One big problem with how Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are spending a small share of their fortune

 

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are becoming bigger donors.
Invision and AP/Evan Agostini

Ted Lechterman, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, recently announced a plan to spend US$2 billion of their $164 billion fortune on homeless shelters and preschools.

Since Jeff Bezos has taken flack for giving away far less of his money than some other billionaires, such as Bill Gates, the announcement may look like a sign that this tech titan is becoming more generous. The announcement also responds to criticism of the $1 billion per year that Bezos already spends on Blue Origin, his space travel experiment.

But as a political theorist who studies the ethics of philanthropy, I think Bezos’s charitable turn raises grave concerns about the pervasive power of business moguls.

Disturbing trend

The Bezos family’s philanthropy is following an unsettling pattern in terms of its timing. Amazon’s market value had recently topped $1 trillion, raising more questions than ever around Amazon’s overwhelming size and power.

This wasn’t the first time that Bezos effectively redirected attention from Amazon’s immense clout with a big announcement about philanthropy. When news broke in 2017 that Amazon was acquiring Whole Foods, raising new concerns about the company’s retail domination, Bezos made a dramatic public appeal through Twitter for advice on how to focus his giving.

The timing may have been coincidental both times, but the suspicion that philanthropy distracts the public from questionable conduct or economic injustice is a familiar worry. Since the days of robber barons like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, social critics have charged that philanthropy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This cynical view holds that magnificent acts of generosity are nothing more than cunning attempts to consolidate power. Like dictators who use “bread and circuses” to pacify the masses, the super-rich give away chunks of their fortunes to shield themselves from public scrutiny and defuse calls for eliminating tax breaks or raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Demonstrators protested against Amazon and Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, shortly before he announced plans to make $2 billion in charitable donations.
AP Photo/Cliff Owen

Good intentions are not enough

Today, political theorists who study philanthropy – like Emma Saunders-Hastings and Rob Reich – tend to think the problem is more complicated. They accept that many philanthropists are sincere in their desire to help others, and the solutions donors develop are sometimes remarkably innovative.

But they also contend that noble intentions and strategic thinking aren’t enough to make philanthropy legitimate. And my own research reaches a similar verdict.

That’s because massive donations can perpetuate inequality and threaten democracy in several ways.

Dramatic acts of charity by the ultra-wealthy may reduce pressure on governments to tackle poverty and inequality comprehensively. Depending on private benefactors for access to basic necessities can reinforce social hierarchies. And when the elite spend their own money on essential public services like housing the homeless and education for low-income children, it lets the rich mold social policy to their own preferences or even whims.

In other words, even if Bezos has great ideas, no one elected him or hired him to house the homeless and educate kids before they enter kindergarten. Great wealth is not a qualification for all jobs.

Tax privilege

The tax deductibility of the donations made by the richest Americans can exacerbate these concerns because it effectively subsidizes their giving. Some scholars argue that the point of tax incentives is to encourage donations for things the government can’t or shouldn’t support directly – like maintaining a church property.

Observers, including MarketWatch reporter Kari Paul and Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, have noted that if people like Bezos and the businesses they lead were to stop fighting for low tax rates, democratically elected officials would have more money to spend tackling big problems like homelessness and other urgent priorities.

By making tax-deductible donations, they argue, Bezos is effectively diverting tax dollars to fuel his private judgments about public policy.

Questions about accountability and generosity

My research indicates that using tax deductions to supply essential public services, such as education and housing assistance, may be a misuse of this privilege because it has the potential to undermine democratic control.

Members of the public have a vital interest in being able to oversee the provision of goods and services that support their most basic needs. This kind of accountability is possible only when these needs are served by democratic governments, not rich benefactors operating in their place.

And Bezos’s behavior as a businessman has raised other questions about his generosity and respect for democracy. When Amazon’s hometown of Seattle proposed to tackle runaway housing costs with a tax on the city’s largest employers, Amazon resisted. The city backed off after the company threatened to scale down its Seattle operations if the bill passed.

It may seem odd that someone who opposed a tax intended to help cover housing costs for his low-income neighbors would want to spend part of his fortune on housing. But to me it makes sense, because in my view, Jeff Bezos’s beef isn’t with his duties to help the least fortunate, but with the limits on economic power that democracy requires.

Ted Lechterman, Postdoctoral Fellow, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Immigrant detention in the US: 4 essential reads

Father and son reunited after being detained in Texas. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Danielle Douez, The Conversation

More children are being held in immigrant detention centers in the U.S. than ever previously recorded, according to The New York Times.

The number of immigrant children in detention has risen to about 12,800, the Times reports, a significant increase from 2,400 in 2017. Here are 4 stories from our archive that will help readers understand some central issues around immigrant detention:

1. Legal challenges

Since President Donald Trump took office, there have been numerous legal challenges to his administration’s policies on immigration, including on immigrant and child detention. In July, a federal court ruled that detention centers could no longer give drugs to treat psychiatric symptoms to children without the consent of a parent or guardian.

Immigration scholar Kevin Johnson writes about several cases in U.S. history that set legal precedents in disputes over detaining immigrants and protecting their rights. For example, a class action lawsuit filed by immigrants in detention in the 1980s argued that moving detainees away from major urban areas deprived them of a right to counsel. The court agreed and ruled in their favor.

Johnson writes: “The long history of detention has an equally long history of legal challenges. These are likely to continue in the Trump administration, which has made detention a cornerstone of its immigration enforcement plan.”

2. Standards for children and families

One case, in particular, stands out as more relevant to today’s debate about detaining children and families. The Flores case was filed in 1985 and led to what’s known as the “Flores settlement.” This contract between the government and the plaintiffs set standards for holding children and families in detention, which courts continue to use today.

An unaccompanied children program shelter in Brownsville, Texas. Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Handout via REUTERS

For example, the agreement says that the government must release immigrant children after 20 days of detention.

In a separate analysis, Johnson explains the case and why it has had such a lasting impact.

3. Who’s to blame?

Critics have blamed the Trump administration for the inhumane detention of immigrant children. However, public policy professor Susan M. Sterett argues that the contractors who provide the detention facilities are also to blame for suffering children.

Although government contracting is not new, the contracts themselves rarely garner attention from the public. There are many reasons why the government uses contracting services. In this case, it is likely because the contractors can act more quickly than the government to provide housing for detained children, Sterett writes.

“[The government] hands nonprofit groups, for-profit businesses and local governments US$1 billion a year or more to house nearly 12,000 children. This money is dispensed through government contracts that do not always gain much public attention,” Sterett writes.

4. Echoes from the past

This episode in U.S. history is not unique. In the 1990s, thousands of Haitians fleeing violence started the journey toward the U.S. to seek safety. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton responded by authorizing their capture and indefinite detention at a military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Scholar A. Naomi Paik writes about conditions on the base: “Under the stress of imprisonment with no end in sight, some refugees fell into despair. The most dire cases purposely hurt themselves or attempted suicide. Children also endured the camp conditions that nearly broke grown adults.”

As information emerges about conditions in today’s detention centers, the parallels to the past may be instructive.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Danielle Douez, Associate Editor, Politics + Society, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Race of mass shooters influences how the media cover their crimes, new study shows

 

If a news report mentions a shooter’s tough childhood, chances are he’s white.
ASAG Studio

Laura Frizzell, The Ohio State University; Sadé L. Lindsay, The Ohio State University, and Scott Duxbury, The Ohio State University

On Jan. 24, 2014, police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun on himself.

On Aug. 8, 2015, 48-year-old David Ray Conley shot and killed his son, former girlfriend and six other children and adults at his former girlfriend’s home. Like Boren, Conley executed the victims at point-blank range.

Both men had histories of domestic violence and criminal behavior. Yet despite the obvious similarities in these two cases and perpetrators, the media, in each case, took a different approach.

When describing Boren, the media focused on his good character and excellent parenting, going as far to call Boren a big “teddy bear” despite a prolonged history of domestic violence. They attributed his crime to “snapping” under the significant stress of his wife’s recent divorce filing.

In Conley’s case, media reports made little attempt to include any redeeming aspects of his personality. Instead, they focused exclusively on Conley’s history of domestic violence and prior drug possession charges. If you were to read articles about Conley, you would likely infer his crime stemmed from his inherently dangerous and controlling personality.

What might explain the differences in media coverage? Could it have something to do with the shooter’s race?

Boren, it turns out, was white; Conley was black.

In a recent study, we explored whether the race of mass shooters influences how the media depict their crime, their motivations and their lives.

We found that the discrepancies in the media coverage of Boren’s and Conley’s crimes were indicative of a broader phenomenon.

Explaining the crime, portraying the criminal

For the study, we randomly selected 433 online and print news articles covering 219 mass shootings from 2013 to 2015. While definitions of a mass shooting can vary, we adhered to the one most commonly used in empirical research: an event in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.

Next, we created a unique data set based on information provided in the articles. We coded each article for a variety of variables associated with the crime and the shooter, including setting of the shooting, number and gender of victims killed and injured and age of the shooter.

After analyzing the data, we found that the shooter’s race could strongly predict whether the media framed him as mentally ill. (Less than 1 percent of the crimes had a female perpetrator.)

In all, about 33 percent of the articles in our study describing the crimes of a white shooter made a mention of mental illness. On the other hand, 26 percent of articles describing a Latino shooter and only two percent of articles describing a black shooter mentioned mental illness.

In fact – holding all aspects of the crime equal – white shooters were nearly 95 percent more likely to have their crimes attributed to mental illness than black shooters. Latino shooters were 92 percent more likely than black shooters to have mental illness mentioned as a factor.

An empathy gap

Furthermore, those articles that did describe a white shooter as mentally ill would often suggest that the shooter had been a generally good person who was a victim of society. The shooting, in other words, was out of character.

For example, in one case, a shooter in a rural trailer park set up a rifle in some bushes and began firing at the family trailer, with his wife, father-in-law and two young children inside. When the police arrived, he turned the rifle on them, hitting two officers before they gunned him down.

Yet subsequent news coverage noted his generally quiet demeanor and his willingness to help family and friends. The man who committed these crimes, one article noted, “wasn’t the same person who loved back-porch cookouts.”

However, such narratives – even within articles that mentioned mental illness – were less common when the shooter was black or Latino.

The graph below includes all news articles in our sample that framed a shooting as stemming from mental illness.

The chart shows the proportion of thematic narratives by race within the mental illness subsample.

Nearly 80 percent of articles that described white shooters as mentally ill also described them as a victim of society and circumstance – a tough childhood, a failed relationship or financial struggles.

However only one article that described a black shooter as mentally ill did the same. Furthermore, no article in our sample offered testimony to black shooters’ good character, suggested that the shooter was from a good environment or that the shooting was out of character. Across the board, roughly the same pattern played out with perpetrators who were Latino.

Why does this matter?

Media coverage actively shapes how we perceive reality.

It seems as if media outlets tend to cast the violent acts of white criminals as unfortunate anomalies of circumstance and illness. For black shooters (and, to a lesser extent, Latino shooters) media outlets render their crimes with a brush of inherent criminality.

This isn’t to say that crimes shouldn’t be fully examined and that personal hardships and society don’t play a role. But if the circumstances of one group’s crimes are being explained in an empathetic way, and another group’s crimes aren’t given the same level of care and attention, we wonder whether this can insidiously influence how we perceive huge swaths of the population – criminal or not.

Laura Frizzell, PhD Student in Sociology, The Ohio State University; Sadé L. Lindsay, PhD Student in Sociology, The Ohio State University, and Scott Duxbury, PhD Student in Sociology, The Ohio State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

‘Two societies, one black, one white’ – the Kerner Commission’s prophetic warnings

 

National Guardsmen move into Detroit’s riot-torn area, July 23, 1967.
AP

Donald Nieman, Binghamton University, State University of New York

On July 23, 1967, Detroit exploded in rioting. Five days later, 43 were dead, 7,200 had been arrested and US$22 million worth of property had been destroyed.

It was just the latest in a string of more than 100 disturbances that shook American cities during “the long, hot summers” of the mid-1960s.

Before the embers cooled, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate. The panel became known popularly as the Kerner Commission, after its co-chair Otto Kerner, the Democratic governor of Illinois.

Johnson announces the establishment of the Kerner Commission in 1967.

Fifty years ago, on Feb. 29, 1968, the commission issued its report. As a historian of civil rights in the U.S., I’m struck by how the power of institutional racism so trenchantly revealed by the report constrains efforts to advance racial equity 50 years later.

Taproot of violence: White racism

As the report masterfully described, these “racial disorders” were really urban uprisings. They were sparked by poverty, unemployment, discrimination in housing and education, police brutality and a sense of powerlessness among inner city residents.

The taproot, however, was white racism, which the commission found “responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II.”

The situation was dire. According to the report, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

To avert this catastrophe, the commission demanded “a commitment to national action on an unprecedented scale.”

Riots erupted in New York’s Harlem neighborhood in July 1974, after a white police officer shot a black teenager.
AP

It recommended creation of public-sector jobs, construction of low- and moderate-income housing, urban school desegregation, expanded early childhood education, welfare benefits at least equal to the poverty level and legislation to end housing discrimination.

Recognizing the role of the police in sparking violence, commissioners urged development of “innovative programs to insure widespread community support for law enforcement” and the hiring of more black police. They also demanded that police cease using massive force in the form of “automatic rifles, machine guns, and tanks.”

The report seized public attention. Covered widely in the press, it was issued as a paperback by Bantam books and sold 740,000 copies within two weeks of its release. Its chilling “two societies” phrase became part of the national vocabulary.

Harsh words, but little action

Impact was another matter.

President Johnson, confronting budget deficits, rising inflation, defeat in Vietnam and growing criticism from the right and left, offered tepid support. And his successor, Richard Nixon, rode to victory promising to restore law and order, not to support an ambitious civil rights agenda.

During the ensuing 50 years, retrospectives on the report surfaced on anniversaries and in the aftermath of highly publicized urban uprisings in Los Angeles, Ferguson, Baltimore and Staten Island.

Its effect on policy, however, has been modest. It helped spur passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which aimed to end the residential segregation of American neighborhoods. Coupled with additional legislation passed in the 1970s and 1980s and the growth of the black middle class, the act has facilitated modest gains in residential integration.

Demonstrators across the street from the Ferguson, Missouri, police department in March 2015.
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

There are now far more African-American police officers than in 1968, but this is due more to litigation and political gains by African-Americans in major cities than the report’s influence. White officers still make up a disproportionate share of police, especially in inner suburbs like Ferguson, Missouri, where the recent movement of black families into the city has changed the racial demographic.

Other recommendations obtained even less traction. Welfare has become less generous, thanks to the welfare reform adopted in 1995 under President Bill Clinton, and police are as much of a flash point as they were in the 1960s, exacting a terrible toll on urban and suburban black communities.

Why the lack of action?

Five decades of uneven economic growth and federal budget deficits bred resistance to expensive new programs. In addition, the commission’s recommendations on law enforcement relied on action by state and local government, which were often reluctant to act.

But racism is the most important factor.

Has racism diminished?

Polls reveal a decline in racist sentiments among whites since the 1960s.

Nevertheless, a 2012 AP poll found that 56 percent of non-Hispanic whites held explicit or implicit anti-black attitudes. Other recent polls have revealed that a majority of whites believe that whites work harder than blacks and that the country talks too much about race.

Persistent racism has been exploited by many Republicans – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump to name a few – to woo working-class white Northerners and turn the South red.

Republican resurgence after 1968 – Democrats have controlled both Congress and the White House for only for only six of the past 50 years – has created partisan gridlock on civil rights, killing serious consideration of the commission’s bold recommendations.

Sadly, the report’s fundamental insight remains as relevant today as 50 years ago.

“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto,” the report asserted.

“White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

I’m encouraged by how Black Lives Matter has once again shattered the nation’s complacency about race. The movement reminds Americans that we have not overcome and that institutional racism remains an intractable barrier to equity. It has shattered illusions that the U.S. has become a post-racial society and challenged the nation to grapple with the ugly realities the Kerner Commission laid bare.

Donald Nieman, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Schools shouldn’t wait for red flags to address student mental health needs

 

Students who need mental health services rarely receive them.
Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com

Nathaniel von der Embse, University of South Florida

One out of every 4 or 5. That’s how many students will display a significant mental health problem over the course of their lifetime.

Such students can be identified early with considerable accuracy if educators are given the right training and tools. Unfortunately, most schools rely on reactive methods, like office discipline referrals, to figure out which students need behavioral and mental health services.

Research shows this approach of waiting until students act out in school is inefficient and leads to as many as 80 percent of those with mental health needs to fall through the cracks.

Such concerns have heightened in the wake of the Parkland high school massacre. News reports indicate the alleged shooter exhibited a number of troubling behaviors, raising questions about his mental health status and whether more could have been done to help him sooner.

To address the issue of students falling through the cracks, more schools should adopt proactive, universal screening tools.

Universal screening typically occurs three times throughout the school year: fall, winter and spring. Screeners are brief assessments that take no more than a few minutes to complete. They include approximately 20 questions and are given to each student in the elementary classroom. These tools ask students to indicate things such as “I lose my temper” or whether they are “adaptable to change.” The questions are purposefully broad and are meant to identify students who may be at risk for either internal problem behaviors, such as anxiety or depression, or external problem behaviors, such as aggression toward others. The screenings are scored and used to prioritize which students need intervention.

Screeners are typically administered without parental consent if they are embedded into the general school curriculum.

Research shows that screening tools can help educators identify students with mental health needs with far greater accuracy and speed, rather than waiting for a severe problem behavior, such as a school fight.

I developed one such tool – the Social, Academic and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener, or SAEBRS – with the help of several grants, including $1.4 million from the Institute for Educational Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education.

If society is serious about preventing severe mental and behavioral health problems, it must take a critical look at the current state of mental health supports in the nation’s schools. Doing so will bring the value of screening tools into sharper focus.

School mental health stretched thin

First, let’s consider the service provider side of the equation. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of 1 school psychologist for every 500-700 students. However, the reality is that states on average have ratios of nearly twice that amount. Simply put, schools rarely have the staff necessary for comprehensive mental health services.

Second, only a small number of students who need mental health services will receive intervention in a timely manner. Due to the amount of time that teachers spend with students, teachers are the critical link to identify which students need help and to refer students to school psychologists, counselors and social workers. The question is: Do teachers know what to look for?

Silent issues overlooked

Consider a typical elementary classroom with 30 students. Approximately 6 students, on average, will have a critical mental and behavioral health problem such as anxiety or aggression, yet less than half will receive timely intervention. Who are those students? Typically those that exhibit more outward types of problems, such as aggression, problems paying attention and disruptive behavior.

Students with harder-to-see issues, such as withdrawal, anxiety and social isolation often get overlooked and rarely receive essential services. Teachers often lack the training or tools necessary to know which students may need help, beyond those that are disruptive to instruction.

These screenings are not part of the process for comprehensive special education evaluations, so the concerns about schools having to offer special education services as a result of the screening do not come into play.

While screening tools can help identify troubled students sooner, it is important not to oversell the usefulness of these tools. To be clear, there are no research-validated tools that can reliably identify which students may commit violent acts.

Toward universal screening

Currently, less than 15 percent of schools engage in some form of behavioral or mental health screening. However, more schools are adopting universal screening.

As the developer of a screening tool, I have seen rapid adoption of the tool over the last four years from two elementary schools in rural North Carolina to hundreds of schools across 28 states. As schools consider how best to meet the behavioral and mental health needs of their students, screening can provide crucial information to guide the way.

Nathaniel von der Embse, Assistant Professor of School Psychology, University of South Florida

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How funding to house #MentallyIll, #Homeless is a financial gain, not drain

A director of a supportive housing center in Bronx, New York, talks with a resident and case worker in December 2015.
Bebeto Matthews/AP

Carol Caton, Columbia University Medical Center

As Congress considers the federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2018 to reduce funding for services to poor and homeless Americans, programs with proven cost-effectiveness should not be on the chopping block. One such program is supportive housing for homeless people with severe mental illness.

Supportive housing, funded and coordinated by several different federal agencies and nonprofits, provides homeless people who have severe mental illness with housing coupled with treatment and support services. There is no increase in net public cost compared to street and shelter living.

While it may appear that paying for supportive housing is a drain on the federal budget, research has shown that ending homelessness for the severely mentally ill saves taxpayers money.

Because funding comes from several different agencies, it is hard to know specifically from the president’s budget plan how deep the cuts to supportive housing could be. Yet we do know that the president has proposed cuts in funding to Housing and Urban Development by 13 percent and to Health and Human Services by 19 percent. Both these agencies provide significant funding for supportive housing.

I research mental illness and homelessness. Cutting funds to house the homeless would cost us more money than it would save.

Supportive housing and the homeless mentally ill

Since the 1980s, homelessness has plagued cities and towns across the country. Today, more than a half-million people in the U.S. are homeless. One in every three homeless people suffers from a mental illness, which is often compounded by multiple health problems and substance abuse.

The homeless mentally ill are likely to remain undomiciled and without treatment for long periods of time. This brings a high social and economic cost to society. Disabled by mental illness and unable to work, these individuals have little hope of exiting homelessness without public assistance.

From www.shutterstock.com

Beset with extreme poverty and disability, their inability to work renders them heavily dependent on the largesse of government agencies for disability income, housing support and health care.

The challenges facing homeless people in general are daunting. Security, privacy and creature comforts are in short supply. The daily burden of being homeless involves finding ways to assuage exhaustion and hunger, and to sidestep the violence and victimization that regularly occurs in life on the streets. An estimated 14 to 21 percent of homeless people are victims of crimes, compared to about 2 percent of the general population.

Supportive housing, started in the early 1980s, has shown to make a big difference. Unlike the temporary respite provided by crisis shelters, it provides access to permanent housing, mental health treatment and support from mental health professionals to guide the adjustment from homelessness to stable residence in the community.

Supportive housing tenants must have a behavioral health condition that qualifies them for a federal disability income. Residents pay one-third of the cost of rent and utilities with their disability income (about US$733 per month). The balance is covered by a housing subsidy provided through private or governmental sources. In some cases, eligibility for a housing subsidy is based on duration of street and shelter living.

The numbers tell the story

In concert with the federal plan to “End Chronic Homelessness in Ten Years,” supportive housing has helped to reduce chronic homelessness by 35 percent between 2007 and 2016.

At an annual cost ranging from $12,000 to nearly $20,000 per unit, permanent supportive housing is expensive, but it is substantially less than the annual cost of a stay in a homeless shelter, jail or prison, or psychiatric hospital.

Some of the funding comes from the federal government, including from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care and from Section 8 housing subsidies. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs also provide funding.

States including New York, California, Washington and Connecticut have helped to fund housing for people with mental illness, as have some city and county governments.

Other sources of funding include low-income housing tax credits, private foundations and charitable donations to nonprofit housing providers. The Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion program provides Medicaid reimbursement for services provided to individuals in supportive housing.

And the winner is…everyone

Controlled trials conducted in the United States and Canada have found the majority of people who have had access to supportive housing remain housed for a year or more, showing greater housing stability than that among comparison subjects. In addition, individuals in supportive housing not only stayed longer but also had a reduction in subsequent homelessness and decreased use of emergency departments and hospitals.

Cost offset studies show that supportive housing leads to less use of costly public services.

A landmark analysis of administrative data from multiple public service systems examined the impact of supportive housing placement on 4,679 individuals and their use of the public shelter system, public and private hospitals, and correctional facilities. The study found that persons placed in supportive housing experienced significant reductions in use of homeless shelters, hospitals and time incarcerated. In fact, public service cost reductions following housing placement nearly offset the cost of the housing itself.

Significantly, supportive housing is nearly half the average cost per year of $35,578 for a chronically homeless person. Part of the reason is that stable housing resulted in a shift in service use from expensive crisis services to less costly community-based care.

Strong and compelling evidence indicates that supportive housing is a “win-win” for both the homeless mentally ill and the holders of the public purse. It offers people with mental illness safe and adequate housing and greater access to treatment, essential elements in their recovery. And it can lead to greater cost-efficient use of public services.

Currently there are not nearly enough supportive housing units to house the thousands of individuals with severe mental illness who are currently unstably housed or are at risk of falling into homelessness.

It would not make economic sense to cut funding for a cost-effective intervention that provides a solution to homelessness. Rather, what we need now is the public will to bring supportive housing to scale so that the most fragile among us might achieve stable residence in the community. They, too, deserve the opportunity for personal fulfillment and involvement in mainstream society.

Carol Caton, Professor of Sociomedical Sciences (Psychiatry and Public Health), Columbia University Medical Center

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

DNC lawsuit: “you’re morons to believe us” — PART 1 of 3

The Florida Squeeze

In the matter of the DNC fraud lawsuit, the absolute worst outcome for the Democratic Party would be to win their argument for dismissal. And yet, if it isn’t dismissed Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC will still be in a world of hurt.

PHOTO BY: Brook Hines

Arguments for dismissal of the DNC fraud lawsuit were delivered Tuesday, April 25 in the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, before the Hon. William J. Zloch. After reading the complaint and the transcript for dismissal, it’s clear to me that the DNC has been caught in a catch-22.  From a legal standpoint, the only hope the DNC has is to win dismissal. If they lose the argument for dismissal, the whole matter will go to trial. This means Democratic Party elites will be called to take the stand (and respond to discovery) under penalty of perjury. Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman Schultz will…

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Is the US immigration court system broken?

A man has his fingerprints scanned by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while others wait their turn. Reuters/Jeff Topping

Lindsay M. Harris, University of the District of Columbia

In the U.S. today, a single immigration case takes an average of 677 days simply to get to the initial scheduling hearing.

There are more than half a million cases in the system, and just over 300 judges working on them. The Trump administration’s push to aggressively enforce immigration laws will make this backlog worse.

Since 2002, funding for immigration enforcement has more than quadrupled, from US$4.5 billion to $20.1 billion in 2016. During the same time period, resources for immigration courts have increased by much less – 74 percent.

President Donald Trump’s budget for fiscal 2018 and request for supplemental funds for fiscal 2017 indicate he will continue this trend of funding immigration enforcement but not adequately funding immigration courts.

His budget requests would add to the more than $40 billion that the Department of Homeland Security will receive this year. It would include $4.1 billion to start building a border wall and $2.65 billion to increase the number of immigration detention beds. In comparison, the fiscal 2018 budget requests $80 million to add 75 new immigration judges.

As a law professor, I have devoted my career to representing asylum seekers and studying our nation’s immigration courts. I witness the daily effects of the immigration court backlog on the lives of immigrants.

Backlogged immigration courts

The U.S. has 57 immigration courts nationwide. The judges in these courts preside over cases in which an individual is in the U.S. and the U.S. government alleges that they may be removable. This includes immigrants who have recently arrived and are seeking asylum protection, lawful permanent residents rendered potentially removable due to a criminal conviction and undocumented immigrants who may be allowed to stay in the U.S.

An asylum seeker outside immigration court with his lawyer in Los Angeles. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

In 2015, the TRAC Immigration Project out of Syracuse University estimated that full resolution of cases in the backlog would take from 2 to 6 ½ years. Asylum applicants who are seeking U.S. protection from persecution in their home countries may wait five or more years simply for an interview to assess their claim.

The backlog has arisen largely because of an increase in the number of Central American women and children seeking asylum. Many families without authorization are sent to detention centers to be held while they undergo expedited removal.

The expedited removal process was created to bypass the immigration court system and allow for the swift removal of undocumented immigrants. However, if those immigrants say they’re afraid to return home, the Department of Homeland Security must give them a “credible fear interview” to determine if they are eligible for asylum. These individuals can then take their cases to immigration court.

Asylum officers are sent to detention centers to conduct credible fear interviews. Approximately 85 to 90 percent of families interviewed are granted the right to present their case in immigration court.

Asking asylum seekers to present their cases before both asylum officers and judges is repetitive and time consuming. It would be more efficient to either allow asylum officers to grant asylum after a credible fear interview when they see a strong case, or simply bypass this step and allow all asylum seekers to present their cases in court.

As of February 2017, there were only 527 asylum officers working in the nation’s eight asylum offices, even though the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has authorized hiring as many as 625. The nonprofit Human Rights First estimates that 272 of those officers are needed just to conduct credible fear interviews.

Effects of the backlog

As I have detailed in my work, delays in processing immigrants cause hardships for asylum seekers.

While an asylum seeker is awaiting a decision in their case, they often face financial instability, difficulty finding employment and prolonged separation from immediate family members. Years of delay also make it more difficult for immigrants to find pro bono legal representation.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has cited the “historic backlogs” in immigration courts to justify increasing expedited removals.

There’s evidence that such expedited removals circumvent due process for asylum seekers. In some cases, U.S. border officials have even failed to properly implement safeguards to protect asylum seekers from being returned to harm or death. Recently, the U.S. government did not attend a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding Customs and Border Patrol illegally turning asylum seekers away from our southern border.

The nonprofit Human Rights First estimates that the U.S. needs at least 524 judges working to address the immigration court backlog, in addition to more law clerks and administrative support.

More asylum officers are also needed. Human Rights First estimates that with 800 asylum officers on the job, we could get rid of the backlog by 2022.

Solving the problem of our nation’s backlogged immigration courts should be a priority for any administration to ensure that the system functions in a timely and efficient manner.

Lindsay M. Harris, Assistant Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How World War I sparked the artistic movement that transformed black America

Aaron Douglas. “Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction.” Oil on canvas, 1934. The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division.

Elizabeth J. West, Georgia State University

Though we often discuss World War I through the lens of history, we occasionally do it through literature. When we do, we’ll invariably go to the famous trilogy of Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald – the authors most representative of America’s iconic Lost Generation. Their work is said to reflect a mood that emerged from the ashes of a war that, with its trail of carnage, left survivors around the world with a despairing vision of life, self and nation.

The anxiety and hopelessness of the Lost Generation has become embedded in literary and cultural history. But for black artists, writers and thinkers, the war meant something entirely different: It spawned a transformation of the way African-Americans imagined themselves, their past and their future.

With Africa as a source of inspiration, a “New Negro” emerged out of the ruins of the Great War – not broken and disenchanted, but possessed with a new sense of self, one shaped from bold, unapologetically black models.

Denying an African legacy

Before World War I, African-American literature depicted stoic, but constrained, black protagonists. They emulated European codes of class and respectability while rejecting any sort of African legacy or inheritance. In other words, they talked like white people, dressed like white people and accepted the narrative that white men were the source of America’s greatness.

From the most well-known 19th-century African-American writer, Frederick Douglass, to his less remembered contemporary, Alexander Crummell, literary black advocacy or racial uplift too often rested on this approach.

Still, in the years leading up to World War I, there were rumblings of the “New Negro” archetype. For example, in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1902 novel “The Sport of the Gods” and Pauline Hopkins’ serialized novel “Hagar’s Daughter,” we see restless, dissatisfied young people who have no desire to become shuffling, servile second-class citizens.

This defiance, however, would not become widespread in African-American literature until the end of the war.

A ‘New Negro’ emerges

Black soldiers abroad during World War I experienced a type of freedom and mobility unattainable back home. In cities from London to Paris, many, for the first time, could travel without the worry of being denied equal lodging accommodations or admission to entertainment venues.

Once they returned stateside, they became increasingly impatient with Jim Crow laws and codes of racial discrimination. Life, they realized, didn’t have to be this way. In a nation that was now half a century beyond slavery, the fever spread among a new generation of blacks.

A group of soldiers pose from the 93rd Division’s 369th Infantry Regiment, which was nicknamed the ‘Harlem Hellfighters.’
US National Archives

In the war’s aftermath, racial tensions heightened – a reflection of this mood. The summer of 1919 was known as the “Red Summer” for the number of race riots that erupted around the country, with one of the worst in Chicago, where 38 people died.

And in black literature, African-American characters no longer looked to the white man – or his nations – as models of civilization. In his 1925 anthology entitled “The New Negro,” writer, philosopher and Howard University professor Alain Locke has been credited with marshaling in the era we now know as the Harlem Renaissance. Locke, in his text, called on a generation of emerging black writers, artists and activists to look to Africa and to black folk culture in the United States and the Americas as a way to mine and explore a new strand of humanity.

We see this in Langston Hughes’ poetry; in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” he heralds Africa as source of creativity and cultural grounding:

   I built my hut by the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
   I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

Two Jakes – one black, one white

Unlike the emerging literati of the Lost Generation, blacks, for the most part, weren’t angst-ridden over a post-war world devoid of meaning: they had never internalized the myth of America as a shining “city upon a hill.” For them, the war brought no end or loss, no disillusionment or void.

Claude McKay.
Wikimedia Commons

We see this difference if we compare Hemingway’s protagonist Jake in “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) to Claude McKay’s protagonist in “Home to Harlem” (1928), also named Jake. Unlike Hemingway’s lost, sullen and impotent hero who can’t find his way home, McKay’s Jake happily traverses Europe for a period after the war until he realizes he yearns for home.

While life is still a struggle and racism persists, McKay’s hero looks to the future with hope; he returns to Harlem where he relishes the many shades of black and brown beauties that he missed in Europe. McKay’s Jake immerses himself in a black world of love and laughter – a place that loudly celebrates life. He becomes inspired not by the readings and ideals of white thinkers and writers, but through black prototypes in and beyond America. His West Indian co-worker introduces him to Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jaques Dessalines, the black heroes of the Haitian Revolution, and to the history of great African empires dating back to antiquity.

In the literary works of black women, a new ethos also emerged. In Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the main character, Janie, is daring in her quest for freedom: She leaves the confines of her restrictive community to take up with a younger man.

Black musicians, artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance are celebrated as leaders of this transformative era in black history. But Harlem wasn’t alone. Cities such as Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago also became hubs of black cosmopolitanism.

Above all, the African-American literary works born out of the ashes of World War I went on to spur the bold spirit of resistance of the African-American protest movement into the 21st century.

We also see that American literature is not a monolith of interpretation and experiences: In the case of post-World War I literature, even though one generation was lost, another was found.

Elizabeth J. West, Professor of English, Georgia State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Why states are pushing ahead with clean energy despite Trump’s embrace of coal

Alamosa Photovoltaic Plan, south-central Colorado.
Energy.gov/Flickr

Bill Ritter, Jr., Colorado State University

On Tuesday, March 28, President Trump traveled to the Environmental Protection Agency to sign an executive order rolling back a number of climate-related regulations that have taken effect over the past eight years. The president’s team claims this effort will help bring our nation closer to energy independence, and that it will begin the process of resuscitating a coal industry that has experienced serious decline in the past decade.

In reality, it will do neither. We do not import coal into the United States. There are no jobs coming back from overseas. Moreover, and somewhat ironically, the chief reason for the decline in the coal industry is not Obama-era regulations, but a rapidly changing energy market.

Any energy market analyst will tell you that advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have provided us with cheap, abundant, natural gas. Add to that declining price curves in wind and solar generation, and one begins to appreciate that a difficult road lies ahead for coal. These are markets that are growing with rapid technological innovation.

USEIA

The shift is underway

The fact is that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan codified where the utility industry was already going. With publicly announced retirements, roughly 45 percent of the existing coal capacity in the western grid will be retired by 2030. According to utility integrated resource plans, by 2026, just shy of half of the total energy in the West will be generated from zero-emitting resources.

The 11 western states that my center had been convening around implementation of the Clean Power Plan are, collectively, in compliance with the plan’s 2026 targets under business as usual. Ironically, removing the Clean Power Plan just eliminates a potential for market-based emission trading that would lower costs to consumers and provide some states with a glide path to meet their targets.

This is not to say that the regulatory rollbacks in President Trump’s order will have no impact. The international community, which crafted the landmark Paris Accord, will not have the benefit of U.S. leadership on climate change. Other nations will fill that void – while reaping the economic rewards of serving a growing global market with low-carbon technologies. One of the most troubling long-term impacts of these actions will be a declining global view of America as a source of innovation and investment.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, holding his granddaughter, signs the Paris Agreement, April 22, 2016.
U.S. Department of State/Wikipedia

At home, should the Clean Power Plan expire, states that have been reticent to advance a clean energy agenda will no longer be required to plan for emissions reductions. The Clean Power Plan brought certainty to energy planning. If you talk to American utility executives and their investors, they crave certainty because it lowers the cost of capital and saves money for consumers. The executive order is a step away from stability in our energy markets and away from America’s leadership as an innovator developing the technologies that will serve a growing global market.

States, cities and businesses are moving forward

Attempts to roll back important environmental safeguards are being sold to the American people under the rubric of job creation. Let’s put this in the proper context: There were 65,971 jobs in coal mining nationwide in 2015. According to the Department of Energy, more than twice as many jobs – 133,000 – were created last year just in the energy efficiency industry. In 2016 the solar workforce grew by 25 percent to 374,000 and the wind workforce grew by 32 percent to 102,000. One in 50 new jobs in America is now in solar energy.

From 2007 to 2011, as Governor of Colorado, I signed 57 pieces of legislation intended to transition Colorado to a clean energy economy. After leaving office I founded the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University with the intention of working with governors, state legislators and utility regulators on clean and advanced energy policy. In our work at the center, my team and I have become confident that states, cities and private companies are taking the lead in the clean energy transition, even as the federal government flounders. Today 37 states, comprising two-thirds of the U.S. population, have renewable portfolio standards that require electric utilities to generate or purchase a percentage of their power from renewable energy.

Governors from both parties have led this transition. Seventeen governors have joined the Governors’ Accord for a New Energy Future, including the Republican Governors of Nevada, Iowa, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. In doing so, they have all committed to diversify their states’ energy generation with clean energy sources, modernizing energy infrastructure and encouraging clean transportation. In addition, 129 U.S. cities have signed the Compact of Mayors’ pledge to address climate change.

Thirty-three U.S.-based companies, the likes of Coca-Cola, GM, Goldman Sachs, HP, Johnson & Johnson and Nike, have committed to a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy as part of the RE100 Initiative. Some 50 U.S. companies will need to purchase 17 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2025 – enough to power the entire state of Colorado – in order to fulfill their existing corporate targets.

True leadership requires a vision that looks to new markets, new technologies and new solutions. Unfortunately, the president’s actions on Tuesday look backward toward a fading horizon, rather than forward toward a bright and promising future.

Bill Ritter, Jr., Director, Center for the New Energy Economy, Colorado State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.