Keep Your Grubby Paws Off My Birth Control!

I was only 13 when my mother found out I was having sex. It was a terrible time for us. She didn’t speak to me for a week. Her golden child, the one with the good grades, who got up early and made a fresh pot of coffee every morning, who never got into any trouble of any kind, was doing the unthinkable. But she did the right thing. She took the proactive step to put me on the pill. Unfortunately, that didn’t prevent me getting pregnant a mere 11 months later, but that’s a story for another day.

I have been on one form or another of birth control ever since. The pill was never the right answer for me, personally. I have a hard enough time remembering to eat meals every day, let alone remembering to take a pill at a specified hour. So, I’ve tried just about everything, several different brands of the pill, NuvaRing, the patch, DepoProvera, and ultimately the IUD. The IUD is the best thing that ever happened to me. No hormones, no remembering, no thought required, and I’m good for 10 years or more. Yes, please! No babies until I decide I’m ready. And that’s the goal, right? To allow women to decide when they are ready to have children, and thereby reduce the instance of unplanned pregnancies, reduce the number of abortions, reduce the number of single moms dependent upon our social safety network, reduce the number of children in foster care, reduce the entire cost on our overburdened system.

Which is why it is so incredibly difficult for me to understand why, in the 21^st century, we are still have a national debate about the availability of birth control. Why? I thought this was a fight our parents had won. A hundred years ago, you could be imprisoned for counseling women about how to avoid becoming pregnant, and many women were. Margaret Sanger underwent a great number of personal tragedies in her quest to ensure that women had access to birth control. 

And they won. In 1972 the Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Biard legalized birth control for all Americans, reversing the Comstock laws that had criminalized the simple act of providing contraception to women. North Carolina was the first state in the country to recognize birth control as a public health measure and to provide contraceptive services to indigent mothers through its public health program. And the rates at which women utilize birth control have been on the rise ever since. A 2013 Lancet systematic literature review found that 77% of women in the United States of reproductive age used contraception.

So, again, I cannot understand why in the year 2014, nearly a hundred years after Margaret Sanger opened her first clinic, we are still having this debate about access to birth control. The requirement for health insurance to provide contraception without a co-pay or deductible was one of the only things the Affordable Care Act got right. Let me say that again, the health insurance company is providing that birth control. Not the government. The right-wing messaging machine has been very adept at selling the notion that the government, that you and I and our taxpayer dollars, are funding the late-night shenanigans of whorish college sorority girls across this great nation by providing them with access to birth control. When the reality is that we all are contributing to an insurance pool that provides birth control to 77% of the women in this country of child-bearing age, probably you, or your sister, or your aunt, or even your mom. And that same insurance pool is unquestioningly providing unfettered access to Viagra, Cialis and penis pumps for men who are very much not of child-bearing age, but want to get their kicks in anyway.

And all of this is what leads me to my present outrage at Speaker Thom Tillis’s plan for providing birth control over-the-counter while removing the mandate for health insurance companies to provide birth control free of charge. Please don’t be fooled folks. This is about money. Insurance companies are none too happy about being required to provide expensive IUDs which can provide 10 years of quality, baby-free life in one fell swoop, for free, when you might easily abandon your plan, and thereby their premiums, leaving them in the lurch. None too happy.

And so we have the present proposed alternative, designed to trick women into thinking that the Republican party is really on their side. That they want women to have access to birth control. But this is not a solution. Not a realistic one. Making birth control available over the counter means that women who would have been able to obtain the pill for free will now have to have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 per year to keep their uteruses zygote-free. That may not seem like much to you, but when you are surviving on less than $1,000 a month, it's might as well be a million dollars. And what does this do to women like me, for whom the birth control pill isn't an effective option? What of my IUD? I’m expected to come out of pocket to the tune of somewhere between $250 and $1,000 or more while my insurance premiums continue to pay for your Viagra? I don’t think so. If I don’t get my little pink pill, or copper "T" as the case may be, covered by my insurance, you don’t get your little blue pill either.

To everything a season

"TO every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3

I remember how well that verse resonated with me even as a small child. Every single thing that happens in life has a purpose. There is a lesson to be learned from every hardship if I can just pay close enough attention to see it. I find myself coming back to that scripture over and over and over as life ebbs and flows through joy and strife, gladness and sorrow, pride and shame, reminding myself at each of those dramatic turns that change is the only thing in life that remains unchanging. Nothing is static. Every sadness is eventually followed by joy. Every heartbreak followed by love. Some people dread those changes in direction. But we shouldn't. They add spice to life. They make it interesting. They give us the opportunity to grow into better people and to improve the lives of everyone around us by sharing that new understanding.

I wouldn't trade any of my experiences, even as terrible as some of them have been, for a life filled with easy love and unchallenged decisions. And my life has certainly not been filled with effortless love or easy decisions. There have been ample opportunities for me to be angry, to hate, to drown myself in the drama and misery of what "they" have done to me, or how "they" have made me miserable. I decided a long time ago that my own spiritual energy is way too precious to me to be wasted on hatred or anger. It is so much more productive to forgive, to try to understand, and then to move on from a place of love and compassion.

I was confronted recently with the idea that I had somehow thrown away the last decade or so of my life because my relationship has ended, that I might look back and wish that I hadn't wasted my twenties. But I think that is the farthest thing from the truth. I haven't thrown away any time. And I certainly don't regret it, not a moment of it, even as difficult as it was most of the time. I'm not certain I could have navigated such a difficult time in my life completely alone. We needed each other. Our relationship served a very real and meaningful purpose for us both. We raised our children together, and did a damn fine job of it, if I do say so myself. We found joyous occasions in the midst of financial struggle and the stress of juggling a houseful of kids with working multiple jobs each, attending school, and, for a great deal of time, maintaining two separate households. We loved and celebrated and fought with equal amounts of passion and energy. We were exhausted together. Our relationship was always a bit unconventional and it worked for us. And I have no doubt that he was my soul mate. The problem lies in how we define a soul mate and what we expect from them.

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. 
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. 
A soul mate's purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

 And if that's the case, then I don't want another soul mate. I don't need to be shaken up any more in life. My heart has been broken so wide open that not another ray of light could possibly find it's way in. What I need is a partner who wants nothing more than to wholeheartedly enjoy all that life has to offer, with a smile and a little zippity-do-dah attitude. The time I've spent over the last year or so with a focus on really understanding what I want and who I want to be has affirmed for me that the most important thing I can do is to have a fulfilling and wholesome relationship with myself... before I am a mother, a spouse, a friend, an employee, a volunteer...I have to be my complete self, and be happy with it.

"We are walking around like a circle half complete. You know, we look like the letter C. We are very susceptible to a person of the opposite sex, some other circle half complete, coming up and joining with us- completing the circle that was-and giving us a burst of euphoria and energy that feels like the wholeness that a full connection with the universe produces. In reality, we have only joined up with another person who is looking for their other half on the outside too."  - The Celestine Prophecy

For the first time in my life, I feel like I am a complete person, all on my own, without anyone else's permission or propping up. My fellowship has helped me identify my passions and give them shape and purpose. My path has become clearer, especially as law school draws ever nearer. I know that I am on my way to becoming the very best possible version of myself, and learning to humbly appreciate the awesomeness of who I am and what I am capable of doing. When I enter into the next chapter of my journey, I want to be my very own complete circle so that I am not dependent on another person to be my source of happiness, so that I can appreciate him for everything he has to offer without expecting anything more or different than everything he already is. It's high time I planted some sunflowers of happiness in a field that has lay fallow and dreary for a very, very long season. I'm ready for spring.

Lessons in Small-Town Southern Sexism

In the more than 10 years I've worked in my current position,  I've run across all kinds of people. We seem to serve relatively equal proportions of racist southerners and inconsiderate northerners.  Thankfully,  in both instances,  they are extraordinarily small percentages of our overall clientele and both are to be expected in our small southern bedroom community.  For the most part our clients tend to fall somewhere in the middle. Whether rich or poor, white or black, well educated or not, young or old, they are mostly ideologically mediocre, kind, middle-of-the-road Americans. They are in need of our service, stressed about what is usually a major life event and grateful to have someone else worrying about it for awhile.

In those instances when a client is particularly appreciative or when we have rendered extraordinary service in some way, it is not unusual for us to receive small gifts. Over the course of my career I have received from our varied clientele gift cards, modest jewelry, chocolates, baked goods, wine, liquor and fruits. All of them delicious or beautiful and so incredibly appreciated. In fact, Rick and I enjoyed the most expensive dinner we have ever shared courtesy of a very generous client's Christmas gift.

But not until today had anyone given me lingerie. Well not lingerie exactly, but close enough. I was thanked for my hard work today in a meeting with a client with a gift card for Victoria Secret. I wish i could remember all the things that ran through my mind bin slow motion as i watched him with a huge grin take our that little pink box and say, "And this is for you." The implicit sexual objectification was probably the first thing followed by a full 10 seconds of me running through all of the possible responses to this horrifically embarrassing moment. But,I'm a good southern girl. I know how to smile pleasantly and graciously say thank you, which I did. I mean, I didn't want to be rude. But as my face turned several varrying shades of red and I stammered over my response, all I was thinking was "You have got to be fucking kidding me! On what planet is it acceptable for a 60+ year old man to give a young(ish) woman providing professional services a gift card for lingerie?"

The answer, of course, is: in a southern small town. My client was very grateful for work I did that went beyond the normal standard of care. Something I'm proud to do pretty routinely. And he showed his appreciation in a way that, to him, seems completely reasonable and appropriate.  He even remarked to me about his knowledge that all women love to spend money at the mall. And, as the recipient of that gift in a small Southern town,  I'm not at liberty to educate him about the several ways his well-meaning gift was offensive. No. I smile and say thank you. And comment about how I'll have to try and get there during the semi-annual sale when, in truth, I won't be going ever because Victoria Secret doesn't sell bras in an H cup. He will never know that his comment was offensive because for me to tell him so would serve no useful purpose in a small southern town except to lose us a client and label me as a difficult-to-get-along-with,  ungrateful, "feminist-type."

So I'll take my gift card and buy something for someone else, which will make me happy, knowing that I am so grateful to my client for expressing his appreciation for my hard work, even if he doesn't know how sexist it was.

Life Lessons From My Darkest Days

There are angels among us. I know, I know. It's one of the most cliche things to say. But it is true. Some of us think of them as literal angels with wings and halos. Some of us know them as gurus and teachers. Whatever form it takes for you, it is undeniable that there are people around us whose flame burns a little brighter, whose wisdom is a little more profound, whose impact is felt so incredibly strongly. In my darkest days, I had the good fortune of knowing one of these angels.

I was 18 and had just moved into my own tiny trailer with Dylan. I was living on my own, not relying on the kindness of others, for the first time in my life. I'd barely had a chance to get the place furnished and food in the fridge when my in-laws filed for emergency custody of Dylan. It was a terrible, scary time. They hurled accusations of neglect and fabricated stories about my treacherous parenting. I was alone, and lonely. I was alone in my grief when I learned they had been granted emergency temporary custody because of the lies they had told the court. I was panicked. I knew that my fate and Dylan's were inextricably linked. There was no way that I could go on with my life if I was not being Dylan's mother. And there was no way that he could turn out to be a happy, healthy, productive member of society if I was removed from his life and he was left to be raised by his father's family. I was grief stricken. I was alone in my hatred and contempt. Even after regaining a shared custody arrangement while we continued our protracted court battle, they seemed to make it their life's mission to plot the ways they could make my life more difficult, more miserable, more desperate. And my hate burned bright. I could feel my loathing taking root in my belly and beginning to grow, to consume me. I wished them misfortune. I tried to think of the ways I could seek retribution, make them feel as badly as they had made me feel. I cried. And when I finally found myself at the bottom of my emotional pit, at what I knew was the darkest place I could ever allow myself to go, I called my minister.

I had grown up attending Chad O'Shea's Unity Center services. I had the good fortune of being raised in his church. I never cared much for the Sunday School classes. I preferred to be upstairs with the grown-ups, listening to Chad. And one of the things I had absorbed in my many Sundays spent listening to this enlightened messenger of God was the lesson that we are each responsible for choosing our reactions, for controlling our emotions, for being the master of our own heart and mind. "No one makes you mad, glad, bad or sad. That's an inside job," he would say. Or another of our favorites, "Misery is Optional." But in those darkest of days I was taking serious objection with Rev. Chad's teachings. How was I choosing to be miserable? I most certainly wasn't making that choice! That choice was being made for me. Look at what they were doing to me! How could anyone say that I was choosing this pain and torment? And, even in the midst of that despair, I knew that I couldn't go on hating them the way I was. I didn't want to. I knew it would destroy me. It would leave me bitter and sad. It would dampen my light. But I couldn't see my way out of it. I couldn't talk myself out of that loathing. So, I called up the minister I hadn't seen in years and sobbed.

Chad counseled me through my darkest hours. He talked with me, lovingly and patiently helping me to see that I had no enemies; that no one was trying to deliberately cause me pain. He helped me to see Kathy & Tim as people trying to make their way down their own path in life using only the tools they had available to them. He reminded me that every being on this earth has a spark of divinity in them, a Christ light that flickers and burns within and it is our task to find that Christ light and nurture it, listen to it, talk to it, coax it out. He encouraged me to visualize that spark of divinity in my encounters, to ignore the outer shell that I felt was causing me so much pain, and instead talk to the divine. That lesson is what got me through the next several years as we continued to battle over custody and argue about parenting techniques and routines. I found patience by talking to the divine. I discovered that I had the capacity to love my enemies, to bless those who would curse me, to do good to those who hated me, and pray for those who would despitefully use me and persecute me. I am so glad that we were able to work through that period in our lives and come out on the other side of it as family. Kathy and Tim have helped me over the years in more ways than anyone and I will forever be grateful to them for their help and love. It is easy for me now, looking back, to see how they must have been so scared for Dylan, terrified that this 18 year old kid didn't know what she was doing and would never be able to care for him. And, in truth, without their help I probably wouldn't have been able to. I'm so grateful to Chad for helping me ensure that I left the door open for that relationship to blossom into what it is now, that I didn't irreparably burn those bridges, that I chose light over dark.

That is a lesson that not only saved my 18 year old self, but has saved me again and again and again. I have no room in my heart for hatred. It consumes far too much energy, energy that could be better spent doing good in the world, helping others, making someone smile. It was the most difficult lesson of my life, to learn to forgive and to love those who had caused me great harm. And I will be forever grateful to God for sending me an angel when I needed it most, in my darkest days.

We celebrated the life of Chad O'Shea this past Saturdeay. His church was packed to capacity, with people overflowing into the lobby. The impact he had on my life is by no means unique or out of the ordinary. He touched the lives of everyone he encountered in deep and profound ways. He was truly an angel, a guru, an enlightened teacher and I am so grateful to have known him. He absolutely and without a doubt saved my life in my darkest days.

Wait. What?

It has come to my attention today that, despite my frequent politically charged posts and the proliferation of garbage that passes for news on the 24-hour news networks, many of my friends out there have absolutely no idea what just happened or why our government just shut down. That's okay. No judgment. Here's the breakdown.

Every year Congress adopts a budget. Simple enough. They decide how much money is going to be spent on different government programs for the next 12 months. That funding runs from October 1st through September 30th. If the Congress can't agree (I know, you'd think that never happens, huh? But, yeah, it totally does) on how much money they want to spend on certain government functions by October 1st, they usually agree to just keep funding those programs at the same level as the previous year. Kind of like saying, well, I know our phone budget for last year was $150 a month and we are really hoping to save some money on telephone bills this year, but until we figure out how to do that, we'd better keep planning on spending $150 a month. This is called a "Continuing Resolution." It simply lets the government continue to function until lawmakers can do what we pay them do, which is to compromise on solutions that benefit the greatest number of us, in theory.

For the last several years, a far right faction of the Republican Party has discovered that they can hold the rest of the Congress hostage by refusing to support the bills put forth by their own party or the opposing party unless their very specific demands are met exactly. This happened last year with the continuing resolution, and again with the debt ceiling increase last fall and again in December. Last year the Tea Party members of the GOP were demanding continuing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and refusing to allow even a small increase in tax rates for corporations or high income citizens. This year, they want to "defund" Obamacare.

Now, let me be clear. I am not a fan of the Affordable Care Act. I would have preferred a single payer system. In my opinion, requiring health insurance coverage is about 180 degrees from insuring that every American has access to affordable health care. The mere presence of health insurance companies dramatically increases the cost of care by requiring even small doctor's offices to employ a virtual army of claims processors. Insurance companies are very skilled at bleeding money out of the general population, out of Medicaid and out of Medicare. I mean, once your Medicaid claim is processed and paid, do you ever go back and examine the bill and see what the government actually paid ? Of course not. It's not your money. It got paid, and that's all that matters. Every health insurance claim I have had processed in the last 3 years required at least once call to the company to correct an error and insure that I was paying the appropriate bill, or that the doctor's office was paid the correct amount. A ridiculous chunk of my precious time was spent arguing with insurance companies over the last year to convince them that they should, in fact, pay for my health care, which is their job.

I will go on to say that, just because someone has health insurance, doesn't mean they can afford to use it. A $2,500 deductible for someone making $18,000 a year may as well be $100,000. Its more money than they will ever have available to pay for medical care. And before you say it, no, a person making $18,000 a year does NOT automatically qualify for Medicaid just because they are poor by your standard. That is technically above the poverty line and in most scenarios in North Carolina, would not qualify for Medicaid.

However, even with its inherent failures, the ACA also did several really great things, like end the lifetime caps on coverage, do away with denials of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and make preventative care 100% free to anyone with a policy. For that reason alone, I purchased a policy. Free physical, free pap smear, free mammogram, free birth control? Bring it on, Obama! The law is flawed, terribly flawed, but it was a grand compromise designed to get the most benefit for the greatest number of people while still managing to pass both houses of Congress, which seems to take a friggin act of Congress lately!

So, the GOP says they hate the ACA and they ain't havin' it! The House is held by a GOP majority who says that the only way a continuing resolution is getting through their chamber is if we fully strip the funding provisions for the ACA. Even if this could get through the Democratic held Senate (which they know it can't), it would never be signed into law by President Obama, so really, it's just a great big game of grandstanding. Which is great. Politicians grandstand all the time. They grandstand until they come close to the brink, and then they do what we pay them do. They think and discuss and compromise and come up with a solution. But not these guys.

When their first proposal was turned down, they countered today with a provision that would have allowed your employer to claim a "conscientious" objection to your being provided with birth control. I'm sorry. Wait. What? You want my employer to be able to decide whether or not my health insurance policy will pay for my birth control? Seriously? Is this 1913? Quick, all the 20-50 year old women in the room who think birth control should be restricted, raise your hand! Anybody? Nobody? No? Didn't think so.

The GOP is going to have to get this rogue bunch of Tea Partiers under control before they sink the entire nation. And they certainly better have a quick Come-To-Jesus session with them to explain that their overarching strategy this election cycle is to overcome the appearance that they are waging a war on women. Sure looks like a war on women to me. You better keep your grubby paws off my birth control GOP, cause Lord knows I can't afford to have more children right now, and you sure as hell don't want to pay for them if I do. Sweet Baby Jesus! I cannot wait to go register voters.

From the tiniest voice, "Help! Help!"

I don't consider myself to be a radical. I don't think that my values, while more liberal than some of my friends, are so far to the left that people think, "Wow, look at that wacko. There she goes spouting off her crazy talk again." In fact, I'd like to think that I'm pretty middle of the road.

I think we need welfare reform. The current system does allow some abuses to happen, although they are not nearly as prevalent as the right-wing media would have you believe. Why is it that we still have more than 20 different kinds of "welfare" (think food stamps, cash assistance, social security, disability, Section 8 housing, Medicaid, WIC, daycare vouchers, tax credits, etc.) administered by a bakers dozen of government agencies, all with different income requirements? Why do we require every needy family to meet with administrators from each of these separate agencies to apply and then recertify for benefits every year, or multiple times a year in many cases? Why can't we simplify this process? It wouldn't be hard to create a singular federal form to apply for government benefits, similar to the way the FAFSA allows you to apply for both Federal and State education assistance, to apply for all available government assistance programs. One application should link you with all of the programs for which you qualify. And then, shudder to think, we could assign actual social workers who could help actually lift families out of poverty!

I think we need tax reform. If my congressman can't fill out his taxes without the assistance of a paid professional, the code needs to be simplified. One of the most interesting things I learned on my recent trip abroad is that filing taxes in France takes all of about 90 seconds. The income data is electronically submitted by employers. Taxpayers log on to an online system, answer a few questions, confirm the information submitted by their employer and then, press send. That's it. Done. I want that.

I want women to make their own health care decisions. Whether you agree with their decision or not, it is theirs to make. Whether or not you choose to use birth control, it is their decision to make, not yours. You certainly shouldn't have to resort to back-room political side-stepping to restrict women's access to abortions. In case you haven't ever read anything, ever, it is damn near impossible to force a women who is opposed to giving birth, to give birth, even if that resistance means that she dies in the process of seeking out a dirty, back-room abortion. Conversely, if you give women unfettered access to birth control and education, the number of abortions decrease substantially, go figure.

I think we should legalize marijuana and end the costly and unjust war on drugs. I don't smoke pot, but the people I know who do, aren't criminals and I prefer that my tax dollars not be spent housing and feeding them, when they are perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

I think we should scale way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way back on the amount of money we spend on the NSA, CIA, FBI, Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Homeland Security, etc, etc, etc. The truth is, we are pretty much the safest and most over-prepared country on the face of the earth. Most of the money we force down the throat of this plethora of government agencies serves only to line the pockets of shareholders in major companies supporting the war machine. If you believe in small government, lets start the shrinking process here.

I think we need to reform the way we provide subsidies to big Pharma, big Agro, and big Oil. If you gross more than $1 Billion a year, you don't need a government subsidy...for anything. Can I get a' Amen!?

I think we need to increase mandatory paid maternity leave, require paid paternity leave, and pay for pre-k for working single moms and families with two working parents. At some point, we need to recognize that there is value in providing care. Just because it's "women's work" doesn't mean we should continue to devalue it. If we valued child-rearing the same way we valued "stock-rearing," this nation would be a far, far better place to live.

I think we can find the funding to pay elementary school teachers at least as much as I pay my plumber. Lord knows they put up with just as much shit. And, if our economy has evolved so that nearly every job in the workforce requires an advanced degree, we should pay for 2-4 year college educations for everyone and ensure that our entire workforce doesn't start working with $50,000 in debt before they ever purchase a house or a car or have a baby or a major medical procedure.

While we're at it, we ought to provide universal health care. Doing so will create thousands of new jobs, and stop the hemorrhaging of money from the working class into the pockets of the health insurance industry. Obamacare is crap. The private health insurance industry has done absolutely nothing to control costs and the entire system is designed to funnel even more money from the working, middle-class in this country into the pockets of the rich and further widen the expanse that exists between the classes.

I think we should provide an exemption so that teenagers can be paid a lower minimum wage than working adults. If you, as an adult, work full-time at McDonald's or Wal-Mart to support your family, you should gross more than $1,055 a month and my tax dollars shouldn't have to pay for your food. You should be paid an actual living wage for laboring 40 hours a week. But, if you are a 16 year old teenager living at home with your parents, I'm sorry, but I think you can scrape by on $5.00 an hour instead of $7.00. Seriously, it's not gonna kill you.

While we're talking about wages, how about if we stop subsidizing billion dollar profits for companies who pay their workforce next to nothing. If 20% of your workforce qualifies for "entitlement" programs because you keep their wages so low, your company should pay a hefty tax penalty to cover the cost of those programs.

I think we should expand the earned income credit (the exact opposite of what was done in North Carolina this year when the state legislature abolished the earned income tax credit) and pay it to workers weekly instead of paying it out at the end of the year in one lump sum. Give people money to live on, money to support their families, to buy groceries and pay their electric bill instead of vacation money or tattoo money or flat-screen-tv-money.

Am I spouting off crazy talk? Have I spewed gross inaccuracies that are begging for correction? If so, please enlighten me with your comments so that I can reconssider my positions. Whether you agree with every point I make or not, surely you can agree that I do not spout off from some uninformed, entrenched, ideological viewpoint. These are well-reasoned arguments that, according to the current political paradigm, should not be allowed to all occupy the same brain. Most people I know do not easily fit into a solidly "conservative" or "liberal" box, which is itself a major national problem that we must someday address. Not that we need to all fit more nicely into the two available boxes, but that we should have far more boxes to choose from.

There are many, many topics I have not covered here, like the abolition of the estate tax in North Carolina, the inability of the US Congress to reach an agreement about imigration reform, civil rights of the LGBT community, the wholesale seizure of public water assets for the sole purpose of later privatizing the system, large scale environmental cover-ups to support fracking, etc. There seem to be so many directions to which I can shift my focus that I cannot narrow it down and write about just one thing. There are so many public misinformation campaigns going at once. There are so many problems to solve. There is so much injustice, and I am, after all, just one person. One person, with a very tiny voice, and a family and a job and very little time for protesting, or calling representatives, or writing nasty letters. I sure hope someone hears this tiny little voice, yelling out, like the Mayor to Horton, and hoping that someone hears us, down here in a tiny small town in a rural southern state, yelling, "Help, Help!"

Institutional Failures

The world's major religions share many important teachings, the most important of which is that we should give to the poor. Jesus, Buddha. Zoroastra and Ghandi all advocated living a simple life with few physical possessions and giving all that one did not need for survival to others. None of them required that we first evaluate the merit or virtue of the recipient. None of the scriptures say that we should give to the poor, but only if they are able to first demonstrate that they are really working hard to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

In the US, we responded to these commandments by establishing a social safety net in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP (Food Stamps), Public Housing & Section 8 rental assistance, unemployment and TANF (welfare). We created these programs to support the needy because we consider ourselves to be a moral society that does not want to see our brethren suffer and die in a land of plenty and excess. 

The problem is that these systems, as currently designed, disincentivize work and increased wages. This only feeds the public perception that the poor are lazy and undeserving of our assistance. In truth, there are very few people who desire to subsist only on handouts from the government. This is not a pleasant way to live. But, the programs are designed by people who have never had to use them, by bureaucrats who fail to see how one program interacts with another.  

The poor, especially the working poor, must always work to keep their earnings below the levels set by the various programs they collect so that their benefits will continue, so that they do not work themselves further into poverty. If a person is physically disabled and in desperate need of Medicaid coverage, he must apply for Social Security Disability and, once receiving that benefit, must keep his earnings less than about $500 a month. Failure to do so could mean a complete loss of lifesaving medical care. But, what if this person wants to work, at a desk, using a brain that is not so disabled? Our system doesn't allow for that, and that is a travesty. 

A working single mother offered a $.50 raise by her employer must be cognizant of the fact that her raise is going to increase her bring-home pay by less than $75.00 per month, but could result in a combined reduction of more than $100 a month in her non-cash benefits. So, she is likely to refuse a raise and remain on government programs so that she doesn't have to figure out how to make dinner with $25.00 less in groceries. This is not her fault. This is an institutional failure, a failure of the programs' designers to see how the programs are utilized in the real world.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is one of the most targeted and beneficial of our safety net programs. It is so unfortunate that NC's state legislature decided to do away with this program this year instead of finding a way for it to function in a more useful manner. It is unfortunate that our national leaders decided years ago to do away with the Advanced Earned Income Credit which allowed a wage-earner to choose to receive the tax refund incrementally over the course of the year. This again represents a failure on the part of our leadership to recognize what makes a difference for people in the real world or the way one program affects another. Currently, families can receive as much as $7,000 in EITC tax refund. This money, when added to an annual salary of $20,000 could mean a substantial increase in the family's quality of life, except that it is given in one lump sum instead of distributed over the course of the year. Not only does this fail to account for the gigantic exercise in self control you are asking of a person who has struggled for a year to make ends meet, choosing to buy bread and milk instead of paying an electric bill, who now has 4-5 months worth of take-home pay sitting in a bank account, but it also fails to account for the fact that having such a large sum of money in the bank is likely going to mean that he is suddenly disqualified from receiving any other public benefits until the money is spent. He is forced to spend this money on large purchases in a short time which does not overall increase his family's quality of life for the coming year. Again, this is not his fault, it is a failure of the system.

It doesn't have to be this way. The system could be fixed. We could take a moment and put some real thought into the design of our safety net. We could have a conversation about what we expect our safety net to provide for people. What is its purpose? What are we trying to accomplish? We could find a way to incentivize work and stop penalizing people for earning a higher wage. We could find a way to wean people off of the safety net programs without decreasing their quality of life in the process. We could streamline the administration of programs so that there is less paperwork and more person-to-person social work. We could pay a social worker to give a family the resources that will lift them out of poverty. We could help them to find those elusive bootstraps. 

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." I John 3:17-18 (Christianity)

"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11 (Judaism)

"Do you know who really rejects the faith? That is the one who mistreats the orphans. And does not advocate the feeding of the poor." Quran 107:1-7 (Islam)

"One may amass wealth with hundreds of hands but one should also distribute it with thousands of hands. If someone keeps all that he accumulates for himself and does not give it to others the hoarded wealth will eventually prove to be the cause of ruin." Atharva Veda 3: 24-25 (Hinduism)

"Possessions are ephemeral and essenceless
Know this and give them generously to monks,
To brahmins, to the poor, and to your friends:
Beyond there is no greater friend than gift." Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, from 'How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator' (Buddhismn)