Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 273
December 16, 2015
A Mistrial in the Freddie Gray Case
A judge in Baltimore has declared a mistrial in the case of William Porter, one of six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man whose death in April while in police custody sparked riots in Baltimore.
After deliberating for more than 16 hours over three days, the jury informed Judge Barry Williams that it could not reach an agreement on any of the four charges against Porter. It’s unclear how the jury was split on the charges, and unclear if that information will be made public.
“You have taken your time” and “clearly been diligent,” Williams said before dismissing them, and declaring a mistrial.
The date for a new trial will be set Thursday, but the development leaves the trials—and fates—of the other five officers charged in Gray’s death on shaky ground.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake urged calm.
“In the coming days, if some choose to demonstrate peacefully to express their opinion, that is their constitutional right,” she said in a statement. “I urge everyone to remember that collectively, our reaction needs to be one of respect for our neighborhoods, and for the residents and businesses of our city.”
The case has deeply divided the city, and there were small protests outside the court after the judge declared a mistrial.
Background:
Gray was arrested in West Baltimore on April 12 and taken face-down in the back of a police van—handcuffed and shackled, but not in a seatbelt— to the police station. By the time he got there, half an hour later, he couldn’t breathe or walk, having sustained spinal injuries. He died April 19.
It’s unclear why Gray was arrested in the first place. He took off running when an officer made eye contact with him, the city said. Officers pursued—and arrested—him. They said they found a switchblade in his pocket, which is illegal under city code.
We don’t know why Gray ran, though he had been previously arrested on minor drugs charges. An investigation by the prosecutor’s office in Baltimore found police had no reason to detain Gray, and his arrest itself had been illegal. The knife that officers found in his possession wasn’t a switchblade, and hence legal, prosecutors said. Marilyn Mosby, the city’s chief prosecutor called Gray’s death a homicide in May, and announced criminal charges against six Baltimore Police Department officers, including Porter, involved in the arrest. A grand jury subsequently returned indictments against the six officers.
Porter’s role
Porter is the first officer to be tried in the case. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office—and faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted of all those charges. He pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say he didn’t put Gray in a seatbelt— in violation of the police department’s policy—and failed to call medical aid when it became clear Gray was injured.
At issue in the case was is an officer’s failure to act a crime?
During the trial, which began December 1, prosecutors alleged Porter denied Gray medical care though he was injured. The Baltimore Sun points out “the standards for winning such a case are higher than in civil court, where similar cases have landed.”
So while legal experts said it’s clear that police officers have a legal obligation to their prisoners, exactly what breaches of that responsibility amount to a crime remains a difficult question to answer.
They also alleged that Porter, by not securing Gray in a seatbelt, had violated department policy. But Gary Proctor, Porter’s defense attorney, contended that few officers actually followed the seatbelt procedure. He noted that Porter, a native of West Baltimore, checked on Gray at a later stop and helped to pull him up on to a bench—but did not fasten Gray’s seatbelt.
Porter himself told the court he didn’t call for medical help because there were no obvious signs of injuries on Gray. He then said he realized the extent of Gray’s injuries only on the van’s final stop. He said there was mucous around Gray’s nose and mouth, prompting him and another officer to put Gray in what he called a "lifesaving position” and waited until a medic arrived. And, he said, he didn’t out Gray in a seatbelt in part because he was afraid Gray would gain access to his gun.
As my colleague David Graham pointed out, Gray wasn’t the first person injured while riding in a police van.
In 2004, a man named Jeffrey Alston won $39 million from Baltimore after he was paralyzed from the neck down during a police-van ride. The following year, Dondi Johnson Sr. won $7.4 million after a ride left him a paraplegic. In 2013, Johns Hopkins librarian Christine Abbott filed a suit against the department for a "rough ride" after a 2012 arrest that resulted from a noise complaint. Her lawyer alleges she was not buckled and an officer drove "maniacally" as she was taken in, throwing her around the unpadded van. (Abbott is white; Alston and Johnson, like Gray, are black.) Arrestees and advocates say drivers will jam to abrupt stops and take corners hard to toss riders around. In addition to rough rides, my colleague Conor Friedersdorf notes, the Baltimore Police Department has a long and ignominious rap sheet of brutality not befitting a place that calls itself Charm City.
Impact of Gray’s death
Protests, mostly peaceful, but also violent, began soon after Gray’s death, another high-profile fatal encounter between a black man and police. In apparent response, Rawlings-Blake fired Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, said the city would pay Gray’s family $6.4 million to settle any civil claims in his death, and, just days after that announcement, said she won’t run for reelection.
Then came Mosby’s charges against the other officers—charges, experts say, are stronger than she can get a conviction for.
David Jaros, an associate professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, told Graham:
There's good reason to think that Mosby was driven by political considerations, and it’s quite possible that the charges she filed against the officers are stronger than she can get a conviction for. While that’s cause for concern, it’s also absolutely typical in criminal cases involving defendants who aren’t police...
The other officers:
Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. was charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years; involuntary manslaughter, two counts of vehicular manslaughter, second-degree assault, and misconduct in office. His trial is scheduled to begin January 6.
Lieutenant Brian Rice was charged with involuntary manslaughter, false imprisonment, second-degree assault, and misconduct in office.
Sergeant Alicia White was charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, and misconduct in office.
Officers Edward Nero and Garrett Miller, who initially arrested Gray, were charged with false imprisonment; second-degree assault, and misconduct in office.
All of the officers had been suspended with pay. Their trials are scheduled for early next year.
The Fed Raises Interest Rates
On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. The committee’s two-day meeting concluded with Fed officials voting unanimously in favor of the raise; the target range for the federal funds rate will move from between 0 percent and 0.25 percent to between 0.25 percent and 0.50 percent. Although this is “lift-off” from near-zero rates, these interest rates are still low by historical standards.
The Federal Funds Rate, 2003 to 2015
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What an Interest-Rate Hike Means for Non-Economists
Intense speculation about whether the central bank will change its monetary policy that’s been in place since 2007 has hovered around monthly Fed meetings since this summer. It was widely expected that the Fed would move to raise interest rates at the December Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, as the U.S. economy has shown a steady recovery. The Fed has also been readying investors and hinting at a rate hike for months.
In a statement, the FOMC wrote:
The Committee judges that there has been considerable improvement in labor market conditions this year, and it is reasonably confident that inflation will rise, over the medium term, to its 2 percent objective. Given the economic outlook, and recognizing the time it takes for policy actions to affect future economic outcomes, the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/4 to 1/2 percent. The stance of monetary policy remains accommodative after this increase, thereby supporting further improvement in labor market conditions and a return to 2 percent inflation.
As Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen noted in a recent speech, an interest-rate hike is a signal that the economy is improving.
The Deepening Mystery of the San Bernardino Shooters' Social-Media Postings
Did American intelligence miss crucial warning signs about San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik? FBI Director James Comey sought to dampen speculation on Wednesday morning, speaking with New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.
For years before they attacks, “they are communicating online, showing signs in that communication of their joint commitment to jihad and to martyrdom,” he said. “Those communications are private direct messages.”
In fact, he said, there was no evidence of public postings that might have raised red flags.
Related Story
“So far in this investigation, we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period of time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad and to martyrdom,” Comey said. “I’ve seen some reporting on that and that’s a garble. The investigation continues, but we have not found that kind of thing.”
Soon after the attacks, multiple news organizations reported, generally with Facebook’s say-so, that Malik had posted on Facebook a pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS chief. At the time, the FBI merely said it was aware of the reports. But in recent days, news reports have raised questions about whether the Department of Homeland Security should have noticed postings by Malik that might have telegraphed her intention to conduct an attack. According to some reports, U.S. investigators are barred from even checking the social-media presence of visa applicants. During Tuesday’s Republican debate, candidate Carly Fiorina blasted the process. “For heaven's sakes, every parent in America is checking social media and every employer is as well, but our government can’t do it,” she said. “The bureaucratic procedures are so far behind. Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt. And that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous.”
But Comey’s comments suggest that even if DHS’s policies are overripe for review, it might not have made much difference in this particular case. While he declined to name the social network or networks involved, what Comey said corresponds with a Los Angeles Times report from Monday that noted that investigators have found private communications:
San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.
As Comey noted on Monday, the FBI does not—and, he implicitly argued, should not—comb through direct communications that American citizens send unless there’s probable cause to be doing so. It’s not clear whether metadata on this sort of message would have been swept up in the NSA’s collection of information. After widespread backlash to the revelations provided by Edward Snowden about mass surveillance, there’s been a turn toward a demand for greater surveillance since the San Bernardino attacks, both in public polling and by politicians.
The messages were also, Comey said, general in nature—about a commitment to jihad, rather than about specific plots.
Comey’s comments leave some important questions unanswered. The way that officials talk about internet tools is often unusual or somewhat opaque. “These communications are private direct messages, not social-media messages,” he said. Comey offered no indication he was contradicting news reports of Malik’s Facebook pledge of allegiance, though his comments could be read to do so.
The fact that the messages in question were private, beyond the reasonable ken of law enforcement and well past constitutional limitations, is yet another indication of the steep challenge American officials face in trying to stop homegrown attackers who are inspired by ISIS or other terrorist groups but appear to be acting largely autonomously, without instruction from known terrorist leaders.
In the wake of an attack like this, it seems like digital evidence ought to have provided a key to stopping the carnage. But the evidence so far suggests the best chances at prevention would have been entirely analog: if someone in the family had reported the couple’s stockpiling of weapons, or given credence to the mutterings of a friend of Farook’s. Social media may have changed the way people live their lives, but some of the most important crime-fighting techniques are centuries old.
What's Inside Congress's Huge New Spending Bill?
An end to the 40-year-old ban on the exporting of U.S. crude oil. Delays in the collection of two unpopular Obamacare taxes. A major increase in research funding for the National Institutes of Health. A permanent extension of benefits to treat first responders poisoned by the toxic air above Ground Zero in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Restrictions on the ability of the IRS and SEC to regulate political activity by tax-exempt groups.
Those were just a few of the key policy changes that congressional negotiators agreed to as part of an enormous tax-and-spending package released in the wee hours of Tuesday night. The spending portion of the deal clocks in at 2,009 pages and contains $1.15 trillion in funding for the federal government through next September. Congressional leaders posted another 233 pages of tax policy, which makes permanent dozens of important tax breaks for individuals and businesses. That measure could cost at least $650 billion over the next decade and possibly as much as $780 billion, according to one preliminary estimate.
And don’t expect most members of Congress to read the thousands of pages of text before they vote on it: In a rush to complete their work and return home for Christmas, the House and Senate plan to pass the bills by Friday. “Let me be the first to say, I don’t think this is the way government should work,” House Speaker Paul Ryan lamented to reporters on Wednesday morning, even as he crowed about some of the victories that Republicans secured in the negotiations.
Indeed, the omnibus spending bill was the unfinished work of Ryan’s predecessor, John Boehner, who sealed an agreement that set the top-line budget numbers before he departed Congress at the end of October. Ryan was left to fill in the details, and most of the haggling he and Republican appropriators had to do with Democrats and the White House centered not on dollar amounts but on policy riders—restrictions in the way the government can spend the money Congress allocates. Those provisions are particularly important because in an era when relatively few bills get through Congress, omnibus spending bills are often the best—and sometimes only—opportunity for lawmakers to get their policy prerogatives into law.
“Let me be the first to say, I don’t think this is the way government should work.”“We are exercising the power of the purse,” Ryan said. “Are we exercising the power of the purse as much as I would like to? No, but that’s what you get in divided government.”
By far the biggest policy win for Republicans in the spending bill was lifting the 1970s-era ban on selling crude oil overseas. The steep drop in oil prices made that possible, and proponents said that in addition to bolstering the bottom lines of domestic energy producers, it would give the United States added foreign-policy leverage in disputes with the oil-rich nations of the Middle East. But in order to get support from Democrats concerned about promoting fossil-fuel consumption, Republicans had to give up quite a bit.
Remember all those conservative demands that Congress defund Planned Parenthood? Or their insistence that lawmakers suspend the Syrian-refugee program following the terrorist attacks in Paris? Neither of those restrictions made it into the package. Republicans also lost out in their push to block EPA regulations and funding for the Obama administration’s climate plan, although they won more modest limits on environmental policy.
Good-government groups were angered by provisions aimed at restricting the IRS’s and SEC’s ability to regulate tax-exempt organizations, which Republicans demanded in response to the IRS’s acknowledgement that it inappropriately scrutinized conservative groups in 2012. But an attempt led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to weaken limits on spending by political parties was rebuffed.
Despite controlling both chambers of Congress, Republicans didn’t get more of their priorities in large part because of leverage held by House Democrats: Since a large bloc of conservatives won’t vote for any spending bill with a trillion-dollar price tag, Ryan knew he would have to rely on Democrats to pass it. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, demanded the extension of a series of tax credits for clean energy and for working families in exchange for consenting to lifting the ban on U.S. oil exports. As a result, the tax package enshrines several of the key provisions of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, including an expanded child tax credit and the refundable American Opportunity Tax Credit.
In some cases, entire new laws were attached to the spending bill. New York lawmakers—and former Daily Show host-turned-advocate Jon Stewart—won the inclusion of a permanent renewal of the World Trade Center Health Program. And privacy advocates were alarmed to see the addition of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. Major provisions that had bipartisan support were the increase in medical-research funding and delays to the Obamacare taxes on so-called “Cadillac” health plans and medical devices. Those levies had drawn opposition from labor unions and many congressional Democrats, even though the White House argued that they were important cost-control parts of the Affordable Care Act.
Despite their wins, Democrats remain broadly opposed to the tax bill, which they view as too favorable to corporations and fiscally irresponsible because it adds so much to the deficit solely through revenue reduction. Pelosi called the tax package “practically an immorality,” and even after the bills were released overnight, she suggested she was still pushing for additional changes sought by Democrats.
The unspoken understanding is that while Republicans will carry the tax bill when it comes to the House floor on Thursday, Democrats will provide the bulk of the votes for the spending bill on Friday. “I do believe we will have bipartisan votes on both of these bills,” Ryan predicted. The Senate then would vote on both measures as a package on Friday. While leaders were hoping to rush the bills into law, there was still time for the agreement to blow up, and the House on Wednesday quietly passed another six-day extension of temporary government funding—just in case.
‘Feliz Navidad’: How Jose Feliciano Won America's Heart
Welcome to The 12 Days of Christmas Songs: an attempt to uncover the forgotten history of some of the most memorable festive tunes. From December 14 through 25, we’ll be tackling one secular song and one holy song each day.
In 1968, the Puerto Rican musician Jose Feliciano performed his own rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a World Series game in Detroit. Today, the Latin jazz-infused interpretation has been called “trailblazing,” “heartfelt,” and “soaring.” But at the time he received only tepid applause, followed by jeers, followed by outcry from onlookers who called his version of the national anthem “unpatriotic.” “Some people wanted me deported—as if you can be deported to Puerto Rico,” Feliciano later said.
The incident didn’t ultimately tarnish his reputation. His album Feliciano! became a No. 2 hit on the Billboard charts, and he won two Grammys the following year. But it did make Feliciano realize the kind of pushback multicultural artists could face—a lesson he applied two years later when he wrote the now widely beloved Christmas song “Feliz Navidad.”
The 12 Days of Christmas Songs Reflections on the music of the season, both secular and sacredRead more
The song is big, bright, punchy, and warm; it could melt away all the snow in “White Christmas.” Just 20 words in English and Spanish make up its lyrics—forget the mental and verbal athleticism required to pull off “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” And when Feliciano sings it, he sounds nothing short of effusive in his desire to spread holiday joy: “From the bottom of my heeaaartt!!!” And you can feel that all that joy and earnestness, even if you don’t know quite know what “Prospero año y felicidad” means.
Now 45 years old, “Feliz Navidad” might never have existed had Feliciano not decided to tweak his initial vision. “If I had left it in Spanish only, then I knew the English stations might not play it,” Feliciano told Billboard last year. Which is where the lyric “I want to wish you a merry Christmas” came in handy as a kind of musical Trojan horse: “There was no way the stations could lock that song out of the programming.”
He was—and still is—right. Today, “Feliz Navidad” is one of the most popular Christmas songs in the U.S. and Canada. Every December, it finds its way into the top 10 of Billboard’s Holiday 100 list, alongside “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Let it Snow.” Feliciano, who recently turned 70, has performed his Christmas classic countless times (and has since reprised his national anthem several times as well). But in watching him, you don’t see an artist who entered the mainstream while in some ways operating on the fringes as a Latino musician from a U.S. territory. You see a man whose fingers move across the fretboard as though dancing. A man who, though he cannot see his audience (Feliciano is blind), nonetheless inspires them to stand up and dance and sing along from, yes, the bottom of their hearts.
What you won’t hear is a single “boo.”
Differing Approaches to a Similar Terror Threat
A terror threat on Tuesday that ultimately proved to be a hoax kept more than 600,000 children in Los Angeles from going to school. Meanwhile, thousands of miles east, a similar threat didn’t prevent another 1.1 million kids in New York from attending classes.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s decision to shut down on Tuesday earned it some criticism, notably from its New York counterparts. As my colleague Marina Koren noted, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio implied that Los Angeles had overreacted, while NYPD Chief William Bratton, a commissioner emeritus of the LAPD, dismissed the threat as something out of Homeland.
But as officials in Los Angeles took turns defending their decision, which was made less than two weeks after a terrorist attack killed 14 people in nearby San Bernardino, the divergence in responses came as the Department of Homeland Security was finalizing a new National Terrorism Advisory System. On Wednesday, the department rolled out the more comprehensive system.
The newest component of the alert system is called “Bulletins,” which provides an intermediate level of warning regarding potential terrorism threats.
NTAS Bulletins will provide information describing broader or more general trends and current developments regarding threats of terrorism. They will share important terrorism-related information with the American public and various partners and stakeholders, including in those situations where additional precautions may be warranted, but where the circumstances do not warrant the issuance of an “elevated” or “imminent” Alert. An NTAS Bulletin will summarize the issue and why it is important for public awareness, outline U.S. Government counterterrorism efforts, and offer recommendations to the public on how it can contribute to the overall counterterrorism effort.
It’s unclear how the system might have affected the response to the dual threats in Los Angeles and New York City on Tuesday, but as we noted earlier this month, The National Terrorism Advisory System has not issued a single alert since scrapping the infamous color-coded system in early 2011.
Our Favorite Songs of 2015
This list isn’t meant to be definitive. Instead, it’s an alphabetically ordered grab-bag of what some of The Atlantic's editors and writers listened to over and over againnon in 2015. You can listen along with our Spotify playlist.
“Ain’t It Sweet,” Phil Cook
On his excellent debut solo record, this guitarist, keyboardist, and singer (known for his work with Megafaun, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Justin Vernon’s Shouting Matches) takes an ecumenical jaunt through American music. “Ain’t It Sweet” is a layer cake of Southern rock: a rollicking guitar line, boogie-woogie bass, honky-tonk piano, Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, fiddle licks, and gospel-inflected vocals, topped off with a soaring slide-guitar solo. (Lowell George lives!) So much Americana takes itself too seriously, or insists on donning a long black veil of Appalachian dolor. This is a roots record that’s not afraid to have fun.
“The Blade,” Ashley Monroe
The title track from Monroe’s third album distills everything that makes the Knoxville native great: mellifluous vocals, folk-tinged harmonies, and jagged, caustic imagery. “I let your love in,” she sings, over a gentle piano hook and mournful slide guitar, “I have the scar. I felt the razor against my heart.” Love is patient, love is kind, as Monroe sings on another track, “If Love Was Fair”; love is also a sharp-edged tool used with surgical precision to exact maximum pain. It’s a gorgeous song, tempered with just the right amount of darkness to distinguish Monroe from her country peers.
“Blank Space,” Ryan Adams
2015 was the year of Taylor Swift: Of squads and stratospheric record sales and selfies and social-media supplicants begging for favor from their worthy idol. And then, in September, came 1989, an album by Ryan Adams covering Swift’s gangbusting record of the same name in its entirety. Not every song was a winner (the same could be said for the original, to be fair), but “Blank Space,” sung in Adams’s trademark wispy, ghostly vocals over just a simple guitar, with a string section kicking in in the second verse, mines real pathos out of Swift’s braggadocious melodrama.
“Change of the Guard,” Kamasi Washington
Every few years, someone crowns a new “savior of jazz.” The designation is almost always wrong, and besides, jazz doesn’t need saving. Still: Kamasi Washington is, if not savior, something special. At 34, he’s no untested prodigy, but 2015 was a breakout year. In addition to his work on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, he also released an aptly named debut, The Epic. The title of the lead track seems to be a statement of purpose, and it delivers with funky, hip-hop inflected, thickly layered sounds. It’s an accessible record, but it’s also honest-to-God jazz—swinging, bluesy, virtuosic.
“Chateau Lobby #4 (In C for Two Virgins),” Father John Misty
Every song on Father John Misty’s glorious I Love You, Honeybear tells a story; every one has gorgeous folk arrangement with big melodies; every one mixes cruel, ironic humor with an abiding belief in love and redemption. But only “Chateau Lobby #4” has a mariachi band propping up that last part. It’s the sound of someone with a jaundiced eye toward the institution of marriage falling helplessly into its clutches because the woman he’s met hates all the same things as him. There’s hope for all of us.
“Chillin’,” Rudresh Mahanthappa
This alto saxophonist’s Bird Calls is a quasi-Charlie Parker tribute: Mahanthappa deconstructs the legend’s music and repurposes it. The original source material is often well-obscured; forget it, and just focus on what Mahanthappa does with it. Like Parker’s bebop sides, it makes not-insignificant demands of the listener but more than rewards them. “Chillin’” kicks off with a snaky call-and-response between the trumpeter Arturo O’Farrill and Manhanthappa, then clears way for O’Farrill—all of 20 years old—to play an arresting solo. This isn’t background music; lose focus and it’ll sneak up on you and shake you awake.
“Clearest Blue,” CHVRCHES
A truth not sufficiently acknowledged is that the best running jam of all time is Britney Spears’s “Work Bitch” (TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me” is #2). “Clearest Blue,” from CHVRCHES’s sophomore album, is a good new addition to the list, teasing toward a beat drop that doesn’t come until two minutes and 13 seconds in but then powers on for the duration of the song. The clunkiness of the bass, paired with Lauren Mayberry’s angelic vocals, makes for eminently satisfying synthpop.
“Death,” Made in Heights
The fact that this track starts with the vocalist Kelsey Bulkin apologizing and then laughing hysterically hints that a title as stark as “Death” is maybe a misnomer. Made in Heights is a Los Angeles-based duo made up of Bulkin and the DJ/producer Sabzi; “Death” is maybe the standout track on 2015’s Without My Enemy What Would I Do: a sprawling, ethereal, chemically induced trip to heaven and back (the background vocals at the beginning sound like angels, or Enya, or both).
“Familiar,” Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment
For a few years now, Chance the Rapper has been a blessed source of positivity, warmth, and moral generosity in hip-hop. That is not the case in this song, which is mean and sexist and infuriatingly clever. Flutes trill playfully and the piano line reminds me “Walking on Sunshine,” but the track’s rappers use that perky backing to dismiss a certain kind of pretentious, stereotypical woman. Maybe you can defend the song by seeing it as part of Chance’s ongoing campaign against conformity, but mostly, I listen to laugh at King Louie saying “If this bitch from Paris then Paris is terrible.” Here’s what’s undeniably praiseworthy: The word “basic” doesn’t appear once.
“Fields of Our Home,” The Tallest Man on Earth
It isn’t a good year in music if there isn’t at least one Swedish folk act turning out lush melodic interpretations of Americana with an impish Scandinavian twist. 2014 boasted First Aid Kit’s Stay Gold; this year was all about Kristian Matsson, whose fourth album, Dark Bird Is Home, is full of haunting, Sigus Ros-esque tales of optimistic angst. “Fields of Our Home” is the most delicate, as Matsson sings about childhood memories in soaring, Dylan-scratchy style.
“Gimmie Love,” Carly Rae Jepsen
The manic-pixie madness of “Run Away With Me” might make for the standout track on E•MO•TION, but it ultimately lacks the ingredient that makes “Gimmie Love” so wonderful: vulnerability. Both songs’ titles (and choruses) are imperatives, appeals from a lover. And yet “Run Away With Me” sounds like an invitation while “Gimmie Love” sounds like a plea. Over a deep, languid beat, Jepsen asks, “Do you think that I want too much?” She’s torn between self-doubt (“I should have asked you to stay, begged you to stay”) and romantic abandon (“Fall into me”). So which side wins out? A clue: A warped, spooky voice that intones “gimme love” in the background early on eventually gives way to a soaring chorus of ohhhs—the sonic equivalent of a happy ending.
“Go Out,” Blur
The news that Blur would release their first album in more than a decade was met with huge excitement; the lead single, significantly less so. But “Go Out” is actually a fitting (and surprisingly addictive) comeback song for a band waking up, groggily, from a long hibernation to participate in the grind of existence again. Graham Coxon’s riff is a jagged migraine; Damon Albarn is basically moaning instead of singing; the bass and drums are good for the kind of dancing that’s just slouching on beat. But when everything revs up for the chorus, you suddenly get why the lyrics are about people drinking and screwing. Repetitive and tiring as it may often be be, life’s still life.
“Hotline Bling,” Drake
Drake spent a lot of 2015 attempting to replace his soft/sensitive/sweatered public image with that of a tough kingpin coldly destroying lesser rappers’ careers. The sales numbers said it was working, and then “Hotline Bling” came along to remind everyone of what really sets Aubrey Graham apart: his singing voice, his insecurity, his ear for sounds and styles unlike the rest of what’s on the radio. The lyrics condemn an ex for her new, fabulous lifestyle, but just end up implying that Drake feels bad about himself. The real trick of the song is how its smooth vocal topline is occasionally cut with a performatively macho grunt—“ever since I left the city YOO!”—which, now that I write it, seems like a pretty good metaphor for Drake’s career in general.
“I Admit I’m Scared,” Eskimeaux
I first discovered this crescendoing ode to the singer-songwriter Gabrielle Smith’s insecurities when she sang it for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, a performance that’s devastating in its emotional power (skip to 5:19). Her lyrics give form to the universal feeling of nagging self-doubt, speaking with an honesty that allows her to go beyond cliché. “If I had a dime for every time I’m freaking out,” she sings near the end, her voice on the verge of breaking.
“If It Takes a Lifetime,” Jason Isbell
A jaunty acoustic-guitar figure opens: Has Jason Isbell gotten soft and happy? Where are the desolate, minor-key laments of 2013’s Southeastern? Not to worry. Isbell—a meticulous crafter of songs and an eloquent spokesman for a certain kind of loving ambivalence about rural Southern life—hasn’t cheered up too much. If Kacey Musgraves’s narrators are desperate to escape suffocating small-town hypocrisy, “If It Takes a Lifetime” is the bittersweet song they might sing after they decide to come back home: resigned, but not defeated; wiser, but still wrestling the demons that drove them away in the first place.
“In Time,” FKA Twigs
The R&B experimentalist Tahliah Debrett Barnett sings here from the perspective of someone who wants more than she’s getting in a relationship, but she sounds anything but powerless. “In time, you’ll learn to say sorry and I will play tender with you” she whispers, a prophecy that comes off like a threat. The electronic arrangement pings and snaps and slithers, creating tension that only escalates during the complicatedly catchy chorus where she tells her defiant lover, “You’ve got a goddamn nerve.” Faced with a will this fearsome, it seems inevitable that her target will submit.
“King Kunta,” Kendrick Lamar
For one of the few To Pimp a Butterfly tracks with hit potential, the normally category-breaking Kendrick Lamar inhabits the rap trope of the infallible, rivals-conquering monarch. But because it’s Lamar, the disses and boasts are ornate and politically charged, drawing from West Indies slang and Roots; because it’s Lamar, the music’s a dizzying pastiche, thumping with echoes of Michael Jackson and Queen and James Brown. Impressively, he managed to fire the first shots in the great hip-hop ghostwriting war of 2015 without naming names and thereby getting dragged into a lyrical skirmish like Meek Mill did. Then again, as this song reminds us, he would have won if he had.
“La Loose,” Waxahatchee
It’s late May and you’ve driven with friends to some tourist-trap town, on the beach or in the mountains. The beer’s lukewarm, the afternoon’s humid, the trees are wilting, and you should be enjoying yourself, but you can’t relax now—because your crush is there too (!) and you two aren’t clicking (!?) and he or she doesn’t even seem to notice you (!!!???).
That’s “La Loose.” Waxahatchee, helmed by Katie Crutchfield, has written the best kind of summer jam—the emotionally ambivalent chilled-out summer jam—and its juvenile drum machine and whistle-along chorus are perfect not only for day-trip crushes but also for poolside make-outs and campfire BFF hang-outs. Waxahatchee gets grouped in with the contemporary punk lions they have shared a record label with—Screaming Females and Downtown Boys among them—but this song made me wonder if Crutchfield shouldn’t also be filed with “All I Wanna Do”-era Sheryl Crow.
“LIFE,” HEALTH
When I first heard “LIFE,” I was taken aback by the relatively gentle, earnest sound. Yes, the noise from HEALTH’s last album, 2009’s Get Color was still there—but not so much the aggression (most popularly heard on the band’s cover of Crystal Castles’ “Crimewave”). With “LIFE,” HEALTH sounded more like M83. This was not a bad thing! The lyrics are syrupy in the best kind of way (“Life is strange, but it’s all we got) and made especially dreamy by Jacob Duzsik’s vocals. And the chorus has the same ouroboros quality (“ouro-chorus”?) often responsible for the catchiest of refrains, the kind that feel like they could just go on forever: “I don’t know what I want, know that I don’t know what I want … No, nobody knows, nobody does nobody knows.”
“Lift Me Up,” Vince Staples
Staples’s “Summertime ’06” brims with genuinely dope beats and brutal, smart writing—a fact made clear from the outset with “Lift Me Up.” Religious imagery abounds, but Staples doesn’t see himself as a preacher or God Himself. He’s “a prophet just like Moses, if Moses looked like Shaka Zulu,” and his “mama was a Christian, crip-walking on blue waters.” More accurately, he’s a jaded disciple who still wants to believe: “I never vote for president, the presidents that change the hood is dead and green.” Which makes the chorus of “Lift Me Up” sound like a call to the divine for salvation, though eventually (after lines like “Can a motherfucker breathe?”) it’s more like an attempt to self-soothe after so many prayers have gone unanswered.
“My Baby Don’t Understand Me,” Natalie Prass
To call Natalie Prass’s voice’s “thin” is no diss: She has power and range, but the best thing about her singing is that it creates interesting shapes using a very delicate implement. A sense of fragility is vital to the opening song on her self-titled album, where woodwinds and brass closely shadow her melody as she unfolds the details of a relationship that has slowly, inexplicably deteriorated. It’s a remarkable display of musical control, in service of mourning something of which she has lost control.
“Nine South,” Chris Lightcap
The whimsically named bassist took five years to release a follow-up to his excellent Bigmouth. It was worth the wait. Lightcap’s recipe for success: complex, offbeat rhythms; tight harmonies from the two-saxophone frontline; and perhaps most importantly, Craig Taborn’s piano. It’s Taborn’s kaleidoscopic, percussive Wurlitzer piano figure that kicks off the exhilarating romp “Nine South.” There’s a lot of Ornette Coleman here—like the way Lightcap floats like Charlie Haden, or the way the rhythm section and the horns seem to drift in and out of alignment. It’s some of the best small-group jazz composing on the scene today.
“Non-Stop,” Hamilton Original Broadway Cast
Hamilton is two-and-a-half hours long, and yet it barely fits in all of Alexander Hamilton’s major accomplishments. “Non-Stop” both embodies this fact and is basically about this fact. A musical in miniature, its uproarious and carefully crafted vignettes-as-verses touch on America’s first murder trial, Hamilton’s political beginnings in Albany, the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers, and Hamilton’s appointment to Treasury Secretary. Appropriately, the music’s a sublime genre jumble: rhythms evoking Alexander’s Caribbean origins, classic hip-hop record scratches, and various themes of the first act merging in a glorious Broadway crescendo. A dozen astonished listens later, I still feel like the delegates taking in Hamilton six-hour-long convention speech: “Bright young man! / Yo, who the eff is this!?”
“No Sleeep,” Janet Jackson
The three e’s in the song title don’t really refer to how Janet Jackson pronounces the words. The misspelling’s more about the visuals: smooth repetition, round edges, the suggestion of eternity. Accordingly, the song is all softness on softness, creating a reverie where the only reminder of time is the click of the beat. Jackson returned this year to argue that love can provide an escape that’s purer, more blissful, than anything in your dreams.
“The Only Thing,” Sufjan Stevens
Seven songs into his album mourning the mother who he barely knew, Sufjan Stevens sings of considering suicide. Heavily. What keeps him from “driving this car, half-light, jack-knife into the canyon at night” are small, seemingly random images—astrological phenomena, possibly Biblical signs, moments of natural beauty. His faith here is tied not to any one religion but rather to the idea that life has meaning, or at least the idea that it could have meaning. He sings in a calm, multi-tracked lilt with sudden jags to the falsetto of the inconsolable. That the song gets stuck in your head, and that it offers comfort even as it describes utter sorrow, is a wonder in itself.
“Pedestrian at Best,” Courtney Barnett
The first song off the indie-rock Australian’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit makes a game of finding different ways to express self-loathing. But Barnett’s words only ever feel half-serious. Her delivery, reminiscent of a bored Jonathan Richman, sits one level below disgust, and one level about disinterest: “I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny.” The scuzzy, bouncy guitars vacillate between poppy and taunting. And Barnett’s lyrics manage a kind of dramatic, juvenile eloquence. “I wanna wash out my head with turpentine, cyanide/ I dislike this internal diatribe when I try to catch your eye,” Barnett wails, and suddenly you understand what it would have sounded like if MTV’s Daria had written a song about her unrequited love for Trent.
“REALiTi (Demo),” Grimes
A few of my friends say that when you’re dealing with life’s arduous administrivia, you’re adulting. It’s a verb: I adult, you adult, she adults. In a sentence: “I did some good adulting this morning—I woke up early, worked out, and mailed my tax return.”
Is there any artist who recognizes the importance of emotionally adulting quite like Claire Boucher, the Canadian singer-producer known as Grimes? “Flesh Without Blood,” off her baroque masterpiece Art Angels, contained 2015 pop’s best slant rhyme and its best moment of romantic realism: “It’s nice that you say you like me / But only conditionally.” But it’s not to snub Art Angels that I picked the version of “REALiTi” which doesn’t appear on the album. It’s just that this original “REALiTi” features Grimes at her most shimmering, impressive, and mature. “REALiTi” is an anthem for persistence, for handling the consuming struggles of life day after day, that manages to feel like life itself: enchanting, terrifying, melancholic and lovely in its detail.
“Sandra’s Smile,” Blood Orange
During a published conversation with Julian Casablancas this year, the R&B and pop producer Dev Hynes recalled how, after Trayvon Martin’s death, he recorded an album’s worth of songs about race and justice—but then decided he didn’t want to face the risks that came with releasing it. Recently, though, he’s been getting more pointed in his work, culminating in “Sandra’s Smile.” On it, he sings about not only the death of Sandra Bland in police custody but also the fatigue and sadness he feels after hearing about so many similar incidents. The music’s just a spare thump and a simple melody, made especially powerful by the implication that such an arrangement was all he could muster.
“Sorry,” Justin Bieber
Enough with the guilty admissions about liking “the new Justin Bieber.” You’re allowed to enjoy Purpose, or even select singles, without explaining at length how you never thought you’d be into music made by the same kid who crooned “Baby” while also looking like a baby himself. Or without opining that it’s really Diplo and Skrillex who fixed Bieber’s sound. Pop music’s apology subgenre has its share of bummers, but wallowing isn’t the point of “Sorry.” It’s a not-quite-banger that manages to be wild and propulsive despite its generally chill, tropical sound. (Still don’t believe me? Watch the magnificent dance video Bieber released for the single.)
“Sparks,” Beach House
I’ve referred to “Sparks” as “The MBV song” ever since I first heard it earlier this year. It’s a cheap comparison, maybe, because My Bloody Valentine doesn’t own the rights to churning shoegaze, or ghostly, layered vocals, or communicating beauty and loss through noise. “Sparks” sounds little like anything else in Beach House’s discography, but it’s still recognizably their music. The jarring organs cut through the fog of Victoria LeGrand’s voice (clearer than Bilinda Butcher’s ever was), as the percussion thrums patiently in the background. The slow buildup is enchanting, but the track’s climax is gorgeous: The distorted guitars kick into overdrive, looping themselves into hypnotic state, as LeGrand calls out “Make it / Wave it / Alive.” It’s the kind of ending that’ll leave you wanting to crank the volume higher and higher until, without warning, it’s over.
“Stonemilker,” Bjork
“Moments of clarity are so rare,” Bjork sings. “I’d better document this.” That self awareness, that ability to be inside of a moment and stand outside of it, are what made Vulnicura, her album-length deconstruction of her breakup with longtime partner Matthew Barney, so devastating. Well, that and the string arrangements. The opener “Stonemilker” can’t be matched for raw beauty anywhere else in music this year, and it also introduced precise new vocabulary to talk about the horrible mess that is falling out of love. “Show me emotional respect,” “I wish to synchronize our feelings”—if these statements sound cold on paper, they’re quite the opposite in song.
“Strange Fruit,” José James
This year marked the hundredth anniversary of Billie Holiday’s birth. It also marked the year that much of the nation focused on the toll of police violence on the bodies and lives of black men. This blues- and R&B-inflected jazz singer closed his centennial tribute album with her most famous song. “Strange Fruit” is by now so familiar that it almost loses its ability to shock, but James restores the song’s horror by abandoning the melody for a minimalist arrangement—providing a macabre reminder that a song first recorded in 1939 is almost as topical now.
“Them Changes,” Thundercat
This superb R&B track isn’t a cover of the Buddy Miles classic, though there’s a family resemblance—a locomotive funk, an infectious hook. But where Miles is ragged and rocked up, Thundercat’s is slinky, slow burning, restrained, wounded, and harmonically richer. The singer and bassist—he plays a six-string instrument, which he strums and plucks like a guitar, slaps and pops like Larry Graham, or uses to lay down a groove like Jaco Pastorius—is a collaborator of Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington. When did jazz fusion get cool again?
“Underground Man,” Desaparecidos
The dream of rock, especially punk rock, is revolution. The reality of rock is, often, capitulation, commercialization, and compromise. Conor Oberst is very, very angry about this on his political-punk side project’s album Payola. “Underground Man” sticks to a common sonic template—Warped Tour drum bopping, four chords played stabbily—but reaches something higher through Oberst’s performance. “THEY MADE ACTIVISM TRITE!” he screams with such intensity that it temporarily undoes the crime he’s screaming about.
The 19th-Century Japanese Law on Last Names
Japan’s Supreme Court has upheld a law from 1898 that requires married couples to have the same last name—a piece of legislation that critics said was discriminatory. At the same time, the court struck down another law, also from the Meiji Era, that barred women from remarrying within six months of a divorce.
Same Last Name
The case was brought by three separate women, and a couple in a civil partnership. They argued the law infringed on personal dignity and the freedom to marry.
The law itself requires Japanese couples to choose a single last name, but does not specify to whom that name should belong. Still, The Japan Times points out that in the past 40 years, 96 percent of Japanese couples have opted for the husband’s name.
The court upheld the law in a 10-5 decision. Presiding Justice Itsuro Terada said the practice is “deeply rooted in our society” and “enables people to identify themselves as part of a family in the eyes of others.” Terada noted that nothing prevents a woman from using her maiden name on a daily basis, but he acknowledged giving it up does disadvantage women in certain ways, including professionally.
The court’s decision upheld the ruling of two lower courts. Public opinion in Japan is split on the issue. Opponents of the law viewed it as an infringement of the fundamental rights of women. Conservatives view it as, in the words of The Japan Times, “a central pillar of the family unit.”
But as the BBC points out: “Women in Japan were traditionally able to retain their maiden names after marriage, until 1898 when the law was enacted as part of a feudal family system where all women and children came under control of the male head of the household. The system was abolished in 1948—but the surname law has been retained.”
Kyoko Tsukamoto, one of the plaintiffs in the case, 
December 15, 2015
What an Interest-Rate Hike Means for Non-Economists
The December Fed meeting began Tuesday morning, and the news surrounding it will be closely watched, as many economists and financial analysts believe that this is the meeting when the U.S. central bank will finally move to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. Ninety-seven percent of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal believe a rate hike will be announced tomorrow. For its part, the Fed has been hinting at a rate hike for months.
Coverage of the Fed’s decision is mostly geared towards the financial world, and will likely include a detailed decryption of Fed-speak and photos of rocketships launching—a visual representation of the “lift-off” from near-zero rates. But Wednesday’s news is worth paying attention to for everyone, not just bankers and economists. Monetary policy is the way a central bank changes the cost and availability of money—which affects anyone who is a participant in the U.S. economy.
Low interest rates have been part of the Fed’s monetary policy since 2007, when they were put in place for a post-recession recovery effort. If the Fed decides on a rate hike, it’s expected that rates will go up by 25 basis points—which means that the Fed’s target for the federal funds rate will move from between 0 percent and 0.25 percent to between 0.25 percent and 0.50 percent.
The Federal Funds Rate, 2003 to 2015What does that actually mean? The federal funds rate is the interest rate banks charge when loaning money to each other, and the Fed sets a target range because it can’t directly manipulate the federal funds rate. Instead, it uses the means available to it as the central bank—creating or removing money from the financial system—to bring about changes that affect the federal funds rate. (Of course, this is not actually as straightforward as it sounds.)
One consequence of all this is that it becomes more expensive to borrow money. The cost of getting a loan has been close to free for the past few years, which is ideal during recessionary times: When loans are cheap, that encourages people, businesses, and investors to spend money, which stimulates the economy. That said, keeping rates low for too long can cause asset bubbles. (Inflation is also another consideration in raising rates, but current readings have been mysteriously low.)
How does this play out for the average consumer? The most common type of loans becoming more expensive are mortgages, credit-card debt, and car loans—which will indirectly become more costly as a result of an interest-rate increase. This is what’s referred to as tightening of the credit market.
The upside, though, is that saving money will become marginally more attractive: Low rates have meant that the incentive to put money away has been virtually nil—for years, savings accounts have had such low interest rates that $1,000 held for a year only turns into $1,001 or $1,002. While gains will likely soon be larger than that, banks are usually slower to raise interest rates on savings accounts than on loans. On top of that, the Fed has noted that it will raise interest rates gradually, so the magnitude of these changes will be small at first.
The bottom line here is straightforward: As Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen mentioned in a recent speech, an interest-rate hike is a signal that the economy is improving.
70-Degree Days in December: What?
Man, it’s a warm one.
At least, here in the eastern half of the United States it is. Since late last week, cities from Chicago to Atlanta to Boston have experienced decidedly un-seasonal heat, with temperatures dozens of degrees Fahrenheit above average. Here in D.C., we had our hottest December 12th since 1889. In Lexington, Kentucky, they did us one better, breaking a record set during the Grant administration.
As pleasant as this weather can be—if it doesn’t quite feel like Christmas in July, it’s at least like Hanukkah in April—the warmth can also provoke unease. Both memory and pop culture instruct that we should hope for a snowy Christmas, not a drizzly one. Sunny, clear days; 70-degree breezes: This is not what December is supposed to feel like around these parts. Something feels deeply wrong.
Alexis Madrigal, an Atlantic contributing editor, coined a term for such weather: “climate changey.” Scientists repeat that few individual weather events can be linked to climate change, and yet, how can an iced-coffee Advent be normal? Surveying an unprecedented California heatwave, historic flooding in South Carolina, and a strange and perplexing sandstorm in Tel Aviv, he wrote in October: “We need a word that reflects the basic anxiety of not knowing what the weather means anymore.” Climate changey is that phrase.
In Madrigal’s telling, climate changey stands in for both the weather event and the mental state. In the 2010s, even when weird weather is enjoyable, it feels like a planetary memento mori. Say goodbye to that white Christmas—more of this is coming, and also, by the way, you may die in it.
An odd byproduct of writing and reporting about global warming and ocean acidification is that you’re forced to conserve your anxiety. The whole thing is so worrying (despite the recent Paris agreement) that it doesn’t make sense to freak out over a stretch of nice days. And that’s especially true when there’s a scientific basis for not connecting this warmth to global warming.
Which is to say: Despite how climate changey these warm days feel, they’re almost certainly the product of El Niño, not global warming.
El Niño is a phase in the Pacific Ocean’s multi-year cycle. During El Niño, warmer surface waters collect in the ocean’s tropical and eastern half. (That is: The water off the western coasts of Central America—and thousands of miles beyond that, into the open sea—is much, much warmer than usual.) A band of low pressure forms over these warm waters. This week, that persistent low pressure has bumped the Jet Stream much further north than usual, sending subtropical air toward the Eastern United States.
This year’s El Niño is one of the strongest ever: Last month, meteorologists ruled it “too big to fail.” It’s helped bring cool rains to California, tempering that state’s long drought; it also played a role in the massive Indonesia fires in September and October and the imminent drought in the Horn of Africa.
Again, scientists haven’t connected the strength of this El Niño to climate change, so you should feel free to enjoy the warmth, despite the climate-changey vibes. But a recent study indicated that global warming is likely to bring more mega El Niños like this one.
Here in the East, it’s looking like we’ll have a warm, not a white, Christmas. So perhaps as you go out for your unorthodox Boxing Day jog, think back to 2010. That year, we experienced the Pacific Ocean’s other major phase, La Niña, which is when warm waters pool in its western half. And while El Niño can bring snow, too—in fact, some meteorologists think we’re in for major storms in February of next year—La Niña of 2010 did not fail to deliver: A post-Christmas blizzard carried more than a foot of snow to many of the same towns that have their windows open right now.
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