by Chudi Obi

Throughout most of 20th century, manufacturing was the core economic identity of the United States. America’s manufacturing sector thrived, helping to make it an economic superpower. It was indeed the face of American culture in many ways, with the image of the factory worker defining classic Americana in many parts of the country. Today, however, the economy has changed. Due to the comparatively low cost of labor in many other countries such as China and India, manufacturing companies have outsourced labor or have gone out of business altogether - unable to compete with cheaper imports. The decline of manufacturing was further exacerbated by the Great Recession in 2007-2009. Here we saw many companies collapse under the pressure, laying off workers who had been in their factories for decades. While the country has come out of the recession, many of the manufacturing jobs that were lost have not come back.

The American promise of the post-WWII generation that a high school education with little special training would be sufficient to get a factory job that pays well enough to support your family and send your kids to college is a thing of the past. The American dream that if you work hard and stay honest you will be able to live a decent middle class life is dead. The current reality is that the American economy is slowly becoming more service based, and moving away from the manufacturing base that bolstered it for so long.

This new reality does not mean that manufacturing cannot rise to prominence again in the American economy. The manufacturing sector needs to modernize and evolve to produce the things necessary for modern times, and for which the United States still has a comparative advantage. In terms of intellectual property protection, innovation, and technological advancements, the United States is highly ranked but lags slightly behind countries like South Korea, Sweden, and Germany, the latter of which is known for its progressive integration of science and technology into product design; a process known as “mechatronics.” As free trade continues to expand, it is important to ensure that domestic production modernizes to keep pace with foreign competition.
One way to modernize American manufacturing is to produce simple technology for domestic use. An area that is receiving significant attention is the production of drones. Apart from their military use, drones are increasingly being looked to for commercial needs.




















Due to the versatility of drones, states have begun to explore their production. The University of Virginia, for example, has explored designing underwater drones for the US Navy. Senator Mark Warner took notice of this, and has encouraged the state of Virginia to promote drone manufacturing in the state as an economic driver. In a September interview with WTVF, Senator Warner aptly mentioned that those unskilled, low-education jobs that supported middle-class families are becoming obsolete; it is important now to find new avenues to promote manufacturing. Apart from military applications, we see private sector companies like Dominos Pizza and Amazon exploring the use of drones for delivery. Drone manufacturing can be very labor intensive, and would necessarily require an education-heavy skill set. That is one reason why many drones are manufactured in China, as Harry McNabb broke down in this recent Drone Life article.

Another way to rejuvenate manufacturing would be to have manufacturing firms partner with online delivery. In 2013, Proctor and Gamble partnered with Amazon in the latter’s program called Vendor Flex, in which Amazon sets up shop in the manufacturing companies and run its e-commerce and logistics. This helps companies reduce transportation costs. In addition, Amazon hires its own workers for the program which saves the firms money on additional labor costs. This program allows for companies to directly deliver its product straight to the consumer without going through a middle-man. Manufacturing firms can flourish as they have a direct line to sell their products to various outlets and customers.

Currently the US has brought about 22,000 manufacturing jobs back to the country that were lost overseas or to downsizing during the Great Recession. While it is good that some manufacturing jobs have been recovered, it is clearly not enough to have a significant effect on the economy, especially when many Americans are still looking for work. Therefore, it is imperative that the US explore new avenues to expand its manufacturing sector to help not only the economy, but meet the workforce’s growing demands. This can be done by changing the nature of manufacturing to focus on technological advancement. That means not focusing solely on drones, but also solar panels, electric cars etc.: commodities that are in demand today and require a higher degree of technical skill or innovation. Manufacturing firms partnering with Amazon in programs like Vendor Flex help lower the cost of manufacturing. Finally, the government must provide a suitable environment for such industries to grow. This means promoting research into technological advancements to help reduce the cost of manufacturing for firms. In 2015, one million foreign-built drones were sold in the country, mainly as consumer items. With public and military demand for drones rapidly increasing, the government should create an environment to facilitate new firms to produce - thus creating a new industry. It is time for the country to think outside of the box, to let go of the past, and to move towards a more modern vision of manufacturing.
 

Hausman, S. (2016, September 26). Drones: A New Manufacturing Frontier in Virginia? Retrieved October 14, 2016, from http://wvtf.org/post/drones-new-manufacturing-frontier-virginia#stream/0
 
Noguchi, Y. (2013, October 28). Moving In With Manufacturers, Amazon Delivers A New Approach. Retrieved October 31, 2016, from http://www.npr.org/2013/10/28/240742832/moving-in-with-manufacturers-amazon-delivers-a-new-approach
 
Aww Do we NAFTA? (2016, October 21). Retrieved October 31, 2016, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/599/seriously?act=3#
 
Hodgson, A. (2014, September 18). Top 5 Manufacturing Economies: What Challenges Are They Facing? Retrieved October 31, 2016, from http://blog.euromonitor.com/2014/09/top-5-manufacturing-economies-what-challenges-are-they-facing.html
 
McNabb, H. (2016, September 30). Eight Reasons Why Chinese Drone Manufacturers Are Dominating the Industry. Retrieved November 8, 2016, from http://dronelife.com/2016/09/30/eight-reasons-chinese-drone-manufacturers-dominating-industry/
 
 

by Madeline Merrill

On April 12, 2015, Hillary Clinton minimally surprised the world when she announced her intentions to run for president...again. As Secretary Clinton was a 2008 Democratic primary contender, vying against President Barack Obama for the official party nomination, very few were shocked when Secretary Clinton re-ignited her professional intentions to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as our nation’s Commander in Chief. At 3 PM on that Sunday in April 2015, her election team released a two-minute video with Hillary’s official pledge to run for president. This was the launch of what would be one of the most well-funded campaigns in American history.
 
Not too long after Secretary Clinton’s platform went public, on June 16, 2015, businessman and media mogul Donald Trump declared his intentions to campaign for the Oval Office. In the halls of his very own Trump Towers, the billionaire tycoon publicly shared that he would run for President and overturn years of legacy politicians to “make America great again.”
 
Fast forward a year and a handful of months - some $1.3 billion for Hillary and $795 million for Donald later - and we have a new president-elect.[1] The images of sobbing Hillary supporters and ecstatic Trump fans inundate our news feeds as Cabinet positions are already starting to be filled and rumblings of potential Supreme Court Justice nominations circulate the web.
 
However one feels about the election, however you cast your vote, most Americans agree that the results were surprising. Secretary Clinton was projected to win, with an 85% chance of victory, as of 10:20 PM Eastern Time on November 8, 2016 [2]. How could the pollsters get the numbers so wrong? And how could Hillary’s campaign, so machine-like and well-oiled in its deliverables, fail to propel Secretary Clinton to the Oval Office, with such a seemingly concrete victory almost within its grasp?
 
From the start of this presidential race, the characters in the running have been anything but predictable. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley challenged Secretary Clinton for the primary. Mr. Sanders championed debt-free and tuition-free higher education, access to Affordable Care Act coverage for immigrants, a demilitarized police force, among other notably progressive policies [3]. Supporters “felt the Bern,” ardently believed in Mr. Sanders’ economic models, and when Mr. Sanders conceded the party nomination this spring, many felt Ms. Clinton was just “too moderate” for the Democratic party.
 
On the Republican side, Mr. Trump’s rise to the party nomination was unorthodox, to say the very least. The conservative party had a well-seasoned and well-established deck of candidates - Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio had to jump through a series of polls to even make it to the primary vote. The Republican field began with seventeen candidates vying for the presidential nomination - Trump silenced the competition on July 22, 2016, when he accepted the Republican party’s support at the GOP National Convention.[4]
 
And now, with two short months until Inauguration Day, with a concession speech from Secretary Clinton behind us and an acceptance speech from Mr. Trump already circulated around the world, so many Americans are wondering how our country arrived here, with this candidate, in this fashion.
 
Political scientists, policy analysts, and the general public collectively lament the nature of this particular election season. The national conversation shifted from a comparison of party platforms to an attack on the other candidate’s personal character and integrity. Todd Purdum of Politico writes, “To judge by the daily parade of headlines and sound bites, the 2016 presidential election has boiled down to one steaming mass of invective, calumny, character assassination and contempt: the madman versus the prevaricator, the bully versus the biddy, the devil you know vs. the devil you don’t.”[5] We reverted to a nation of bullying - on both sides of the aisle - and now, we must live with the unsavory politics we have collectively unearthed.
 
The margins of victory for candidates in specific states were more significant than the differences in the 2012 election. In the District of Columbia, for example, Secretary Clinton carried the vote by 93%, and carried the Northeastern region with three-fifths of the votes cast. In contrast, Mr. Trump won Tennessee and Kentucky with three-fifths of the popular vote, and in West Virginia, won by a two-to-one margin [6].
 
Regardless of party, regardless of political loyalty, the results are clear - America is more polarized and more divided than ever before. Online social media outlets create echo chambers that solidify our own beliefs and validate our pre-existing biases and values.
 
We live in a dangerous time. No matter which candidate you supported or which platform you adopted, we must collectively acknowledge that American politics is no longer civil. Our modern-day election cycle scrutinizes character over policies and personal choices over solutions to pressing problems.



[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html
[3] https://berniesanders.com/issues/
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/2016-presidential-candidates.html
[5]http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/does-anyone-care-about-issues-anymore-or-only-whether-trump-is-crazy-214150
[6]http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2016/11/09/donald-trumps-presidenti-victory-demographics/#309a40a79a8b

by Emmanuel Vega
 
There is less than a week left until people head to the polls to cast their votes for the 2016 general election. Voter registration volunteers ramped up efforts to register as many people as they could before Virginia’s October 17th registration deadline. Community Organizations and Advocacy Groups made a huge push to register minority voters. However, in states like Virginia, just registering and showing up to the poll will not gain a person the right to vote. Virginia residents will have to present valid photo identification in order to cast their ballots on the 8th of November.
 
Controversy surrounding Voter ID laws has been raised throughout this election cycle. Having had the opportunity to register people to vote in the Charlottesville, VA community, I’ve made a strong emphasis on providing Voter IDs to black and Latino voter because those are a couple groups that will be most disproportionately affected by the policy. I believe the push for Voter ID laws is partially in response to the growing number of minority voter populations in the US. Voter ID laws are a way to suppress the growing voice of the minority voter population. Advocates against the policies argue that voter ID laws have the potential to skew elections and that they target minorities. In August of this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 4th circuit stated that North Carolina legislature was racially discriminatory, “by targeting voters who, based on race, were unlikely to vote for the majority party.” Advocacy organizations such as the ACLU, LULAC, League of Women Voters, and NAACP have all challenged state-passed Voter ID laws in states such as North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and Kansas. They argue that providing valid photo ID at polls explicitly discriminates against minority and low-income voters.
 
The attempt to implement Voter ID laws in Virginia goes back to 1999, after the state attempted to implement a voter ID pilot program in Arlington and Fairfax. Proponents of Voter ID laws have argued the need to protect the integrity of the voting process by preventing voter fraud. The Supreme Court of Virginia blocked the pilot program in a 5 to 1 vote. State Legislature proposals for Voter ID laws rose after the Supreme Court Decision on Shelby County v Holder nullified Section 4(b) in the Voting Rights of 1965 that required states with recent history of racial discrimination in voting procedures to have a preclearance from the Department of Justice or a DC Federal Court in to change a state election law. There are currently 35 States with Voter ID laws passed, with many of them currently being challenged in court.
 
Proponents of Voter ID Laws argue that voter turnout will not be affected. They also argue that other parts of the Voting Rights Act will protect minorities from voter discrimination. Proponents of Voter ID Laws are discontent with their ongoing dismantling in the courts, believing that civil litigation is hampering the improvement of voting procedures. However, opponents believe that in-person voter fraud is insignificant relative to the repercussions of the enactment of the laws. The Brennan Center for Justice found that incident rates of voter fraud are “between 0.00004 percent and 0.0009 percent”. Opponents also point out that getting a voter ID costs money and time. In U.S. DC District Court Case Texas v Holder, a Texas State Senator testified that in his majority Latino rural district, some individuals have to travel between 100 to 125 miles to reach the nearest office issuing Voter IDs. This creates a barrier of class privilege to obtaining Voter ID’s. Many people are unable to take time off work to obtain a voter ID during business hours. This especially hurts low-income individuals, who are disproportionately non-white. Opponents argue that Voter ID laws deter poor and minority people from voting before they even arrive at the polls.

Voter ID laws are only one of several restrictions over history to suppress the minority vote in the US. The Grandfather clause and literacy tests directly targeted African-Americans during the Jim Crow Era until the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The Grandfather Clause said that anyone who had the right to vote before 1867, and their descendants, were exempt from educational, property, or tax requirements. As the 15th Amendment granting former slaves the right to vote was not ratified until 1870, this almost exclusively left non-whites with the nearly unattainable requirements. Minority populations continue to suffer other injustices in the voting process into the present. Requirements to demonstrate residency target homeless people who are unable to give a fixed address during registration. African-Americans and Latinos make up a disproportionate number of convicted felons in the US. Individuals with felonies are unable to vote unless given a pardon. In Virginia, Governor Tim McAuliffe’s effort to provide 100,000 former felons with pardons was struck down by the Republican-appointee dominated Virginia Supreme Court. This has essentially left a disproportionate amount of African Americans and Latinos as second class citizens.
 
Implementation of many voter ID laws have been halted because of court challenges of unconstitutionality. Consequently, we may not see a significant effect from voter ID laws in National elections. However, with implementation in Virginia, we can see how these laws could affect State turnout of minorities. Voter ID laws are not only a legal injustice, but the symbol of an old majority that is not ready to recognize the changing demographic of the US. A new minority demographic that will continue to grow and influence the policy direction of the US. States will need to reevaluate their voter laws as courts claim that the implementation of Voter ID laws are racially discriminatory, and hence unconstitutional. There’s also the hope in the future that States will encourage the easing of voter restrictions. This includes online voter registration and early voting, and potentially online voting in the future.