. . . and healthcare reform.  Ramesh Ponnuro of Time magazine has written an easy-to-understand summary of where we are on healthcare and some potential options to cover more of the uninsured.  You can read the article here. 

It’s official: Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. Bush apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to frustrated, sputtering rage than any president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon.  

Admittedly, anyone who knows me, knows I believe I have rocks in my backyard smarter than this president.  But, in today’s (Nov. 9, 2007) Washington Post, Eugene Robinson reports that George Bush, the dimest of U.S. president’s has the lowest approval rating of any president, and actually scoring even with Richard Nixon upon his impeachment. You can read the full op ed piece here. 

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life, which a man can lose, is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses. 

This means that the longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing.  For the passing minute is every man’s equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours. Our loss, therefore, is limited to that one feeling instant, since no one can lose what is already past, nor yet what is still to come – for how can he be  deprived of what he does not possess? 

So two things should be borne in mind. First, that all the cycles of creation since the beginning of time exhibit the same recurring pattern, so that it can make no difference whether you want the identical spectacle for a hundred years, or two hundred, or forever.  Secondly, that when the longest- and the shortest-lived of us come to die, their loss is precisely equal. For the sole thing of which any man can be deprived is the present; since this is all he owns, and nobody can lose what is not his. 

Meditations,

Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 A.D.

Jury awards father nearly $11 million in funeral protesters case

By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer - BALTIMORE (AP) 

The father of a fallen Marine was awarded nearly $11 million Wednesday in damages by a jury that found leaders of a fundamentalist church had invaded the family’s privacy and inflicted emotional distress when they picketed the Marine’s funeral.

The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress to the Marine’s father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa.

Snyder sued the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified monetary damages after members staged a demonstration at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.  Under the leadership of Rev. Fred Phelps, the church has its web address: “God Hates Fags.” 

Church members picket military funerals out of a belief that U.S. deaths in the war in Iraq are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

Source: From the Left  (thank you!) 

Greatness lives among us. Nick Anderson, a teenage from Conway, Mass. approached Oxfam about going to Darfur after co-founding a successful national high school challenge to raise awareness and funds for Darfur by using the social networking site, Facebook.  

As the co-founder of a highly successful fundraising initiative, Nick helped to raise more than $300,000 for the people of Darfur. But not content to stop there, he approached Oxfam with an idea: If he could visit Darfur he could help create a vital link between a growing group of youth activists here in the United States and Darfur teens forced to spend years in the camps.  

As premier international organization committed to creating lasting solutions to global poverty, hunger, and social injustice, Oxfam readily agreed. Before Nick left, Oxfam, asked him what the single most important thing was that he wanted to accomplish on this mission. 

He said he hoped to bring back an experience that would touch the hearts of American teenagers. He wanted to find a way for his friends—and teenagers like them—to identify with the youth of Darfur and feel moved to help them as peers. 

In late July, Nick Anderson left for a one-month mission to Dafur as Oxfam Humanitarian Youth Ambassadoron. What Nick found was sobering. More than four years of fighting in that remote western region of Sudan has forced 2.5 million people from their homes.  

Many of them have flocked to overcrowded camps for safety. Others have squeezed into towns bursting with displaced people. Yanked from their homes and villages—and the social and civic framework those places provided—Darfur’s youth are now growing up in an environment riddled with fear and boredom.  

Nick heard about their hunger for places to gather, for simple pleasures like balls with which to play sports, for basic improvements to health standards, for books, for safe ways to get to school—and the list goes on. Returning with first hand accounts on what it’s like to live in Darfur, Nick says more Americans—particularly young Americans—must learn about the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis in Darfur and help support those who will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their homes.  

 “Wherever I went you could hear the sound of gun shots. There were armed men around every corner,” said Anderson. “I couldn’t understand how violence like that could be so routine.” 

Commenting on conversations he had with a local he was traveling with, Anderson noted, “to me it’s a disaster, to him, it’s life.” In Kebkabiya, a small town that has seen its population swell to over 60,000 people after thousands settled there to escape attacks on their own villages, he spoke with young people, ranging in age from 14 to 20, who had been displaced from their homes and are living in temporary shelters.  

He asked them all the same question: “If there was one thing you could ask Americans to help you with, what would it be?” Anderson found that the responses varied little regardless of whom he asked. 

He heard two things consistently —the need for health care and technical training for jobs. The health care Anderson heard about is not what immediately comes to mind in the U.S. “They need shovels to fill in holes and ditches in their schoolyards because during the rainy season, stagnant pools of water form and become breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry infectious diseases like malaria.  

In addition, many of the young people in Darfur are looking for training in technical skills—things like carpentry and metalwork so they can get jobs and help to rebuild their communities,” said Anderson.  

Also, he observed that young people did not have any way to become active participants and leaders in their communities, to have a voice in what was happening around them. Now back in the U.S., his personal goal is “To define us as a generation that takes action and one that cares about such important causes as the one in Darfur.”  

Check out Nick’s You Tube video here. Now, get into action, and consider supporting this important cause.  

Greatest lives among us. 

There’s being committed to the job, and then there’s being a workaholic. It might sound like a polite euphemism for someone who puts maybe a little too much time into work or seems a little too dedicated.

But according to Bryan Robinson, a retired psychology professor, workaholism is an addiction, a serious one that harms not only the addict but also everyone around the person. In fact, it also does a disservice to the group, company or organization to which the workaholic belongs.

Being a workaholic has been linked to sleep disorders, heart attacks and strokes.  In his book, Chained to the Desk, Robinson identifies 12 symptoms that are signs of being workaholic.  While none of these alone point to pathology, taken together they indicate a serious problem.    

The 12 signs are:

1. Rarely delegating or asking for help;
2. Showing impatience with others’ work;
3. Often doing two, three or more tasks at one time;
4. Committing to work; biting off more than one can chew;
5. Feeling guilty and/or lost when not at work;
6. Focusing on results, not the task;
7. Focusing on planning, ignoring the here and now;
8. Continuing to work after others quit;
9. Imposing pressure-filled deadlines;
10. Seldom relaxing;
11. Attending more to work than to relationships; and,
12. Lacking hobbies and social interests.

Source: The Nonprofit Times

President Bush signed The College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669) into law on Sept. 27, 2007. The Act became effective on Oct. 1, 2007.

For us working for nonprofits and cause-relaed 501(c)(3) organizations, the impact of the Act is substantial, including forgiveness of all remaining federal student loans after 120, ontime payments (10 years). A detailed explanation of the public service loan forgiveness section of the bill can be found here.

In my Oct. 10th post, Bush: one; Healthcare for poor kids: zero, I attacked the cruelty of a President who would veto a bill that would have extended healthcare to 3.8 million children of the near poor. The bill requested $35 billion over ten years; that’s an annual cost per kid of $1.08.

In that post I stated, “every time the President burps, the Congress ponies up another $50 billion for the war in Iraq.”

Sure enough.– Bush Requests $46B to Fund Military Operations is today’s lead story in The Washington Post.

Once again I assert — no, I scream from the rooftops — that it is immoral to choose the mechanisms of war over the healthcare of kids. My heart hurts over this.

Shame on Bush. Shame on America. Shame on all of us to allow this to continue.

I teach Leadership and Change to working adults pursing graduate degrees in public administration and nonprofit management at George Mason University. They are a great group and one of the students shared the following information regarding the federal student loan debt forgiveness program for those who worked for nonprofits for ten years. You probably haven’t head about it, but you want to! The bill has just been reported out of committee and is headed to the White House. Let’s hope that the President will sign it.

This is the latest information on the forgiveness program.

H.R. 2669: The College Cost Reduction and Access Act – Courtesy of Maryland Nonprofits

On Friday Sept. 7, both houses of Congress approved a conference committee report including employees of 501(c)(3) organizations as ‘public sector’ employees for purposes of a new loan forgiveness provision. Among numerous other provisions (see below), the legislation defines employment by 501(c)(3) tax exempt organizations as a ‘public sector job’ making the individual eligible for loan balance forgiveness after 10 years of payments under an income contingent repayment plan.

Senator Barbara Mikulski was a member of the conference committee that accepted the House’s inclusion of 501(c)(3) employees, and Representative Sarbanes was a sponsor of the expanded loan forgiveness provision and inclusion of nonprofit employees, and Representative Van Hollen also co-sponsored the legislation.

In addition, Senator Cardin, and Representatives Gilchrest, Ruppersberger, Wynn, Hoyer and Cummings joined in voting for the conference report.

The nonprofit community across the country faces a serious challenge with the onset of “baby-boomer” retirements from its management and professional ranks. At the same time, costs of college and advanced education have skyrocketed, and many young people otherwise interested and committed to public service in nonprofit organizations are effectively forced to seek higher compensation elsewhere in order to repay college debt that rivals the cost of home-ownership just a decade or two ago.

At the same time, there is heightened concern among the public and in Congress itself with the effective and ethical operation of tax exempt organizations.

H.R. 2669 is described by the House Education and Labor Committee as “The largest investment in higher education since the GI Bill…”. In addition to loan forgiveness for public service, it includes:

• Interest rate reductions on subsidized student loans,
• Caps on required repayments based on available discretionary income,
• Increase in Pell Grant amounts and eligibility.

Could we live in traitorous times? We have been lured by the Siren call of so many challenges — 9/11, Iraq, global warming, cultural wars, record mortgage foreclosures — that we are becoming bystanders of day-to-day life.

Today, I came across W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939 meditation made on the footsteps of World War II. While he spoke to challenges of a bygone day, I can’t help but wonder if anything will every change?

All I have is a voice.

To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.