Criminal
Justice Reform
The effect of a few days of detention for people who have been
accused of misdemeanors and not released simply because they do not have the
ability to pay can be devastating and far reaching ― possibly leading to
the loss of employment and housing, which only exacerbates the kind of
instability that can lead to a life of crime,” he said. “If we want to continue
the progress we’ve made in lowering crime, reducing recidivism, and making our
communities safer, then we must focus on what happens at the front-end of the
justice system.”
The new
law, which will take effect in July, bars courts from assigning money bail to
misdemeanor defendants, except in cases involving family violence or in which
an individual has been determined to be a flight risk, or likely to obstruct
justice or harm themselves or someone else.
“What we
know is that 75 percent of all criminal case filings are misdemeanors, so this
bill will have a big impact on a lot of people,” Cherise Fanno Burdeen, CEO of
the Pretrial Justice Institute, a leading advocate for bail reform, told
HuffPost
Racial
Equity
Video
Dr. Clarence B. Jones is currently
the First Diversity Visiting Professor at the University of San Francisco and a
scholar writer in residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research &
Education Institute, Stanford University, and Palo Alto, California. He served
as counsel, political adviser, and speechwriter for Dr. King. He’ll be speaking
about what lawmakers today can learn from King at the Aspen
Ideas Festival.
It appears there is collective unwillingness and/or inability
of “the best and the brightest” today to acknowledge that the consequential
impact of the institution of slavery and its ideology of white supremacy upon
subsequent generations of the children of slaves and slave owners constitute
the core of the “problem of race” in America today.
What is about the current generation of leaders of
foundations, think tanks, businesses, universities, and government institutions
that makes them unable to clearly see the consequential historical impact of
slavery and its doctrine of white supremacy upon virtually all matters relating
to race? Discussions about “race” still reside between “a rock and a hard
place”
Foreign
Policy
…there are some things that United States just has to do because
no foundation, no investor, and no government can or will. Sometimes it is
supporting a democratic election; sometimes it is leading from the front on
Ebola; sometimes it is doing mind-numbingly boring but important work improving
the tax collection systems of a developing country or fixing the plumbing at a
border to make trade easier. Much of this is neither photogenic nor easy to
explain on a bumper sticker, but it is increasingly the bread and butter of
what Washington should be doing — and not necessarily what it or the political
constituencies that support development “want” to do.
There are currently 30 or so countries that are fragile
and weak. These are where many of our biggest problems come from.
These countries are going to generate such problems for decades. Their
challenges are hard to tackle. We have only a small ability to make incremental
progress, but the United States needs to be in these countries for their own
security and ours. These nations will require ongoing U.S. leadership and
involvement.
Health
Care
The most likely outcome, then, is that the efforts to repeal
Obamacare will die in the Senate. If that happens, the more pressing question
will become, How can the Trump administration address the very real flaws of
the U.S. health-care system, improving care without taking coverage away? The
answer is to fix Obamacare rather than replace it.
Already, hospitals
across the country are experimenting with ways to offer better care at a lower
cost. Eight years ago, Grand Junction, Colorado, became the poster child of
health-care reform when it was singled out by Atul Gawande of The
New Yorker for investing in preventive care and changing the way
doctors were paid in an effort to slash Medicare costs without sacrificing
quality. La Crosse, Wisconsin, has achieved the lowest costs in the country for
end-of-life care by having nurses ask patients to fill out advance directives
about how aggressive they want their treatment to be. And Geisinger Health
System, a network of hospitals in Pennsylvania, has reduced emergency-room
admissions by focusing on delivering high-quality primary care, with a view
toward customer service. (It even offers refunds to patients who report
“uncompassionate care.”) Meanwhile, a bevy of start-ups inspired by the
Affordable Care Act are doing everything from matching patients with caregivers
to helping people shop for insurance plans.
If policymakers really
want to curb costs and improve quality, they should focus on accelerating the
growth of such game changers—by enhancing the incentives of existing
high-value providers to expand their market share and by unleashing the
forces of capitalism to create new such providers.
Work
When looking at people to hire for any company, there are
certain things employers always hope to find: a strong work ethic, consistent
work quality, a team player, and a great personality, for example, are just a
few of the most important qualities recruiters search for.
But what are the traits that every employer looks for to find
employees who are awesome, rather than simply ones who can
do the job? Read on to find out.
