The Choice, Part 1

Thursday, October 20, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

For the next three meetings, we will Zoom-In on the 2016 election, mostly but not limited to the presidential election. We will start on the day after the final presidential debate; so we will begin the meeting with an open discussion about the debate series. For the remainder of the meeting, we will view and discuss the Frontline special, The Choice 2016, about the biographies of Clinton and Trump. This is a two hour documentary, so it will span possibly the following two meetings.

---------------------------------------- Updated 10/21/16 -------------------------------------

Here is a link to the addition video shown:

• Hillary Clinton’s 3 debate performances left the Trump campaign in ruins

Police Under Fire

Thursday, October 13, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

We will conclude our Broken Windows series with a look at police misbehavior. While recent events seem to indicate that the situation is out of control, the underlying problems have been identified since Ferguson. Obama has taken steps to solve the problem, but it will take time. Until Obama's reforms are enacted, communities have taken action with program like CopWatch. These are the videos that we will review:

• Police Accountability
• Baltimore cop tells all
• Ferguson Revisited
• Obama's COPS Task Force, PDF
• CopWatch

Penalties of Law

Thursday, October 6, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Two meetings ago we discussed that Broken Windows may not have caused the drop in crime of the 90s. In this meeting, we will discuss how Broken Windows may be the underlying cause of the current conflict between the police and their community. In particular, excessive policing of minor offenses results in an overwhelming economic burden on the underclass due to excessive penalties.

Emmy Award winning comedian John Oliver gives three examples of excessive policing:

• Municipal Violations
• Civil Forfeiture
• Bail

Abortion Politics

Thursday, September 29, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Last week we examined the alternatives explanations to the crime drop of the 1990s, thus further discrediting the Broken Windows Theory, the primary justification for zero tolerance policing. The surprising cause, credited for a third of the crime drop, was the demographic change due to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Not surprisingly, this reason is rarely mentioned.

Abortion is a topic we have so far avoided in our discussion group. But now I have opened the issue, I cannot just put it aside. So for this meeting, the topic will be the politics of abortion, how this became such a hot button issue and its impact on the current presidential race. I could not find any videos which had an intelligent discussion on abortion which could not be accused of taking a political side. But I did find some material from the late night comics, whose we generally give license to be biased.

• Samantha Bee recounts the untold history of abortion politics
• An apology by one of the founders of the Pro-Life movement
• John Oliver explains the state laws used to restrict legal abortion
• The Supreme Court decision on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt

-------------------------------------- Updated 9/29/16 -----------------------------------

These are the additional videos shown at the meeting:

• Al Jazeera's report on Texas HB2
• Mike Pence speaks on Pro Life
• Tim Kaine speaks on Pro Choice

The Freakonomics of the Crime Drop

Thursday, September 22, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Malcolm Gladwell acknowledges the problems with "Broken Windows", but he wants to know what else could have caused the dramatic drop in crime in the 90s. Another famous author, Steven Levitt, answered that question in his book, Freakonomics. Chapter 4 of that book ranks all the proposed reasons for the crimes drop, and identifies an important reason that was overlooked. Unfortunately, that reason was so controversial that Levitt's challenge to Broken Windows is rarely discussed.

For our meeting we will go over Levitt's analysis. There is no good video on YouTube; so I will use excerpts from the audiobook during the meeting. For those that want to read about the analysis, but don't have the book, there is a PDF online.

----------------------------------- Updated 9/22/16 --------------------------------------

Here is the link to the short video shown at the beginning of the meeting:

• Origin of Broken Windows

Broken Windows and the Baltimore Police

Thursday, September 15, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Malcolm Gladwell's story on NYPD "Broken Windows" policy may have been instrumental in spreading it across the nation, including to Baltimore where it is called Zero Tolerance. This policy was rebuked in the AG report on the Baltimore Police. For our next meeting we will discuss the Broken Windows policy and its effect on the Baltimore Police.

• A retrospective on Gladwell's story on Broken Windows, Part 1, Part 2
• Zero Tolerance in the AG BPD Report
• The effort to end Broken Windows in New York, HERE, HERE and HERE

Malcolm Gladwell

Thursday, September 8, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Malcolm Gladwell is arguably one of the most influential authors of our time. The concepts he popularized, like Tipping Point, Matthew Effect and 10,000 Hours of Practice, are now part of regular public discourse. In the previous meeting, we explored Moral Licensing, which Gladwell recently introduced in his Revisionist History podcast. In the meeting after this, we will explore Broken Windows, an older theme from his early work, and is now at the heart of the controversy of policing. For the upcoming meeting, we will watch Gladwell's three TED Talks, which cover a range of topics. In each of the following talks, Gladwell tells you something different about a subject that you thought you knew everything about, and then broadens its scope so that it has a major impact on the way you look at the world.

• David and Goliath
• The Norden Bombsight
• Spaghetti Sauce