philanthropy | Chris Aldrich

Listened to The Daily: Michael Bloomberg’s Not-So-Secret Weapon from New York Times

The media tycoon and former New York mayor has paid his way into a position of influence in the Democratic Party. But can he buy a presidential nomination?

🎧 Harm To Ongoing Matter | On the Media | WNYC Studios

Listened to Harm To Ongoing Matter from On the Media | WNYC Studios

After years of waiting, journalists finally began digging into the redacted version of the Mueller report. On this week’s On the Media, how the special counsel’s findings confirm years of reporting about turmoil within the White House. Plus, what the Notre Dame fire and the Sacklers show us about the dark side of philanthropy, and how the Justice Department stopped prosecuting executives. And, an undercover investigation shines a light on the NRA’s PR machinery.

1. Eric Umansky [@ericuman], deputy editor at ProPublica and co-host of the Trump Inc. podcast, on the Mueller revelations. Listen.

2. Anand Giridharadas [@AnandWrites], author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, on the dark side of philanthropy. Listen.

3. Jesse Eisinger [@eisingerj], author of The Chickenshit Club, on how the Justice Department stopped prosecuting executives. Listen.

4. Peter Charley, executive producer of Al Jazeera's "How To Sell a Massacre," on the NRA's PR machinery. Listen.

Some interesting thoughts in the last couple of segments on the last Guilded Age and the one we’re potentially about to exit soon??

I definitely want to see the documentary discussed in the last segment about the NRA.

🎧 The Opioid Narratives | On the Media | WNYC Studios

Listened to The Opioid Narratives from On the Media | WNYC Studios

Purdue Pharma has settled a lawsuit with the state of Oklahoma for $270 million, a larger figure than two other cases the company has settled with other states. In doing so, the company also avoided a televised trial in May at a time when there's been growing public pressure on Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, amid allegations that they misled the public about the dangers of OxyContin.

Back in 2017, Bob spoke with Barry Meier about how public discourse about chronic pain and treatment have been shaped by companies like Purdue with help from physicians, consultants, and the media. Meier is a former reporter for The New York Times and author of Pain Killer: A "Wonder" Drug's Trail of Addiction and Death.

Bob also interviewed journalist Anna Clark about her reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review on opioid-related death notices. Sites like Legacy.com, she explained, have often chronicled the crisis' individual human toll.

👓 Opinion | Michael Bloomberg: Why I’m Giving $1.8 Billion for College Financial Aid | New York Times

Read Opinion | Michael Bloomberg: Why I’m Giving $1.8 Billion for College Financial Aid (New York Times)

Let’s eliminate money problems from the admissions equation for qualified students.

God bless you Michael Bloomberg for putting your money where your ~~mouth~~ heart is. We could use more serious leadership and thought like this in the world.
#2020

👓 Bloomberg gives Johns Hopkins a record $1.8 billion for student financial aid | Washington Post

Read Bloomberg gives Johns Hopkins a record $1.8 billion for student financial aid (Washington Post)

Former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Sunday he is giving a record $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University to support student financial aid at his alma mater and make its admissions process “forever need-blind.” The gift, believed to be the largest private donation in modern times to higher education, is a landmark in a growing national movement to make elite universities more accessible to students from low-to-middle income families.

👓 Michael Bloomberg donates $1.8 billion to boost financial aid for low-income students | CBS News

Read Michael Bloomberg donates $1.8 billion to boost financial aid for low-income students (cbsnews.com)

Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and one of the world's richest people, is donating $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in an effort to boost financial aid for low- and middle-income students. The university said the contribution — the largest ever to any education institution in the U.S. — will allow Johns Hopkins to eliminate student loans in financial aid packages starting next fall. The university will instead offer scholarships that don't have to be repaid.

❤️ ClintSmithIII tweet about philanthropy

Replied to a tweet by

Clint Smith on Twitter (Twitter)

We live in a country where billionaires make the decision to pay their workers less than minimum wage & then when they donate the most infinitesimal amount of their relative wealth to a decent cause they get buildings named after them & endlessly praised.
It’s all so backwards. — Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) June 18, 2018

This reminds me a lot of Malcolm Gladwell‘s thesis about philanthropy in higher education. Hopefully identifying the problem and suggestions for solutions will point a way to fixing the problem.

🎧 Episode 06 My Little Hundred Million | Revisionist History

Listened to Episode 06 My Little Hundred Million by

Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

In the early ’90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a university in New Jersey, an act of extraordinary generosity that helped launch the greatest explosion in educational philanthropy since the days of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. But Rowan gave his money to Glassboro State University, a tiny, almost bankrupt school in South Jersey, while almost all of the philanthropists who followed his lead made their donations to elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. Why did no one follow Rowan’s example?
“My Little Hundred Million” is the third part of Revisionist History’s educational miniseries. It looks at the hidden ideologies behind giving and how a strange set of ideas has hijacked educational philanthropy.

The key idea laid out stunningly here is strong links versus weak links.

I’m generally flabbergasted by the general idea proposed here and will have to do some more research in the near future to play around further with the ideas presented. Fortunately, in addition to the education specific idea presented, Gladwell also comes up with an additional few examples in sports by using the differences between soccer and basketball to show the subtle differences.

If he and his lab aren’t aware of the general concept, I would recommend this particular podcast and the concept of strong and weak links to César Hidalgo (t) who might actually have some troves of economics data to use to play around with some general modeling to expand upon these ideas. I’ve been generally enamored of Hidalgo’s general thesis about the overall value of links as expressed in Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies¹. I often think of it with relation to political economies and how the current administration seems to be (often quietly) destroying large amounts of value by breaking down a variety of economic, social, and political links within the United States as well as between our country and others.

I wonder if the additional ideas about the differences between strong and weak links might further improve these broader ideas. The general ideas behind statistical mechanics and statistics make me think that Gladwell, like Hidalgo, is certainly onto a strong idea which can be continued to be refined to improve billions of lives. I’ll have to start some literature searches now…

References

Hidalgo C. Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies. New York: Basic Books; 2015.