Ashley Southall, Ali Watkins and Blacki Migliozzi reporting for the New York Times:

This pattern of lenient punishment holds true for about 71 percent of the 6,900 misconduct charges over the last two decades in which the agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, recommended the highest level of discipline and a final outcome was recorded, according to an analysis of recently released data by The New York Times.

The citizen review board, put into place in the early 1990’s, has no real power to reign in officers who abuse their authority. It’s clear the NYPD has no interest in policing themselves, so the review board or some other outside agency should be granted that power.

Bill de Blasio campaigned on bringing more accountability to the NYPD back in 2014 but has managed to achieve basically nothing.

As protests swept the city and nation this summer, both Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea urged the public to have confidence in the city’s ability to hold officers accountable. But the data offers further evidence of the challenges that outside oversight agencies face in going up against police forces.

Mr. Shea, who was appointed a year ago, has imposed the board’s recommended penalty in only two of the 28 cases in which charges were brought, records show.

The idea that the people we have entrusted with the power and privilege to maintain our laws should be held to a high standard of accountability should not be controversial, but of course it’s become a weaponized and highly politicized aspect of modern American life. There is some good news — at least 20 police-reform ballot initiatives in places from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio were put in front of voters this year and many of them have passed.

A city as big and diverse as New York should be a model of oversight and accountability. Instead, the city appears to be almost uniquely disqualified to protect its citizens.

Selling merch and vinyl (and cassettes???), and offering an in-the-know newsletter seems like a great approach. You can always go visit the one remaining location in Tokyo.

The specifics of this are worth a glance, even if the hindsight of knowing the Amy McGrath and Jaime Harrison campaigns were “doomed” is a little much (I was certain McGrath was going to lose, I believed the bad polls that showed Harrison had a chance). But this story speaks to some bigger dynamics, namely how much of politics has been nationalized and how important local races remain. People who live in big, liberal cities often seem to place themselves above local politics beyond the mayor, and take for granted how quickly things can change.

Yglesias is a smart fella and rigorous thinker who sometimes gets a bit out over his skis, especially on Twitter; generally, I’d say that’s a good thing for a pundit. I appreciate his holistic view and insight as a left of center moderate and expect he’ll feel right at home with his new blog.

TPM remains one of the best, and to my mind, purest distillations of online publishing in the short history of the medium. Josh has a keen understanding of not just his beat — politics — but how journalism can and should work on the internet. The past twenty years have seen one seismic shift after another for publishers and TPM has remained steadfast throughout, not chasing trends, and doing fantastic work. It’s hard to overstate how groundbreaking the site has been, I have no doubt it will continue to be so over the coming decades.

Andrew Golis, one of _TPM_’s first hires, has a mini-appreciation that highlights some of the site’s influences.

Just a fantastic essay by Emily Segal & Martti Kalliala, written back in March at the start of the pandemic, that brilliantly captures so much of the era roughly bookended by the financial crisis and, well, now. The experience economy, an ultimate endpoint in globalized capital and internet-flattened culture that generated a ton of wealth but didn’t really build anything to last, is dissolving.

Framing it as a lost generation seems dire, but it’s clear the effects of this year (and who knows how much more beyond) are going to be real and lasting. The inequality that already exists between rich and poor kids is only going to widen.

It remains deeply shameful that as a country we prioritized opening restaurants and bars and nail salons and barber shops over schools.

Now the hard work can begin.

Earlier this year, I saw some polling that Trump had actually seen a small but measurable increase in support from Latino voters. This struck me as not only some kind of fantasy but actually impossible, or maybe some kind of error. The election is days away and this increased support appears to have endured and it’s likely more Latino voters will cast a vote for Trump in 2020 than did in 2016. Understanding that dynamic is going to be vital for Democrats going forward.

Ed Yong, in The Atlantic:

As November nears, the coronavirus is surging again, with cases rising to record-breaking heights for the third time. To control the pandemic, changes are necessary, but Trump has proved that he does not learn from his mistakes—perhaps the most costly of his failings. If he is reelected, he will continue on the same path, and so will the coronavirus. More Americans will be sickened, disabled, and killed. Donald Trump is unchanging; the election offers an opportunity for the country to change instead.

We often have spirited conversations about the issues of the day at dinner. A few weeks ago, our son (age 6) asked a question that still continues to wreck me in small and large ways: “Does Donald Trump know he’s doing these bad things?”

I have no idea what Donald Trump knows or thinks but one thing has been crystal clear since even before he ran for president: the man is wholly incurious, incapable of empathy, and ossified to the core. It is simply who he is. He doesn’t learn from his mistakes because he’s incapable of doing so. The cost of that inability is borne by the world.