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The Abstract
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> By Evan Mintz, Arnold Ventures
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I personally prefer print media, but I found myself watching TV news on Wednesday in anticipation of President Biden’s announcement of the White House's Community Violence Intervention Collaborative. This new partnership involves philanthropic organizations, including Arnold Ventures, supporting evidence-based programs that reduce violence, promote safety, and foster healing in 15 cities. Biden even gave direct recognition to two people leading programs currently in place: Eddie Bocanegra, the Executive Director of the YMCA of Metro Chicago's Youth Safety and Violence Prevention initiative, and DeVone Boggan, the founder and CEO of Advance Peace in California.
That widening of the lens to include not just law enforcement, but also community agents, presents a more honest — and effective — picture of how we can reduce violence.
Unfortunately, the news cameras remained tightly focused on the same-old talking heads. As the news network filled time before Biden's announcement, I saw no interviews with people like Bocanegra or Boggan, who could show how violence intervention programs work and explain why this support from the White House was so important. Instead, I heard perspectives from police officers, professional pundits and one man named Bill White, who was trying to get his wealthy enclave of Buckhead to secede from the city of Atlanta so they could create their own police department.
Not all of the interviews were bad. John Woodrow Cox of the Washington Post discussed why we need more federal funding for gun policy research, a point later echoed from the White House lectern by Attorney General Merrick Garland. But at no point did the anchors talk to the victims of crime or the people who actually run these intervention programs. It was as if interviewees were selected on the basis of their proximity to a ring light and camera, not their proximity to the people and places most at risk of violence.
Earlier this month the National Press Foundation held a panel to help reporters understand the larger context of this spike in homicides, but there’s a bigger problem at hand. In failing to include communities impacted by the policy responses to violent crime, the TV news promoted a perspective that was inherently undemocratic, uninformative and — here’s the real sin for television — uninteresting.
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Hope for Durable Bipartisan Climate Policy
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The recent Energy Sector Innovation Credit Act proposal follows the blueprint of the most effective and sustainable climate policies — it's bipartisan, and it uses the tax code to spur innovation.
Why it matters: The largest carbon dioxide reductions have come from policies that have these same attributes. The new proposal, from Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), is a market-driven technology-inclusive tax credit that both incentivizes development of new energy sources and addresses concerns with existing tax credits.
What's next: The way forward for addressing climate change demands that we build on our nation’s history of clean energy innovation policies that are durable and bipartisan.
Read the story >
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Will Congress Finally Improve Higher Education's ROI?
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The proposed American Families Plan slates $62 billion for evidence-based student success programs. This is an unprecedented opportunity to invest in college accountability.
Why it matters: Bronx native Jesus Diaz started community college without a net — financial or academic. Then he found the CUNY ASAP program, a student-support program that provides financial assistance and mentorship. ASAP's proven success has now been replicated in multiple locations.
What's next: The few higher-ed programs that can boast strong evidence of increased ROI for students have always faced the same obstacle: They work. And they are expensive. The AFP's allocation to finally help pay for these programs is a first, and it's only a small part of the Biden Administration's families-focused infrastructure proposal. The bill faces long road through Congress, but opportunities like this are worth fighting for.
Read the story > |
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The issue: High-priced specialty drugs that accelerate through the government's approval process are increasingly driving up U.S. spending on health care. State Medicaid programs, especially, are feeling the pinch. A nonpartisan agency charged with making recommendations to Congress is out with new proposed reforms to address the issue and rein in drug spending. Erin Jones, Arnold Ventures' drug pricing analyst, breaks down why these recommendations lay the groundwork for stronger Congressional action on drug prices.
Dive deeper: States have long voiced their concerns that the continued introduction of new and expensive specialty drugs are affecting their Medicaid budgets. Medicaid is already spending about $29 billion per year on prescription drugs alone, and that number is expected to continue growing in coming years. Also troubling: Many of these new drugs are being approved via FDA's accelerated approval pathway, and as a result, Medicaid is spending big dollars on drugs without real evidence of a desired clinical benefit in patients. The new recommendations by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) are "important steps in controlling Medicaid spending for high-cost specialty drugs that have not yet verified their clinical benefit for patients," Jones writes.
Read the story > |
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Scott Hechinger, founder of Zealous, an organization that trains and supports public defense attorneys to effectively and ethically advocate for themselves and the communities they serve.
Read the story >
Related: Zealous worked with the Texas Jail Project and Civil Rights Corps on Shedding Light, a series that provides first-hand accounts of the appalling conditions within Texas jails during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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John Pfaff could have simply shown how data disproves arguments that falsely try to blame criminal justice reform efforts for the ongoing spike in homicides, and it would have been enough. But in his recent piece in The New Republic, the Fordham professor goes even further by laying out a history of the push-and-pull between reformers and the tough-on-crime crowd that puts the current debate in a longer, and more interesting, historic context.
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John Arnold was quoted in a Bloomberg story about how MacKenzie Scott has shown just how easy it can be for the wealthiest to give away their money while other millionaires and billionaires continue to hoard cash they had supposedly set aside for charity.
“It’s really kind of stunning what’s she’s done and how different an approach she’s taken,” said John Arnold, a billionaire hedge fund manager who retired in 2012 to devote himself full-time to philanthropy. “I’m hopeful that more people will follow that model.” |
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This nuanced, evidence-based take from The Appeal on how bail reform is having a positive impact and making communities safer – despite the media-fueled hysteria coming out of in New York.
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Deadly encounters with law enforcement make headlines and drive the debate about police accountability, but new reporting by The Marshall Project sheds light on the injuries caused by police use of force, and the lack of data and adequate investigations – and also quotes Arnold Ventures Vice President Walter Katz about his time as independent police auditor for the city of San Jose, California. |
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As we begin removing our masks and eating indoors as part of the reentry to life after COVID, I had begun to wonder whether the exhilaration of returning to normalcy will have us all-too-quickly forgetting the death and destruction that the pandemic wreacked on the United States. So I was struck by a recovered memoir published by Jewish Currents that documents the 1918 flu in stark, mournful terms I hadn't seen anywhere else:
We wept for the tragedy of dead babies who could not be saved; teenagers at the beginning of adult lives who ended up with ashes in their teeth; old people whose breath was snuffed out like candles on a birthday cake. |
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In a classic victory for free speech, the Supreme Court held in an 8-1 decision that a Pennsylvania high school violated the First Amendment when it suspended a freshman from the cheerleading team for an F-bomb rant about school that she posted on Snapchat. The ACLU, which represented the teen, is celebrating their win by selling T-shirts featuring the offending words. |
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In the largest example of Ranked-Choice Voting in U.S. history, New York City residents cast their ballots in mayoral primaries this Tuesday. Final results aren't due until July (a result of New York quirks, not the Ranked-Choice process) but it looks like Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is on path to be the Democratic nominee and the likely winner in November.
Meanwhile, on New York's Western frontier, a socialist candidate was elected mayor in Buffalo on a platform of policing reform after a video of law enforcement officers attacking a 75-year-old peace activist prompted public outrage.
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Talk about sky-high prices. The New York Times crunches the numbers and determines that the U.S. government could end up spending more on a newly approved (and questionably effective) drug to treat Alzheimer’s than it does on the entire NASA budget. |
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Amazon held its Prime Day this week, and while the self-proclaimed shopping holiday has turned into something reminiscent of a Simpson's joke (" Product Day? Giftsgiving?") the worker elves who make it all possible aren't so holly-jolly. Alex Press wrote in Jacobin about how the influx of new workers and mandatory overtime around Prime Day create "high-risk situations" for people in Amazon's warehouses. |
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- The Japanese government has proposed that companies embrace a four-day workweek to help people improve their work-life balance. Here's hoping the United States gets on board, too: A 32-hour workweek by 2032!
- The first members were appointed to Gulf Coast Protection District Board of Directors, which the Texas Legislature just created in its most recent session. This is a critical step necessary to build a coastal storm surge barrier that will protect the Port of Houston from hurricanes. I have been advocating for this massive engineering project — also known as the Ike Dike — for nearly a decade. What a joyous feeling to see some real progress!
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Your usual author will be back for the next newsletter. Until then, have an evidence-based week,
– Evan
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Evan Mintz develops communications for Arnold Ventures' Criminal Justice team.
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