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The Abstract
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> By Juliana Keeping and Steven Scarborough, Arnold Ventures
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Stephanie Getman let us drive the newsletter while she’s on a well-deserved vacation this week. On Tuesday, Houston was visited by Hurricane Nicholas. Our colleague Sam Mar, AV’s Vice President of the Office of the Co-Chairs, was inspired to write about how we must address climate change by pricing carbon emissions.
I’m writing from my home in Houston, where I had no power and my two small children were enjoying a day home from school this week. That's because Nicholas, which toggled between hurricane and tropical storm as it raked the Gulf Coast, knocked out electricity to half a million homes and businesses. Two weeks ago, it was Hurricane Ida cutting a path of destruction from Louisiana to New York, killing dozens of people. In fact, nearly one in every three Americans has been affected by a weather disaster in just the past three months.
And things are not on track to get better. According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, natural disasters will get progressively more frequent as we approach warmer global temperatures.
At Arnold Ventures we support putting a price on carbon emissions. A carbon tax is the most efficient and effective way to reduce emissions and internalize the cost of climate change. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the four former Chairs of the Fed (among them Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen), 28 Nobel Laureates and 15 former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers who agree that “a carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.” Even traditionally staunch opponents of a carbon tax — the American Petroleum Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable — have come around to supporting the policy.
A border-adjusted carbon tax would also be a no-brainer way to help pay for Democrats’ $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. As Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts it, “by raising revenue from carbon-emitting activities, we can simultaneously help fund new infrastructure projects and deter the use of fossil fuels…carbon taxes are especially unique in how this one policy can achieve so many goals at once.”
The only thing missing is the same thing missing with nearly every logical, rational policy idea: political will. Which is why it’s encouraging to see that a carbon tax is being considered as one possible way to pay for budget reconciliation.
For policymakers in Washington who are busy hand wringing over political blowback from difficulties of supporting a carbon tax, it’s worth noting that the American public and future generations — like my kids — are going to pay a price for carbon emissions one way or another. Right now, we’re paying in the form of a warming planet — and we aren’t getting anything in return. An economy-wide carbon tax creates the necessary incentives to decarbonize quickly, fund infrastructure, and show our children that we can do better than borrowing from their wallets while polluting their skies. — Sam Mar
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'I Hope That I Can Inspire My Nephews'
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Chelsie Perreira's journey took her from a home without electricity to becoming a registered nurse, all while caring for her three young nephews. Project QUEST, a job training program that began in San Antonio, helped her get there.
What's Happening: According to the recently published 11-year follow-up study, Project QUEST has demonstrated itself as America’s only workforce training program with clear and compelling evidence of sizable gains in earnings for participants 10 years and more after they joined the program. In each of the ninth, 10th, and 11th years after joining the program, Project QUEST participants increased annual earnings by an average of $5,000 per year.
Why It Matters: In Part 3 of our series, Transforming Higher Education, you'll meet three boys who got to grow up with their aunt instead of in foster care; she is poised for her dream career and looking to buy them all a house. Project QUEST helped make that happen. And right now, there is the potential to fund Project QUEST, and programs like it, as never before. House Democrats included $9 billion for the Retention and Completion Fund as part of the Build Back Better Act: much needed cash for evidence-based programs with proven track records in facilitating completion rates at colleges and universities that serve high numbers of low-income students.
Read the story
Read Part 1 | Read Part 2
Related: Why we're looking for proposals to research what works in online learning
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Ohio Pursues Powerful and Bipartisan Bail Reform
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By Evan Mintz, Communications Manager
A bipartisan coalition in Ohio is pushing bail reform legislation aimed at dismantling the cash bail status quo. Even as protests and partisanship may have pundits wondering whether the bipartisan moment in criminal justice reform has reached its end, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in the Buckeye State are working together to stop wealth-based detention and shrink jail populations.
Why It Matters: Research shows that people who remain in jail pretrial for three or more days are substantially more likely to lose their job, home, or even start the process of losing custody of their children. Yet Democrats and Republicans have often struggled to agree on the right way to reduce pretrial detention. Efforts in Ohio shows how a broad political spectrum can come to an effective compromise.
“While we disagree on a lot of other things, this is one area where we all very strongly agree,” Claire Chevrier, a former policy counsel with the ACLU of Ohio who led the organization’s bail reform campaign, said. “The bill is powerful, the bill is bipartisan, and the bill would get a lot of people out of jail who don’t need to be in jail, so we strongly support it as it’s currently written.”
What’s Next: The bail reform is still making its way through the Ohio Legislature, after which it will need the signature of Gov. Mike DeWine. While any legislative process is fraught with pitfalls, support from law enforcement groups — including the Law Enforcement Action Partnership — and the state chief justice has helped to clear barriers that thwarted other criminal justice reforms.
“Bail reform in Ohio needs to be written into the tablets of our laws, into statutes codified,” Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor noted in her annual State of the Judiciary address.
“Bail reform would add permanence and stability to our whole widely shared endeavor and shield our progress from the more fluid avenues of rulemaking.”
Read the story
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Breaking the Link Between Community Supervision and Mass Incarceration
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By Steven Scarborough, Communications Manager
Across the country, advocates, criminal justice officials, and legislators are taking steps to reform their probation and parole systems. This year, state legislatures in Texas and Oregon approved bipartisan changes to make probation and parole less onerous and more fair. Philadelphia has also recently implemented policies to reduce the number of people on supervision.
Why It Matters: Ideally, community supervision programs should transition people out of the justice system. In reality, they are a main driver of mass incarceration. Two-fifths of all prison admissions stem from probation and parole violations, which can be as minor as drinking too much water before a court-mandated drug test. “It should be a system that helps facilitate stability, employment, housing, treatment, and mental health if needed,” says Robert Rooks, CEO of REFORM. “It should be a system that facilitates success, not prepares people for reincarceration.”
What’s Next: Legislators across the political spectrum are increasingly recognizing the urgent need to reform community supervision systems by shortening supervision sentences and amending the kind of supervision violations that can send somebody back to jail. Recent progress on this issue demonstrates that these kinds of changes are feasible and do not harm public safety. Despite these improvements, supervision revocations are still too often funneling people back into prison or jail and much more progress is needed.
Read the story
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Criminal Justice
- Bon Appetit profiles a Philadelphia restaurant where all the employees are people who were formerly incarcerated. Michael Carter, who went from a cook in prison to the executive chef of the restaurant reflects, “Down North Pizza has given me a voice. It’s allowed me to talk to people — news reporters, customers, anyone — about the carceral system.”
- Across the country, people who are incarcerated are protesting the atrocious conditions found in prisons, reports Time. Their protests have been catalyzed by the disastrous response prisons and jails have mounted to COVID-19, which has left incarcerated populations ravaged by the virus.
- A nonprofit organization is taking on the exorbitantly expensive prison phone industry. Phone calls from prison can cost $1 per minute, but Ameelio is piloting free video conferencing in California and Iowa prisons. Via Bloomberg.
- New research finds that reforms instigated by progressive prosecutors do not increase violent crime. The data actually suggest that these policies might actually make communities safer. Bloomberg reports.
- Politico writes that President Biden is taking action to commute the sentences of individuals who were put on home confinement because of the pandemic.
- Linda McFarlane (Executive Director of Just Detention and an AV grantee) writes in The Inquirer about a disturbing trend of depriving incarcerated people from receiving mail.
- Inside Philanthropy writes about an emerging area of giving by philanthropies funding criminal justice reform — leadership development among people directly impacted by our mass incarceration crisis. Increasingly, the strategies guiding reform efforts are being crafted by people who have been incarcerated.
Health
- Arnold Ventures’ own Mark Miller, Ph.D, the EVP of Healthcare, delves into the human impact of healthcare affordability in “Affordability: The Challenge of the Decade,” on the podcast The Gary Bisbee Show. “When you have 40% of American families unable to get together $400 in an emergency, you’ve got to do something.” Catch Mark at 2:26.
- OSPIRG released a new report on the role medical debt plays in financially burdening Oregonians. Nearly 60% of personal bankruptcies in Oregon cited medical debt in their filings.
- Health Affairs summarizes what’s in the Biden administration’s new drug pricing plan released this week, including items geared at increasing competition, making drug prices more affordable, and facilitating continued scientific innovation.
- An interactive mapping tool from Data For Progress illustrates the popularity of drug pricing reforms across the country. No surprise: Americans are unified in thinking that drug costs are unreasonable and need to be reined in.
Also:
- In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, one radio station’s employees have moved into the studio to keep the station on the air. The Washington Post reports on how they are providing one of the only means of communication in a city without power.
- September is Suicide Prevention Month. This June, we wrote about how the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research is starting to fund chronically neglected research on firearm suicides.
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Last week, the Institute of Higher Education Policy hosted a briefing calling for a once-in-a-generation investment in the College Completion Fund. They were joined by U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, and U.S. Representatives Joaquin Castro and Mikie Sherrill. The College Completion Fund Act Senator Heinrich announced at the briefing has now been introduced, and it calls for $62 billion in additional funding to support college completion. You can watch the briefing highlights here.
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The Time 100: Time released its 2021 list of most influential people. Read and be inspired by Naomi Osaka, whose bold message — that ‘It’s OK Not to Be OK’ strikes a chord during unprecedented times.
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Have an evidence-based week and wishing you a safe weekend,
– Juliana and Steven
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Steven Scarborough develops communications for Arnold Ventures’ Criminal Justice and Health Care teams.
Juliana Keeping develops communications for Arnold Ventures’ Health Care teams
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