captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, december 19: president obama meets with families of victims of the san bernardino terrorist attack. how boston uses data to track how well it delivers services to residents. and consumer advocate ralph nader opens a museum. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: lewis b. and louise hirschfeld cullman. bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products.

that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thanks for joining us. president obama has vetoed legislation intended to slow his policies on climate change. the bill would have nullified an environmental protection agency rule requiring power plants to reduce carbon emissions by one- third over the next 15 years. his "pocket veto"-- exercised after congress had adjourned for the year-- was expected. 27 states are suing to stop the rule. the president is in hawaii for his annual two-week family vacation in his home state. en route, the president and first lady stopped in san bernardino, california, to meet relatives of the 14 people shot and killed by a radical islamist

couple at a holiday party this month. the meeting, behind closed doors at a high school, lasted nearly three hours. >> some described their loved ones who had come to this country as immigrants, others who had lived in the area all their lives. all of them extraordinarily proud of the work they were doing to keep people healthy and safe here in this community. >> sreenivasan: the f.b.i. revealed in a criminal complaint this week that one of the san bernardino shooters, the husband, syed rizwan farooq, and an alleged co-conspirator who bought the couple's assault rifles, were inspired by former al qaeda leader anwar awlaki. the u.s. killed awlaki in a drone strike four years ago in yemen, but his legacy lives on in hours of recordings, many posted on line. "new york times" reporter scott shane wrote the book "objective troy," about awlaki and the drone war. he joins me now from baltimore.

you mentioned in your article there is increased pressure on birnt companies. where iss that coming from and how are these companies responding? >> well, it's not really coming from the government, although many counter-terrorism officials are very distressed by awlaki's continuing influence on the radicalization of some americans. it's coming more from the sort of advocates who are working to counter extremism, especially in the muslim community,. and some of it's coming from a group called the counter-extremism project, which includes a number of former government officials. they're the ones who are sort of leading this call for youtube and other internet platforms to pull down awlaki's material. >> sreenivasan: there was connections, the fort hood shooters, the tsarnaev brothers. they were all in some way, shape, or form inspired from what they saw on the internet

from alocka. what is the thing that actually triggers someone to pick up arms against the united states? >> in writing this book about anwar al-awlaki, i used youtube and other internet sites and listened to many, many hours of awlaki talking. so people who want to understand radicalization, want to understand terrorism, these are important things to look at. but it is complicated because, you know, the country is spending billions of dollars to prevent terrorism, and, you know? nsome ways the main engines of radicalization are provided, ironically, by some of the united states' most successful and prominent companies. >> sreenivasan: as you pointed out, i mean, there were 60,000 results for his videos on youtube today. so how-- what is the technological fix? >> well, part of what makes his particular case complicated is that he was a very successful, popular imam in the united

states for a number of years, and so he did, for example, a 53-cd set on the life of the prophet mohammed, totally mainstream stuff, very popular among english-speaking muslims, certainly in the years before awlaki became a terrorist. and that is up there on youtube as with well. the counter-extremism project believes youtube should take down not just the calls for violence from anwar al-awlaki, but all of his material, because they say that the mainstream stuff sort of establishes his respectability and his authority. and then when he tells people, "your religious obligation is to kill americans and attack the united states," that hits home. but many civil rights groups, muslim advocacy groups have a big problem with that. >> sreenivasan: all right, scott shane reporter from the "new york times" joining us from baltimore, his book is called "objective troy." thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you.

>> sreenivasan: the city of boston currently monitors steady streams of electronic data to measure how well every city agency is doing its job, from fighting fires and crime to fixing potholes and street lights. the city is about to begin crunching all those numbers into a daily "city score" to grade itself. in tonight's signature segment, the newshour's megan thompson explains how boston is aiming to be more accountable through analytics. the report is part of our serie" urban ideas," how cities are innovating to solve problems. >> reporter: it's 6:00 a.m. on a thursday morning at the headquarters of boston's public works department. danny nee, who's in charge of making sure boston's streets and sidewalks stay clean and in good repair starts the day by logging onto a computer application called "clean." >> this is what i'm responsible for on a weekday, monday through friday. i have kind of from mass. ave. through the north end.

>> reporter: just a few years ago, nee's garbage truck drivers had to look inside each trash can to see if it needed emptying. not anymore. about one-third of boston's trash cans are now equipped with solar panels and sensors- green means empty, red means full. >> out of 416 components, 64 are ready for collection. it just makes for a much more productive day, it's just you're going right to the specific units, and you're done. >> reporter: this is one of many ways the city of boston is using data and technology to operate more efficiently and better serve its residents. >> i find data is an opportunity for us to bring better services to the people of this city and >> reporter: since taking office two years ago, boston mayor martin walsh has made using data and analytics a central part of his administration. some of these projects started during the 20-year administration of walsh's predecessor thomas menino, but walsh and his chief of staff, daniel koh, wanted to take it further.

>> boston as a city does a good job, of creating services and in different areas. but we've never measured how we do. and we look at year end, and we compare year to year, but what we've done with data is taken it from year-to-year to literally day-to-day. >> reporter: walsh has a large data dashboard in his office displaying real time information from across the city, like the number of potholes filled and the number of community center visits. a map shows each neighborhood walsh has visited this month and how often. >> i'm constantly looking at the screen. i'm constantly looking at the measurements of where we were in a day, where we were in a year and looking at it. and it gives me the opportunity to call a department head or a manager or a cabinet chief and ask them why is something so low, why is something so high? >> reporter: so, from your office, here at city hall, you basically have your finger on the pulse of what's going on? >> every single department, every single day. >> reporter: every city commissioner has a data dashboard, too, showing even

more detailed information. they were created by the new citywide analytics team- software engineers and data analysts-- with $1.3 million in funding for building data analytics tools. >> cities are accelerating at a fast pace to put data to use. >> reporter: neil kleiman directs new york university's innovation labs and studies city government. >> i mean, when you think about data and technology, you don't often think about city governments. this is really something that's been more the domain of the private sector. but cities are learning fast. so, just in the last five years, you've gone from probably zero to about 20 chief data analytic officers that are within city governments and working directly with their mayors. >> reporter: boston was one of the first cities to partner with waze, a mapping app that collects data from drivers about conditions on the streets, like traffic jams or road blocks. the data helps boston's traffic control center determine whether

to change the timing of traffic lights. and last summer, mayor walsh launched boston 311, an improved version of the city's constituent services program, modeled after similar programs in baltimore and new york. residents can call in to this 311 call center or report issues via the 311 app on their smartphones-- anything from missed trash pick-ups to potholes. >> potholes are dangerous, they can do damage to your car and everything. >> reporter: another app called city worker assigns a deadline to each job. the goal is to fill potholes within 24 hours. they meet it 80% of the time. danny nee gets all kinds of requests. >> the person says, "there doesn't seem to be any public trash cans on bunker hill street. a trash can near the bus stop would be nice." >> reporter: on the street, nee carries a smartphone and a tablet to keep track of the workload. when his crew finishes installing the can on bunker hill street, nee snaps a photo, which can be sent to the constituent.

>> i've noticed a real improvement in terms of response time from the city, i'd say in the last year and a half or so. >> reporter: community activist erica mattison lives in dorchester, in south boston, and is a frequent user of the 311 app. even though the city can't fill every single 311 request, her request for this recycling can outside the local ymca was fulfilled within a couple of days. >> i've encountered a lot of people who feel distrust toward government at a number of levels, so, i think, you know, using data and having responsiveness and accountability, using technology is a great way to build the trust between residents and their governments. >> it shows that government's listening and government is engaged. >> reporter: mike dennehy is boston's commissioner of public works. the technology helps him see where multiple problems exist, so he can plan better and his crews can work more efficiently, tackling several jobs at once. the city hasn't calculated how much money the increased efficiency saves it each year,

but officials say the number of sidewalks repaired increased by 52% between 2013 and 2014, and in the last two years, the time it takes to fix street lights dropped from 35 days to 15 days. it's all a far cry from a few years ago when dennehy's department kept track of jobs on paper, and there was no system to track them. >> i wouldn't even call it data. it was just, it was just today. it was today's work, and tomorrow's work was tomorrow's work. now, we're looking back at yesterday's work and hopefully that'll help us do tomorrow's work better. >> reporter: with such a large amount of data available, mayor walsh's chief of staff daniel koh began thinking about how to distill it all down to one number- a daily "pass/fail" grade for government performance. >> our first thought was, "how do we create a government batting average?" >> reporter: koh and the mayor were inspired by baseball, and billy beane, the main character in the book and movie," moneyball." as general manager of the oakland a's, beane used statistics in a new way to make

better hiring decisions. >> we realized that we had a number of different variables that any city tracks- arts grants dollars, wi-fi availability, crime rates. and we realized that we could measure how that's trending to our target in each of those areas. and we could take it a step further, we can roll all of that up into a single number that tells us how well we're doing in a given day. >> reporter: koh calls the program "cityscore." >> this is the first time we've ever debuted cityscore. >> reporter: koh gave newshour the first look at cityscore, which is scheduled to go live in january. when we visited, the prototype was crunching data from 18 performance metrics, showing how the city was meeting its goals for each one. everything from graffiti removal to 311 call center performance to emergency response time. >> and this all rolls up to a single score. anything above one means that we're exceeding, anything below one means that we need improvement. >> reporter: so, today, cityscore is 1.17. >> yeah, so we're-- we're doing

well today. but you can see that there are some areas that we're not doing as well in a given day or week that we need to-- we need to focus on. >> reporter: today those includes signal and sidewalk repairs. the top performing metrics are library users, tree maintenance, and fire department response time. cityscore also displays metrics for the week, month, and quarter. >> so, one day may not be a big concern. but if it continues over a week, over a month, or over a quarter, you know that that's a bad trend, right. so what the mayor can do is tackle these trends when they're signaling that they're going bad before they actually go bad. and that's a real sea change, in our opinion, because i think most municipalities are looking at data maybe in an annual report and not on such a real time basis. >> reporter: how is it that a single number can possibly tell the mayor what's going on in such a big city? >> the reality is, just given the mindshare of most public officials, they don't have the time to be sitting there really digging through the data every day. so, what this does is it gives

him a sense or an indication of where, how we're doing on a given day or quarter, and allows him to delegate to people below him why we're on a course. >> reporter: as the technology develops, koh plans to add dozens more metrics. boston residents will be able to check cityscore on the web and access the raw data behind it. nyu public policy professor neil kleiman says no other city is issuing a daily report card like boston. >> and it's not surprising that they would be cautious about data, right? because data can really open you up to a higher demand for services. >> reporter: mayor walsh admits that at first, he was cautious. >> if the scores aren't as high as they need to be, you know, we're going to get criticism for it. but cityscore, after thinking about it a little bit, it's okay to get marked, it's okay to be underperforming in certain areas because that gives us the ability to focus on those areas and improve the quality of service that we provide to the public.

>> sreenivasan: for the past 50 years, ralph nader has been america's leading consumer advocate-- fighting for stronger safety standards in products ranging from cars to toys, and for stronger government regulations over corporations. through it all, nader has championed the power of any citizen to have the right to sue, or in legalese, bring a tort. now, he's founded the "american museum of tort law" to showcase legal cases that changed our country. the newshour's phil hirschkorn reports. >> reporter: "the american museum of tort law" focuses on breakthroughs in product, worker, and consumer safety achieved through lawsuits mostly for wrongful injuries or deaths. consumer crusader ralph nader founded the museum in his hometown of winsted, connecticut. >> the three purposes of the law of wrongful injury, called tort law, is not just compensation of the wrongfully injured person by the perpetrator, not just

disclosing defects that help educate and alert people, but it's also deterrence. it deters unsafe practices around the country. >> reporter: at 81, nader still has faith in the jury system and champions civil court as a transparent venue that empowers regular citizens. >> no one can stop you from going to a lawyer and filing a case in court to hold the perpetrator of your wrongful injuries accountable. in that sense, it's the most direct democracy instrument that people in this country have, and it's all an open court with transcripts, with the media, with cross examination. >> reporter: nader first gained national attention in 1965, when he documented dangerous cars in his book "unsafe at any speed." exhibit a: the chevrolet corvair made by general motors. it's the museum's centerpiece. >> it was not a stable car. it leaked carbon monoxide. the steering column starts a few

inches from the leading surface of the front tires, so you get a collision like this the steering column becomes a spear in the chest of the driver. >> reporter: g.m. faced more than a hundred liability lawsuits, and corvair sales plunged. a year later, congress passed a landmark car safety act. >> in 1966, president lyndon johnson signed into law the motor vehicle and highway safety laws regulating the auto industry, mandating safety standards like better brakes, better tires, seatbelts, eventually airbags, padded dash panels-- all the things we now take for granted. and it's been a great success. >> reporter: in fact, it changed standards for automobile manufacturing around the world. so did the case of the 1970's ford pinto after dozens of people were burned in collisions. >> it had a fuel tank that could be penetrated on a rear end collision and spew the gasoline all over. and ford knew it. >> reporter: nader says internal memos subpoenaed in a lawsuit revealed ford knew about the

defect in millions of cars but was unwilling to pay for the fix. do you think the civil justice system is adequate to provide the accountability that we need when it comes to regulating companies that are engaged in either misconduct or cover-up of misconduct? >> the history of successful cases, some of which are in this museum, illustrates that often the regulators and legislatures don't wake up until some plaintiff gets a lawyer and digs out the cover-ups and the incriminating information about a safety defect in an automobile or another product. and the media picks it up and that leads to more broad-based upgrades in safety standards to protect the people. >> reporter: nader credits civil lawsuits for stopping the sale of toys with parts that were choking hazards, and banning asbestos, an insulation material once widely used in construction but found to cause cancer.

nader says too often criminal prosecutors shy away from charging corporate executives. in the recent general motors ignition switch defect, linked to more than 100 deaths, federal prosecutors settled for a $900 million fine. it seems to happen all the time as if it's a cost of doing business? >> well, it's not a cost of doing business when the corporation executives go to jail. it's amazing how much penalty a company can take if it's big enough, like general motors or volkswagen, and ride it out. >> reporter: in the 1980s and '90s, lawsuits revealed tobacco companies knew about and hid the risks of smoking. the companies agreed to pay out more than $200 billion. >> it all started with these lawyers who often lost and lost in the courts, until they started winning and divulging all the internal documents of philip morris and r.j. reynolds, which showed two things: one,

that they knew from the get go that tobacco smoke caused serious ailments like lung cancer; and two, that they were deliberately marketing to young kids because they knew if they could hook them at 12 years age, they got them for life. >> reporter: over the years, nader's critics have said the reforms and regulations he has advocated for have enriched trial lawyers and driven up business costs. what do you say to critics who would look back over these 50 years, these cases which you celebrate, and say, "you know what, mr. nader, you have a point, but it's also turned us, the united states, into a much more litigious society"? >> just the opposite. that's insurance company propaganda. the center for state courts and studies by law professors at the university of wisconsin show, that we do not file more civil lawsuits per capita than western countries, and stunningly, that we file fewer civil suits per capita today than we did in the

1840's. >> reporter: the study that supports that claim is from the mid-1980s. a more recent study shows more lawsuits per capita are filed in the u.s. than in other industrialized democracies. a new report by the national center for state courts finds a slight drop in civil cases filed in the u.s. in the past decade. nader ran for president four times as a third party candidate and would like the 2016 candidates to focus more on consumer protection. >> although the law of wrongful injury affects millions of americans every year, it's never discussed in political campaigns, except negatively. >> reporter: what title do you prefer for yourself? >> public citizen. i think we all should be public citizens with a few hours every week. how else can our democracy work? how else can we have a good society?

>> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> sreenivasan: defense secretary ash carter says the friendly fire incident that accidentally killed ten iraqi soldiers yesterday resulted fro" mistakes on both sides." while visiting a navy ship in the persian gulf, carter called iraq's prime minister today to express his condolences and promised a full investigation. a u.s. airstrike hit iraqi forces as they were fighting near the western iraqi city of fallujah, currently held by isis militants. russian president vladmir putin says his troops deployed in syria may use greater force. addressing a security staff meeting in moscow today, putin said, russia has, "more military means, and we will use them, if need be." putin also said in an interview today, moscow would work with all sides, the u.s. and arab nations to resolve the syrian conflict. negotiators at un-brokered talks to end the eight-month civil war in yemen have agreed to a form a

ceasefire committee. it will be headed by a lebanese general, with members of yemen's government, which is backed by saudi arabia and supported by the u.s., and the shiite rebels, known as houthis, who are backed by iran. fighting over the past three days near yemen's border with saudi arabia has killed 75 fighters on both sides, according to the a.p. peace talks resume tomorrow in switzerland. a record number of americans are dying from drug overdoses. the centers for disease control and prevention reports more than 47,000 americans died from overdoses in 2014, the latest year data is available. abuse of heroin and opioid painkillers accounted for 29,000, or 61%, of the overdoses. that's up 14% from the year before. c.d.c. director thomas frieden said the increase is "alarming" and called for more steps to prevent and treat addiction. in the past 15 years, prescriptions for painkillers have quadrupled, and fatal opioid overdoses have doubled.

>> sreenivasan: don't forget to until newshour online tonight for full coonch of the final democratic presidential debate of 2015 in new hampshire. join us at 8:00 p.m. eastern time at pbs.org/newshour, and on twitter @newshour. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made

possible by: lewis b. and louise hirschfeld cullman. bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

hello, i'm greg sherwood and i'm very pleased to be here with the founder of the healing mind, a clinical faculty member at ucsf medical school, a pioneer in mind/body medicine and a practicing physician right here in marin county, dr. martin rossman. dr. rossman, thank you so much for helping out with kqed today. >> it's my pleasure, greg. thank you for having me. >> it is such a delight. i'm so looking forward to chatting with you and i hope you will stay with us for the next half hour or so as we explore dr. rossman's methods of overcoming anxiety, worry and stress. he is going to explain how our en