Search Results for: The Nation

Street Cop

Longreads Pick

A profile of Mary Jo White, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who is making a name for herself as a tough enforcer. But when it comes to regulating, can White keep Wall Street in check?:

As the country sank into a severe recession, many wondered why the major figures in the financial world, whose firms had received billions of taxpayer dollars at the height of the crisis, weren’t being punished for their misdeeds. Because the S.E.C.—unlike the Treasury or the Federal Reserve—is an enforcement agency, it became the focus of the frustration. It was publicly humiliated when, in 2009, and again in 2011, a federal judge in New York, Jed Rakoff, tartly rejected its proposed settlements in fraud investigations of Bank of America and Citigroup. The Bank of America settlement, Rakoff wrote, “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality.” Rakoff’s Citigroup opinion concluded with a flourish: “In much of the world, propaganda reigns, and truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers. Even in our nation, apologists for suppressing or obscuring the truth may always be found. But the S.E.C., of all agencies, has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges; and if it fails to do so, this Court must not, in the name of deference or convenience, grant judicial enforcement to the agency’s contrivances.” As one person who worked in the S.E.C.’s enforcement division put it when I spoke to him, “Judge Rakoff was wagging a finger at the S.E.C.” He raised his middle finger.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 4, 2013
Length: 40 minutes (10,236 words)

Center Of The Universe

Longreads Pick

A former marine recalls an experience with someone he believes was a notorious serial killer 33 years ago:

At my keyboard, I recognized Randy Kraft immediately—the chin, the eyes, the eyebrows, the expressions. It would have been shocking to recognize an acquaintance as a serial killer under any circumstance, but recognizing Kraft as the guy I met on that long-ago afternoon took my breath away for days.

You blink. You look again. You look at other photos. You wonder if you’re being melodramatic, if your memory is faulty. You wonder if people will believe you, or simply think your imagination has run away with you. You wonder if there is a class of neurotic people who make up false accounts of run-ins with serial killers. You realize that to be true to your story and yourself, you can’t let what you are reading create false memories.

Published: Sep 23, 2013
Length: 17 minutes (4,301 words)

Stranger in a Strange Land: A Very Personal History of ‘Ender’s Game’

Longreads Pick

Rany Jazayerli reflects on his early discovery of Ender’s Game, what it taught him about empathy and about himself, feeling isolated as a young Muslim in the Midwest. And it’s the characters’ empathy that made the anti-gay views of the book’s author, Orson Scott Card, so troubling:

That endless loneliness is what makes it so easy to root for Ender. Card is so deeply sympathetic, so deeply empathetic to Ender’s plight that the reader can’t help but feel the same way. It’s what makes the book essential reading for every kid who has walked away from the protective embrace of his or her parents, which is to say every kid who has ever hit puberty. To be young is to feel alone, like an outcast, like a misfit. Adolescence is alienation.

Source: Grantland
Published: Nov 1, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,737 words)

“I did have an interesting (unattributable, of course) briefing from someone very senior in one West Coast mega-corporation who conceded that neither he nor the CEO of his company had security clearance to know what arrangements his own organization had reached with the US government. ‘So, it’s like a company within a company?’ I asked. He waved his hand dismissively: ‘I know the guy, I trust him.’”

“Do MPs and congressmen have any more sophisticated idea of what technology is now capable of? Could they, as supposed regulators, also decipher such documents? A couple of weeks ago I asked the question of another very senior member of the British cabinet who had followed the Snowden stories only hazily and whose main experience of intelligence seemed to date back to the 1970s. ‘The trouble with MPs,’ he admitted, ‘is most of us don’t really understand the Internet.’”

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, in New York Review of Books, on who we trust and what we know when it comes to technology and spying. Read more on spying.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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“In the jargon of economics, the demand for therapeutic drugs is ‘price inelastic’: increasing the price doesn’t reduce how much the drugs are used. Prices are set and raised according to what the market will bear, and the parties who actually pay the drug companies will meet whatever price is charged for an effective drug to which there is no alternative. And so in determining the price for a drug, companies ask themselves questions that have next to nothing to do with the drugs’ costs. ‘It is not a science,’ the veteran drug maker and former Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer told me. ‘It is a feel.’”

– An examination of how pharmaceutical companies determine the price of drugs. Read more on medicine in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo: Rennett Stowe

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The Old Man Next Door

Longreads Pick

A look at mob boss “Whitey” Bulger’s last days while living in an apartment complex in Los Angeles:

Catalina Schlank, who is 90, has lived at the Princess Eugenia since moving there in 1974, a decade after arriving from Argentina. To her the pair had a storybook quality. “They were nice neighbors and courteous with me,” says Schlank. “They were elegant. You could just picture them as a young couple.” She remembers how Greig would place tenants’ mail on their doorsteps, since the letter carrier usually dumped onto the floor whatever didn’t fit into the tiny boxes. Schlank still has some of the notes Greig gave her, written in tall, clear cursive letters, to express appreciation for the occasional pieces of fruit or a pocketbook the older woman had given her. “Many thanks for the American Hero stationery.” “Hope you have a great month. (March already!)” Bulger had written thank-yous as well. Schlank found him nothing but a courtly, caring figure of a man who insisted on carrying her luggage should he see her with a suitcase and who once, without warning or explanation, came over and enthusiastically hugged her.

Published: Oct 23, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,621 words)

“Perhaps he wasn’t wrong to stake everything on this. He’d chosen a different path – a journey deep into the unknown to confront his self-doubts and fears head-on. He had to walk fearlessly inside the gates of Rucker Park and believe it was all worth it … then play the game of his life. His choice to put everything on the line was rare, but it’s not unique. Nearly every culture and tradition has a similar story, real or imagined. When a young man starts his journey, he must be brave enough to take a metaphysical leap of faith. He must be willing to step foot on the bus and travel straight into the labyrinth of his fears, toward whatever awaits him on the other end, even if it may rip him to shreds. It’s the ultimate gamble. If the young man is successful, he comes home a hero, and becomes important. His life has meaning and purpose. But in order to succeed, he must first completely open up his soul to the consequences of failure, knowing there may be no way back out. This, above all else, is the hardest thing to do.”

Flinder Boyd on the hoop dream of Thomas “TJ” Webster Jr. (SB Nation). Read more from Boyd in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo by Flinder Boyd

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“In 2011, Air Force psychologists completed a mental-health survey of 600 combat drone operators. Forty-two percent of drone crews reported moderate to high stress, and 20 percent reported emotional exhaustion or burnout. The study’s authors attributed their dire results, in part, to ‘existential conflict.’ A later study found that drone operators suffered from the same levels of depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol abuse, and suicidal ideation as traditional combat aircrews. These effects appeared to spike at the exact time of Bryant’s deployment, during the surge in Iraq. (Chillingly, to mitigate these effects, researchers have proposed creating a Siri-like user interface, a virtual copilot that anthropomorphizes the drone and lets crews shunt off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.) ”

GQ on the life of a “Drone Warrior.” More from the Longreads Archive on how drones are changing the modern battlefield.

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What It's Like to Be Gay In a Country Where It's Illegal: Our College Pick

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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick:

Good journalism costs money. It also takes a little nerve. Sonali Kohli and Blaine Ohigashi of UCLA’s Daily Bruin have both resources. The Bridget O’Brien Scholarship Foundation annually funds an ambitious reporting project proposed by UCLA student journalists. Kohli and Ohigashi went to Malawi, where UCLA has a strong research presence, to report on the LGBT community in a country that outlaws homosexuality. The students were urged by university officials not to make the trip, but they did. The sources who spoke to the reporters did so at considerable risk to themselves and their loved ones.

Kohli and Ohigashi returned and created an ambitious multimedia package. International stories produced by student journalists tend to have a quick, parachute sensibility with little context. The Bridget O’Brien Scholarship Foundation gave Kohli and Ohigashi the time and resources they needed to do right by their story.

In the Shadows

Sonali Kohli, Blaine Ohigashi | Daily Bruin | October 2013

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.


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The Whitest Historically Black College In America

Longreads Pick

How Bluefield State, a historically black college, became a school where 90 percent of the students are now white:

“In 1966, the state picked Wendell G. Hardway to lead the college — the school’s first white president. Deirdre Guyton, who runs the college’s alumni affairs department, said that Hardway was the first president to live off campus rather than at Hatter Hall, the house in the center of campus named for the school’s black founder. By 1968, according to the book Bluefield State College Centennial History, Hardway had hired 23 new faculty members — all of whom were white. The book goes on to say that the college’s dedicated faculty, which had been all-black as recently as 1954, was only 30 percent black by 1967. If there was a tug of war over what the college was going to be, many of the black alumni and students felt they were losing. Bluefield State was quickly becoming unrecognizable.

“That tug of war looked a lot like battles being waged across the country, like the growing divide between black folks who believed in nonviolence as an avenue to black progress and those who felt that method was taking too long and yielding too little. During halftime at homecoming in 1967, black students staged a demonstration on the football field to protest what they saw as Hardway’s discrimination against black faculty and students. Things got rowdy. The police were called. Students were suspended.”

Source: NPR
Published: Oct 18, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,665 words)