Shouldering ther Burden -- Tithing Disparities

NPR had an interesting story this morning (http://www.npr.org/2012/08/20/158947667/study-reveals-the-geography-of-charitable-giving) about the trends of giving to charities.  The article boils the study down:  It turns out that lower-income people tend to donate a much bigger share of their discretionary incomes than wealthier people do. And rich people are more generous when they live among those who aren't so rich.  I can't say that I'm surprised.  First, to address the point that wealthier people are more generous when they live among those who aren't --- sure!  They are surrounded by those in need, as opposed to those whose needs are met and then some.  It is hard to justify keeping your money and spending opulently when you are confronted on a daily basis by those going without basic necessities.  Personally, this is one of the reasons that I am not comfortable living in suburbia -- I need to be confronted with people's needs.  As a person, I need to fulfill my duty to help others, and I am better at responding to those needs when I am confronted with them on regular basis.


Second, let me share a story from my beloved Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee.  During the Capital Campagin season, one of the members got up to speak to us about tithing.  He told us that he and his family didn't used to tithe, but then they began realizing that it wasn't their money;  it was God's.  It wasn't for them to "give up" because it wasn't theirs in the first place.  Even when they struggled to make their rent payments, they tithed 10%.  I abosrbed this message and took it to heart:  never before had anyone made such a compelling argument for tithing.  I began to tithe at 10%.  And even when I was making essentially nothing (my monthly income was less than my rent), I still tithed because the money didn't belong to me.  Now that I have a financially-secure career, I continue to tithe at 10%.  It is a way to give God a portion of what He has given me.  It's not a choice, it's a compulsion for me.  I must do it  . . .  it's only fair. 

For this upcoming month, I challenge you to consider how you can give ten percent of your income to charity.  It doesn't have to be to a church.  It can be to the Humane Society (one of my favorite charities), to an NGO, to the local library,  . . . the list is endless.  Don't let those struggling financially carry the burden of giving, and don't let your financial struggles stop you from giving.  Peace ~

ObamaCare -- polarization in a name

I recently ran across Wendell Potter's piece for the Center for Public Integrity (read it here:  http://www.natlawreview.com/article/analysis-obamacare-label-sticking).  Even though he wrote the article in Sept. 2011, I believe the principles still apply:  Americans generally have no idea what the Affordable Care Act does, and they have been inundated with false claims and negative publicity about "ObamaCare" that they have become ignorantly polarized.  Now that the Supreme Court has issued its opinion on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate and Medicaid Expansion, and now that the Presidential election is getting closer, it seems that health care has come even more into focus while it still remains out-of-focus with regards to clarity.  To put it another way, with the political race going on, there is a lot of talk about health care, but it is mostly wrong and meant to scare people into voting a certain way.  Heck, I've been reading state governors' responses to whether they will expand Medicaid in their states, and over half of them seem not to have a clue about what the program does for their state.  The Obama Administration needs to get CMS and HHS to put together a massive education campaign about what the Affordable Care Act has done, is doing, and will do.  Fear is a strong motivator, and people are being fed fear right now.  Listening to an NPR broadcast, I heard an interview from an older man who said that he really like the Massachusetts health care plan (he had friends and family there), but he didn't like the Affordable Care Act plan because it was a tax.  It's essentially the same thing!  Moreover, the "tax" classification was merely a constitutionality hook, just as used to uphold Social Security. 

So, to avoid being someone who critiques without taking action to remedy the situation, I am pledging to write President Obama and Secretary Sebilius about the need for education about the Affordable Care Act.  What will you do?

No nurses, no nurses

I'm in the process of developing a lecture on the financial effects of the Affordable Care Act and the related Supreme Court opinion.  While driving to work today, I heard Morning Edition's piece on the shortage of nurses that already exists and that is going to get worse as the ACA begins to take effect.  Because of the increased demand for primary and preventative care, there will be an increased demand for nurses as a cost-effective way to provide this treatment.  This demand will also increase as baby boomers age and need more health care.  Great --- we need more nurses, which means we can provide more jobs in our economy.  Well, it's not that easy.  There is a nursing professor shortage.  Because of factors such as nurses wanting to take care of patients instead of going to school for many years beyond their 2- or 4-year degree and the pay disparity between experienced nurses or nurses in managerial roles versus nurses in professorial roles, among other factors, there aren't many nurses attaining PhDs.  Without a PhD, a nurse may not teach at a university.  (The program cited that fewer than 1% of nurses have their PhDs, which means the pool of qualified professors is very small.)  So the easy response may be, well, just increase the class size until we get more . . .  not so easy because laws require a minimum ratio of faculty to students considering how hands-on nursing education is.  Adding more complexity, there is also a serious diversity issue:  the nursing occupation desperately needs more Hispanic, African-American, and male nurses.  (As a personal note, when my mom was dying of cancer, one of her all-time favorite nurses was a male nurse named Pierre from a francophone country in Africa -- he was large enough to turn her 6'1" frame, and he had an extremely soothing voice and speaking cadence.  Ahhh, Pierre.  My dad also especially liked Pierre because they could speak French to one another.  We need more Pierres!) 

So, now that we've recognized this problem, what are the potential solutions?  Well, essentially we need to create an environment where we have temporary instructional changes to feed the demand and to buy the market time to create more nursing PhDs.  In addition, we need to create an environment where achieving a nursing PhD is seen as a desirable goal and where research and instruction of nurses is promoted.  I think that will need to start in the nursing schools themselves.  I think that any medical campus also needs to do more promoting and advising of students towards nursing PhD programs.  Undergraduate universities also would do well to promote nursing PhD tracks and attempting to provider those who bail out of pre-med to consider nursing as an alternative.  Given the scarcity of the number of nursing educators, it seems likely that students just aren't aware of the possibility and what it could provide for them.  

This nursing shortage and nursing professor shortage is and will continue to have an impact on Americans.  Let's keep an eye on this and see what changes schools and nurses make in order to meet the needs.  

Listen to or read the NPR story here:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/03/156213925/nursing-schools-brace-for-faculty-shortage

Going Global

I absolutely love this article on NPR's website about the trend of young Americans being well-travelled and culturally aware.  It interviews some students who have spent years traveling and studying.  I have to say that I absolutely loved my time studying and traveling abroad.  I look forward to waking up in new lands and being surrounded by languages I don't know and cultures I need to learn.  Honestly, I never thought I'd go to Asia, but I've now been there twice, and I absolutely can't wait to go back!  I've definitely switched from an American-Euro-centric interest to more of an Asiatic interest.  Recently, I've been reading books about women in China and Afghanistan.  I'm about to start one that details the lives of the Indian ruling class women.  (I'm even gathering multi-cultural children's books for whenever we have children.)  I've also been listening to my CDs of Mandarin lessons in my car on my way to work --- it's so different from what I grew up hearing, but I embrace it as a part of my family's culture.  Looking to the future, my life plans include hiking the El Camino de Santiago, revisiting Taiwan and other Asian countries many times, visiting Estonia, and joining the Peace Corps (if Sam dies before me).  I also very much want to travel to the Galapagos to see the tortoises and spitting iguanas and to the arctic to see polar bears in the wild.  Bring on the world!!!  Where do you want to go???

Adding an adendum, I strongly believe that we have a duty to help othes across the world and that we have a duty to learn about each other.  Every day this world is becoming more and more connected.  With more connections, there will be more conflict.  As we engage in discussions to resolve conflicts, it will be important that we understand the other person's point of view and cultural ideas in order to properly interpret messages and identify his or her wants, needs, and interests.  An obvious sidenote is that, as we know and understand more about each other, any diagreements become less about people and their charactertistics that are different from "us" and more about the issues at hand. 

Citizens United -- how it came to be and what we're seeing now

As you know, I'm in the process of catching up on my New Yorkers.  In the May 21, 2012, edition, Jeffrey Toobin wrote a piece titled "Money Unlimited" about how Chief Justice John Roberts "orchestrated the Citizens United decision."  For some background information, Citizens United has its roots in a 2003 case named McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, where the Supreme Court upheld most of the McCain-Feingold act.  (The McCain-Feingold Act prohibited corporations and unions from broadcasting advertisements mentioning a candidate within thirty days of a primary or caucus and within sixty days of a general election.  The purpose of the act was to clarify a meaningless distinction between "candidate" and "issue" advertisements that existed before.)  With the Supreme Court upholding an "as-applied" test of the Act, a right-wing organization that wanted to broadcast a "conservative documentary" against Hillary Clinton knew it had to challenge the Federal Election Commission's barring its broadcast and challenge the law on its face.  The case went to the Supreme Court, and during the first round of oral arguments, Tom Olsen represented Citizens United, and he stated the issue as a very narrow right.  The government made a grand faux pas in oral arguments, and the conservative justices pounced.  As the deliberations and opinion drafts circulated, it became apparent that  Justice Kennedy was viewing the case in a much broader freedom of speech for corporations scope.  David Souter wrote a scathing dissent that essentially was a "go to hell" send-off for himself that pointed out that the court was deciding the case on much wider grounds that the parties sought.  As Toobin writes, Roberts needed to preserve "the Court's credibility," and he developed the solution of a second round of oral arguments where the court wrote the questions presented, and they were written to address whether the Act violated free speech.  The parties argued a second time, but the decisions were already made, and the opinions were already drafted.  It was merely a show.  After oral arguments, Roberts was ready with Kennedy's opinion striking down the law.  The outcome was that corporations are now permitted to have unlimited spending for political campaigns.

So, beyond my suggestion for you to read the article, the question becomes what is the fallout?  The fallout has easily been seen by the most recent Wisconsin governor recall election.  Whoever can court the most corporations can win.  The Republican governor outspent the Democratic candidate 8:1, according to one new article I read.  That's an astounding difference in spending.  Taking this idea further, what we're now seeing is that corporations (which are now being created and funded by major players like Karl Rove exclusively to impact elections) are essentially buying local elections.  By buying local elections (think US Representatives, US Senators, state representatives, etc.), the corporations are slowing amassing support for their policies at capitals across the country.  NPR's This American Life highlighted this exact process in its broadcast "Take the Money and Run for Office: Act II."  Listen to the podcast.  Justice Souter has since retired, but he has continued to speak about the legal activism that Roberts led on this case in order to circumvent the separation of powers.  Other critics of the decision have warned that this decision has now permitted American elections to be bought by foreign corporations, and thus be subject to an invisible yet powerful foreign hand.  At this point, Souter's dissent has not been released, and those seeking to "correct the injustice" are hoping that it is eventually published in an attempt to fight how the decision was made and to prepare for the future  (see CU -- Souter & Toobin).  This is definitely going to become a stickier and stickier wicket as we see more elections being "bought" within the final weeks by mass cash infusions from corporations.  Candidates may no longer rely on their constant flow of money from actual voters, but they must allot massive amounts of cash for their rainy day late push to counteract corporations' attempts to control elections.  Obviously, this will affect the two political parties differently.  (I'll refrain from making a cynical statement about Republicans at this time.)  At some point, there will be push back.  I'll be watching.

San Francisco's Unusual Ban -- No Tic Tac Toe for Chickens

I am brushing up on all of the podcasts I've downloaded, and this morning, while driving to school, I listened to This American Life's Poultry Slam.  I believe it was from Thanksgiving time, and it was wholly focused on poultry.  The first story was about a capital case defense attorney trying to argue that her mentally retarded and clinically insane client should not be executed because he could not understand what that meant  (in fact, he thought he was going to be reupholstered).  The State's psychiatrist who testified that the inmate understood what an execution meant explained her logic by saying that she played tic tac toe with the inmate and he won.  The defense attorney immediately thought of chickens at southern county fairs that play tic tac toe, and she tried to get the chicken admitted to rebut the psychiatrist's testimony.  Well, the defense attorney was not permitted to enter the chicken in evidence, in any capacity, and the inmate was not executed, but later, San Francisco actually developed a wacky little ordinance that banned chickens from playing tic tac toe because of the government interest in preventing animal cruelty.

Want to read more?  Check it out:  This American Life -- Chicken Tic Tac Toe


p.s.  the two other stories in the podcast are definitely worth hearing:  one is on Tom the Turkey, who terrorized Martha's Vineyard and was eventually shot by the police; and the other is on raising geese naturally for them to naturally produce foie gras.