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Key Obama Adviser: "There’s Never Been a Time When We’ve Taken Progressive Action and Regretted It"

by GudrunNesmith Posted on March 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here to jump start your weekend is a “Quote of the Week,” taken from Jonathan Chait’s interview with longtime Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, who worked closely with president from the 2008 campaign until his resignation last week. Their conversation focused on the president’s embrace of liberalism in the face of a staunch GOP-controlled Congress. Pfeiffer’s choice quote:

Whenever we contemplate bold progressive action, whether that’s the president’s endorsement of marriage equality, or coming out strong on power-plant rules to reduce current pollution, on immigration, on net neutrality, you get a lot of hemming and hawing in advance about what this is going to mean: Is this going to alienate people? Is this going to hurt the president’s approval ratings? What will this mean in red states?

There’s never been a time when we’ve taken progressive action and regretted it.

Happy Friday!

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Key Obama Adviser: "There’s Never Been a Time When We’ve Taken Progressive Action and Regretted It"

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Hillary Clinton Just Responded to Her Email Controversy

by LorrainJUC Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton responded to questions from reporters regarding the ongoing controversy over her exclusive use of personal email while she was serving as secretary of state.

“I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal e-mails than two,” Clinton said. “I did it for convenience and I now looking back think that it might have been smarter to have those two devices from the very beginning.”

Although the email revelation, which was reported by the New York Times last week, does not appear to have affected top Democratic donors’ enthusiasm for Clinton, it has prompted renewed questions about the likely presidential candidate’s propensity for secrecy.

Aside from a tweet saying she requested the State Department publicize 55,000 pages of emails that she turned over, Clinton has largely avoided addressing the emails until today.

For more on the Clintons and their relationship with the media in the wake of this latest controversy, read David Corn’s analysis here.

Her full transcript below:

I want to thank the United Nations for hosting today’s events and putting the challenge of gender equality front and center on the international agenda. I’m especially pleased to have so many leaders here from the private sector standing shoulder to shoulder with advocates who have worked tirelessly for equality for decades.

Twenty years ago, this was a lonelier struggle. Today, we mark the progress that has been made in the two decades since the international community gathered in Beijing and declared with one voice that human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.

And because of advances in health, education, and legal protections, we can say that there has never been a better time in history to be born female. Yet as the comprehensive new report, published by the Clinton Foundation and the Gates Foundation this week makes clear, despite all this progress, when it comes to the full participation of women and girls, we’re just not there yet.

As I said today, this remains the great unfinished business of the 21st century. And my passion for this fight burns as brightly today as it did 20 years ago.

I want to comment on a matter in the news today regarding Iran. The president and his team are in the midst of intense negotiations. Their goal is a diplomatic solution that would close off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear bomb and give us unprecedented access and insight into Iran’s nuclear program.

Now, reasonable people can disagree about what exactly it will take to accomplish this objective, and we all must judge any final agreement on its merits.

But the recent letter from Republican senators was out of step with the best traditions of American leadership. And one has to ask, what was the purpose of this letter?

There appear to be two logical answers. Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to the commander- in-chief in the midst of high-stakes international diplomacy. Either answer does discredit to the letters’ signatories.

Now, I would be pleased to talk more about this important matter, but I know there have been questions about my email, so I want to address that directly, and then I will take a few questions from you.

There are four things I want the public to know.

First, when I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.

Looking back, it would’ve been better if I’d simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but at the time, this didn’t seem like an issue.

Second, the vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.

Third, after I left office, the State Department asked former secretaries of state for our assistance in providing copies of work- related emails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work- related emails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.

No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.

Fourth, I took the unprecedented step of asking that the State Department make all my work-related emails public for everyone to see.

I am very proud of the work that I and my colleagues and our public servants at the department did during my four years as secretary of state, and I look forward to people being able to see that for themselves.

Again, looking back, it would’ve been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts. I thought using one device would be simpler, and obviously, it hasn’t worked out that way.

Now I’m happy to take a few questions.

QUESTION: Sorry.

Madam Secretary, Kahraman Haliscelik with Turkish Television. On behalf of the U.N. Correspondence Association, thank you very much for your remarks, and it’s wonderful to see you here again.

Madam Secretary, why did you opt out not using two devices at the time? Obviously, if this didn’t come out, you wouldn’t — probably wouldn’t become an issue.

QUESTION: And my — my second follow-up question is, if you were a man today, would all this fuss being made be made?

Thank you.

CLINTON: Well, I will — I will leave that to others to answer.

But as I — as I said, I saw it as a matter of convenience, and it was allowed. Others had done it. According to the State Department, which recently said Secretary Kerry was the first secretary of state to rely primarily on a state.gov e-mail account.

And when I got there, I wanted to just use one device for both personal and work e-mails, instead of two. It was allowed. And as I said, it was for convenience. And it was my practice to communicate with State Department and other government officials on their .gov accounts so those e-mails would be automatically saved in the State Department system to meet recordkeeping requirements, and that, indeed, is what happened.

And I heard just a little while ago the State Department announced they would begin to post some of my e-mails, which I’m very glad to hear, because I want it all out there.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, can you…

CLINTON: Andrea? Andrea, thank you, Andrea.

QUESTION: Can you explain how you decided which of the personal e-mails to get rid of, how you got rid of them and when? And how you’ll respond to questions about you being the arbiter of what you release?

And, secondly, could you answer the questions that have been raised about foreign contributions from Middle Eastern countries, like Saudi Arabia, that abuse women or permit violence against women to the family foundation and whether that disturbs you as you are rightly celebrating 20 years of leadership on this issue?

CLINTON: Well, those are two very different questions. Let me see if I can take them in order. And I’ll give you some of the background.

In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear.

For any government employee, it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what’s personal and what’s work-related. I am very confident of the process that we conducted and the e-mails that were produced.

And I feel like once the American public begins to see the e- mails, they will have an unprecedented insight into a high government official’s daily communications, which I think will be quite interesting.

With respect to the foundation, I am very proud of the work the foundation does. I’m very proud of the hundreds of thousands of people who support the work of the foundation and the results that have been achieved for people here at home and around the world.

And I think that we are very clear about where we stand, certainly where I stand, on all of these issues. There can’t be any mistake about my passion concerning women’s rights here at home and around the world.

So I think that people who want to support the foundation know full well what it is we stand for and what we’re working on.

CLINTON: Hi, right here.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton?

CLINTON: She’s sort of squashed, so we’ve got to…

QUESTION: Hi, Secretary.

CLINTON: Hi.

QUESTION: I was wondering if you think that you made a mistake either in exclusively using your private e-mail or in response to the controversy around it. And, if so, what have you learned from that?

CLINTON: Well, I have to tell you that, as I said in my remarks, looking back, it would have been probably, you know, smarter to have used two devices. But I have absolute confidence that everything that could be in any way connected to work is now in the possession of the State Department.

And I have to add, even if I had had two devices, which is obviously permitted — many people do that — you would still have to put the responsibility where it belongs, which is on the official. So I did it for convenience and I now, looking back, think that it might have been smarter to have those two devices from the very beginning.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton?

CLINTON: Yes? QUESTION: Did you or any of your aides delete any government- related e-mails from your personal account? And what lengths are you willing to go to to prove that you didn’t?

Some people, including supporters of yours, have suggested having an independent arbiter look at your server, for instance.

CLINTON: We did not. In fact, my direction to conduct the thorough investigation was to err on the side of providing anything that could be possibly viewed as work related.

That doesn’t mean they will be by the State Department once the State Department goes through them, but out of an abundance of caution and care, you know, we wanted to send that message unequivocally.

That is the responsibility of the individual and I have fulfilled that responsibility, and I have no doubt that we have done exactly what we should have done. When the search was conducted, we were asking that any email be identified and preserved that could potentially be federal records, and that’s exactly what we did.

And we went, as I said, beyond that. And the process produced over 30,000 you know, work emails, and I think that we have more than met the requests from the State Department. The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private and I think that the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, can you…

CLINTON: Right there.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, two quick follow ups. You mentioned the server. That’s one of the distinctions here.

This wasn’t Gmail or Yahoo or something. This was a server that you owned. Is that appropriate? Is it — was there any precedent for it? Did you clear it with any State Department security officials? And do they have — did they have full access to it when you were secretary?

And then separately, will any of this have any bearing or effect on your timing or decision about whether or not you run for president? Thank you.

CLINTON: Well, the system we used was set up for President Clinton’s office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches.

So, I think that the — the use of that server, which started with my husband, certainly proved to be effective and secure. Now, with respect to any sort of future — future issues, look, I trust the American people to make their decisions about political and public matters. And I feel that I’ve taken unprecedented steps to provide these work-related emails. They’re going to be in the public domain. And I think that Americans will find that you know, interesting, and I look forward to having a discussion about that.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary?

CLINTON: Hi.

QUESTION: How could the public be assured that when you deleted emails that were personal in nature, that you didn’t also delete emails that were professional, but possibly unflattering?

And what do you think about this Republican idea of having an independent third party come in an examine your emails?

CLINTON: Well first of all, you have to ask that question to every single federal employee, because the way the system works, the federal employee, the individual, whether they have one device, two devices, three devices, how many addresses, they make the decision.

So, even if you have a work-related device with a work-related .gov account, you choose what goes on that. That is the way our system works. And so we trust and count on the judgment of thousands, maybe millions of people to make those decisions.

And I feel that I did that and even more, that I went above and beyond what I was requested to do. And again, those will be out in the public domain, and people will be able to judge for themselves.

QUESTION: Okay, Madam.

Madam Secretary?

Madam Secretary, excuse me.

Madam Secretary, State Department rules at the time you were secretary were perfectly clear that if a State Department employee was going to be using private email, that employee needed to turn those emails over to the State Department to be preserved on government computers.

Why did you not do that? Why did you not go along with State Department rules until nearly two years after you left office?

QUESTION: And also, the president of the United States said that he was unaware that you had this unusual email arrangement. The White House counsel’s office says that you never approved this arrangement through them.

Why did you not do that? Why did you — why have you apparently caught the White House by surprise?

And then just one last political question, if I — I might. Does all of this make — affect your decision in any way on whether or not to run for president?

CLINTON: Well, let me try to unpack your multiple questions.

First, the laws and regulations in effect when I was secretary of state allowed me to use my email for work. That is undisputed.

Secondly, under the Federal Records Act, records are defined as reported information, regardless of its form or characteristics, and in meeting the record keeping obligations, it was my practice to email government officials on their state or other .gov accounts so that the emails were immediately captured and preserved.

Now, there are different rules governing the White House than there are governing the rest of the executive branch, and in order to address the requirements I was under, I did exactly what I have said. I emailed two people, and I not only knew, I expected that then to be captured in the State Department or any other government agency that I was emailing to at a .gov account.

What happened in — sorry, I guess late summer, early — early fall, is that the State Department sent a letter to former secretaries of state, not just to me, asking for some assistance in providing any work-related emails that might be on the personal email.

And what I did was to direct, you know, my counsel to conduct a thorough investigation and to err on the side of providing anything that could be connected to work. They did that, and that was my obligation. I fully fulfilled it, and then I took the unprecedented step of saying, “Go ahead and release them, and let people see them.”

QUESTION: Why did you wait two months? Why — why did you wait two months to turn those emails over? The rules say you have to turn them over…

(CROSSTALK) CLINTON: I don’t think — I’d be happy to have somebody talk to you about the rules. I fully complied with every rule that I was governed by.

QUESTION: Were you ever — were you ever specifically briefed on the security implications of using — using your own email server and using your personal address to email with the president?

CLINTON: I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.

So I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

CLINTON: Because they were personal and private about matters that I believed were within the scope of my personal privacy and that particularly of other people. They have nothing to do with work, but I didn’t see any reason to keep them.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: At the end of the process.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: … who was forced to resign two years ago because of his personal use of emails?

By the way, David Shuster from Al Jazeera America.

CLINTON: Yeah. Right…

QUESTION: What about Ambassador Scott (inaudible) being forced to resign?

CLINTON: David, I think you should go online and read the entire I.G. report. That is not an accurate representation of what happened.

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all.

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Hillary Clinton Just Responded to Her Email Controversy

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Even the Voting Problems Are Bigger in Texas

by TomasDennis Posted on March 5, 2015

Mother Jones

Battleground Texas, the effort by Obama vets to turn the nation’s biggest red state blue, got off to a rough start last fall when Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis lost by 21 points. But now, as the organization looks to rebuild toward its long-term goal of mobilizing the state’s long-dormant Democratic base, its leaders are doing a public dissection of what went wrong—and what to do differently next time.

In a feature published by Texas Monthly in late February, Robert Draper broke down the organization’s financial struggles and turf wars, but also the difficulties Battleground faced with the field of battle of itself. The newcomers, Draper explained, had no idea just how hard it would be enroll new voters while complying with the state’s Byzantine rules:

For a group like Battleground to register Texans to vote, they themselves must be Texas residents, must be eligible to vote and—in a wrinkle that is unique to Texas—must be deputized by each county where they’re registering. In some of the state’s 254 counties, going through the requisite voter registration training course can be done online; in others, certification is offered only once a month, at the county courthouse during work hours. But as the Battleground team came to learn, the complications only begin once a deputy registrar is certified. If a Dallas County-certified volunteer registers someone who says they live in that county when in fact they live just across the border in Tarrant County, then the deputy registrar has committed a misdemeanor. If the volunteer turns in the completed registration forms more than five days after they’ve been collected, that’s also a misdemeanor.

“When we first heard about these laws,” recalled executive director Jenn Brown, “I said, ‘There’s no way this is the law—this is unbelievable.'”

The organization has released a 36-page report documenting the findings of its voter-protection program. There’s plenty to chew over, some of it anecdotal, some of it not. In Texas’ five largest counties—the urban, majority-minority areas heavily targeted by Democrats—provisional ballots were rejected more than four times as often as the national average. (Only one in four provisional votes was accepted.) That’s significant because a variety of factors on the most recent Election Day—like the debut of a voter ID requirement that affected as many as 600,000 eligible voters, and a breakdown of the state’s voter registration portal—made it much more likely that citizens who showed up at the polls had to fill out provisional ballots.

The report highlights another inconsistency in the state’s voter law—what happens when you move:

Unfortunately, although more than one in 10 Americans move annually, Texas law requires voters to completely re-register after moving between counties within the state. If a voter fails to do so, her ability to vote is dependent upon a seemingly irrelevant factor—whether that voter casts a ballot during Early Voting or on Election Day. If a voter has moved to a new county and the voter rolls have not been updated, she is only permitted to vote a so-called limited ballot for statewide offices, and can only do so during Early Voting or by mail. On Election Day, by contrast, that same voter cannot vote at all. We received more than a hundred reports involving voters who had recently moved within Texas, yet whose address had not been updated on the voter rolls.

This isn’t Battleground’s attempt to explain away that 21-point stomping, and there’s plenty of debate on that in the Texas Monthly piece. But it’s a revealing look at what’s on the organizers’ minds as they retool for 2016 and beyond.

Read the full report here:

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Even the Voting Problems Are Bigger in Texas

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Contact: Guitar Wunderkind Blake Mills

by NoellaPride Posted on February 24, 2015

Mother Jones

Photographs by Jacob Blickenstaff

The 28-year-old California native Blake Mills has been playing guitar with a singular focus since he was 10. As a high school kid he cofounded, with Taylor Goldsmith, the band Simon Dawes—which would reform as Dawes following Mill’s 2007 departure.

Over the years, Mills has established a rep as a top guitar talent. Eric Clapton has called his playing “phenomenal” and Rick Rubin described it as “breathtaking.” A musician’s musician, he’s been hired for touring and session work with Kid Rock, Fiona Apple, Julian Casablancas, Jenny Lewis, Jackson Browne, Neil Diamond, Conor Oberst, Ed Sheeran, and Norah Jones.

His two albums as a songwriter, 2010’s Break Mirrors and last year’s major label debut Heigh Ho, featured contributions from his contemporaries as well as legendary elder statesmen, including drummer Jim Keltner, bassists Don Was and Mike Elizondo, and pianist Benmont Tench. He’s also becoming a sought-after producer and was recently tapped to work with Alabama Shakes on their highly anticipated second album, Sound & Color.

I photographed and spoke with Mills in Los Angeles at the home of producer and frequent collaborator Tony Berg.

Mother Jones: Many notables regard you as a great player. For someone who’s gone so deeply into your instrument, have you discovered certain ways of practicing that are particularly effective?

Blake Mills: I think I had a way of practicing when I wasn’t sitting with an instrument, thinking about things at such length that they ingrained themselves into my musical vocabulary so I could draw from that in an improvisational situation. Earlier on, when the things that began to really resonate with me and fascinate me started to surface, it was a kind of catharsis. Anything we were studying in school, like math, or understanding somebody’s behavior outside of school, kind of worked its way into something I could understand by way of a musical experience I’d had or something I’d heard.

MJ: So music became the lens for how you viewed and processed everything?

BM: It was the common denominator, like a first language—the Rosetta Stone that I keep going back to. Maybe that helps to keep the enthusiasm. You can get really burned out and apathetic if you listen to too much music. If you go out to shows and you hear some of the shit that comes out, it can be soul-crushing just to be exposed to it, let alone work on it or be around it for a living. It’s the most surprising thing that I’ve encountered since the experience of putting a record out with a major label and touring and everything: the need for the protecting yourself from things that take away your energy.

MJ: As you create songs and albums, do you think of it as slowly establishing a body of work?

BM: I don’t know if I think about it like that. My favorite experiences have all been finding myself at one point in a timeline and going in both directions, just discovering at my own pace. If I could admit to be playing some kind of long game, and strategizing this, I would. I think my role as a musician is much more reactionary than that of the creative personality type who locks himself in a tower and then comes out with Pet Sounds or something. I just respond to stimuli more than anything.

MJ: You could easily be out there doing front-and-center, face-melting guitar stuff—but what’s remarkable about both of these albums is that you use your abilities in the service of a bigger picture. You’re seem unconcerned with pyrotechnics.

BM: Yeah, I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt like there was an appropriate time to approach my own songs and add that thing to it. I remember being 16 or 17 and going apeshit for that kind of playing: Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai. I was just going, “How do these guys do it?” And then you sit down with one of those passages and learn it, and you go, “Oh, I can do it.” But when you sit down with the chords to Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me,” or Kurt Weill’s “September Song” and the piece of music doesn’t give you any more insight into how a song like that is written or created. There’s something so much more fascinating and mysterious to me about where those things come from than the playing. There are things on this record where people will go, “I’m not sure where the guitar playing is on it.”

MJ: You play a lot in nonstandard tunings and really just have your own way of doing things. How did you discover those techniques?

BM: Using slide was a big precursor for me into the open tunings. There were a lot of things about Derek Trucks, Ry Cooder, Elmore James and Kokomo Arnold, this huge era of guys who all played slide in certain dialects. I had the benefit of the internet when I was growing up, so I was listening to all the live tapes of Derek Trucks‘ band that I could get ahold of, and reading interviews, and seeing that the people he was listening to were the same people I was listening to.

I grew up playing with a guy named Bob Brozman, who was a world-music guitar player. He’d just go around the globe and make these beautiful records with different musicians, spoke something like 11 or 12 languages. He turned me on to a lot of the Middle Eastern and West African players that shaped a large part of the vocabulary of what I do.

At the same time, my finger got fucked up, crushed in a door, and it was in one of those metal splints. So I started playing slide. And the open tuning thing just came with the package. Then I started thinking, I’ll be a better slide player if I really demystify this tuning. I should try some of the things, just a verbatim sort of transfer over to the open tuning, and see what it does.

MJ: What’s the most difficult part about playing for you, the thing you really have to slog through to make progress?

BM: Staying enthused about finding things; discovering new beauty in the world that can translate into music. That’s the most precious sort of resource. You have to pull stuff from outside of the musical realm. Whatever muscle it is that it takes to listen to music and stay focused, in me, is really strong. I don’t have a problem working 14 hours a day and still have ears and have a brain to mix afterwards. But I don’t have the same strength to actively pursue and stay enthused about things like literature and movies and a social life—things that enhance the music, and the person. I don’t want to become this lazy person, a guy who thinks in terms of New Year’s resolutions. I really do want to see a change in myself in certain ways, but I want to figure out exactly what they are and not have it be like a diet that I’m trying.

That’s the most alarming thing to me. I’m 28, and the world just starts to look like a different place as you start realizing, “Okay, now you’re 35, now you’re 40, and it’s no longer the thing where, “He’s really young, and he’s good.” I want to be good at something else that feels a little more private, a little more personal. That I think that will ultimately be more valuable, looking at everything, if I make it to 50 or 60 or 70.

Jacob Blickenstaff

MJ: I guess that’s what I’m sensing with the albums. These are attempts at a whole process. They’re not guitar records, they’re not even just songwriter records. There’s a lot of depth to the sound.

BM: The most attractive thing that I’ve seen in the creative realm is the enthusiasm in people that does not seem to burn out. That’s what I’m after. Fuck, I can’t tell you how amazing it would to be able to be to call from memory the Schubert Lieder or Bach Etudes and be able to play them at the level of Chris Thile or Edgar Myer. I’m surrounded by guys who are some of the best musicians on their instruments that there ever were. It’s a heavy, heavy concept. And they all seem to enjoy something other than the celebration of that ability. When we get together, we play Dylan songs.

When you have the catalog of work, it doesn’t feel like you’ve got one shot to get it right; it’s just like, you’re making a new document of something at the present time, and it’s a living thing, and it changes. It’s been cool to help other people make their records, to produce. You get a crash course in things that you don’t get as the artist.

MJ: What was it like producing the Alabama Shakes?

BM: It was an amazing experience. It was such a serendipitous combination, because there aren’t a lot of bands that I’ve ever heard of who have the kind of success on the first record that they did, and then chose to be as daring and challenging as they did on their second record. Instead of trying to figure out how to capitalize on it, or keep the pace, they were energized and wanted to make a record that checked all the boxes of the honest things that worked for the forces of good. I’m worthless in a conversation of, “Well, what about the radio? Let’s listen to five records that sold really well last year.” I would way rather be on the side of something that is beautiful and never catches on than the alternative. Not that there’s one alternative, but there’s definitely some stuff you can end up in that I would be embarrassed with myself for doing.

In Close Contact is an independent documentary project on music, musicians, and creativity. Visit InCloseContact.com for extended interviews and more photography.

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Contact: Guitar Wunderkind Blake Mills

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"Selma Is Now": John Legend and Common Just Gave An Amazing Oscar Speech

by oks23po Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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John Legend and Common’s “Glory” from Selma just won an Oscar for Best Original Song. Legend and Common gave a wonderful, heartfelt, important speech.

“Selma is now,” Legend began. “The struggle for justice is now. The Voting Rights Act that they fought for fifty years ago is being compromised right now in this country today. Right now the struggle for justice is real. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850. When people march with our song, we want to tell you: we see you, we are with you, we love you, and march on.”

Earlier they delivered an amazing performance of the song. Everyone was in tears.

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"Selma Is Now": John Legend and Common Just Gave An Amazing Oscar Speech

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On These Five Things, Republicans Actually Might Work With Dems To Do Something Worthwhile

by MitchelBriscoe Posted on February 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Recently, bipartisan momentum has been building behind an issue that has historically languished in Congress: criminal justice reform. Recent Capitol Hill briefings have drawn lawmakers and activists from across the political spectrum—from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden, whose boss, conservative mega-donor Charles Koch, has made reform a key philanthropic priority.

The emergence of this unlikely coalition has been building for some time: liberals have long been critical of the criminal justice status quo, and many “tough on crime” conservatives—growing concerned by the staggering costs of mass incarceration and the system’s impingement on liberty—are beginning to join their liberal and libertarian-minded colleagues. In the past, bills aimed at overhauling the criminal justice system have stagnated on Capitol Hill, but the bipartisan players who are coming together to push for change means that there are some reforms that could realistically gain traction, even in this divided Congress.

Earned time credits. These programs, under which prisoners can work to earn an early release by completing classes, job training, and drug rehab, are highly popular among reformers. Many states already offer them, and they’ve been touted as smart, efficient ways to reduce prison populations as well as recidivism rates. Criminal justice lawyer and commentator at The Hill newspaper Jay Hurst says that this is the likeliest issue where Congress could pass legislation this year.

Easing up mandatory minimums. These laws, which broadly require those convicted of certain crimes to serve set sentences regardless of the specifics of the case, are considered hallmarks of the tough-on-crime approach politicians used to embrace. Critics, such as advocacy group Families Against the Mandatory Minimum, argue that these laws “undermine justice by preventing judges from fitting the punishment to the individual” and that they are one of the main reasons for overcrowded prisons. According to Jesselyn McCurdy, a criminal justice expert at the ACLU, half of those locked up in federal prison are there for drug offenses, which mandatory minimums are often rigorously applied to.

Last January, Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the Smarter Sentencing Act, which intended to reduce the size of the prison population and rein in ballooning costs, by reducing mandatory minimum sentencing, especially for drug-related crimes. Someone serving a 10-year sentence for a nonviolent crime could theoretically get out in five, under the legislation. The bill also proposed broadening judges’ discretion to sentence below federal minimums, known as the “safety valve” for over-sentencing.

The Durbin-Lee bill died in committee—a common fate for criminal justice legislation—and a total overhaul of mandatory minimums could be a tough ask for this Congress. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s new chair, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), is a vocal defender of sentencing minimums. Still, experts say there’s reason to believe some progress could get made. “Safety valve relief could happen this Congress,” Hurst said, because it’s considered a more moderate path to reducing sentences.

Juvenile justice reform. Criticism has grown louder over the way the justice system treats juveniles, from its practice of trying younger teenagers as adults to its placement of some minors in brutal solitary confinement. Last summer, Booker and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced the REDEEM Act (which stands for Record Expungement Designed to Enhance Employment), which—among other things—aimed to eliminate solitary confinement for minors, and provided incentives, such as first dibs on public safety grant money, to get states to stop trying minors in adult courts.

REDEEM stalled in committee, but Michael Harris, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, thinks this Congress will make progress. “There will be bipartisan support for legislative action on solitary,” Harris says. “There is growing support for limiting it…many places are just using it way too much.”

Reducing recidivism. A major talking point from reformers on the left and the right is the need to transform prisons into places that actually rehabilitate inmates—not the existing “graduate schools of crime” that encourage repeat offenses. For years, “policymakers across the political spectrum saw high rates of re-offense as inevitable,” so they just kept offenders behind bars, according to a report from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, an office within the Department of Justice. Some states, however, have changed their approaches to incarceration and reduced recidivism rates dramatically. North Carolina passed reforms in 2011 that allocated more resources towards smoothing parolees’ transitions into regular life through advising and planning help. The state’s recidivism rate has gone down nearly 20 percent, and it has closed nine correctional facilities.

In late 2013, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced the Federal Prison Reform Act of 2013, which aimed to translate successful state reforms to the federal level. The central proposal was to require that all inmates be classified by risk of recidivism (low, medium, or high) and allocate resources based on that. The bill died in committee, but Whitehouse’s office confirmed that his cooperation with Sen. Cornyn will continue in this Congress, and it’s possible they’d revive their previous bill.

Sealing and expunging records. The key provision of Paul and Booker’s REDEEM Act is one that gives adults convicted of nonviolent offenses a path to sealing their criminal records—something that could make finding employment much easier. It also provides for the “automatic expungement” of non-violent crimes committed before the age of 15, and sealing the records of non-violent offenders between 15 and 18. Harris thinks this issue could find new life in the new Congress. “It makes sense to pass bills like this.”

Despite the bipartisan efforts, many experts still believe that there are plenty of issues that could pose serious obstacles to compromise. Beyond the disagreement on mandatory minimums, there’s potential conflict on the role of for-profit prisons, which conservatives praise and Democrats like Booker loathe. Additionally, support for loosening drug penalties—particularly for marijuana—is growing broadly popular, but powerful Republicans remain vocal opponents. McCurdy at the ACLU says that, despite potential hang-ups, she’s encouraged by the bipartisan concern over the state of the justice system. I’m encouraged by how many diverse groups have come on board, which sends a signal to leadership that this is something the American people really want to get done,” she says.

There is one especially powerful force pushing along reform: The federal government is expected to spend nearly $7 billion on prisons this year and conservatives in charge of Congress will be under pressure to bring down costs. “With every Congress, I’m hopeful for reform,” Hurst says. “But this Congress’ argument is based on money, not humanity, which is why it’s more realistic that it’d happen.”

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On These Five Things, Republicans Actually Might Work With Dems To Do Something Worthwhile

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Blogging Isn’t Dead. But Old-School Blogging Is Definitely Dying.

by EpifaniBellamy Posted on January 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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With Andrew Sullivan giving up his blog, there are fewer and fewer of us old-school bloggers left. In this case, “old school” pretty much means a daily blog with frequent updates written by one person (or possibly two, but not much more). Ezra Klein thinks this is because conventional blogging doesn’t scale well:

At this moment in the media, scale means social traffic. Links from other bloggers — the original currency of the blogosphere, and the one that drove its collaborative, conversational nature — just don’t deliver the numbers that Facebook does. But blogging is a conversation, and conversations don’t go viral. People share things their friends will understand, not things that you need to have read six other posts to understand.

Blogging encourages interjections into conversations, and it thrives off of familiarity. Social media encourages content that can travel all on its own. Alyssa Rosenberg put it well at the Washington Post. “I no longer write with the expectation that you all are going to read every post and pick up on every twist and turn in my thinking. Instead, each piece feels like it has to stand alone, with a thesis, supporting paragraphs and a clear conclusion.”

I’d add a couple of comments to this. First, Ezra is right about the conversational nature of blogging. There was lots of that in the early days, and very little now. Partly this is for the reason he identified: traffic is now driven far more by Facebook links than by links from fellow bloggers. Partly it’s also because multi-person blogs, which began taking over the blogosphere in the mid-aughts, make conversation harder. Most people simply don’t follow all the content in multi-person blogs, and don’t always pay attention to who wrote which post, so conversation becomes choppier and harder to follow. And partly it’s because conversation has moved on: first to comment sections, then to Twitter and other social media.

Second, speaking personally, I long ago decided that blog posts needed to be standalone pieces, so I’m not sure we can really blame that on new forms of social media. It was probably as early as 2005 or 2006 that I concluded two things. Not only do blog posts need to be standalone, but they can’t even ramble very much. You need to make one clear point and avoid lots of distractions and “on the other hands.” This is because blog readers are casual readers, and if you start making lots of little side points, that’s what they’re going to respond to. Your main point often simply falls by the wayside. So keep it short and focused. If you have a second point to make, just wait a bit and write it up separately not as a quick aside open to lots of interpretation, but with the attention it deserves.

And there’s a third reason Klein doesn’t mention: professionalism. I was one of the first amateur bloggers to turn pro, and in my case it was mostly an accident. But within a few years, old-school media outlets had started co-opting nearly all of the high-traffic bloggers. (I won’t say they co-opted the “best” bloggers, because who knows? In any case, what they wanted was high traffic, so that’s what they went for.) Matt Yglesias worked for a series of outlets, Steve Benen took over the Washington Monthly when I moved to MoJo, Ezra Klein went to the Washington Post and then started up Vox, etc. Ditto for Andrew Sullivan, who worked for Time, the Atlantic, and eventually began his own subscription-based site. It was very successful, but Sullivan turned out to be the only blogger who could pull that off. You need huge traffic to be self-sustaining in a really serious way, and he was just about the only one who had an audience that was both large and very loyal. Plus there’s another side to professionalism: the rise of the expert blogger. There’s not much question in my mind that this permanently changed the tone of the political blogosphere, especially on the liberal side. There’s just less scope for layman-style noodling when you know that a whole bunch of experts will quickly weigh in with far more sophisticated responses. Add to that the rise of professional journalists taking up their own blogs, and true amateurs became even more marginalized.

All of this led to blogs—Sullivan excepted—becoming less conversational in tone and sparking less conversation. There are probably lots of reasons for this, but partly I think it’s because professional blogs prefer to link to their own content, rather than other people’s. Josh Marshall’s TPM, for example, links almost exclusively to its own content, because that’s the best way to promote their own stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that. It makes perfect sense. But it’s definitely a conversation killer.

In any case, most conversation now seems to have moved to Twitter. There are advantages to this: it’s faster and it’s open to more people. Blogs were democratizing, and Twitter is even more democratizing. You don’t have to start up your own blog and build up a readership to be heard. All you have to do is have a few followers and get rewteeted a bit. Needless to say, however, there are disadvantages too. Twitter is often too fast, and when you combine that with its 140-character limit, you end up with a lot of shrill and indignant replies. Sometimes this is deliberate: it’s what the tweeter really wants to say. But often it’s not. There’s a premium on responding quickly, since Twitter conversations usually last only hours if not minutes, and this means you’re often responding to a blog post in the heat of your very first reaction to something it says—often without even reading the full blog post first. In addition, it’s simply very difficult to convey nuance and tone in 140 characters. Even if you don’t mean to sound shrill and outraged, you often do. Now multiply that by the sheer size of Twitter, where a few initial irate comments can feed hundreds of others within minutes, and you have less a conversation than you do a mindless pile-on.

I’m not really making any judgments about all this. Personally, I miss old-school blogging and the conversations it started. But I also recognize that what I’m saying about Twitter is very much what traditional print journalists said about blogging back in the day. You have to respond within a day! You have to make your point in 500 words or less! Whatever happened to deeply considered long-form pieces that took weeks to compose and ran several thousand words? Sure, those conversations took months to unfold, but what’s the rush?

Well, they were right to an extent. And now conversations have become even more compressed. Some people think that’s great, others (like me) are more conflicted about it. When I respond to something, I usually want to make a serious point, and Twitter makes that awfully hard. Writing a coherent multi-part tweet is just way harder than simply writing a 500-word blog post. On the other hand, the tweet will get seen by far more people than the post and be far more timely.

As with everything, it’s a tradeoff. I miss old-school blogging. A lot of people say good riddance to it. And the world moves on.

Originally posted here – 

Blogging Isn’t Dead. But Old-School Blogging Is Definitely Dying.

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Murder In Los Angeles Is Way Down Among Teenagers

by ThaliaMahony Posted on January 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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The LA Times reports that murder is becoming less common among teenagers:

“You’re not seeing youngsters like you have in the past,” said Det. Todd Anderson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “You used to see a lot more kids who were 16, 17, 18, 19. While it does still happen, it seems like they are getting a little bit older.”

In 2000, the average homicide victim was 30 years old and in 2014, the average victim was 34 years old, according to a Los Angeles Times data analysis. The shift comes as the total number of homicides falls.

Why?

George Tita, a criminologist at UC Irvine who studies homicide, said the increase in age is consistent with the changing nature of gang violence and the sharp decrease in killings throughout the county.

Others say that the trauma of losing brothers, cousins and fathers to street violence may make gang life less appealing to younger people. “It’s the little brother looking at what happened to the big brother and saying, ‘I don’t want to go that way,’” said Elliott Currie, another UC Irvine criminologist. “It’s something I think we criminologists don’t talk about enough.”

That may be part of the answer. But you’ll be unsurprised that there might be another, more plausible, reason: lead. Back in the 90s, the teenage and 20-something generations had grown up in the 70s and early 80s. This was an era of high lead emissions, and this lead poisoning affected their brains, causing them to become more violence-prone when they grew up.

Today’s teenagers, however, were born in the late 90s and early aughts. This was the era when leaded gasoline had finally been completely banned, so they grew up in a low-lead environment. As a result, they’re less violence prone than their older siblings and less likely to find refuge in gangs.

As always, lead is not the whole story. There have been other changes over the past couple of decades, and those changes may well have had an impact on both gangs and on crime more generally. But lead clearly has a generational impact. Younger kids are now less violent than in the past, while older folks haven’t changed much. They’ve gotten older, which has always been associated with a drop in violent crime, but their basic temperament is still scarred by a childhood filled with lead emissions from automobiles.

In any case, the age of a homicide victim is highly correlated with the age of the killer, and the chart above, excerpted from the Times story, shows homicide victimization age in 2000 and 2014. The huge bulge between age 15-30 is nearly gone, which is just what you’d expect if lead played an important role in violent crime. There may be less mystery here than the experts think.

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Murder In Los Angeles Is Way Down Among Teenagers

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I’ve Never Gotten an Annual Physical. How About You?

by RomeoEletzcdv Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Ezekiel Emanuel passes along the results of research about the value of getting an annual physical exam:

The unequivocal conclusion: the appointments are unlikely to be beneficial. Regardless of which screenings and tests were administered, studies of annual health exams dating from 1963 to 1999 show that the annual physicals did not reduce mortality overall or for specific causes of death from cancer or heart disease. And the checkups consume billions, although no one is sure exactly how many billions because of the challenge of measuring the additional screenings and follow-up tests.

How can this be? There have been stories and studies in the past few years questioning the value of the physical, but neither patients nor doctors seem to want to hear the message. Part of the reason is psychological; the exam provides an opportunity to talk and reaffirm the physician-patient relationship even if there is no specific complaint. There is also habit. It’s hard to change something that’s been recommended by physicians and medical organizations for more than 100 years. And then there is skepticism about the research. Almost everyone thinks they know someone whose annual exam detected a minor symptom that led to the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer, or some similar lifesaving story.

This is a funny thing. I’ve never had an annual physical. This isn’t for any specific reason. It just never occurred to me, and none of my doctors has ever recommended it. I’ve probably had half a dozen different primary care physicians over my adult life, and not one of them has ever suggested I should be getting an annual physical.

I’m not sure what this means. Is the annual physical something that doctors only do if their patients ask? Or have I just had an unusual bunch of doctors over the years? What’s your experience with this?

And as long as I’m noodling about stuff like this, here’s a thought that passed through my brain the other day. I was thinking about the fact that one of the indicators of the multiple myeloma that I was diagnosed with comes from blood tests. So why not test routinely for the markers of multiple myeloma? The answer is obvious: you’d be performing millions of blood tests every year with a vanishingly small chance of finding anything. What’s more, there are lots of different cancers. Are you going to draw a few pints of blood every year and test for all of them at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars? That makes no sense in otherwise healthy people.

But this got me thinking about that new blood testing technique I wrote about a few months ago. In a nutshell, it requires only a tiny amount of blood, and the tests themselves are super cheap. If this works as advertised—and presumably gets even cheaper with time—does it open up new possibilities for an annual physical that actually makes sense? Would it be possible to draw no more than a standard vial of blood once a year, and then perform a huge variety of tests at a cost of a few hundred dollars? The odds of finding anything would still be small, but it might nonetheless be worth it if the cost both in time and money was also small.

Of course, there are still problems with false positives and so forth, even if the cost of this regimen was small. So maybe it would be a lousy idea regardless of its feasibility. I really have no idea. But it’s an intriguing possibility.

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I’ve Never Gotten an Annual Physical. How About You?

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Mystery Chart of the Day: What’s Up With All the Skinny Economists?

by MatthewBrower Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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The chart on the right is excerpted from the Wall Street Journal. It shows which occupations have the lowest obesity rates, and most of it makes sense. There are folks who do a lot of physical labor (janitors, maids, cooks, etc.). There are health professionals who are probably hyper-aware of the risks of obesity. There are athletes and actors who have to stay in shape as part of their jobs.

And then, at the very bottom, there are economists, scientists, and psychologists. What’s up with that? Why would these folks be unusually slender? I can’t even come up with a plausible hypothesis, aside from the possibility that these professions attract rabid obsessives who are so devoted to their jobs that they don’t care about food. Aside from that, I got nothing. Put your best guess in comments.

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Mystery Chart of the Day: What’s Up With All the Skinny Economists?

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