LEGACY - The Obama Years

"Can a president's farewell speech help write history?" PBS NewsHour 1/10/2017

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SUMMARY:  President Obama will deliver a farewell address to the nation in Chicago on Tuesday evening.  Why do presidents give goodbye remarks?  Judy Woodruff gets historical context on past speeches and the shaping of political legacy from presidential historian Michael Beschloss and Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard University Law School.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  President Obama will deliver his farewell address to the nation this evening before a room full of supporters in Chicago.

We discuss a little of the Obama legacy and look ahead to tonight's speech with two historians, NewsHour regular Michael Beschloss, and Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard University.

And we welcome both of you back to the NewsHour.

Michael, let me start with you.

How often do Presidents give farewell addresses?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian:  Well, George Washington began the tradition, but it's really been more a thing of modern times begun by Harry Truman, who did one from the Oval Office when he retired in 1953.

But they don't always work.  The ones that really work are when you have the sense that the President is sort of leveling with you in a way that perhaps he wasn't able to during his four or eight years in office.  So, he's saying something that you haven't heard before with new candor.

And the other thing is that when he says something that sounds as if it's a lesson he's learned that perhaps he didn't know before.  The best example of this, Eisenhower in 1961, said, worry about the military industrial complex.

It was something that he had been increasingly worried about for a long time, but this was the first time he said it to the public.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Annette Gordon-Reed, of course, it's speculation, but why do you think President Obama wants to do this?

ANNETTE GORDON-REED, Harvard University Law School:  Well, he's in an interesting position.

The election didn't turn out the way he probably thought it was going to turn out.  This is a chance to cement his legacy and talk about the kinds of things that he wanted to do as President.  And he is facing a situation where people might try to undo a good amount of that.

So, I think this is a good way for him to sort of lay a template, perhaps, for historians later on, even though that's almost an impossible thing to do.  But I think it's a way for him to talk about his legacy, to sort of say to the American people what was important to him, what he thinks he accomplished as President.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And, Michael, there is some reporting over the last few days that the president may be rethinking how he wants to spend his post-presidency, given the outcome of the election.  Could this be part of that?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS:  Might very well be.  He might spend a lot more time replying and criticizing things that Donald Trump may be doing as President.

And if that's true, he's got to have some kind of foreshadowing of that in this speech tonight.  One thing everyone will be wondering is, what is his current thinking about Trump?  Right after the election, he seemed quite moderate about it, hoping perhaps to coax Donald Trump to make more moderate appointments and more moderate policies than he was expecting to.

But that's all over now.  So, if Barack Obama gets through this speech and there's not some, you know, genuine statement from him saying, you know, the country has to worry a little bit about what the new President is doing and, you know, perhaps think about a different direction, then I think we may not feel that he's really leveling with us in the way that other Presidents have.

"How Obama left his mark on the criminal justice system" PBS NewsHour 1/10/2017

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SUMMARY:  President Obama has commuted the sentences of more federal prisoners than any other president, and he's on track to leave far fewer federal inmates in federal prison since the 1960s.  Hari Sreenivasan offers a look through the life of a former prisoner.  Then William Brangham gets an assessment from Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and former Florida attorney general Bill McCullum.

"Obama's ‘bold, yet fragile' climate legacy" PBS NewsHour 1/11/2017

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SUMMARY:  President Obama is passionate, and vocal, about combating climate change.  As his tenure draws to a close, science correspondent Miles O'Brien reviews the administration's environmental policy -- from the 2009 “cap-and-trade” climate bill, to the 2015 Paris Accord, to executive orders on greenhouse gas emissions -- in assessing the President's legacy.

"Is Obama's economic legacy one of missed opportunity or success?" PBS NewsHour 1/12/2017

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SUMMARY:  What is President Obama's economic legacy?  Did his efforts to turn the country around after the 2008 financial crisis constitute a robust recovery, or too little, too late?  Economics correspondent Paul Solman assembled a panel of economic experts to discuss employment across racial groups, the types of jobs created and the obstacles the President faced in enacting his economic agenda.

ON THE PARANOIA FRONT - Microsoft on the Bandwagon

"Microsoft sues DOJ over demands for access to customer data" PBS NewsHour 4/15/2016

Here we go again.  The paranoia over privacy that helps criminals and terrorists hide from the law, even with a legal warrant.

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SUMMARY:  In the wake of the FBI’s showdown with Apple last month, a new tech giant is taking up arms against government oversight.  Microsoft sued the Department of Justice Thursday, arguing that it is unconstitutional for the government to request access to a customer’s data while banning Microsoft from informing the individual in question.  Microsoft president Brad Smith joins Judy Woodruff for more.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A high-profile showdown between a tech giant and the U.S. government over accessing private data.

This time, it’s Microsoft.  Yesterday, the company filed a suit against the Department of Justice in federal court.  Microsoft argues it’s unconstitutional for the government to ask for customers’ personal data or e-mails in most cases without the individuals’ knowledge.  The company says it’s received more than 5,600 requests for such data from the government in the last year-and-a-half, often from the cloud or remote servers.  And nearly half of those requests come with a ban from the government on alerting customers.

Brad Smith is the president of Microsoft.  He joins me from company headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

And welcome to the program, Brad Smith.

I do want to point out we invited the Department of Justice to join the interview, but they declined.

So, let me begin by asking you, what is it that the federal government is doing that Microsoft doesn’t like?

BRAD SMITH, President, Microsoft:  Well, what gives us concern is the fact we have received almost 2,600 — almost 2,600 of these so-called gag or secrecy orders over the last 18 months.

Over two-thirds of them have no end date at all.  So it means that we are permanently prohibited from telling customers that the government has accessed, read and obtained copies of their e-mails.  We feel that infringes on the constitutional rights of consumers and businesses to be secure from unreasonable government searches.

It infringes on our First Amendment right to speak, to share information with our customers.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, we know the Justice Department has not responded to the lawsuit.  They have not said anything publicly, but we know that in the past they have said these are investigations that involve criminals, people who are breaking the law, that involve — that are perhaps involved in potential terrorist acts.

Why not work with the government when they’re trying to go after the bad guys?

BRAD SMITH:  Well, this is an issue that we have discussed with various officials in government for some time.

And we readily recognize that there are many cases where there should be some kind of secrecy, that there is a real danger if information is disclosed.  But we feel that these kinds of secrecy orders have been — become too routine.  They’re being issued in cases that involve businesses, as well as consumers.

.....

...hence, the paranoia.  Like businesses can't be criminals or help terrorists hide?  Also, lets warn the criminals BEFORE they are brought to trial, think secret Grand Juries.  Oh, wait, the Black-WEB sites used by drug lords and terrorists to hide.  Humm.... could it be the big profits such companies make laundering hiding money?

JUSTICE IN AMERICA - Reform

"Criminal justice reform gains bipartisan momentum" PBS NewsHour 7/16/2015

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SUMMARY:  On Thursday, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, part of his larger campaign to encourage reform of the American criminal justice system.  Political director Lisa Desjardins reports he’s not the only politician pushing for reform, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are speaking out and offering proposals on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This week, the issue of criminal justice reform, who goes to prison in America, hit a kind of critical mass, with action from President Obama, in Congress and on presidential campaigns.

As part of our Broken Justice series, our Lisa Desjardins lays out the reform movement that both Republicans and Democrats are pushing, and which some in law enforcement want to push back.

LISA DESJARDINS (NewsHour):  It was a symbol intended to spark sweeping change, the first visit ever by a sitting U.S. president to a federal prison.  President Obama’s walk today through the El Reno facility outside Oklahoma City capped off his weeklong push on what he calls a broken criminal justice system.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  These are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made.

LISA DESJARDINS:  Monday, the President commutes sentences for 46 drug offenders.  Tuesday, at the NAACP National Convention in Philadelphia, the president speaks to the racial disparity within the prison population.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  African-Americans and Latinos make up 30 percent of our population.  They make up 60 percent of our inmates.  About one in every 35 African-American men, one in every 88 Latino men is serving time right now.  Among white men, that number is one in 214.

LISA DESJARDINS:  President Obama is adding his voice to a bipartisan call for reform of the criminal justice system.

Today, Republican presidential hopeful and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie released his plan to educate prisoners.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, Republican Presidential Candidate:  If we’re going to incarcerate people, then we should make them do something productive, not just sit around watching TV all day.  One solution is to require inmates to try and get their GED before release, so they have some minimum qualifications.

LISA DESJARDINS:  Reforming criminal justice is on the radar of nearly all those who would be President.  In the past few months, 18 of the current 20 presidential candidates have argued for some kind of change.

Up on Capitol Hill, ideas have made it into a group of bills that are moving toward floor votes.  A House Oversight Committee hearing this week reviewed a number of reform proposals, including a bill sponsored by Senate Republican John Cornyn.

BROKEN JUSTICE - Baltimore and Beyond

"Perception of the police depends on your Baltimore zip code" PBS NewsHour 4/30/2015

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SUMMARY:  Two neighborhoods in Baltimore are less than a mile apart, but have vastly different relations with the police.  Hari Sreenivasan looks at how residents of the two communities are dealing with the recent unrest.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  As we’ve been reporting, Wednesday night in Baltimore was calm, in part because of the continuing beefed-up enforcement and in part because most residents are complying with the curfew.

NewsHour senior correspondent Hari Sreenivasan spent time in Baltimore, reporting on how two vastly different neighborhoods coexist.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  In the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore, a woman named Marilyn on Appleton street takes pride in the garden she’s tending on her front porch…

Pride in the tiny corner of the city she’s been able to clean up in the house that has been in her husband’s family since 1959.

But she is also scared. Scared to give us her last name because of the troublemakers in Sandtown.  An element she suspects is behind the recent riots and looting….

She fears retaliation from them for speaking her mind.

MARILYN:  We have drug dealers trying to come on our block down the corner, or whatever, we call the police, they do come, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

They should have buried that man peacefully, like his family asked, what they did, I think they did because I think they just wanted to steal, they wanted to take.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The past two days have been stressful for Marilyn, and her blood pressure has gone up, looters destroyed the CVS where she filled her prescriptions.

MARILYN:  I don’t have my blood pressure medicine, I don’t have my medicine, period.  Now I gotta find another CVS that didn’t get broken in or burnt down

HARI SREENIVASAN:  For her cousin, Gregg Lee, a block captain in Sandtown the recent violence and distrust are symptoms of a larger change in policing.

GREGG LEE:  You don’t see an officer walking around, only time you see an officer is, they in the car, they on the way they… woosh flying.  When I was coming up as a kid, you had foot patrol.

"Do Baltimore’s charges against police signal a change?" PBS NewsHour 5/1/2015

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SUMMARY:  To learn more about the charges against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, Judy Woodruff talks to David Harris of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and former Baltimore prosecutor Debbie Hines.

"Criminal justice is so broken, Democrats and Republicans are working together to fix it" PBS NewsHour 4/30/2015

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SUMMARY:  The U.S. accounts for just 5 percent of the world’s population, but it houses more than 20 percent of its prisoners.  Now groups on opposite sides of the political spectrum are working together to overhaul the country’s criminal justice system.  Judy Woodruff learns more about the Coalition for Public Safety from Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress and Mark Holden of Koch Industries.