michael michael higgen bathambotham said that we have to agree there s a problem, identify it and move forward. how does society prevent further violence when it doesn t seem to agree on the cause of it? well that s an interesting point, alex, because you see there s kind of a disconnect there as to what is behind all of this frustration. and i think it speaks to perspective, and if your introduction to black lives matter or if your introduction to people of color in neighborhoods like freddie gray lives in in baltimore, if your introduction to that is seeing the cvs being burned on national television, if your introduction to that frustration is seeing a young teen put a bat through a police window, then you re going to be disconnected as to why they re doing that. but for black folks, for a lot of black folks, you know, that frustration is a symptom of something so much larger.
and now she s got the very difficult job of going out and proving that. she stood in the face of the police union pushing back on her a little bit. she s going to get a lot more over the next few weeks. but i thought she came out strong and was good to see. and hear i think it was healing for the city. can i ask you, michael do you think this is an isolated incident, though? in your tenure as lieutenant governor of maryland and as a long-time resident of the city of baltimore, certainly not a depraved heart murder charge. but had the heard about police abuses and believe that this not isolated at all? hello yeah. hello? yeah. i mean this has been an ongoing problem for some time. it was exacerbated between 1999 and 2007 with the very aggressive, you know policing policies that the o malley administration had on the street where literally men, particularly black men, were arrested for standing on street
it begins at home. how do you regulate that? how do you influence that as politicians? you don t regulate it at home. i do think 0 to3, i thought early childhood education, 0 to 3, is critical. we need high standards in all the schools and need an opportunity for every kid to blomp that means high standards to blossom. that means high standards in all the schools. if you go to charter schools, as long as they re not for profit than as it may. that means investing in neighborhoods like baltimore, northeast baltimore, northwest baltimore, and not investing in hedge funds and tax breaks for carried interests for wall street and things like that. it does make a difference that s not what cities are doing. cities aren t investing in hedge funds and tax breaks. cities are working with the resources at no, no michael, i m talking about the tax code. michael, i m talking about the tax code okay. okay. i m not preferentially drives money away from the cities.
unacceptable. joining me is michael steele former rnc chair and lieutenant governor of maryland. and howard dean former dnc chair and vermont governor. glad to have you here. good to see you. michael, as former lieutenant governor and former resident of baltimore, what was your reaction to the state attorney s decision to charge the six officers involved in freddie gray s arrest? i think that she had come to the table with a thorough review of the facts as she had been able to gather them. i think a lot of things that were a lot of stuff that was missed was her statement saying we began this process. immediately hearing of mr. gray s death. so this was an ongoing process. it wasn t something that just was done in the past week when all the uproar and focus was on the rioting in the city. so i thought that she put together a good team. she s come she came to the table very forthrightly with transparency. she laid out the fact pattern. she laid out the argument.