NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
WATCHDOG REPORT
U.S. police shootings
fueling black extremism
By JAY REEVES
Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
The public backlash against
police shootings of black
people is helping fuel the
growth of black hate groups,
some of which advocate
retaliatory violence against
law enforcement, watchdog
groups said Monday.
The Southern Poverty
Law Center counted 113
groups advocating black
separatism, black supremacy
or some other extreme,
black-centric ideology in the
United States in 2014. By
the end of 2015, in the after-
math of last year’s killing
of a black man by a white
police oficer in Ferguson,
Missouri, the number had
grown to 180, an increase
of nearly 60 percent in less
than a year.
The center says the
number of Ku Klux Klan
groups grew even more
during the same period, but
experts say much of that
change was linked to the
splintering of larger groups
rather than real growth.
No one knows exactly
how many people have been
drawn to black extremist
groups, but there’s no reason
to believe the growth of
violent ideology is slowing.
Last week’s protests of
police shootings in Loui-
siana and Minnesota have
only spread since a black
sniper killed ive police
oficers at a demonstration
in Dallas.
“It draws people to their
ranks, people who are mad
about what is going on with
law enforcement,” said
Heidi Beirich, director of
the Alabama-based center’s
Intelligence Project, which
tracks extremist organiza-
tions.
People who join such
organizations might not pose
the biggest threat anyway,
said Oren Segal of the
Anti-Defamation League.
He agrees that killings by
police and the ensuing
protests provide fuel for
black extremist groups, but
believes exact numbers are
AP Photo/Eric Gay
A protester holds up his ist as he stands behind Dallas police oficers at their
headquarters, Monday in Dallas. Five police oficers were killed and several in-
jured during a shooting in downtown Dallas last Thursday night.
Hate group increase
The number of black
separatist groups rose
between 2014 and 2015,
according to the Southern
Poverty Law Center. Ku Klux
Klan groups also rose during
the period due to splintering.
Black separatist/ Ku Klux Klan
hate group
groups
190
180
113
72
’14
’15
’14
’15
SOURCE: SPLC
AP
hard to pin down.
“The most dangerous
are those who don’t join
anything, who get inspired
by the militancy or hate,
who get inluenced by the
rhetoric, and act on their
own,” said Segal, who
directs the ADL’s Center on
Extremism.
Dallas gunman Micah
Xavier Johnson apparently
fell into this category: The
25-year-old Army veteran
wasn’t known to be an
active member of any group,
but he was on Facebook,
and followed the feeds of
the New Black Panther
Party and the Black Riders
Liberation Party.
He also “liked” the
African-American Defense
League, which formed
in 2014 and advocates
violence against police and
white people in general. The
group has gathered more
than 870 “likes” on its Face-
book page, whose cover
photo still showed dozens of
military-style weapons days
after Johnson killed ive
white oficers.
Beirich said the Intelli-
gence Project tracks hate
groups through methods
including its own research,
reports by media and law
enforcement, the groups’
own publications, and social
media. Some radical black
religious organizations also
have houses of worship
or book stores that can be
counted, she said.
But
determining
a
group’s true size and reach
can be dificult, said the
ADL’s Segal.
For example, he said, the
New Black Panther Party is
considered a “hard-core hate
group” and members have
advocated violence against
police, yet it typically stages
few events where watch-
dogs can count members,
as they do with the KKK or
the National Alliance, which
are considered white hate
groups.
Instead, he said, black
extremists often join in
demonstrations, and some-
times incite others in the
crowd.
Adding to the dificulty
is the fact that some black
extremist groups use their
advocacy of common social
issues like eradicating
poverty
or
improving
education as a doorway to
lead people down a path of
militancy, he said.
“They take legitimate
social issues that people care
about and infuse them with
their brand of hatred,” said
Segal.
The KKK once did the
same thing, billing itself
as a group that helped
poor Southerners even as
members were blamed for
racial violence. And similar
to black extremists, the
KKK reported an increase
in followers after oficials
removed Confederate lags
in the South following the
shooting that killed nine
people last year at a black
church in Charleston, South
Carolina.
A bull market record that doesn’t feel like it
By BERNARD CONDON
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK — It’s a
new record for stocks, but it
sure doesn’t feel like it.
The biggest gainers in
the past year are fuddy-
duddy utilities. Investors are
cowering for cover in gold.
And the best they’re hoping
for in the current earnings
season is that proits don’t
fall as much as they initially
feared.
It’s the second-longest
bull market in history, and
its old age is showing.
Still,
stocks
have
rewarded investors who
had faith to hold on. With
a new high for the Standard
and Poor’s 500 index on
Monday, it has tripled since
its low in March 2009
during the inancial crisis.
“This is one of my
favorite days. There’s
nothing like a new high,”
says John Manley, chief
equity strategist for Wells
Fargo Fund Management.
No matter what you think
of the stock market — love
it, fear it — you’ve got to
admire its resilience.
The market has been hit
with a string of bad news
in the past year. Plunging
oil prices. Falling corporate
earnings. Fear over rising
interest rates. Slowing
growth in China. The British
vote to leave the European
Union.
There were scary head-
lines, panic selling, big
drops. But there was always
another rush to buy.
And so it was in the last
two trading days. Since
Friday, the Standard and
Poor’s 500 index has risen
39 points, or 2 percent,
hitting 2,137.16. That is
about seven points higher
than the last record over a
year ago.
For all its recent gains,
though, the stock market
isn’t showing great coni-
dence in the future.
Among the 10 sectors
of the S&P 500, utilities
are up the most, soaring
18 percent since the last
high on May 21 last year,
according to research
irm Bespoke Investment
Group. They are mostly
bought for their steady
dividends payments.
The bond market is
signaling trouble, too.
Investors tend to load up
on government bonds when
they’re nervous, pushing
yields lower. And yields on
U.S. government bonds in
the past week have fallen to
their lowest levels ever.
Jonathan
Corpina,
senior managing partner at
Meridian Equity Partners,
thinks the bull market is
fragile.
“There’s no real convic-
tion behind the buying,” he
says.
One reason is that compa-
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nies have been struggling to
increase their earnings.
For much of the bull
market, companies have
been able to compensate
for slow growth in the U.S.
by cutting costs to squeeze
more proits out of each
sale or ramping up exports
to faster growing countries
overseas.
But they’ve cut to the
bone, and proits margins
are falling now, not rising.
What’s more, many of the
overseas markets that helped
in the past, particularly ones
in the developing world, are
slowing or stalling.
You could see this in the
dismal proit reports over
the past year. According to
research irm S&P Global
Market Intelligence, earn-
ings per share for companies
in the S&P 500 index have
fallen for three quarters in
a row, nearly unheard of
outside of a recession.
Some widely respected
gauges of stock market
value are signaling trouble,
too.
The so-called Shiller
earnings ratio, named after
Nobel Prize winner Robert
Shiller of Yale, compares
the price of stocks to annual
earnings averaged over 10
years. The measure is now
26, much higher — meaning
more expensive — than the
long term average of 18.
The good news is that
the U.S. economy appears
healthy.
The rally on Friday was
set off by a surprisingly
strong jobs report for June,
suggesting that employers
have been conident enough
to hire. And more jobs mean
more money for consumers
to spend, who power 70
percent of U.S. economic
output.
With Alcoa reporting
results after the close
Monday, the second quarter
earnings season has unofi-
cially begun. Earnings per
share for the S&P 500 are
expected to fall 5.4 percent.
But there are signs of hope.
The inancial analysts who
follow the companies expect
the next two quarters after
that will bring gains.
Wells Fargo’s Manley is
optimistic.
“Consumers will inally
start to feel good after being
in a funk,” he says, “and the
rest of the economy will
open up.”
Hopefully.
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Page 7A
Inmate kills two
bailiffs at Mich.
courthouse
ST. JOSEPH, Mich.
(AP) — A jail inmate trying
to escape from a western
Michigan
courthouse
wrested a gun from an oficer
Monday, killing two bailiffs
and injuring two more people
before he was fatally shot by
other oficers, a
sheriff said.
People scram-
bled for cover
inside the Berrien
County Courthouse
in St. Joseph, a
city of about 8,300
people in the south-
western corner of
Michigan,
about
100 miles northeast Gordon
of Chicago.
“Our hearts are torn apart.
... I have known them for
over 30 years. It’s a sad day,”
Sheriff Paul Bailey said of the
bailiffs.
Larry Darnell Gordon,
44, who was locked up on
several felony charges, was
being moved from a cell for a
courtroom appearance when a
ight occurred and he was able
to disarm an oficer, Bailey
said. The sheriff did not say
what charges the inmate was
facing.
Bailey said it does not
appear that Gordon was hand-
cuffed, adding authorities had
“no warning signs” that the
suspect would be violent.
The inmate shot a sheriff’s
deputy, killed the bailiffs and
then shot a civilian in the arm
in a public area, the sheriff
said.
During the incident, Bailey
said Gordon took hostages for
a short period before trying to
leave through another door.
The inmate then was fatally
shot “by two other bailiffs
who came to render aid, along
with several other oficers,”
Bailey said.
“He was trying to escape,”
the sheriff said.
Bailey identiied the
bailiffs killed as Joseph
Zangaro, 61, and Ronald
Kienzle, 63. He said the
longtime law enforcement
oficers were close friends
of his who became
court oficers after
retiring from their
departments.
Zangaro
was
head of court
security. He retired
from the Michigan
State Police as
commander of the
Bridgman Post in
Berrien
County.
Kienzle retired as a
sergeant of the Benton Town-
ship police department after
serving in the U.S. Army.
Both had been employed
by the court for more than a
decade.
The injuries suffered by
the deputy and the civilian
weren’t considered life-threat-
ening. Bailey said the deputy,
41-year-old James Atterberry
Jr., had surgery on his arm
and is “doing ine.” He said
the civilian was a woman who
also suffered an arm injury.
He did not identify her.
Bailey said the courthouse
would be closed on Tuesday.
Gordon’s ex-wife, Jessica
Gordon, told WOOD-TV and
the Detroit Free Press that he
likely was trying escape to see
his family. She added that he
was “not a monster,” but “an
amazing man that got mixed
up with the wrong people.”
Jessica Gordon said they
divorced earlier this year
but he remained close with
his 6-year-old daughter. His
ex-wife said she spoke with
him Sunday and had no
indication he was planning an
attack.
CAMPAIGN BRIEFLY
Many holes in
GOP presidential
ground game in
key states
COLUMBUS, Ohio
(AP) — Presidential
battleground states were
supposed to be swarming
with Republican Party
workers by now.
“We’ve moved on to
thousands and thousands of
employees,” party chairman
Reince Priebus declared in
March, contrasting that with
the GOP’s late-blooming
stafing four years earlier.
“We are covering districts
across this country in
ways that we’ve never had
before.”
That hasn’t exactly
happened, a state-by-state
review conducted by The
Associated Press has found.
With early voting
beginning in less than
three months in some
states, the review reveals
that the national GOP has
delivered only a fraction of
the ground forces detailed
in discussions with state
leaders earlier in the year.
And that is leaving anxious
local oficials waiting for
reinforcements to keep
pace with Democrat Hillary
Clinton in the states that
matter most in 2016.
To be sure, the national
party actually has notched
record levels of fundraising
over the past few years and
put together a much more
robust ground game than it
had in 2012.
4 th
Annual
Sanders to back
Clinton. Will
supporters follow?
ORLANDO, Fla.
(AP) — It looks as if Bernie
Sanders is ready to back
Hillary Clinton. But not all
his supporters are prepared
to give up revolution for
realism.
After weeks of stalling
as he sought liberal policy
concessions from Clinton
and lobbied to push the
party platform to the left,
the Vermont senator is
expected to appear with
Clinton in New Hampshire
Tuesday to endorse her
as the Democratic Party
presidential nominee.
Still, despite some major
victories in the latest draft
of the platform and big
concerns about presumptive
Republican nominee Donald
Trump, many Sanders fans
at a Democratic meeting in
Orlando over the weekend
had clear reservations about
casting a ballot for Clinton.
“Personally, I don’t think
I will support Hillary. I don’t
trust her,” said Lisa Friddle,
53, a nurse from Palm Bay,
Florida. “I can’t see backing
someone I don’t believe in.”
Those sentiments were
echoed by Xavier Gaud,
26, of Orlando, who said he
would prefer that Sanders
run as an independent. If
Sanders isn’t on the ballot,
he said it was “more likely I
will support Jill Stein,” the
leader of the minor Green
Party.
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