What A Time To Be Alive! February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 BUT FIRST: A REALITY CHECK The President’s approval rating is back down to 43% — never mind that the American Ebola death toll has peaked (at zero), job growth’s healthy, the deficit’s down by two-thirds, health care inflation’s at a 50-year low . . . and on and on and on. (“By any standard,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell assures us, “Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.”) But do you know what? President Reagan’s approval rating at this same time in his second term was also 43%. And George W. Bush’s was . . . 33%. And that was before the economy collapsed on his watch. Just saying. Meanwhile . . . A PLANE LARGER THAN A FOOTBALL FIELD Largest plane in the world with a wingspan substantially wider than a football field. And it flies! MEDICAL HOLOGRAMS Surgeons holding hearts in their hands . . . . . . holographically! https://vimeo.com/92807000 Stay tuned, kids: it gets more amazing every day.
What Are We Gonna Do Without Jon Stewart? February 26, 2015February 25, 2015 With luck, we’ll get John Oliver and all will be well. (And Jon Stewart won’t, like, disappear. He’ll find ways to be relevant.) But while we have him, watch this. For days now it’s be making me crazy how overblown the reaction’s been to the VA Secretary’s attempt to connect with that homeless vet. Even the Secretary’s apology, I thought, while warranted, was overblown, unduly abject. Well, as usual, Jon Stewart — and seemingly only Jon Stewart — just nails it. And makes the real point here.
Soylent: Cooking Like A Sci-Fi Guy February 25, 2015February 24, 2015 Young Rob Rhinehart, 26, can fuel your body with ideal nutrition — called Soylent — for $9 a day, as he explained to Stephen Colbert here. “It’s the ultimate ‘Cooking Like a Guy™,'” my pal Dan gushed when he sent that link. “But . . . but . . . ” I sputtered . . . “don’t you miss tastes and smells and three-course meals and brunch? Ripe peaches and juicy tomatoes? Why do you do this? For health? money? time? weight loss?” “I do get all those tastes and smells,” Dan wrote back, “not to mention the fun of eating socially, since Soylent isn’t all I eat. It’s just mainly what I eat. Two meals a day and snacks usually. Which saves me from shopping. And figuring out what to eat with what. And preparing. And cooking. And sitting down and eating. And cleaning up and throwing away. These things take, what, an hour a day? Do you have any idea how much time an hour a day is? Well I’ll tell you. If you’ve got only 20 more years to live it’s 1.25 years assuming you sleep 8 hours a day. Which for me is 6% of the rest of my life. Which I’d rather spend doing something besides eating. Simple as that.” Hello? I love eating! But I didn’t want to interrupt, so I let Dan conitinue: “So I get 15-20 bags of Soylent a month on subscription, enough for 2/3 of a month’s meals and snacks. A bag, three meals worth, takes 2 minutes to prepare by shaking it with water and a little bottle of fish oil they give you (we gotta have some fat to be healthy) in the BPA-free plastic tea pitcher that comes free with your first order. No blender! Then it takes 15 seconds to shake and pour the next time you want some, 15 seconds to stir in a splash of Gatorade powder, orange juice, chocolate milk, or even peanut butter (OK, blender needed for that one) and 60 seconds–or as long as you like–like to drink it. While you read, think, talk on the phone, whatever. “I spend less than $180 a month eating this much Soylent. And even taking into account the ‘regular’ food I buy for occasional old-fashioned meals I can’t live without — pot roast comes to mind — I have more money and time for eating out. They even know me now at Gramercy Tavern. That could never have happened without the money I save eating Soylent primarily. “And health? I’ve lost 15 pounds, have no problem keeping it off, and have more energy. Way more. It doesn’t take as long to digest Soylent as it does other food. And because it has the right amount of natural fiber, not to mention the right amount of everything else, my entire system operates, shall we say, right on time. “I don’t need to get into Soylent’s bigger picture. The carbon footprint, for example — although you can imagine how much lower Soylent’s is than, say, the meat industry’s, where food has to be raised, slaughtered, processed, shipped, refrigerated, prepared, eaten with the right other food and so on. Or how Soylent isn’t anything really new. Baby formula is complete food, for example. The web is full of articles. All I can say is what it does for me — which is free up my life. A LOT.” ☞ Hmmm.
I Think He Enjoyed Giving This Speech February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 Ladies and gentlemen . . . the President of the United States. Politifact checked and approved. You’re paying his salary and he’s delivered: a depression averted, a stock market tripled, a deficit cut by two-thirds*, health care inflation lowest in 50 years, home prices firm and rising, Detroit booming, energy independent, graduation rates up — all easy to take for granted**, but boy would we have salivated at such prospects six years ago, as the Dow was closing in on 6,500 (today, 18,000). Enjoy. *So our National Debt is now again growing slower than the economy, which is what really matters. ** And so much more progress needed and within reach, if only the opposition would allow it.
A $50,000 Windfall For YOUR Parents? February 23, 2015February 22, 2015 Of Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security, my friend the brilliant PBS financial correspondent Paul Solmon writes: It was conceived after a bout of tennis four years ago, when Boston University economist friend Larry Kotlikoff asked me my own Social Security plans, found that my wife and I were on the cusp of full retirement age (66), but waiting until 70 to collect the maximum benefit. Are you planning to take spousal benefits? he asked. Your not-so-humble PBS economics correspondent (now in the 38th year of his gig) had never heard of them. Four years later Jan and I are taking maximum benefits. But in the interim, I’ve collected nearly $50,000 — $50,000 to which we, having paid into the system all our lives, were entitled, yet knew nothing about. All she had to do was file for SS and suspend her benefits until age 70. I then applied for, and promptly began getting, my spousal benefits. The woman on the phone at SS was skeptical when I first told her what I wanted to do. She consulted an expert, returned to the call and thanked me. “I’m going to tell this to all the people I speak with from now on.” Awhile later, I began publishing Larry on Making Sen$e, our PBS NewsHour web page — to alert as many people as I could reach to spousal benefits and other Social Security “secrets.” Larry then suggested a book and on February 17, it was published . . . I feel a bit uncomfortable, at this stage of my career, about promoting a book — mine or anyone’s else’s. But I’m completely convinced this one will be of considerable use to pretty much anyone who consults it — and it has been, pretty dramatically, to nearly a dozen of my friends. . . . Meanwhile, consider this: Forty-one percent of American men and 46 percent of women apply for Social Security at 62. For many of them, that’s almost surely nuts, as we explain in the book. And one of the key reasons they do — fear that Social Security is so broke they won’t get their benefits — is nuttier still. You may or may not know that Larry is a noted critic — some would say crank — on the subject of Social Security’s solvency. Accordingly, the last chapter of the book is a spirited disagreement among the three authors on the system’s future. But the rest is detailed advice, meant to be as helpful as possible – to the widowed, the divorced (eligible for spousal benefits if married for 10 years or more), the disabled, gay couples. This link will give a better sense of it: Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security. And as if that weren’t enough, all the reviewers agree: it’s entertaining, to boot.
The Song of the Century February 20, 2015February 21, 2015 WHAT THEY’RE READING IN MOSCOW Sam P: “Just saw someone reading The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need on the Metro here in Moscow. Tough times here, if they’re turning to you.” ☞ Fifty-one years ago I was riding the Moscow subway, startling passengers with a smile and (in terrible Russian), “Guess where we’re from?” (I was with a 17-year-old friend, slightly my senior, who would go on to get kicked out of Princeton and eventually found Myriad Genetics.) “The moon?” they were thinking, but generally guessed “Germany?” — which was as far away as they could imagine a foreigner being from. “New York!” I would tell them, and then start asking insanely personal questions (“how much do you earn? how big is your apartment?”) as I tried to make sense of this fascinating socio-economic experiment called “the road to communism.” I returned from three months behind the Iron Curtain much less sure we had everything right (well, for example, the unpleasantness in Mississippi) and much less sure they had everything wrong . . . and here we are, a few years later, with someone on that same subway reading how to save money buying in bulk, on sale, and investing in equally-weighted index funds. DEFEATING ISIS Following on that must-read Atlantic Monthly story is this Laurence O’Donnell clip, near the end of which ISIS’s planned End of Days route of march — to Damascus and then Jerusalem — is revealed. First step in any fight: understanding the enemy. JEB Nice guy! But you know his demonstrated domestic governing priorities (cut taxes on the rich, cut drug treatment programs for the prison population). And here is another Laurence O’Donnell clip in which he addresses foreign policy. If you liked the last eight Bush years, you may very well want eight more. SONG OF THE CENTURY Evy MacPhee: “I didn’t know this story.” ☞ I didn’t either. Or that searing song — named by Time in 1999 “the song of the century.” Oh, the struggles of the last century! The two world wars, communism’s tyranny (following czarist tyrany), the lynchings, the union-busting, Apartheid, Mao’s cultural revolution, Vietnam, Pol Pot . . . and so it goes, as we keep looking for ways to live with each other — and, now, our planet. In many ways — easy as it is to miss in the moment — we’ve made enormous progress. And in many ways, “it’s been going on for 10,000 years” (to quote another searing song). Thanks, Evy.
Randi and Reeves – Both Pretty Amazing February 19, 2015February 18, 2015 THE AMAZING RANDI (YET AGAIN, BUT WHY NOT?!) Tom Galloway: “A bit belated, but [those of your readers who’ve become intrigued with him] might want to look at this video of the Amazing Randi at the Googleplex back in 2007. At the time, I was a Googler and part of the @Google speaker coordinating group and took great pleasure in asking Mr. Randi to come and then introducing his talk when he agreed (yep, that’s me at the very beginning). Due to Mr. Randi’s flight time, we had to schedule the talk for 9:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. Despite this, a fair sized room was completely packed, mostly I thought by engineers. So a bit of my intro that got cut from the video went something like, “As you can all see, we have a packed house this morning with a lot of engineers. I’d like to thank them for coming out, and, for the first time since their first day at Google, seeing what the place looks like at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning.” It got a nice self-aware laugh. Still, it spoke very well of Mr. Randi that this many engineers did show up at that hour to hear him.” And now you can hear what they did — without even having to roll out of bed. My favorite parts: homeopathy and the Q&A. THE AMAZING JUDGE REEVES A Black Mississippi Judge’s Breathtaking Speech To 3 White Murderers is a fitting bookend to FBI Director Comey’s speech, posted Monday. NPR.org sets it up this way: Here’s an astonishing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, one of just two African-Americans to have ever served as federal judges in Mississippi. He read it to three young white men before sentencing them for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling “white power” as they drove off. The speech is long; Reeves asked the young men to sit down while he read it aloud in the courtroom. And it’s breathtaking, in both the moral force of its arguments and the palpable sadness with which they are delivered. We have decided to publish the speech, which we got from the blog Breach of Peace, in its entirety below. A warning to readers: He uses the word “nigger” 11 times. As follows: One of my former history professors, Dennis Mitchell, recently released a history book entitled, A New History of Mississippi. “Mississippi,” he says, “is a place and a state of mind. The name evokes strong reactions from those who live here and from those who do not, but who think they know something about its people and their past.” Because of its past, as described by Anthony Walton in his book, Mississippi: An American Journey, Mississippi “can be considered one of the most prominent scars on the map” of these United States. Walton goes on to explain that “there is something different about Mississippi; something almost unspeakably primal and vicious; something savage unleashed there that has yet to come to rest.” To prove his point, he notes that, “[o]f the 40 martyrs whose names are inscribed in the national Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL, 19 were killed in Mississippi.” “How was it,” Walton asks, “that half who died did so in one state?” — my Mississippi, your Mississippi and our Mississippi. Mississippi has expressed its savagery in a number of ways throughout its history — slavery being the cruelest example, but a close second being Mississippi’s infatuation with lynchings. Lynchings were prevalent, prominent and participatory. A lynching was a public ritual — even carnival-like — within many states in our great nation. While other states engaged in these atrocities, those in the Deep South took a leadership role, especially that scar on the map of America — those 82 counties between the Tennessee line and the Gulf of Mexico and bordered by Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama. Vivid accounts of brutal and terrifying lynchings in Mississippi are chronicled in various sources: Ralph Ginzburg’s 100 Years of Lynching and Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, just to name two. But I note that today, the Equal Justice Initiative released Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror; apparently, it too is a must-read. In Without Sanctuary, historian Leon Litwack writes that between 1882 and 1968 an estimated 4,742 blacks met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs. The impact this campaign of terror had on black families is impossible to explain so many years later. That number contrasts with the 1,401 prisoners who have been executed legally in the United States since 1976. In modern terms, that number represents more than those killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and more than twice the number of American casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom — the Afghanistan conflict. Turning to home, this number also represents 1,700 more than who were killed on Sept. 11. Those who died at the hands of mobs, Litwack notes, some were the victims of “legal” lynchings — having been accused of a crime, subjected to a “speedy” trial and even speedier execution. Some were victims of private white violence and some were merely the victims of “nigger hunts” — murdered by a variety of means in isolated rural sections and dumped into rivers and creeks. “Back in those days,” according to black Mississippians describing the violence of the 1930s, “to kill a Negro wasn’t nothing. It was like killing a chicken or killing a snake. The whites would say, ‘niggers jest supposed to die, ain’t no damn good anyway — so jest go an’ kill ’em.’ … They had to have a license to kill anything but a nigger. We was always in season.” Said one white Mississippian, “A white man ain’t a-going to be able to live in this country if we let niggers start getting biggity.” And, even when lynchings had decreased in and around Oxford, one white resident told a visitor of the reaffirming quality of lynchings: “It’s about time to have another [one],” he explained, “[w]hen the niggers get so that they are afraid of being lynched, it is time to put the fear in them.” How could hate, fear or whatever it was transform genteel, God-fearing, God-loving Mississippians into mindless murderers and sadistic torturers? I ask that same question about the events which bring us together on this day. Those crimes of the past, as well as these, have so damaged the psyche and reputation of this great state. Mississippi soil has been stained with the blood of folk whose names have become synonymous with the civil rights movement like Emmett Till, Willie McGee, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Vernon Dahmer, George W. Lee, Medgar Evers and Mack Charles Parker. But the blood of the lesser-known people like Luther Holbert and his wife, Elmo Curl, Lloyd Clay, John Hartfield, Nelse Patton, Lamar Smith, Clinton Melton, Ben Chester White, Wharlest Jackson and countless others, saturates these 48,434 square miles of Mississippi soil. On June 26, 2011, four days short of his 49th birthday, the blood of James Anderson was added to Mississippi’s soil. The common denominator of the deaths of these individuals was not their race. It was not that they all were engaged in freedom fighting. It was not that they had been engaged in criminal activity, trumped up or otherwise. No, the common denominator was that the last thing that each of these individuals saw was the inhumanity of racism. The last thing that each felt was the audacity and agony of hate, senseless hate: crippling, maiming them and finally taking away their lives. Mississippi has a tortured past, and it has struggled mightily to reinvent itself and become a New Mississippi. New generations have attempted to pull Mississippi from the abyss of moral depravity in which it once so proudly floundered in. Despite much progress and the efforts of the new generations, these three defendants are before me today: Deryl Paul Dedmon, Dylan Wade Butler and John Aaron Rice. They and their co-conspirators ripped off the scab of the healing scars of Mississippi … causing her (our Mississippi) to bleed again. Hate comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and from this case, we know it comes in different sexes and ages. A toxic mix of alcohol, foolishness and unadulterated hatred caused these young people to resurrect the nightmarish specter of lynchings and lynch mobs from the Mississippi we long to forget. Like the marauders of ages past, these young folk conspired, planned, and coordinated a plan of attack on certain neighborhoods in the city of Jackson for the sole purpose of harassing, terrorizing, physically assaulting and causing bodily injury to black folk. They punched and kicked them about their bodies — their heads, their faces. They prowled. They came ready to hurt. They used dangerous weapons; they targeted the weak; they recruited and encouraged others to join in the coordinated chaos; and they boasted about their shameful activity. This was a 2011 version of the nigger hunts. Though the media and the public attention of these crimes have been focused almost exclusively on the early morning hours of June 26, 2011, the defendants’ terror campaign is not limited to this one incident. There were many scenes and many actors in this sordid tale which played out over days, weeks and months. There are unknown victims like the John Doe at the golf course who begged for his life and the John Doe at the service station. Like a lynching, for these young folk going out to “Jafrica” was like a carnival outing. It was funny to them — an excursion which culminated in the death of innocent, African-American James Craig Anderson. On June 26, 2011, the fun ended. But even after Anderson’s murder, the conspiracy continued … And, only because of a video, which told a different story from that which had been concocted by these defendants, and the investigation of law enforcement — state and federal law enforcement working together — was the truth uncovered. What is so disturbing … so shocking … so numbing … is that these nigger hunts were perpetrated by our children … students who live among us … educated in our public schools … in our private academies … students who played football lined up on the same side of scrimmage line with black teammates … average students and honor students. Kids who worked during school and in the summers; kids who now had full-time jobs and some of whom were even unemployed. Some were pursuing higher education and the Court believes they each had dreams to pursue. These children were from two-parent homes and some of whom were the children of divorced parents, and yes some even raised by a single parent. No doubt, they all had loving parents and loving families. In letters received on his behalf, Dylan Butler, whose outing on the night of June 26 was not his first, has been described as “a fine young man,” “a caring person,” “a well mannered man” who is truly remorseful and wants to move on with his life … a very respectful … a good man … a good person … a lovable, kindhearted teddy bear who stands in front of bullies … and who is now ashamed of what he did. Butler’s family is a mixed-race family: For the last 15 years, it has consisted of an African-American stepfather and stepsister, plus his mother and two sisters. The family, according to the stepfather, understandably is “saddened and heartbroken.” These were everyday students like John Aaron Rice, who got out of his truck, struck James Anderson in the face and kept him occupied until others arrived. … Rice was involved in multiple excursions to so-called “Jafrica”, but he, for some time, according to him and his mother, and an African-American friend shared his home address. And, sadly, Deryl Dedmon, who straddled James Anderson and struck him repeatedly in the face and head with his closed fists. He too was a “normal” young man indistinguishable in so many ways from his peers. Not completely satisfied with the punishment to which he subjected James Anderson, he “deliberately used his vehicle to run over James Anderson — killing him.” Dedmon now acknowledges he was filled with anger. I asked the question earlier, but what could transform these young adults into the violent creatures their victims saw? It was nothing the victims did … they were not championing any cause … political … social … economic … nothing they did … not a wolf whistle … not a supposed crime … nothing they did. There is absolutely no doubt that in the view of the court the victims were targeted because of their race. The simple fact is that what turned these children into criminal defendants was their joint decision to act on racial hatred. In the eyes of these defendants (and their co-conspirators) the victims were doomed at birth. … Their genetic makeup made them targets. In the name of White Power, these young folk went to “Jafrica” to “fuck with some niggers!” — echoes of Mississippi’s past. White Power! Nigger! According to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that word, nigger, is the “universally recognized opprobrium, stigmatizing African-Americans because of their race.” It’s the nuclear bomb of racial epithets — as Farai Chideya has described the term. With their words, with their actions — “I just ran that nigger over” — there is no doubt that these crimes were motivated by the race of the victims. And from his own pen, Dedmon, sadly and regretfully wrote that he did it out of “hatred and bigotry.” The court must respond to one letter it received from one identified as a youth leader in Dylan Butler’s church — a mentor, he says — and who describes Dylan as “a good person.” The point that “[t]here are plenty of criminals that deserve to be incarcerated,” is well taken. Your point that Dylan is not one of them — not a criminal … is belied by the facts and the law. Dylan was an active participant in this activity, and he deserves to be incarcerated under the law. What these defendants did was ugly … it was painful … it is sad … and it is indeed criminal. In the Mississippi we have tried to bury, when there was a jury verdict for those who perpetrated crimes and committed lynchings in the name of White Power … that verdict typically said that the victim died at the hands of persons unknown. The legal and criminal justice system operated with ruthless efficiency in upholding what these defendants would call White Power. Today, though, the criminal justice system (state and federal) has proceeded methodically, patiently and deliberately seeking justice. Today we learned the identities of the persons unknown … they stand here publicly today. The sadness of this day also has an element of irony to it: Each defendant was escorted into court by agents of an African-American United States Marshal, having been prosecuted by a team of lawyers which includes an African-American AUSA from an office headed by an African-American U.S. attorney — all under the direction of an African-American attorney general, for sentencing before a judge who is African-American, whose final act will be to turn over the care and custody of these individuals to the BOP [Federal Bureau of Prisons] — an agency headed by an African-American. Today we take another step away from Mississippi’s tortured past … we move farther away from the abyss. Indeed, Mississippi is a place and a state of mind. And those who think they know about her people and her past will also understand that her story has not been completely written. Mississippi has a present and a future. That present and future has promise. As demonstrated by the work of the officers within these state and federal agencies — black and white, male and female, in this Mississippi they work together to advance the rule of law. Having learned from Mississippi’s inglorious past, these officials know that in advancing the rule of law, the criminal justice system must operate without regard to race, creed or color. This is the strongest way Mississippi can reject those notions — those ideas which brought us here today. At their guilty plea hearings, Deryl Paul Dedmon, Dylan Wade Butler and John Aaron Rice told the world exactly what their roles were … it is ugly … it is painful … it is sad … it is criminal. The court now sentences the defendants as follows: [The specific sentences are not part of the judge’s prepared remarks.] The court has considered the advisory guidelines computations and the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The court has considered the defendants’ history and characteristics. The court has also considered unusual circumstances — the extraordinary circumstances — and the peculiar seriousness and gravity of those offenses. I have paid special attention to the plea agreements and the recommendations of the United States. I have read the letters received on behalf of the defendants. I believe these sentences provide just punishment to each of these defendants and equally important, I believe they serve as adequate deterrence to others and I hope that these sentences will discourage others from heading down a similar life-altering path. I have considered the sentencing guidelines and the policy statements and the law. These sentences are the result of much thought and deliberation. These sentences will not bring back James Craig Anderson nor will they restore the lives they enjoyed prior to 2011. The court knows that James Anderson’s mother, who is now 89 years old, lived through the horrors of the Old Mississippi, and the court hopes that she and her family can find peace in knowing that with these sentences, in the New Mississippi, justice is truly blind. Justice, however, will not be complete unless these defendants use the remainder of their lives to learn from this experience and fully commit to making a positive difference in the New Mississippi. And, finally, the court wishes that the defendants also can find peace.
The Atlantic Piece You Need To Read February 18, 2015February 17, 2015 So this ISIS/ISIL thing is either the end of the world — if the nut jobs who’ve decided it’s they who’ve been called to fulfil the Koran’s End Times prophesy manage to get their way (which includes drawing us into a ground war of civilizations) — or a horrible blight on mankind that will play itself out if we understand what we’re up against. Which until I read the Atlantic Monthly cover story everyone’s reading, I did not, but now I think I do. It’s not short; but it sure beats the Apocalypse.
Presidents’ Day Quickies February 16, 2015February 17, 2015 THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITH WHEELTUG Classic photo. “Oops.” CONGRESSMAN AARON SCHOCK In case you missed the link Friday. Too funny. KANSAS Thursday, I linked to a report of Governor Brownback overturning a ban so that Kansas could once again discriminate against its gay state employees. Jon Stewart’s take on this (and Alabama) was 1,000 times better. Enjoy. FBI! Boy, is this guy ever an improvement on J. Edgar Hoover. An important speech, in case you missed it. Watch or read: . . . Serious debates are taking place about how law enforcement personnel relate to the communities they serve, about the appropriate use of force, and about real and perceived biases, both within and outside of law enforcement. . . . Debating the nature of policing is very important, but I worry that it has become an excuse, at times, to avoid doing something harder. The Hard Truths Let me start by sharing some of my own hard truths: First, all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty. At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups. It was unfair to the Healy siblings and to countless others like them. It was unfair to too many people. I am descended from Irish immigrants. A century ago, the Irish knew well how American society—and law enforcement—viewed them: as drunks, ruffians, and criminals. Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicles we use to transport groups of prisoners. It is, after all, the “paddy wagon.” The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans. That experience should be part of every American’s consciousness, and law enforcement’s role in that experience—including in recent times—must be remembered. It is our cultural inheritance. There is a reason that I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training. And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s approval of J. Edgar Hoover’s request to wiretap Dr. King. It is a single page. The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is “communist influence in the racial situation.” The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them. One reason we cannot forget our law enforcement legacy is that the people we serve and protect cannot forget it, either. So we must talk about our history. It is a hard truth that lives on. A second hard truth: Much research points to the widespread existence of unconscious bias. Many people in our white-majority culture have unconscious racial biases and react differently to a white face than a black face. In fact, we all, white and black, carry various biases around with us. I am reminded of the song from the Broadway hit, Avenue Q: “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.” Part of it goes like this: Look around and you will find No one’s really color blind. Maybe it’s a fact We all should face Everyone makes judgments Based on race. You should be grateful I did not try to sing that. But if we can’t help our latent biases, we can help our behavior in response to those instinctive reactions, which is why we work to design systems and processes that overcome that very human part of us all. Although the research may be unsettling, it is what we do next that matters most. But racial bias isn’t epidemic in law enforcement any more than it is epidemic in academia or the arts. In fact, I believe law enforcement overwhelmingly attracts people who want to do good for a living—people who risk their lives because they want to help other people. They don’t sign up to be cops in New York or Chicago or L.A. to help white people or black people or Hispanic people or Asian people. They sign up because they want to help all people. And they do some of the hardest, most dangerous policing to protect people of color. But that leads me to my third hard truth: something happens to people in law enforcement. Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts. For example, criminal suspects routinely lie about their guilt, and nearly everybody we charge is guilty. That makes it easy for some folks in law enforcement to assume that everybody is lying and that no suspect, regardless of their race, could be innocent. Easy, but wrong. Likewise, police officers on patrol in our nation’s cities often work in environments where a hugely disproportionate percentage of street crime is committed by young men of color. Something happens to people of good will working in that environment. After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel. A mental shortcut becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights. The two young black men on one side of the street look like so many others the officer has locked up. Two white men on the other side of the street—even in the same clothes—do not. The officer does not make the same association about the two white guys, whether that officer is white or black. And that drives different behavior. The officer turns toward one side of the street and not the other. We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve. So why has that officer—like his colleagues—locked up so many young men of color? Why does he have that life-shaping experience? Is it because he is a racist? Why are so many black men in jail? Is it because cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries are racist? Because they are turning a blind eye to white robbers and drug dealers? The answer is a fourth hard truth: I don’t think so. If it were so, that would be easier to address. We would just need to change the way we hire, train, and measure law enforcement and that would substantially fix it. We would then go get those white criminals we have been ignoring. But the truth is significantly harder than that. The truth is that what really needs fixing is something only a few, like President Obama, are willing to speak about, perhaps because it is so daunting a task. Through the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, the President is addressing the disproportionate challenges faced by young men of color. For instance, data shows that the percentage of young men not working or not enrolled in school is nearly twice as high for blacks as it is for whites. This initiative, and others like it, is about doing the hard work to grow drug-resistant and violence-resistant kids, especially in communities of color, so they never become part of that officer’s life experience. So many young men of color become part of that officer’s life experience because so many minority families and communities are struggling, so many boys and young men grow up in environments lacking role models, adequate education, and decent employment—they lack all sorts of opportunities that most of us take for granted. A tragedy of American life—one that most citizens are able to drive around because it doesn’t touch them—is that young people in “those neighborhoods” too often inherit a legacy of crime and prison. And with that inheritance, they become part of a police officer’s life, and shape the way that officer—whether white or black—sees the world. Changing that legacy is a challenge so enormous and so complicated that it is, unfortunately, easier to talk only about the cops. And that’s not fair. Let me be transparent about my affection for cops. When you dial 911, whether you are white or black, the cops come, and they come quickly, and they come quickly whether they are white or black. That’s what cops do, in addition to all of the other hard and difficult and dangerous and frightening things that they do. They respond to homes in the middle of the night where a drunken father, wielding a gun, is threatening his wife and children. They pound up the back stairs of an apartment building, not knowing whether the guys behind the door they are about to enter are armed, or high, or both. I come from a law enforcement family. My grandfather, William J. Comey, was a police officer. Pop Comey is one of my heroes. I have a picture of him on my wall in my office at the FBI, reminding me of the legacy I’ve inherited and that I must honor. He was the child of immigrants. When he was in the sixth grade, his father was killed in an industrial accident in New York. Because he was the oldest, he had to drop out of school so that he could go to work to support his mom and younger siblings. He could never afford to return to school, but when he was old enough, he joined the Yonkers, New York, Police Department. Over the next 40 years, he rose to lead that department. Pop was the tall, strong, silent type, quiet and dignified, and passionate about the rule of law. Back during Prohibition, he heard that bootleggers were running beer through fire hoses between Yonkers and the Bronx. Now, Pop enjoyed a good beer every now and again, but he ordered his men to cut those hoses with fire axes. Pop had to have a protective detail, because certain people were angry and shocked that someone in law enforcement would do that. But that’s what we want as citizens—that’s what we expect. And so I keep that picture of Pop on my office wall to remind me of his integrity, and his pride in the integrity of his work. Law enforcement ranks are filled with people like my grandfather. But, to be clear, although I am from a law enforcement family, and have spent much of my career in law enforcement, I’m not looking to let law enforcement off the hook. Those of us in law enforcement must redouble our efforts to resist bias and prejudice. We must better understand the people we serve and protect—by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement. We must understand how that young man may see us. We must resist the lazy shortcuts of cynicism and approach him with respect and decency. We must work—in the words of New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton—to really see each other. Perhaps the reason we struggle as a nation is because we’ve come to see only what we represent, at face value, instead of who we are. We simply must see the people we serve. But the “seeing” needs to flow in both directions. Citizens also need to really see the men and women of law enforcement. They need to see what police see through the windshields of their squad cars, or as they walk down the street. They need to see the risks and dangers law enforcement officers encounter on a typical late-night shift. They need to understand the difficult and frightening work they do to keep us safe. They need to give them the space and respect to do their work, well and properly. If they take the time to do that, what they will see are officers who are human, who are overwhelmingly doing the right thing for the right reasons, and who are too often operating in communities—and facing challenges—most of us choose to drive around. One of the hardest things I do as FBI Director is call the chiefs and sheriffs in departments around the nation when officers have been killed in the line of duty. I call to express my sorrow and offer the FBI’s help. Officers like Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, two of NYPD’s finest who were gunned down by a madman who thought his ambush would avenge the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I make far too many calls. And, there are far too many names of fallen officers on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and far too many names etched there each year. Officers Liu and Ramos swore the same oath all in law enforcement do, and they answered the call to serve the people, all people. Like all good police officers, they moved toward danger, without regard for the politics or passions or race of those who needed their help—knowing the risks inherent in their work. They were minority police officers, killed while standing watch in a minority neighborhood—Bedford-Stuyvesant—one they and their fellow officers had rescued from the grip of violent crime. Twenty years ago, Bed-Stuy was shorthand for a kind of chaos and disorder in which good people had no freedom to walk, shop, play, or just sit on the front steps and talk. It was too dangerous. But today, no more, thanks to the work of those who chose lives of service and danger to help others. But despite this selfless service—of these two officers and countless others like them across the country—in some American communities, people view the police not as allies, but as antagonists, and think of them not with respect or gratitude, but with suspicion and distrust. We simply must find ways to see each other more clearly. And part of that has to involve collecting and sharing better information about encounters between police and citizens, especially violent encounters. Not long after riots broke out in Ferguson late last summer, I asked my staff to tell me how many people shot by police were African-American in this country. I wanted to see trends. I wanted to see information. They couldn’t give it to me, and it wasn’t their fault. Demographic data regarding officer-involved shootings is not consistently reported to us through our Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Because reporting is voluntary, our data is incomplete and therefore, in the aggregate, unreliable. I recently listened to a thoughtful big city police chief express his frustration with that lack of reliable data. He said he didn’t know whether the Ferguson police shot one person a week, one a year, or one a century, and that in the absence of good data, “all we get are ideological thunderbolts, when what we need are ideological agnostics who use information to try to solve problems.” He’s right. The first step to understanding what is really going on in our communities and in our country is to gather more and better data related to those we arrest, those we confront for breaking the law and jeopardizing public safety, and those who confront us. “Data” seems a dry and boring word but, without it, we cannot understand our world and make it better. How can we address concerns about “use of force,” how can we address concerns about officer-involved shootings if we do not have a reliable grasp on the demographics and circumstances of those incidents? We simply must improve the way we collect and analyze data to see the true nature of what’s happening in all of our communities. The FBI tracks and publishes the number of “justifiable homicides” reported by police departments. But, again, reporting by police departments is voluntary and not all departments participate. That means we cannot fully track the number of incidents in which force is used by police, or against police, including non-fatal encounters, which are not reported at all. Without complete and accurate data, we are left with “ideological thunderbolts.” And that helps spark unrest and distrust and does not help us get better. Because we must get better, I intend for the FBI to be a leader in urging departments around this country to give us the facts we need for an informed discussion, the facts all of us need, to help us make sound policy and sound decisions with that information. * * * America isn’t easy. America takes work. Today, February 12, is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. He spoke at Gettysburg about a “new birth of freedom” because we spent the first four score and seven years of our history with fellow Americans held as slaves—President Healy, his siblings, and his mother among them. We have spent the 150 years since Lincoln spoke making great progress, but along the way treating a whole lot of people of color poorly. And law enforcement was often part of that poor treatment. That’s our inheritance as law enforcement and it is not all in the distant past. We must account for that inheritance. And we—especially those of us who enjoy the privilege that comes with being the majority—must confront the biases that are inescapable parts of the human condition. We must speak the truth about our shortcomings as law enforcement, and fight to be better. But as a country, we must also speak the truth to ourselves. Law enforcement is not the root cause of problems in our hardest hit neighborhoods. Police officers—people of enormous courage and integrity, in the main—are in those neighborhoods, risking their lives, to protect folks from offenders who are the product of problems that will not be solved by body cameras. We simply must speak to each other honestly about all these hard truths. In the words of Dr. King, “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.” We all have work to do—hard work, challenging work—and it will take time. We all need to talk and we all need to listen, not just about easy things, but about hard things, too. Relationships are hard. Relationships require work. So let’s begin that work. It is time to start seeing one another for who and what we really are. Peace, security, and understanding are worth the effort. Thank you for listening to me today.
One Hitchcock Film You Haven’t Seen February 13, 2015February 13, 2015 THE DARK SIDE You thought you’d never see the dark side of the moon, let alone on my ridiculous little web site — but here it is. (Technically “the far side,” as it’s only dark to us.) A SIDE OF THE PRESIDENT YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EITHER You have GOT to see this video. Not only is it very funny, it will actually be important to someone you know who has just a couple days left to sign up. THE TRUE DARK SIDE Jeremy Gerard’s review speaks for itself: In April 1945, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force ordered that footage shot by combat and newsreel cameramen during the liberation of Occupied Europe be aggregated into a documentary film that would be shown to the German prisoners of war as irrefutable proof of what had occurred under the Nazi regime. The producer . . . eventually brought Alfred Hitchcock over to help organize the footage and accompanying narration. (Later, Billy Wilder would also be brought in to work on the documentary.) . . . The resulting film has the unglamorous yet unassailably apt title German Concentration Camps Factual Study. HBO has begun showing Night Will Fall, a documentary about the making of the documentary that includes several minutes of the footage. On Tuesday night I saw the complete film in Los Angeles at the Museum Of Tolerance . . . The audience included representatives from various foreign consulates, clergy and community leaders, and a number of survivors with first-hand knowledge of what we were about to see. . . . The film is unabashedly shocking . . . The battle-worn cameramen took great care to record what they witnessed so as to obviate any possible charge that the footage was staged. There are long, uninterrupted shots of indescribable inhumanity, of impossibly starved bodies, hollowed cheeks, dead eyes open wide and smashed skulls; of the officers and town folk forced to by the Allied troops to drag the surreal stick figures from the typhus-breeding barracks or frozen ground where they lay snow-covered and naked, to the pits that had been bull-dozed for mass graves, each marked with an estimated number of the bodies within: 5,000 in one plot after the next. The cameras movie unblinkingly into the gas chambers, with their Zyklon cannisters, and crematoriums still smoldering and filled with ash and bone. . . . Not long after the film began, I heard weeping from the couple sitting in front of me, both of them survivors there by invitation. The husband, sobbing, kept telling his wife not to look, shielding her eyes lovingly. Yet he was the one who finally whispered, “I wasn’t prepared for this” as he reached for his walker and quietly left the auditorium. A few minutes later, his wife followed. I would say I know how they felt, but of course I have no idea. I do know how I felt, which was taken to the edge of a bottomless chasm. It was almost impossible to walk out into the night. It is all one long river of struggle to learn to live with each other: literally trillions of tiny individual acts of kindness and meanness; tens of millions of slightly broader choices (build 28 new Third World schools or update one beautiful First World condo lobby?*); thousands of vastly broader ones (invade? free the slaves? give women the vote? allow unionization?) — all shocked by occasional earthquakes of aggression, madness and horror I count myself spectacularly fortunate to have experienced only second-hand, through reports like these. # (Too heavy? Monday or Tuesday: household tips or kittens or something. Oh! Or this laugh-out-loud report on Peoria Congressman Aaron Shock. Have a great President’s Day weekend.) *Stay tuned.