5/27/2022

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            The midshipmen are sitting on the football field in their service whites under a grey sky listening to your remarks. My uncle, Peter Andre, might be in the audience. He taught math there for many years & was known by the plebes for his tie collection. If he’s there, I’m sure he got a bit of a thrill when he heard you use the term, “inflection point.”

In my perfect world, we would not have a Naval Academy, where some of our best and brightest young folk learn to engineer weapons systems & command nuclear submarines. Since generations of people have proven over & over again that WINTA, don’t you think the energy & brain power of those young folk would be better used ending cancer & figuring out how to capture carbon?

            I cringed when I heard you refer to yourself as the “Commander in Chief.” I hoped you would use this opportunity to continue the message that you shared when you signed the Exec Order on policing, “healing the soul of this nation, is ongoing and unfinished and requires all of us never to give up.”

By the way, thanks for continuing the effort to set up a database to help track officer misconduct to prevent problem officers from hopping from job to job. It’s a start at changing police culture. Perhaps more places should do what they did in Camden, NJ, in 2013 when the city disbanded their police force & paid the County to do their policing instead. That group focused on community policing with a philosophy of de-escalation & violent crime went down 42%. It was also cheaper! A win -win -win!!!

            I hope you heard about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s recent meeting with Burma’s NUG’s foreign minister Daw Zin Mar Aung. Afterwards he asked the following questions which I hope you answer soon:

“How is it [the administration] working to help document the junta’s crimes and provide cross-border humanitarian assistance for its victims?”

 “Are we willing to help a people committed to democracy finally realize it for themselves?”

BYBS,