those soldiers fighting, dying, and returning wounded from combat. Increasingly, a divide is emerging between communities whose young people are dying to defend the country, and those communities whose young people are not.

No nation can remain a cohesive unit for long under the above circumstances. Not to mention the fact that it’s extraordinarily unethical.

Here is another powerful excerpt from the paper:

 

Imagine a country continuously at war for nearly two decades. Imagine that the wars were supported by both Democratic and Republican presidents. Continue to imagine that the country fighting these wars relied only on a small group of citizens—a group so small that those who served in theater constituted less than 1 percent of the nation’s population, while those who died or were wounded in battle comprised far less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the nation’s population.

 

And finally, imagine that these soldiers, their families, friends, and neighbors felt that their sacrifice and needs had long been ignored by politicians in Washington. Would voters in these hard hit communities get angry? And would they seize an opportunity to express that anger at both political parties? We think the answer is yes.

 

Their argument is obviously aimed at coastal elites, which have more power than rural communities over decision-making, but far less to lose. The authors are unsparing about the very different experience of war for different communities. 

 

When the United States goes to war, the sacrifice that war exacts in blood is far from uniformly distributed across the country. And in the Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, constituencies that have suffered the highest casualty rates have proven most likely to punish the ruling party at the polls.

In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, for example, seven states have suffered casualty rates of thirty or more deaths per million residents. By contrast, four states have suffered casualty rates of fifteen or fewer deaths per million. As a result, Americans living in these states have had different exposure to the war’s human costs through the experiences of their friends and neighbors and local media coverage.

 

The four states with the lowest rates are NY, NJ, CT and Utah. All but Utah voted Democratic. Overall, rural states have higher casualty rates, and the authors find pretty significant inverse correlations between state income and education medians and casualty rates. Though it must be noted that Vermont suffered the worst casualty rate– more than 41 deaths per million– and it is home to the most vociferous antiwar candidate, Bernie Sanders, but was also very safe for Clinton.

People in the tristate area where I grew up should think a bit more deeply about support for imperial wars abroad, especially when their families aren’t as willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

Here’s Krayewski’s summary again, emphasizing the policy takeaway from the study:

 

The president’s electoral fate in 2020 “may well rest on the administration’s approach to the human costs of war,” the paper suggests. “If Trump wants to maintain his connection to this part of his base, his foreign policy would do well to be highly sensitive to American combat casualties.” More broadly, the authors argue that “politicians from both parties would do well to more directly recognize and address the needs of those communities whose young women and men are making the ultimate sacrifice for the country.”

The most effective way of addressing their needs is to advance a foreign policy that does not see Washington as the world’s policeman, that treats U.S. military operations as a last resort, and that rethinks the foreign policy establishment’s expansive and often vague definition of national security interests.

Reason also covered the study:

The paper—written by Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Boston University, and Francis Shen, a law professor at the University of Minnesota—provides powerful lessons about the electoral viability of principled non-intervention, a stance that Trump was able to emulate somewhat on the campaign trail but so far has been incapable of putting into practice.

The study, available at SSRN, found a “significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.” The statistical model it used suggested that if Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin had suffered “even a modestly lower casualty rate,” all three could have flipped to Hillary Clinton, making her the president. The study controlled for party identification, comparing Trump’s performance in the communities selected to Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012. It also controlled for other relevant factors, including median family income, college education, race, the percentage of a community that is rural, and even how many veterans there were.

“Even after including all of these demographic control variables, the relationship between a county’s casualty rate and Trump’s electoral performance remains positive and statistically significant,” the paper noted. “Trump significantly outperformed Romney in counties that shouldered a disproportionate share of the war burden in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

For all his nice campaign rhetoric, Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will be well aware of my serious concerns when it comes to Trump’s foreign policy and his sincerity regarding keeping the nation out of unnecessary imperial wars. Nevertheless, if it’s true that Hillary’s war lust materially impacted the 2016 election, this unquestionably would be a great thing. It means real issues are finally coming to the fore of U.S. politics, and that populism truly is ascendant and isn’t going away. Hopefully members of Trump’s team are aware of the study and will make him memorize its contents.

If less imperial violence can in fact become a winning election theme, then we are indeed making some real progress.

New Study Says Robots Took All Of Detroit's Jobs, Not Mexico

As Trump gets ready to renegotiate NAFTA and impose tariffs on companies looking to outsource production to Mexico, a new study from MIT and Boston University suggests that industrial robots, not Mexico, may be the bigger factor contributing to the high levels on unemployment in the Midwest. 

Entitled "Robots and Jobs: Evidence From US Labor Markets," the authors of the study found that the addition of 1 robot per 1,000 workers results in an 18-35 bps reduction in the employment-to-population ratio and 25-50bps reduction in wages.  Per Bloomberg:

One additional robot per thousand workers reduces the employment-to-population ratio by 0.18 percentage points to 0.34 percentage points and slashes wages by 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, based on their analysis. To put that in context, the U.S. saw an increase of about one new industrial robot for every thousand workers between 1993 and 2007, based on the study.

"The employment effects of robots are most pronounced in manufacturing, and in particular, in industries most exposed to robots; in routine manual, blue collar, assembly and related occupations; and for workers with less than college education," the authors write. "Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups."

Worth noting: the authors estimate that robots may have increased the wage gap between the top 90th and bottom 10 percent by as much as 1 percentage point between 1990 and 2007. There"s also room for much broader robot adoption, which would make all of these effects much bigger.

While the study found that only 360,000-670,000 jobs had been lost to robots over the past couple of decades, estimates indicate that an additional 3.5 million permanent jobs losses could occur over just the next 10 years which would increase the natural unemployment level by over 2%.

Because there are relatively few robots in the US economy, the number of jobs lost due to robots has been limited so far (ranging between 360,000 and 670,000 jobs, equivalent to a 0.18-0.34 percentage point decline in the employment to population ratio). However, if the spread of robots proceeds as expected by experts over the next two decades (e.g., Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2012, especially pp. 27-32, and Ford, 2016), the future aggregate implications of the spread of robots could be much more sizable. For example, BCG (2015) offers two scenarios for the spread of robots over the next decade. In their aggressive scenario, the world stock of robots will quadruple by 2025. This would correspond to 5.25 more robots per thousand workers in the United States, and with our estimates, it would lead to a 0.94-1.76 percentage points lower employment to population ratio and 1.3-2.6 percent lower wage growth between 2015 and 2025.

Of course, the impact is even more dramatic when you consider that the job losses are heavily concentrated in a handful of industries.  The automotive industry employs 39% of existing industrial robots, followed by the electronics industry (19%), metal products (9%), and the plastic and chemicals industry (9%).

Meanwhile, the following maps help to highlight the exposure of various regions of the country to industrial automation, imports and offshoring of jobs.  Not surprisingly, the heaviest concentration of robots has developed in the rust-belt region where they"ve replaced 1,000s of UAW workers.

Of course, this wouldn"t be the first time that economists had prematurely predicted the demise of labor markets due to technological advances:

"We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come—namely, technological unemployment" - Keynes, 1930

“Labor will become less and less important. . . More and more workers will be replaced by machines. I do not see that new industries can employ everybody who wants a job” - Leontief, 1952