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This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.I’ll open with a warning: what follows isn’t short, isn’t simple, and isn’t likely to leave anyone feeling entirely satisfied.But it is important. Deeply so.Like many, my first exposure to this story was via Emily Doe’s victim impact statement — an eloquent essay that became a key plank in the scaffolding of the #MeToo movement, itself the most overdue reckoning of our time.Emily referred to her statement as a “tiny fire”. It was anything but. It raged, far and beautifully. Reading it brought back the tears I shed with those I love as they wrestled with their own aftermaths. If you’d asked me in the hours after, I would have signed any petition and joined any march. I was inspired, and angry.That’s the thing about righteous anger: it burns.But once my fire had time to reduce down to coals, I decided to learn more about the judge in question. I wanted to understand why he did it.What I found was unnerving.The Big PictureI’ve invested a lot of time into this case over the past two years. I’ve reviewed all but one of the public trial documents, most of them multiple times. I’ve waded through somewhere around 100 additional articles, transcripts, and recaps. I’ve checked, cross-checked, and re-checked. This is by far the most work I’ve put into a single piece of writing. I wanted to be clear, and sure.My conclusion?Righteous anger blinded us to some really important things.This shouldn’t be surprising. We’re hardwired for clean narratives. We love being presented with binary action options that let us make our stance towards larger issues known. We love to reduce the chaos of the world to simple propositions that let us clearly place ourselves on the right side of the things we hate.Trouble is, Judge Persky’s recall was always more complicated than a simple referendum on how we feel about sexual assault. A vote against him was never a vote for justice or a vote against rape culture. It was a vote for a story. And it so happens that there was far more to this particular story than most of us knew.For a distilled version of my thesis, I’m going to quote (of all things) a random Reddit user:My lawyer friend had this take on it: “Let’s be clear: Brock turner is a piece of sh*t. The justice system failed this woman. But when our jails and criminal courtrooms are still primarily filled with poor / black / brown / undocumented defendants, scaring judges out of showing leniency is not achieving justice. The Brock Turners of the world will not pay for Persky’s recall.”That last line really gets to the heart of it.The Brock Turners of the world will not pay for Persky’s recall.If true, this suggests a crucial question: if the recall won’t hurt Brock or those like him, who will it hurt?That’s what I want to explore in what follows.Just four quick caveats/clarifications before we get into the meat of it:Brock Turner did a terrible thing. I have no interest in exonerating him. What follows is less about him and more about modern journalism, our treatment of Judge Persky, and our ideas of justice more broadly.For the purposes of cutting length, I’ve moved everything not vital to this story into a supplemental post. You’ll find an index of the topics it covers at the end.Some who read this will likely have cast a ballot in favor of Persky’s recall. Please know I have zero desire to confront anyone for their vote. My aim is to deconstruct the popular narratives behind the campaign for going-forward value only.I’m neither a lawyer nor a trained journalist. While I’ve done fairly extensive research into sexual abuse and its prosecution in the course of past roles, I’m not a credentialed expert there either. As such, I’ve gone to lengths to link authoritative sources as I go.That all in mind, let’s dive in.The Story of What HappenedIf you boil down the majority reporting, you get a story something like this:A rich white kid was caught raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, then was let off with a slap on the wrist because his rich white judge was also once a Stanford athlete.Some of the better outlets were a bit more nuanced than that, but they were few.What We KnowAt 12:19am on January 18th, 2015, Emily Doe receives a call from her boyfriend in Philadelphia. She’d just left him a voicemail that he couldn’t make sense of. When she picks up, her speech is heavily slurred. The boyfriend is concerned. He tells Emily to find her sister.Unbeknownst to him, Emily’s sister had left two minutes earlier to take a friend somewhere safe for the night. So when Emily rings her at 12:29am, the sister is still preoccupied. She asks Emily to call her back.When Emily doesn’t, the sister both calls and texts her.She gets no response.At 1:01am, the police are dispatched. Two cyclists had found a young man, later identified as Brock Turner, thrusting atop an unconscious Emily. The cyclists tackle Brock and hold him until the campus police arrive five minutes later.The authorities find Emily out cold, her underwear in a ball next to her, her other clothes in various stages of undress. Brock has his pants on, but seems to be erect underneath.Emily doesn’t wake up for several more hours. Even after the IV drip, she’s at no less than a .22 BAC — blackout territory. When she does wake up at 4:15am, she doesn’t remember anything from after about when her sister left.The police do tests. Emily hasn’t been drugged. But the tests do confirm something else: Emily has been assaulted. No semen, but the abrasions are consistent with aggressive digital penetration. They also find Emily’s DNA on Brock’s right hand.What We Don’t KnowBetween 12:29 and 1:01, Emily Doe moved from the patio of Stanford’s Kappa Alpha house to where the cyclists found her — lying on a slope near a three-sided wooden enclosure often used to store bikes and the frat’s dumpster.No one except perhaps Brock Turner knows how Emily traveled those 116 feet, nor in what state. We do know that it was in the rough direction of his dorm, and that she had no bruises or defensive wounds consistent with a struggle. But as to what motivation drove her from the porch, we have only his word. He says he invited her to his room. She doesn’t remember anything.Some time after his arrest and initial statement, Brock expands his story (which now conflicts in places with his original testimony):They had been kissing and dancing on the porch.She agreed to leave with him.On their way to his dorm, she slipped on the pine needles on the slope.They laughed about it.He leaned in and kissed her.Rather than getting up, he proposed digitally pleasing her then and there.She consented, and rubbed his back as he proceeded.He thought she climaxed.He moved on to dry-humping.He hopped off at some point because he was feeling sick.It was only then that he noticed the cyclists.He doesn’t know when Emily lost consciousness, or her name.Apart from the question of when he got off her relative to the cyclists’ arrival (they both say he dismounted and fled after they announced their presence), Brock alone knows how much of this is true. He was drunk that night, but not so drunk that he’s likely to have forgotten much. His BAC was around .16 at the time of arrest. Drunk enough, but still aware. And culpable.Sadly, we have no help from other witnesses. We know that Brock kissed Emily’s sister earlier and that he was generally acting in a hounding sort of way. The sisters and their friends teased him with a nickname based on how he resembled someone else they knew. But no one saw them together after Emily’s sister left, nor did anyone hear or see any kind of struggle or altercation.At minimum, Brock was caught dry-humping someone no longer conscious. As for how long she’d been in that state or what prior consent she may have given for that or other acts (or in which state she gave it), we have only his testimony, uncompelling as it is.The Anatomy of White PrivilegeLet’s recall the popular framing:A rich white kid was caught raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, then was let off with a slap on the wrist because his rich white judge was also once a Stanford athlete.Well, about that.As it happens, the Turner family isn’t exactly rich. Brock was attending Stanford on a 60% swimming scholarship. His two older siblings weren’t so lucky. All told, the three kids accumulated some $150k in student debt between them. The family wasn’t poor enough for full aid, nor wealthy enough to afford the tuitions outright. Their household income would be significant in context of Dayton, Ohio, but rather modest in context of the average Stanford student or Bay Area resident. In all likelihood, Brock’s case will leave them in or near bankruptcy.[EDIT: Brock’s mom mentions $90k in student debt for his two siblings in her testimony. I can’t recall where I got the $150k figure from, but the delta might be from Brock’s remaining costs after his scholarship.]And if the narrative isn’t quite true with Brock, it’s far less true with Judge Persky. If we look into his record, we find that:He’s a decorated advocate for mental health, AIDS awareness, and civil rights, known for generous pro bono work. His non-profit work included time on the board of the Support Network for Battered Women in Santa Clara.Before becoming a judge, he served for six years as a well-respected prosecutor focused specifically on sexually violent predators.As a judge, he had a thoroughly corroborated and very public history of ruling equally across ethnic lines. He has no record of favoring whites or disfavoring anyone else. (Some claim otherwise. We’ll get to that.)He was one of many Stanford-educated judges serving on a Bay Area court (though he actually got his law degree elsewhere).Prior to the Turner case, he’d never had an official complaint launched against him.Almost everyone who’d ever worked with him (prosecutor or defender) had only positive things to say about his character and judgment. (We’ll get more into this later too.)The entire basis of Turner’s appeal is that Persky was prejudicial against him.In other words, Turner wasn’t an overly privileged kid (apart from his skin, which we have no reason to believe played a role in the courtroom), and Persky had no particular reason to favor him.This isn’t to say that white privilege in courtrooms isn’t a thing. Nearly every study I’ve ever consulted says it is. But Aaron Persky happened to be one of the judges well-known for fighting against that particular problem.[EDIT: The original suggested that Persky’s wife was African-American. I got that wrong. She’s Asian-American. Mea culpa.]To The Left, To The LeftIt’s worth noting that Aaron Persky is, by all accounts, almost stereotypical in his philosophical consistency. Like many Bay Area natives, he seems a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, possibly from the womb.Putting that into practical terms as it concerned his judgeship:He favored restorative over punitive justice (i.e., he worried more about improving the future than correcting the past).He had a fondness for tailored punishments (which data suggests are more likely to produce positive outcomes).He was against prison in general, especially for first-time offenders (unless there was reason to believe that their release would lead to re-offense or some other public harm).Media distortion aside, I think part of our problem with Turner’s sentence has a lot to do with the difficulty of this philosophy. Progressive values are tough. They ask us to accept hard truths about the limits of eye-for-an-eye rulings. They ask us to take a much longer view of things. They give us precious little catharsis.As a consensus of qualified parties later acknowledged (we’ll get to them), most progressive judges would have placed a broadly similar sentence on Turner as Persky did. If we have a problem with that, it’s really with progressivism itself, not with a man who had long been an exemplary and consistent steward of the values he was appointed to uphold.The Day of JudgmentThe jury found Brock Turner guilty of three crimes:unlawful sexual penetration of an intoxicated personunlawful sexual penetration of an unconscious personassault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious personAs he often did, Judge Persky opted to follow the Santa Clara County Probation Department’s recommendation to the letter, sentencing Turner to six months in county jail, three years of probation, a year of mandatory counselling, lifetime sex-offender status, and a handful of non-trivial financial penalties.That’s a lot. But the crux of this particular case is that we have a tendency to over-focus on just one of those punishments. Our diet of scripted crime dramas has tuned us to see prison sentences as the real meat. Everything else feels trivial and insufficient to answer the demands of anything we’d agree upon as full justice.Well, here’s the thing: prison time is not intended to be the real punishment.There’s been a growing consensus in the legal community (particularly in progressive circles) that two things are particularly punitive:The restrictions and stigma that come with a felony conviction.The restrictions and stigma that come with being a registered sex offender.Around a week before Turner’s sentencing, Judge Frederic Block of the Eastern District Court of New York dropped whatever the judicial equivalent of a hit record is. Over the course of 42 pages, he artfully outlined what progressive judges have been saying for decades: that the 50,000 or so various legal restrictions applied to felons across the US often produce something quite other than their intended civic effect.Sexual offenders have it even harder, particularly in states like Ohio (where Turner is from, and to where he returned). I get more into the other downsides of sex offender status in the appendix, but suffice it to say that they are many and meaningful. As just one: he’ll have to register in the same category as pedophiles.Being honest, I find it improbable that the accompanying downsides could fail to deter anyone capable of being deterred. Even before his sentence was compounded by the public attention, it’s exceedingly difficult to imagine a scenario in which a would-be rapist could look at the totality of Brock’s punishment and consider it a slap on the wrist worth risking.It’s for this reason that progressive judges tend to eschew prison time unless especially warranted. In their calculus, most facilities are under-funded and over-crowded anyway. And while long sentences might give the illusion of justice, the evidence (see appendix) says they aren’t actually any better at producing rehabilitation or deterrence. As such, adding another prisoner at taxpayer expense only makes sense when the taxpaying public is receiving some extra benefit in return.Put another way, progressives judges tend to use prison as a means of protecting the public, not punishing the perpetrator. It’s just not that useful at the latter.And so, given the cost and diminishing returns of imprisonment, the relatively low risk of re-offence, and the presence of what they felt was sufficient empathy and remorse, two seasoned Santa Clara County probation officials, both of them women, decided there was no compelling public benefit in Brock Turner spending more than six months behind bars.Judge Persky, in turn, found no cause to disagree. He handed down the recommended sentence with detailed commentary as to the mechanics of his thinking. (While the infamous phrases “severe impact on him” and “I take him at his word” do appear in there, the context is other than you may think.)Though Justice Be Thy PleaNow, if a longer sentence does little-to-nothing to improve deterrence, little-to-nothing to reduce recidivism, and eats up costly public resources better spent on increasing conviction rates (which very much do matter), we’re left with a very important question:Who exactly is benefited by Brock Turner being in prison?This returns us to rival definitions of justice. Is it the gut pleasure of evil being overwhelmed with swift retribution? Is it the cold math of reciprocity? Is it maximum possible deterrence? Is it the measured response of a society determined to salvage what they can as best they can? Or, as some wonder, is it the victim getting what they want?Emily’s impact statement was published on June 3rd, 2016, exactly a month after her interview with the probation officer. A good chunk of it is dedicated to revisiting their discussion and how the latter party interpreted it.While we can (and should) be sympathetic to the inadequate amount of time that the two spent together, what Emily said at the time seems pretty clear.Note that last half-line. Then note what Emily says in her letter (emphasis mine):I told the probation officer I do not want Brock to rot away in prison. I did not say he does not deserve to be behind bars.Unless we’re going to quibble about the difference between “need” and “deserve”, there’s a discrepancy there. Is it possible that the probation officer paraphrased incorrectly? If anyone made that claim, I didn’t come across it.[EDIT: I suppose you could read Emily’s comment as “I didn’t say that last half-line from the report in any form”, but that would be a curious way to phrase it. I guess we’ll see if she clarifies in her forthcoming book.]Based on what Emily says in her impact statement, it seems more probable that three other factors played into her shift:The meeting wasn’t long enough for full nuance. The probation officer wasn’t wrong in her transcript. She just got a rushed, incomplete picture.When Emily made her statement, she wasn’t privy to what Brock would say in his. As such, what she suggested was predicated on her assumption of a certain remorse on his end.It wasn’t until she read his statement and the defense’s sentencing memo that it became clear to her that neither she nor the process had reached Brock in the way she’d hoped.To give a quick taste of how Turner framed it:I am the sole proprietor of what happened on the night that these people’s lives were changed forever. […] I can never forgive myself for imposing trauma and pain on [her]. It debilitates me to think that my actions have caused her emotional and physical stress that is completely unwarranted and unfair. […] I wish I had the ability to go back in time and never pick up a drink that night, let alone interact with Emily. […] At this point in my life, I never want to have a drop of alcohol again. […] I know I can impact and change people’s attitudes towards the culture surrounded by binge drinking and sexual promiscuity. […] I made a mistake, I drank too much, and my decisions hurt someone.He’s basically saying “everything between us was consensual — I just made a mistake in not recognizing how drunk she was, mostly because I was really drunk myself”.Emily felt this fell short of full honesty and remorse. I’d tend to agree.The trouble is that to expect more was a very bad idea.Defense attorney Nicholas Wooldridge explains it neatly:[The statement that] Brock's victim read during the sentencing hearing underscored the detachment between what victims expect from the criminal justice and what the criminal justice system is designed to deliver. Her victim impact statement was an attack on the system—she wanted a trial where Brock admits his guilt—that's not what happens in an adversarial system. A trial is a contact sport with a binary outcome: guilty or not guilty. The victim expected something from the criminal justice system that it was never designed to provide outside of the movies, at least, so long as fundamental principles such as the presumption of innocence or due process are to have any meaning. The victim is very much entitled and has a right to expect some responsibility, accountability, remorse and perhaps understanding and support from her attacker (by not having put her through the trial process in the first place)—but the criminal justice system is a blunt force tool not designed to provide any of the things that she desires. And, even after conviction, many defendants choose to appeal, so to expect a confession at that point is a non-starter.We can add to that a few comments from Judge Persky at sentencing:And so you have Mr. Turner expressing remorse — which I think, subjectively, is genuine — and [Emily] not seeing that as a genuine expression of remorse because he never says, “I did this. I knew how drunk you were. I knew how out of it you were, and I did it anyway.” And that — I don’t think that bridge will, probably, ever be crossed.Mr. Armstrong [Brock’s attorney] offered an explanation for that disconnect, which is that Mr. Turner, in his state of intoxication, sees the events in a certain way. And if he were to, just for the benefit of a lighter sentence or to pacify the Court or the public, come in at a sentencing hearing or any other time and state otherwise, which I’m sure defendants do all the time, he really would be not honest. I mean, I take him at his word that, subjectively, that’s his version of events. […]Once a jury renders a verdict, everybody is bound by that verdict. Everybody must accept the verdict, including Mr. Turner. But I’m not convinced that his lack of complete acquiescence to the verdict should count against him with respect to an expression of remorse, because I do find that his remorse is genuine.Emily’s counsel should have prepared her for this. From the outside, it seems that Ms. Kianerci may have been more focused on preparing a memo of her own — one meant to match her client’s in tone and effect. But however their discussions went, Emily seems to have come out with expectations sure to disappoint her. Brock didn’t get all the way to Jesus, no. But that was never likely to happen. It just wasn’t a reasonable thing to hope for in context.That said, Brock did get somewhere. In the opinion of the probation department, he demonstrated that he understood that he’d hurt Emily and why and how he needed to change. For them, that was enough.It isn’t that we shouldn’t want more from him. We’d just be unwise to pin our hopes on it. The law is frustrating like that. It almost never gives us the justice we want in our bones.But neither does any alternative we’ve ever come up with.Enter the Den MotherIf you’ve heard of this case, it’s likely because of Emily’s letter.If you have strong feelings against Judge Persky particularly, it’s likely because of Professor Michele Dauber.For those keen to really get into her bio and likely motivations, I recommend this excellent Highline piece. It’s by far the best thing I’ve read about the case in general (though that bar is low enough to be fit for a round of championship-level limbo).But for those who already feel over-invested (you have my empathy), here’s the gist of what Professor Dauber is all about:She had two direct connections to this case: (i) to sexual assault at Stanford, (ii) to Emily personally.In the first case, Dauber was an internal crusader at Stanford. She’d pushed hard to modernize what she felt were backward and antagonistic sexual assault response policies. While this introduced friction with her colleagues, that wasn’t enough to deter her from a cause she believed too just and too needful to ignore. She seems very much the type to dig her heels in when on the side of perceived righteousness.In the second case, Emily was like a daughter to her. One of Dauber’s own daughters was roughly the same age, and the two had been “inseparable” in childhood. Emily had even joined them on at least one family vacation.(As an aside, Dauber has an impressive backstory. She rose from being a homeless teenager working on her GED to a tenured position at one of the most prestigious law schools in the world, all while raising five kids in the process!)In sum, we have a tenacious advocate for women being led to apply that tenacity in the aid of a young woman she loved dearly.On the surface, there’s a lot that’s good and wholesome in this. I’m glad Stanford has her. And I’m glad Emily had someone like that in her corner.The issue is that Professor Dauber didn’t stay in the corner. Despite the obvious concerns about being too close to the case, she decided she was going to enter the ring and go after Persky personally for failing to deliver the justice she felt Emily deserved.But while intimacy clouding judgment was always going to be a concern here, there was something else too. Something more concerning.In this particular war, Professor Dauber had a hard time telling the truth.A Tale of Two SidesAs Professor Dauber’s recall campaign gained steam, the legal community began sorting themselves in two camps.Except, not really.Though much of the reporting would give the impression of arrayed forces on both sides, the ratios here were, well, not very equal.I asked around, reviewed the recall campaign’s website, combed through newspaper archives, and Googled to the best of my ability. From what I could find, precious few legal professionals, active or retired, were inclined to take Dauber’s position. I managed to identify eight in total, at least six of whom either had conspicuous causes of potential bias or a noticeably deficient understanding of the case. Some had both.In no particular order:Stanford Professor Mark Lemley (who found that Persky didn’t commit misconduct, but somehow thought he should be recalled anyway).Brandeis Professor Anita Hill (who, though I think highly of her, has her own well-known history here).California Attorney General Kamala Harris (who was stumping at the time, and spoke of the case as if she hadn’t gone deep on the details).NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (same as Kamala).Retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner (who may or may not have actually supported the recall — the article they quote from is paywalled, and the excerpt itself is negative but inconclusive; it’s also unclear from the excerpt how well she understood the details of the case).Georgetown Professor William G. Otis (who wrote a New York Times op-ed which opens with the phrase “it is not disputed” and then carries on to list facts very much still in dispute).Stanford Professor David Palumbo-Liu (whose op-ed in The Guardian made a particularly brittle argument that Persky was racially biased based on a single ill-reasoned point of comparison).Attorney Barbara Spector (who was the plaintiff’s lawyer in the De Anza case and still seems angry at Persky about it, despite his decisions being deemed uncontroversial by nearly everyone else). [EDIT: There’s more about the De Anza case in the appendix. Nearly every article written about it as it concerns Persky omits really important context.]All considered, not exactly a weighty lot.[EDIT: I’ve taken Judge Del Pozzo off the list. The recall campaign quotes his disagreement with the Turner sentence, but fails to mention what he says minutes later in the same podcast interview: “Should he be recalled? Absolutely not.” Del Pozzo also goes on to say of Dauber’s attempt to show a pattern of favoritism in Persky’s past cases: “she fell flat on her face”. So yeah. If there’s a pattern, it’s misrepresentation on her part. See audio from 49:30.]The campaign otherwise rested on quotes from Dauber’s husband, a few politicians, a flock of random celebrities — oh, and one more retired judge.Trouble is, that last judge was LaDoris Cordell, who happens to have been the most vocal voice of the pro-Persky counter-campaign.(Best as I can tell, Dauber had some intern/assistant pull every quote that looked like it could be rhetorically favorable, context and integrity be damned.)While they were happy to quote Cordell about a different trial, they left out this more relevant gem:We did everything we could possibly do to fight the most dishonest campaign I had ever encountered. It was dishonest about who Aaron Persky was on the bench, and dishonest about his record. People were basically ill-informed about him and also about how the court system — and particularly the criminal justice system — works.She went on elsewhere to call Dauber a “bully” and “a smart, relentless, troubled human being”. So, yeah, perhaps not a star witness for the prosecution.As for the anti-recall team, support letters were signed by at least 95 law professors (including 29 from Stanford), the California Judges Association, the Santa Clara Bar Association, and quite a long list of Bay Area public defenders. Supportive op-eds appeared all across the US (and beyond).More narrowly, I was particularly interested in what those connected to the Santa Clara justice system thought. In reading those takes (here, here, here, and here), you’ll notice a common theme. The only person with direct knowledge of Persky that supported the recall seem to be Spector, a woman with a long-standing grievance not shared by her peers. The rest were effusive in their praise and/or defense.But the real kicker is that the recall was also opposed by the last three elected District Attorneys of the Santa Clara County Court — including none other than Jeff Rosen, i.e. the DA that oversaw the prosecution of Brock Turner.[EDIT: Note this quote from Rosen to the New York Times: “Most of the judges in California would have done the same thing as Judge Persky.” Also, see the appendix for more context about Rosen and Persky. The recall campaign played dumb to a great deal of background info that was rather damning to their position.]All said, it seems that the recall effort wasn’t really supported by any legal professionals with significant knowledge of Persky or the case.Which raises the question; why did it pass?History on RepeatAs the media did a decent job of making clear, recalls are extraordinary measures. There’s a reason California hadn’t passed one since 1932.To quote the California Code of Judicial Ethics:An independent judge is one who is able to rule as he or she determines appropriate, without fear of jeopardy or punishment. So long as the judge makes rulings in good faith, and in an effort to follow the law as the judge understands it, the usual safeguard against error or overreaching lies in the adversary system and appellate review.Put simply, there are better means than recall to correct otherwise good judges when they err.Of course, the sticking point here is whether or not Persky ought to be viewed as good. Professor Dauber clearly felt otherwise, pointing to what she claimed was a history of gender and racial favoritism.Well, those concerns were investigated by three bodies:The California Commission on Judicial Performance (report here).The Associated Press (findings here).Local newspaper Palo Alto Online (rundown here).Taken together, they found exactly one case where Persky did something even vaguely objectionable. And that exception concerned a somewhat obscure quirk of an interstate compact that even California’s overseer of said compact suggested was unclear to many judges.(In the interest of fairness, the recall campaign did write up a response to the CJP report. I personally found it poorly-written, misleadingly-framed, and not terribly compelling. But your mileage may vary.)Now, in the absence of any real evidence, one might wonder on what basis someone might still push for a recall?The clearest answer I can give you comes in the form of a editorial from The Mercury News (a Bay Area paper that covered the trial):The decision comes down to this: Voters need to stand up and make a statement on behalf of women and men about the seriousness of sexual assault. Persky’s sentence failed to do so to an extent that he never will again be able to serve as a respected, effective judge. He should be recalled.Bizarrely, the editors went on to concede that the recall team had cherry-picked data and that the CJP had reviewed the relevant cases and found Persky innocent of any misconduct. And yet they supported the recall anyway because…?It may not be fair to Persky, who is a decent man and an able judge. […] But opportunities such as the Turner case to alter longstanding cultural problems are rare. It’s imperative that Santa Clara County lead where Persky failed when given the opportunity.I struggle deeply with that thinking. The idea of offering up innocent sacrifices in the name of progress is Bronze Age thinking. We have a long history of that approach ushering in grotesque unintended consequences. We also have mines of data telling us that increasing social pressure on judges inevitably leads to less overall justice.Even so, the editors hand-waved those concerns away, suggesting that any damage a recall might unleash had already been summoned anyway.Well, here’s the thing: all available evidence suggests that this take is wrong.Paying the PiperDo you know what happens when you make judges afraid of being perceived as soft on crime?To quote the Dean of Law at Berkeley:Efforts to recall judges for light sentences encourage judges to impose maximum penalties out of fear that anything else could cost them their positions. After all, no one has begun a recall when a judge imposed an outrageously high punishment, such as in the first case I argued in the Supreme Court where my client received a sentence of 50 years to life under California’s “three strikes law” for stealing $153 worth of videotapes.Judicial independence is crucial to upholding the rule of law, and history shows that it is lost when judges fear removal for their unpopular decisions. This is not a new realization.Not new indeed. As per a metastudy by the Brennan Center (NYU Law) in 2015, more public pressure on judges invariably leads to longer sentences and more death penalties. This is something we’ve understood for a while.And, as with so many things, this is worse for minorities. Every “tough on crime” push falls heaviest on their shoulders (which statistically has nothing to do with how often they commit crimes). This is cruelty for them.Perhaps most perverse of all, longer sentences can also result in fewer men being held accountable for sexual assault. From my own work with shelters and sexual-assault counsellors, female victims have a tendency to be reluctant to name and charge their assailants when the penalty is perceived as being too severe.So, the net outcome of Persky’s recall?Judge Persky, stripped of his judgeship, had to take the numbers off his house because his address was doxed online.Judges, terrified of being “Perskied”, will now rule more harshly and with less discretion.More bills like Assembly Bill 2888 will introduce new mandatory minimums (again leading to diminished judicial discretion).Fewer men like Brock Turner are going to be prosecuted.Who exactly is winning here?A Better WayMy heart breaks for victims of abuse. I know what it’s like to weep with them. I have an idea of what it takes for them to rebuild, and how difficult it can be for them to relearn how to feel safe and whole. We should have deep empathy.To quote Emily (emphasis my own):I stood [in the shower] examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided I didn’t want it anymore. I was terrified of it. I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.On that morning, all that I was told was that I had been found behind a dumpster, potentially penetrated by a stranger, and that I should get retested for HIV because results don’t always show up immediately. But for now, I should go home and get back to my normal life. Imagine stepping back into the world with only that information.Imagine that indeed.There’s a lot there to chew on, and a lot we need to fix. But doing so is going to take far more than casting a ballot. These aren’t problems we can abstract or outsource. If we want culture to change, we have to roll up our sleeves and do the messier, much harder work.As a short list of what that might entail:Demand better journalism. Most of the reporting on this case had negative value. Lazily rewriting a trending story for clickshare is how the press dies. Why was the Highline piece the only coverage that helped me really understand the case?Demand increased budgets. Emily said she had a “fifteen minute” conversation with the probation officer, most of which was spent reviewing legal procedures. That isn’t sufficient. If we want victims to feel like justice has been served, the most important factor is making sure they feel (and are) heard.Train and volunteer as crisis counselors. Most sexual assault victims get (at most) a half-dozen sessions with a qualified therapist. They need far more support than that. Every victim should have people they can turn to for help — for as long as it takes.Train and volunteer as youth mentors. Teaching consent is critical. Young men like Brock Turner need to be told by every adult in their various orbits when to stop and why. This message can never be repeated often enough by enough different people. Millions of teens are still unclear on the basics.Watch over our friends. Victim-blaming is a problem. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need more dialogue about responsible partying. Anyone with a BAC 3 to 4 times the legal limit needs to be cared for. Try as we might (and must), we can’t catch and cure all the predators out there. But we can limit the opportunities for them to act (while also reducing the risk of other non-predatorial safety concerns).Support and celebrate wins. The conviction rate for sexual abuse is well under 1%. When it touches those near us, we need to walk alongside them through what can be an enormously draining process. Many won’t pursue charges because they worry about their own ability to get to the other side intact. That’s far more bearable with cheerleaders and warm voices saying over and over again “we will win together”.What happened to Emily should be a spur to all of us — not towards reflexive action, but towards creating a world in which young women like her don’t have to wake up alone in a hospital room wondering what happened, if their body is still their own, and what we’re going to do on their behalf.Covered in the appendix:What else should people know about Judge Persky’s background?Didn’t Judge Persky favor student athletes in the De Anza case?What would a normal sentence be for Turner’s specific crimes?What actually deters would-be offenders from sexual crimes?What’s the basis of Turner’s appeal?What about that letter from Turner’s father?What other motivations may Professor Dauber have had?Does it matter that Professor Dauber was never a lawyer?What impact does being on a sexual offender list have on one’s life?How likely is it that Turner took a picture of the victim?How aware was Turner that what he was doing was criminal?Don’t Turner’s comments about drinking prove that he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong?What’s the real purpose of victim impact statements?EDIT: I published my first draft here on June 18th, 2018, then made some cosmetic edits in the days following. I’ve now returned a year later to give it another once-over. See the edit log for a full list of changes (most for clarity).

(*WARNING: LONG ANSWER*)Part 1: Localised DestructionOoooooh mama here we go!Now this question can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways (In my opinion), being that the world goes through either a.) an event which causes a significant proportion of the global population to lose access to a functioning power grid, which could be limited to a large country or region or b.) the overwhelming majority of the global population loses access to a functioning power grid, a truly worldwide catastrophe.For both of these scenarios, I’m going to try to delve as deep as I dare and examine how this will not only affect the nation, but you, the average Joe, sitting there reading this on your device to distract you from the fact you’ve actually got a boatload of work waiting for you somewhere (it’s ok, no need to study for that final, Quora is the real priority).In this answer, I’m gonna solely focus on scenario A and save B for later, depending if people can tolerate an answer as long as this!And before we start, here’s the criteria for what stipulates a major blackout as per Dr. Wikipedia;“The power outage must conform to all of the following criteria:The outage must not be planned by the service provider.The outage must affect at least 1,000 people and last at least one hour.There must be at least 1,000,000 person-hours of disruption”Let’s start with scenario A, and bring in everyone’s favourite apocalypse guinea pig;The Good ol’ US of APopulation: 326,433,373 people (June 2017)Area: 9.834 million km²GDP: 17.95 trillion USD ‎(2015)Per capita: 55,836.79 USD ‎(2015)I think we can all agree a prolonged, sustained nationwide blackout in the States would of course be considered a global event, since we effectively have paralysed the majority of the nation which so happens to be the undisputed military and economic superpower of the 21st Century (sorry China).Of course city, state even region-wide major power outages are all too common in the United States, with Hurricane Sandy in 2012 knocking out pylons and transformers leaving over 8 million people without energy across 9 states, them being New Jersey (2.7 million), New York (2.2 million), Pennsylvania (1.2 million), Connecticut (620,000), Massachusetts (400,000), Maryland (290,000), West Virginia (268,000), Ohio (250,000), and New Hampshire (210,000). More recently, thanks to severe thunderstorms, we had a taste of that this year. On March 1st, 2017 a thunderstorm with conditions similar to that of a typhoon left over 10 million people without power all across the Eastern Seaboard. That’s 3.1% of the population of the most powerful nation on Earth left without power, all because of a single storm.These massive black outs are more common than you’d think, a quick look on the list on Wikipedia will show that. North America has had a major black out, which affects at least 1 million people at a averaging rate of 1 every other year from 1981 to 1999.There have been four multi-million person black outs on the continental United States in the past five years alone (5 if you want to count Puerto Rico, although it’s not mainland or really a state, yet).The United States has approximately 55,000 power plants throughout but as reported by the Daily Mail, America could plunge into a blackout if NINE power plants are attacked, since the US grid system is interdependent, so if one component fails, the load is placed on the next component, putting it under strain which thereby makes it more likely for the component to fail.But if multiple components fail, then you can get a rolling failure effect, a cascade of power stations going down, and with each station you lose, the more load you put on the ones that are still holding out.This is why a real life scenario with a coast-to-coast blackout is now a real possibility. This become further compounded considering attacks on power stations are frighteningly common.US Power Grid Attacked Every 4 Days; Nationwide BlackoutNew Report: US Power Grid Attacked Every 4 Days; Nationwide Blackout More Likely Than We ThoughtUnited States Power Grid Attacked Every Four Days — Nationwide Blackout Highly Expected To HappenThese statistics are based on Federal Energy records and were analysed by reporters at USA Today.These assaults range from cybernetic attacks on controlling computational systems to good ol’ fashioned physical smash n’ bash of transformers and other critical electrical infrastructure. Between 2011 and 2014, there were 348 physical attacks and 14 cyber attacks on the grid that caused outrages or disturbances, according to electric utility data reported to the US Southern Department of Energy.You’d think Uncle Sam® would respond to these pressing vulnerabilities wouldn’t you?To quote the Inquistr :“…focused more so on the part of the report in which power grid attacks may go unnoticed for several hours. This gives saboteurs plenty of time to cover their tracks and escape. An example of this is when police investigated an attack happening back in April of 2013 on a California substation until several hours after shots were fired. To this day, those attackers have never been found or identified.”With the cyber-warfare capabilities of other nations not so friendly with the US (*cough North Korea cough*) being sufficient to cause widespread havoc and even the threat of domestic cyber-terrorism, it’s a surprise the US hasn’t been sent back to the Stone Age yet.Want a bit more? To quote OfftheGridNews;“Members of the EMP Commission that reported to Congress found that if the grid is down for one year, 70-90 percent of the US — between 200 million and 285 million Americans — would be at severe risk due to starvation, a lack of medical supplies, and civil unrest. One big reason an attack would do so much damage is because there are no backup parts to much of the system; they’re custom made, and it can take weeks or months to replace them.”Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said “Those critical nodes can (electrical power infrastructure), in fact, be attacked in one way or another… You have a very vulnerable system that will continue to be vulnerable until we figure out a way to break it out into more distributed systems.”He described the grid as “too susceptible to a cascading outage”, which is a nice way of saying America’s power grid security systems, they way they are now, couldn’t guard a boiled egg.You could dismiss this all as hooey and scaremongering. Ok sure, I respect that. But not even 11 hours ago (as of writing this answer), thousands of companies and organisations across the United States and Europe were crippled by the massive “Petya” cyber attack, a ransomware strain which affected massive companies like Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world's largest overseas cargo carrier, and Russian oil titan Rosneft. These were among a few of the high-profile corporate victims in at least six countries.It also affected Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and British media company WPP tweeted they had been hit by Petya. Even the behemoth law firm, DLA, was a target of this attack.That sure is a nice way to start the dayWant a bit more? In May 2017, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was rocked by a massive cyber-assault. The ransomware “WannaCry” locked down hospital computers, patient records, pharmaceutical information and caused massive disruption everywhere from GP clinics to full-blown central hospitals. This virus crippled the health service, arguably the most important and under-strain service in the nation, of the United Kingdom, a leading world power in its own right.Wanna guess who launched it? NHS cyber-attack was 'launched from North Korea' - BBC News>TFW you hack the other kids Xbox…and cripple his nations f*cking health serviceWant even more, more? This one is genuinely f*cking crazy.Terror attack plunges 140 million into darknessMassive power failure plunges 80% of Pakistan into darknessPakistan works on power blackout after 'rebel attack' - BBC NewsYou know what put 140 million people, (80% of Pakistan’s population) in darkness, what one event knocked out energy to nearly 2% of the global population in 2015?The bombing of just two goddamn pylonsYeah, these pricksRebels in Naseerabad in Pakistan bombed two pylon towers, which caused a massive backward surge in electricity and forced two nuclear power plants to go offline. This plunged the country into darkness, including the capital, Islamabad and the 25 million strong city of Karachi, not to mention Lahore airport being down, which serviced 4.7 million people in 2016, making it Pakistan’s second busiest airport.Power had to be drawn from other stations, which put enormous strain on the aged and underdeveloped power grid of Pakistan.The following is according to a ministry spokesperson, Zafaryab Khan following the attack;“The blowing up of two power pylons in Naseerabad last night created a backward surge which affected the system. It was an act of sabotage.”Think that’s a big outage? Oh you sweet summer childAllow me introduce to you the 2012 India blackouts, a series of rollings outages over two days that ultimately affected 620 million people or 9% of the world’s population in 2012. It affected 22 states and resulted in 32 gigawatts of power capacity going offline, enough to power roughly 3,200,000,000 light bulbs or roughly 26.7 time travelling DeLorean’s.The event was actually two blackouts, with the first on July 30 affecting 300 million people (the biggest in history at that point) and the second affecting another 320 million people the day after, on July 31st.This is a classic example of how several components failing and straining the rest, can ultimately break the whole system.“But James!” you say “You’re not answering the question! I don’t need more examples, just tell me how would the US react to a massive, nationwide cascading black out?”Alright then. You know how we do it here, gentlemen. Let’s go for the worst case scenario; a prolonged national power failure, with critical components destroyed by attack and a repair time of roughly 18 monthsWell friend, in this case, the American public would do the one thing that God put them on this green earth to do;FLIP THE F*CK OUTIn the event of a massive prolonged outage, especially one caused by deliberate nationwide sabotage (be it cyber or physical), it wouldn’t take long before society would degrade into chaos as people panicked and took to the streets to either demand the government take action (which they undoubtably would be racing to do), get as many supplies as they could by any means necessary (hello, mass looting!) or just to take advantage of the fact that the systems which keep society in order are now gone or at least heavily impaired as they try and organise a strategy to re-affirm order without being able to rely on anything that requires the electrical grid to operate, so bye bye cell towers, internet, Quora, online banking, stock markets, landlines, lights, and anything not backed up by electrical generators.Sure most hospitals, airports and critical government buildings have got their own power sources separate from the grid, but what happens when the diesel powering their generators runs out? How are you going to get more fuel to these places?You expect trucks and tankers full of the stuff to be able to move from refinery to city? And how are you meant to refine the crude oil you pull outta the ground? You got fractional distillers that work on magic? And if you did, could they feed the demand of the millions of cars running, plus the millions more generators you need to run so people don’t freeze? You think other countries have the capacity to send enough oil overseas, to ports that don’t have power to run or place their ships in a country in the midst of total pandemonium? Well, with the streets full of rioters and looters, good luck with that.Get ready to see plenty of these…And just how are you going to co-ordinate this massive re-fueling effort? Most communications infrastructure will be down and even if you could co-ordinate, there isn’t enough oil and generators in the world to compensate for the destruction of the majority of America’s nuclear, coal and hydroelectric plants.Keep in mind, America’s military infrastructure would be largely intact, as they’ve been strengthening and hardening their bases and silos from just about any God and all his angels can throw at them and believe me, they’re gonna be out for vengeance on whoever launched this attack.If it was domestic, expect the government to double down on everyone and play dirty as they launch the biggest manhunt the world has ever seen. And considering they can’t rely on traffic cams, ATM’s or internet tracking to find the culprits, they are going to go after anyone with the slightest whiff of being involved in this attack. Martial law, crackdowns on civil liberties, federalising and mobilising the National Guard, the whole nine yards.They’ll also be tasked with maintaining the order in the Union, contending with looters, rioters, protestors, secessionists, terrorists and just about every other nut job in the country with a gun( s̶o̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶U̶n̶i̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶s̶).Coming to a city near you! And also through your front door at 3 AM…If the attack was from a foreign power well then first, may they rest in peace and second, expect the Stars n’ Stripes to go into a total war mentality, akin to that of the UK and Russia during the Second World War, with the already scarce and dwindling resources on the homefront being rationed and giving priority to said scarce resources to America’s war machine, because making sure the Navy isn’t dry docked is more important than making sure you’re sorry ass has a warm bed to sleep and light to read. Of course, the nuclear option is always open since America’s ICBM and strategic missile forces sure as hell don’t rely on the electricity coming out of the plug. But that all of course depends on what the mood is of the Cheeto in Chief and how much of an atomic erection he’s got.“When I said nuke the Chinese, I meant put the take-out in the microwave!” - El Presidenté 2K17And now aside from that, onto the bad stuffWhat happens in the North, when the winter blizzards set in, bringing mountains of snow. What happens when a hurricane batters the East coast? What about tornado season in the Mid West or when an earthquake hits California while the black out is in effect? A heat wave? Enough folks already die from those now, in a world full of air conditioning. Imagine a whole summer with no AC! (Keep in mind, a coast to coast black out could take up to 18 months to recover from.)Think it’ll be fun trying to last a few weeks, months even years with no heat in a blizzard?I’d like to see you last the South with no air conditioningHow are you meant to warn people of impeding natural disasters, with no TV, phones or internet? How can you supply them, keep them warm and fed? You expect these people to just hide out in the suburbs and cities while government facilities still have lights flickering and radiators humming?If the only place in your city with electricity was restricted because of limited resources, and you and your family have been starving since all the food in the fridge spoiled in the first few days and all the dry food in the city has already been raided, do you think your going to form an orderly queue and wait your turn?And you thought Boxing Day was wild….And let’s say you were smart, or just lucky, and happen to have a source of food/water and reliable, off the grid energy (ie solar), you think your fellow, less prepared compatriots are just gonna roll over and die? When 10 masked, armed guys are banging on your door because you just so happen to have a bathtub full of drinking water or a working solar panel array, who are you gonna call (and with what)?! The police? Sorry, they’re more pre-occupied trying to quell the riots or direct evacuees or perhaps looking after their own families.Better bust one of these out.What happens when the already swamped hospitals are flooded with victims of the violence that spread on the streets? What about the thousands of people of the roads? Even with well lit highways and co-ordinated emergency response systems, thousands still die on our roads every year. How do you imagine how the situation will be on roads with no lighting, no snow plowing, no maintenance?Come on! You can buff that out!Bridge goes down from flooding or a quake? How are you meant to get spare parts or manufacture new ones when the factories are all down since there’s no power? How are you going to feed the populous of millions of starving people when the industrial farming methods we’ve spent the past 50 years perfecting go to sh*t?The chicken and cattle in those temperature regulated factories, what do you think happens to them when the temperature outside hits zero or when the waste pumps in the factory can’t divert the rivers of waste they produce?Yup, they’re all dead and now so are you… cuz you starvedHell, screw the chickens, what happens when the water pressure in the pipes and pumps dies? No latrines, no sanitation. Say goodbye to flushing toilets and clean tap water. No desalination plants either or pumps to bring up water from aquifers. Water treatment plants also go down, so get ready for open, flooded sewers overflowing with human waste and drinking out of polluted, disease-ridden river water.Drink up!Speaking of disease, what happens to those with chronic illness? Those who need to keep their medications refrigerated (ie insulin)? What happens when they can’t buy (or steal) anymore since the supplies are either exhausted or simply spoiled from lack of proper storage? It’s not like they can order some online! This coupled with the lack of distribution of existing medical stores and the rise of unsanitary conditions would lead to epidemics and the return of previously “eradicated” diseases in the US (ie cholera, malaria)What about people in the ICU or on ventilators? Well, their lights go out with the hospitals, when the emergency generators finally run out. People who need radiotherapy, MRI’s, CAT scans, invasive surgeries, transplants? Nope, all dead. People who need dialysis machines? Sorry, buddy no can do. If it needs electricity then you just can’t use it.Your wife who needs a C-Section to deliver the baby? Well I hope the baby doesn’t need an incubator because otherwise…And it’s not like the hospital and medical services will have the time, space or resources to deal with everyone. They’ll try their best but ultimately the demand will just be too much.Hang in their fellasWhat about places like California? Even with the massive monetary, industrial and technological resources the state has they still find themselves in the midst of a water crisis. Now try and imagine that with no electricity and you’ll get a place closer to Mad Max than Orange County.Real of footage of Californians when someone takes a water bottle outIt’s not like Californians can take the highways out (clogged with broken down, gas-less cars), a plane (no fuel and civilian air traffic probably grounded any way) and the train lines? Too busy moving aid and materiel in and out of the state, in a desperate attempt to keep those within sustained with aid, and when the trains fuel runs out, all you’ve got left is a 1000 ton paper weight.The subways? Flooded, no pumps to keep’ em dryAnd we haven’t even gotten to the fire pumps, the ones that keep the hydrants pressurised. Sure they, like hospitals and banks and other public infrastructure, have emergency fallback systems but those are only short term stop-gap measures, designed to fill the role of the main pumps till they’re repaired.They aren’t designed to hold out for the long term, (especially due to the fact during a disaster the load placed on these services increases drastically.) You wanna know what happens when every fire hydrant in the country goes down?Yeah that, x 10,000If that wasn’t bad enough, we couldn’t effectively respond to the massive wildfires that are becoming more and more common place. Uncontrolled fires would cause thousands of death and billions in damages nationwide, razing entire districts and forests to the ground.Smoky needs your help…. TO GET THE F*CK OUTWhat happens when those fires hit chemical warehouses, or fuel repositories? What happens when places dealing with volatile, toxic, temperature sensitive industrial chemicals suddenly lose power and can’t safely contain their materials?It’s like a regular fire, but with extra death®And let’s not forget, a cyber attack on nuclear power stations could disable their safety protocols and lead to, well…*Roblox death noise*Let’s say you decide to (finally) get the hell out of Dodge (literally) and leave the US. How are you gonna do it? Air traffic will no doubt be grounded and suspended until power and order can be restored to the cities. Although they will probably remain open initially, land borders with Canada and Mexico will eventually close as the human tide of refugees from the US overwhelms the countries which, despite their welcoming populations, resilient economies and industrial bases, can’t handle an exodus of this scale.Sea routes will probably remain open, since ports and other deep water shipping facilities will be among the first to have power restored but given that everybody and their mother wants to leave, those seats are gonna be expensive. Oh yeah, and good luck getting a visa or right to reside in another country without access to a phone, internet, online bank or even a functioning consulate/embassy. Besides, the Federal government will no doubt discourage mass exoduses (at least as much as they can) because they don’t want half the country up and leaving when there’s work to be done.Wanna get smuggled? Well that’s gonna be double expensive and risky and of course very illegal. And what are you going to pay your esteemed chauffeur with anyway? Unless you keep you money in a mattress, you’ll need to withdraw the money from a bank which will either be a.) looted, b.) closed due to no power or c.) closed and frozen due to Federal order, so that people like you don’t all withdraw money thereby leaving the bank with no money thereby collapsing the bank thereby further collapsing the no doubt, at this point, free falling US economy.Frozen banks bring a whole new meaning to cold, hard cashEven if you did have the cash, it’s possible (albeit still unlikely but hey, we got for worst case scenarios here) that the dollar’s value will have degraded drastically, so you might not have enough to pay anyway. Not to mention the hundreds of billions lost through stock divestment, shareholder panic and lost trade, as factories, shipping, manufacturing are all paralysed by the power cuts.So you can’t drive, fly or sail out. Looks like your walking. Expect thousands of American’s crossing the northern border and, ironically, illegally immigrating to Mexico by crossing the Rio Grande.The cost of this disaster would be unprecedented, an event unlike any other in human history. The ensuing riots, fighting, civil unrest, crime, famine, drought, fires, flooding, war, blizzards, heat waves and epidemics due to the disappearance of medicines and sanitary conditions would claim millions.The financial toll would be billions if not trillions of dollars and the subsequent clean up would take decades, especially for the chemical, oil and nuclear spills likely to happen without the modern, electricity-driven apparatus we have built to contain them.A true national, monster blackout such as this (caused by massive cyberattacks, physical terrorism, high nuclear EMP’s or even a Coronal Mass Ejection) would send the United States, at least for the most part, back to the Stone Age.TL;DR: A normal week in Detroit*Hey guys, don’t hesitate to tell me if you enjoyed this, what you didn’t like and how to improve or if there’s anything else to add!If you guys like, I’ll make a second part (Global destruction this time guaranteed ), leave a comment to tell me what you think!All the best,-MK

Below are the Campaign promises listed as broken by poilitifact. You can argue that he didn’t get a lot of help from the right, but he didn’t exactly do much to bridge the gap himself.There are things on this list that required no help from the right such as recognizing Armenian genocide as well. There was no excuse for not crossing that one off the list.Obama was what he was. An under-qualified community activist that was in over his head and led astray by senior Democratic officials.The Obameter: Campaign Promises that are Promise BrokenEliminate all oil and gas tax loopholes"Eliminating special tax breaks for oil and gas companies: including repealing special expensing rules, foreign tax credit benefits, and manufacturing deductions for oil and gas firms."Expand the child and dependent care creditExpand and make refundable the child and dependent care credit.Require publicly traded financial partnerships to pay the corporate income taxRequire publicly traded financial partnerships to pay the corporate income tax.Close loopholes in the corporate tax deductibility of CEO payCongress has set rules regarding the tax deductibility of the salaries of CEOs, but forms of non-salary compensation have become popular. Obama would look at revamping definitions of compensation.Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeownersCreate a $10 billion fund to help homeowners refinance or sell their homes. "The Fund will not help speculators, people who bought vacation homes or people who falsely represented their incomes."Provide option for a pre-filled-out tax formWill direct the Internal Revenue Service to "give taxpayers the option of a pre-filled tax form to verify, sign and return to the IRS or online. This will eliminate the need for Americans to hire expensive tax preparers and to gather information that the federal government already has on file."Create a mortgage interest tax credit for non-itemizersCreate a refundable tax credit equal to 10 percent of mortgage interest for nonitemizers, up to a maximum credit of $800.Require automatic enrollment in 401(k) plansAutomatic enrollment in 401(k) plans for workers whose employers offer retirement plans.Create a retirement savings tax credit for low incomesA tax credit for retirement savings up to $500 (couples) or $250 (singles). Phases out when incomes exceed $65,000 (couples) or $32,500 (single). Indexed for inflation.End income tax for seniors making less than $50,000"Will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This will eliminate taxes for 7 million seniors -- saving them an average of $1,400 a year-- and will also mean that 27 million seniors will not need to file an income tax return at all."End no-bid contracts above $25,000"Will ensure that federal contracts over $25,000 are competitively bid."Create a $60 billion bank to fund roads and bridges"Will address the infrastructure challenge by creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation's most challenging transportation infrastructure needs. The Bank will receive an infusion of federal money, $60 billion over 10 years, to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity."Tax carried interest as ordinary incomeCarried interest is a way of compensating executives by giving them ownership stakes, or "interest," in a business. Carried interest is taxed as a capital gain, which has a lower tax rate than ordinary income. Obama proposes taxing carried interest at the same rate as regular income.Sign the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for workers to unionize"Obama is a cosponsor and strong advocate of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bipartisan effort to make the unionization process more transparent and increase penalties on companies that violate employee rights. He will sign EFCA into law as president."Lift the payroll tax cap on earnings above $250,000"Barack Obama believes that the first place to look to strengthen Social Security is the payroll tax system. Obama believes that one strong option is increasing the maximum amount of earnings covered by Social Security by lifting the payroll tax cap on only earnings above $250,000."Forbid companies in bankruptcy from giving executives bonuses"Protect the jobs and benefits of workers and retirees when corporations file for bankruptcy by telling companies that they cannot issue bonuses for executives during bankruptcy while their workers watch their pensions disappear."Allow workers to claim more in unpaid wages and benefits in bankruptcy court"Increase the amount of unpaid wages and benefits workers can claim in bankruptcy court against their employer."Require full disclosure of company pension investments to employees"When companies fund their pensions, many do not disclose their investments with the employee's pension dollars. This lack of transparency can make it easier for fund managers to make imprudent or even fraudulent investment decisions. Obama will ensure that all employees who have company pensions receive annual disclosures about their pension fund's investments, including full details about which projects have been invested in, the performance of those investments and appropriate details about probable future investments strategies."Allow imported prescription drugs"Allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S."Prevent drug companies from blocking generic drugs"Prevent drug companies from blocking generic drugs from consumers."Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices"Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices."Appoint federal-level coordinator to oversee all federal autism efforts"They will appoint a Federal ASD Coordinator to oversee federal ASD research and federal efforts to improve awareness of ASD and improve the training of medical professionals to identify and treat ASD. By establishing one top-level point person to coordinate ASD efforts in the White House, they will ensure that ASD receives the recognition and priority it deserves in the federal government. The Federal ASD Coordinator will also be tasked with eliminating bureaucratic obstacles that may be delaying implementation of important ASD measures and ensuring that all federal ASD dollars are being spent in a manner that prioritizes results. The Coordinator will work with state task forces on ASD to ensure effective communication and collaboration among federal, state, and local agencies."Double federal funding for cancer research"Will double federal funding for cancer research within 5 years, focusing on NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NCI (National Cancer Institute)."Direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a study of federal cancer initiatives"As president, Barack Obama will immediately direct his Secretary of Health and Human Services, in collaboration with agency officials, academic researchers, cancer survivors and advocates for people with cancer, and state public health officials, to comprehensively examine the various cancer-related efforts of federal agencies, and provide recommendations to eliminate barriers to effective coordination across federal agencies and between the federal government and other stakeholders."Provide the CDC $50 million in funding to determine effective approaches for cancer patient care"Will provide the CDC $50 million in new funding to determine the most effective approaches that assist not only navigation of cancer patients through diagnosis and treatment processes, but also provide easy-to-understand information on the necessary follow-up steps to ensure continued lifelong health."Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities"As president, Barack Obama will renew America's leadership by making the United States a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; the first human rights treaty approved by the UN in the 21st century and a vital foundation for respecting the rights of people with disabilities worldwide He will urge the U.S. Senate to ratify the Convention expeditiously."Fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)"Barack Obama has been a strong and consistent advocate for fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Congress promised to shoulder 40 percent of each state's "excess cost" of educating children with disabilities, but it has never lived up to this obligation. Currently, the federal government provides less than half of the promised funding (17 percent)."Create a National Commission on People with Disabilities, Employment, and Social SecurityCreate a national commission charged with "examining and proposing solutions to work disincentives in the SSDI, SSI, Medicare, and Medicaid," among other things.Change rules so small businesses owned by people with disabilities get preferences for contracts."Barack Obama and Joe Biden would direct the Small Business Administration to amend regulations under the Small Business Act that provide preferences in federal contracting to small businesses owned by members of socially and economically disadvantaged groups to include individuals with disabilities."Reduce the threshhold for the Family and Medical Leave Act from companies with 50 employees to companies with 25 employees"The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides eligible employees of larger employers (i.e., 50 or more employees) with 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a family member's or their own serious health condition. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will guarantee that millions more workers have access to FMLA leave by reducing the threshold for which employers are covered from companies with 50 or more employees to those with 25 or more."Provide a $1.5 billion fund to help states launch programs for paid family and medical leave"As president, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will initiate a 50-state strategy to encourage all of the states to adopt paid-leave systems (as part of the Family and Medical Leave Act). Barack Obama and Joe Biden will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help states offset the costs for employees and employers. Obama's Department of Labor will also provide technical information to the states on how to craft paid-leave programs consistent with their local needs."Require employers to provide seven paid sick days per year"Require that employers provide seven paid sick days per year – which may be taken on an hourly basis – so that Americans with disabilities can take the time off they need without fear of losing their jobs or a paycheck."Amend the Medicare "homebound" rule to allow some travel without loss of benefitsAmend the Medicare 'homebound' rule, which requires severely disabled recipients to stay in their homes to retain benefits, so that they have the freedom to leave their homes without fear of having their home-health benefits taken away.Reduce the Veterans Benefits Administration claims backlog"There are currently over 400,000 claims pending within the Veterans Benefits Administration, and over 800,000 claims receipts are expected in 2008 alone. … Obama will hire additional claims workers and convene our nation's leading veterans groups, employees and managers to develop an updated training and management model that will ensure that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently, and stem from adequate training and accountability for each claims adjudicator."Expand the Family Medical Leave Act to include leave for domestic violence or sexual assault"Expand the purposes for which leave can be taken under the Family Medical Leave Act to include reasons related to domestic violence or sexual assault."Form international group to help Iraq refugees"Will form an international working group to address" the problem of "more than five million Iraqis (who) are refugees or are displaced inside their own country."Provide at least $2 billion for services to Iraqi refugees"Provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries."Work with Russia to move nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert"The United States and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. Barack Obama believes that we should take our nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert -- something that George W. Bush promised to do when he was campaigning for president in 2000. Maintaining this Cold War stance today is unnecessary and increases the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch. As president, Obama will work with Russia to find common ground and bring significantly more weapons off hair-trigger alert."Clarify legal status for defense contractor personnel"Establish the legal status of contractor personnel, making possible prosecution of any abuses committed by private military contractors."Double U.S. spending on foreign aid to $50 billion a year by 2012"Barack Obama would target this new spending towards strategic goals, including helping the world's weakest states to build democratic institutions, foster healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty and generate wealth."Establish a Global Education FundBarack Obama would use part of increased U.S. assistance to establish a $2 billion Global Education Fund to "offer an alternative to extremist schools."Launch a new 'America's Voice Corps'"Obama also would launch a new 'America's Voice Corps' to rapidly recruit and train fluent speakers of local languages (Arabic, BahasaMelayu, Bahasa, Farsi, Urdu, and Turkish) with public diplomacy skills, who can ensure our voice is heard in the mass media and in our efforts on the ground."Develop an alternative to President Bush's Military Commissions Act on handling detainees"He will reject the Military Commissions Act, which allowed the U.S. to circumvent Geneva Conventions in the handling of detainees. He will develop a fair and thorough process based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice to distinguish between those prisoners who should be prosecuted for their crimes, those who can't be prosecuted but who can be held in a manner consistent with the laws of war, and those who should be released or transferred to their home countries."Restore habeas corpus rights for "enemy combatants""The right of habeas corpus allows prisoners to ask a court to determine whether they are being lawfully imprisoned. Recently, this right has been denied to those deemed enemy combatants. Barack Obama strongly supports bipartisan efforts to restore habeas rights. He firmly believes that those who pose a danger to this country should be swiftly tried and brought to justice, but those who do not should have sufficient due process to ensure that we are not wrongfully denying them their liberty."Establish regulations to secure chemical plants"Barack Obama will establish a clear set of federal regulations that all plants must follow, including improving barriers, containment, mitigation, and safety training, and, where possible, using safer technology, such as less toxic chemicals."Improve port security through better radiation detection"Will redouble our efforts to develop technology that can detect radiation and determine the danger it poses, and he will work with the maritime transportation industry to integrate this technology into their operations so as to maximize security without causing economic disruption."Strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and double its budget in the next four years"The IAEA is understaffed and underresourced at a time when demand for its expertise are growing. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will seek to ensure that the Agency gets the authority, information, people, and technology it needs to do its job. They will work to double the IAEA budget in the next four years (increasing the U.S. annual share to about $225 million). They will press countries to adopt the "Additional Protocol," -- which grants the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive inspections, including at undeclared facilities — and seek agreement among members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group not to transfer nuclear technology to NPT countries that have not adopted the Additional Protocol. They will work to gain agreement on effective global standards for nuclear safety and security. And they will call for establishing IAEA verification procedures that go beyond the Additional Protocol to strengthen the agency's ability to detect clandestine facilities and activities."Secure ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)"The United States has maintained a moratorium on testing since 1992. It signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, but it has not been ratified yet. Since the U.S. Senate last considered the treaty in 1999, significant progress has been made in our verification capability to detect nuclear explosions, even at extremely low yields, and to ensure confidence in the reliability of our nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing."Require companies to disclose personal information data breaches"California and other states have laws requiring a company that may have disclosed a resident's personal information without authorization to inform the victim of the disclosure. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that all Americans deserve the same right to know and will push for comparable federal legislation."Seek to negotiate a political agreement on Cyprus"As president, Barack Obama will show U.S. leadership in seeking to negotiate a political settlement on Cyprus. He believes strongly that Cyprus should remain a single, sovereign country in which each of the two communities on the island is able to exercise substantial political authority within a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation."With the G-8, launch Health Infrastructure 2020"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will take the lead at the G-8, working with and leveraging the engagement of the private sector and private philanthropy, to launch Health Infrastructure 2020 – a global effort to work with developing countries to invest in the full range of infrastructure needed to improve and protect both American and global health."Reinstate special envoy for the Americas"In the past, American presidents have filled the position of special envoy to bring senior-level attention to hemispheric matters that might otherwise get buried in the normal diplomatic process. Unfortunately, the position was eliminated after the post was vacated in June of 2004. As president Barack Obama will reinstate the position."Double the Peace Corps"Barack Obama will double the Peace Corps to 16,000 by its 50th anniversary in 2011 and push Congress to fully fund this expansion, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean."Seek independent watchdog agency to investigate congressional ethics violations"Will use the power of the presidency to fight for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations so that the public can be assured that ethics complaints will be investigated."Create a public "Contracts and Influence" database"Will create a 'contracts and influence' database that will disclose how much federal contractors spend on lobbying, and what contracts they are getting and how well they complete them."Expose Special Interest Tax Breaks to Public Scrutiny"Will ensure that any tax breaks for corporate recipients — or tax earmarks — are also publicly available on the Internet in an easily searchable format."Allow five days of public comment before signing billsTo reduce bills rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them, Obama "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials"No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."Double funding for Federal Charter School Program and require more accountability"Will double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will provide this expanded charter school funding only to states that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing down chronically underperforming charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will also prioritize supporting states that help the most successful charter schools to expand to serve more students."Double funding for afterschool programs"Will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children."Create scholarships to recruit new teachers"Will create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location."Regulate pollution from major livestock operations"In the Obama Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will strictly monitor and regulate pollution from large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) - which raise more than 40 percent of U.S. livestock - with fines for those who violate tough air and water quality standards."Provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrantsWill support "a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens."Sign the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act into law"Will sign the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act into law and charge the Voting Rights Section with vigorously enforcing that law and the provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The act will will enable investigations into deceptive and fraudulent practices. It establishes significant, harsh penalties for those who have engaged in fraud, and it provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote."Eliminate caps on damages for discrimination casesWill sign into law the Equal Remedies Act of 2007 "to do away with the caps on compensatory and punitive damages under Title VII that presently impede the ability of victims of racial and gender discrimination to fully recover for the wrongs they have suffered."Ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies"Will sign legislation that will ban the practice of racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal funding to state and local police departments if they adopt policies to prohibit the practice."Allow bankruptcy judges to modify terms of a home mortgageWill repeal provisions of the Chapter 13 law that prohibit bankruptcy judges from modifying the original terms of home mortgages for ordinary families -- regardless of whether the loan was predatory or unfair or is otherwise unaffordable -- "so that ordinary families can also get relief that bankruptcy laws were intended to provide."Increase the supply of affordable housing throughout metropolitan regionsWill support "efforts to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to develop affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund would use a small percentage of the profits of two government-sponsored housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to create thousands of new units of affordable housing every year...Will also restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and ensure that all Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs are restored to their original purpose."Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour"Will further raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing."Restore Superfund program so that polluters pay for clean-ups"Will restore the strength of the Superfund program by requiring polluters to pay for the cleanup of contaminated sites they created."Fully fund the COPS programWill fully funding the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program "to combat crime and help address police brutality and accountability issues in local communities."Support tax deduction for artistsWill "ensure tax fairness for artists" by supporting the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "The Act amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow artists to deduct the fair market value of their work, rather than just the costs of the materials, when they make charitable contributions."Re-establish the National Aeronautics and Space CouncilWill re-establish an organizational authority in the federal government with a sufficiently broad mandate to oversee a comprehensive and integrated strategy and policy dealing with all aspects of the government's space-related programs, including those being managed by NASA, the Department of Defense, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Commerce Department, the Transportation Department, and other federal agencies. This Council reporting to the president "will oversee and coordinate civilian, military, commercial and national security space activities. It will solicit public participation, engage the international community, and work toward a 21st century vision of space that constantly pushes the envelope on new technologies as it pursues a balanced national portfolio that expands our reach into the heavens and improves life here on Earth."Support human mission to moon by 2020Will "endorse the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars."Direct revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to increased coastal hurricane protection"Will also direct revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to increased coastal hurricane protection."Create a national catastrophe insurance reserve"Will create a National Catastrophe Insurance Reserve that would be funded by private insurers contributing a portion of the premiums they collect from policyholders. Such a framework would neither distort the insurance market nor discourage risk avoidance and risk mitigation investments because insurers would not be forced out of high-risk markets for fear of bankruptcy in the event of a disaster. With this program in place, disaster victims would no longer have to depend solely on taxpayerfunded federal disaster aid loans."Establish a Global Energy Corps to promote green energy in developing countries"Will extend opportunities for older individuals such as teachers, engineers, and doctors to serve overseas. This effort will include a Global Energy Corps to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions overseas and promote low-carbon and affordable energy solutions in developing nations. One of this century's great challenges will be promoting the use of green energy in developing countries, which will face exponential increases in energy demand. This Corps will be composed of scientists and engineers who will work with local partners overseas."Expand service-learning in schoolsWill tie a plan to give schools a substantial infusion of funds to support teachers and principals and improve student learning to the condition that school districts develop programs to engage students in service opportunities. "Obama and Biden believe that middle and high school students should be expected to engage in community service for 50 hours annually during the school year or summer months. They will develop national guidelines for service-learning and community service programs, and will give schools better tools both to develop successful programs and to document the experience of students at all levels. They will encourage programs that engage with community partners to expand opportunities for community service and service-learning opportunities, so that students can apply what they learn in the classroom to authentic situations that help the community. These programs will also involve citizens from the community engaging students in service opportunities through the Classroom Corps."Pay for the national service plan without increasing the deficit"Will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government (to pay for a national service plan that will cost about $3.5 billion per year when it is fully implemented). This plan will be paid for in part by cancelling tax provisions that would otherwise help multinational corporations pay less in U.S. taxes starting in 2008 by reallocating tax deductions for interest expenses between income earned in the U.S. and income earned abroad. The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with ending the war in Iraq."Seek treaty to control fissile materials"Will lead a global effort to negotiate a verifiable treaty ending the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes."Encourage diversity in media ownership"Will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum."Improve and prioritize student science assessments"Will work with governors and educators to ensure that state assessments measure…a student's higher order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis, interpretation, forming questions and communicating these skills."Reduce the number of middle managers in the federal workforce"Barack Obama will thin the ranks of Washington middle managers, freeing up resources both for deficit reduction and for increasing the number of frontline workers."Limit subsidies for agribusiness"Obama will implement a $250,000 [farm commodity] payment limitation so that we help family farmers, not large corporate agribusiness. Obama will close the loopholes that allow megafarms to get around the limits by subdividing their operations into multiple paper corporations."Strengthen anti-monopoly laws to favor independent farmers"Obama will strengthen anti-monopoly laws and strengthen producer protections to ensure independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and fair prices for their goods."Give tax incentives to new farmersObama "will also provide tax incentives to make it easier for new farmers to afford their first farm. Obama will increase incentives for farmers and private landowners to conduct sustainable agriculture and protect wetlands, grasslands and forests."Strengthen the Age Discrimination in Employment Act"Obama will fight job discrimination for aging employees by strengthening the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and empowering the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prevent all forms of discrimination."Limit term of director of national intelligence"Will insulate the Director of National Intelligence from political pressure by giving the DNI a fixed term, like the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Obama and Biden will seek consistency and integrity at the top of our intelligence community -- not just a political ally."Call for a consultative group of congressional leaders on national security"I will call for a standing, bipartisan consultative group of congressional leaders on national security. I will meet with this consultative group every month and consult with them before taking major military action."Give annual "State of the World" address"I'll give an annual 'State of the World' address to the American people in which I lay out our national security policy."Reduce earmarks to 1994 levels"Barack Obama is committed to returning earmarks to less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were at before 1994."Work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers"He will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods."Establish a low carbon fuel standard"Will establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) to speed the introduction of low-carbon non-petroleum fuels. The standard requires fuels suppliers in 2010 to begin to reduce the carbon of their fuel by 5 percent within 5 years and 10 percent within 10 years. The Obama-Biden plan will incentivize increased private sector investment in advanced low-carbon fuels and has a sustainability provision to ensure that increased biofuels production does not come at the expense of environmental conservation. The LCFS is an important mechanism in ensuring that our efforts to reduce our oil dependence also reduce carbon emissions."Require 25 percent renewable energy by 2025"Will create a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that will require 25 percent of American electricity be derived from renewable sources by 2025, which has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs on its own."Enact windfall profits tax for oil companies"Will require oil companies to take a reasonable share of their record-breaking windfall profits and use it to provide direct relief worth $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a married couple. The relief would be delivered as quickly as possible to help families cope with the rising price of gasoline, food and other necessities. The rebates would be fully paid for with five years of a windfall profits tax on record oil company profits."Create cap and trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming"Will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming - an 80% reduction by 2050. To ensure this isn't just talk, I will also commit to interim targets toward this goal in 2020, 2030, and 2040. These reductions will start immediately, and we'll continue to follow the recommendations of top scientists to ensure that our targets are strong enough to meet the challenge we face."Use revenue from cap and trade to support clean energy and environmental restoration"A small portion of the receipts generated by auctioning [cap and trade] allowances ($15 billion per year) will be used to support the development of clean energy, invest in energy efficiency improvements, and help develop the next generation of biofuels and clean energy vehicles – measures that will help the economy and help meet the emissions reduction targets. It will also be used to provide new funding to state and federal land and wildlife managers to restore habitat, create wildlife migration corridors, and assist fish and wildlife to adapt to the effects of a warming climate. All remaining receipts will be used for rebates and other transition relief to ensure that families and communities are not adversely impacted by the transition to a new energy, low carbon economy."Require plug-in fleet at the White House"Within one year of becoming President, the entire White House fleet will be converted to plug-ins as security permits."Require new federal fleet purchases to be half plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles"Half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012."Require more flex-fuel cars for the federal government"Government should lead the way here. I showed up at this event in a government vehicle that does not have a flexible-fuel tank. When I'm president, I will make sure that every vehicle purchased by the federal government does."Mandate flexible fuel vehicles by 2012"Will work with Congress and auto companies to ensure that all new vehicles have flexible fuel (FFV) capability . . . by the end of his first term in office."Double federal program to help "reverse" commuters who go from city to suburbs"Will double the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program to ensure that additional federal public transportation dollars flow to the highest-need communities and that urban planning initiatives take this aspect of transportation policy into account. JARC funds have been used to connect low-income workers around the country with job opportunities."Require energy conservation in use of transportation dollars"Will require governors and local leaders in our metropolitan areas to make energy conservation a required part of their planning for the expenditure of federal transportation funds."Provide an annual report on "state of our energy future""I will report to the American people every year on the State of our Energy Future."Devote federal resources to promote cellulosic ethanol"Will invest federal resources, including tax incentives, cash prizes and government contracts into developing the most promising technologies with the goal of getting the first two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol into the system by 2013."Sign the Freedom of Choice Act"Throughout my career, I've been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. ... And I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president."Allow penalty-free hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts in 2008 and 2009"Obama and Biden are calling for legislation that would allow withdrawals of 15% up to $10,000 from retirement accounts without penalty (although subject to the normal taxes). This would apply to withdrawals in 2008 (including retroactively) and 2009."Give the White House's Privacy and Civil Liberties Board subpoena power"Strengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board with subpoena powers and reporting responsibilities."Recognize the Armenian genocide"Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term 'genocide' to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. … as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide."No family making less than $250,000 will see "any form of tax increase.""I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."No signing statements to nullify instructions from Congress"While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability. I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law."Negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPANTo achieve health care reform, "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."Create a public option health plan for a new National Health Insurance Exchange."The exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and meet the same standards for quality and efficiency."Cut the cost of a typical family's health insurance premium by up to $2,500 a year"I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year."Bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agendaObama and Joe Biden will "turn the page on the ugly partisanship in Washington, so we can bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda that works for the American people."Introduce a comprehensive immigration bill in the first year"I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible."End the war in Afghanistan in 2014"President Obama responsibly ended the war in Iraq and will end the war in Afghanistan in 2014."