Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - October 24 Edition

Travel, Friendship

Why a Road Trip Is the All-American Way to Build a Friendship

"Halfway to the coast, Genny announced that she hadn’t brought a gun. I glanced at the glove compartment of the Toyota Corolla with a sting of surprise and relief. Her nephew had given her shooting lessons for her last birthday, when she’d turned 76, but apparently she’d decided not to take up the offer of a pistol for our road trip. “They say you shouldn’t have a gun if you have any doubt whether you would shoot it or not,” said Genny, turning her eyes from the road to look at me. “I don’t own a gun, but the one thing I do know is: I would shoot.”

We were only two hours into our trip, and I was already nervous about what else I might learn about Genny on our way. We had been pen pals since a chance meeting in North Carolina four years ago; she was an avid reader and a curious soul, and our shared love of books and meeting new people had kept us corresponding after I returned home to England. But Genny rarely talked about herself. The idea that she—at five feet tall with white hair and impeccable Southern manners—might be the Thelma to my Louise had never occurred to me.

Outside the passenger window, the yellow wash of South Carolina’s soy fields gave way to clouds of cotton, ready for harvest. I considered what I did know. Like me, Genny had lived alone in a city most of her life—Charlotte in her case, London in mine. Like me, she had never married. Our shared circumstances had forged a bond that made us feel, instinctively, that we would be good traveling companions. So I’d asked Genny if she’d take a trip with me, and we’d chosen the coast of South Carolina, a place she knew and loved."

Puerto Rico, Disaster Relief

Appeal for hurricane aid backed by former presidents raises $31 million

"The five living former presidents put aside politics and appeared together for the first time since 2013 at a concert on Saturday to raise money for victims of devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Republicans George H.W. and George W. Bush gathered in College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M University, to try to unite the country after the storms.

Texas A&M is home to the presidential library of the elder Bush. At 93, he has a form of Parkinson’s disease and appeared in a wheelchair at the event. His wife, Barbara, and George W. Bush’s wife, Laura, were in the audience.

Grammy award winner Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance at the concert that also featured country music band Alabama, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer ‘Soul Man’ Sam Moore, gospel legend Yolanda Adams and Texas musicians Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen.

The appeal backed by the ex-presidents has raised $31 million since it began on Sept. 7, said Jim McGrath, spokesman for George H.W. Bush."

New York City, Libraries, Children

New York City’s Libraries Will Forgive All Children’s Fines

"Library books are free, until they aren’t: Patrons who rack up $15 in late fees at the city’s public libraries are blocked from taking out more books until the fine is paid.

Among those with suspended privileges are 160,000 children, most of them from the city’s poorest neighborhoods, who cannot afford to pay.

“Learning is a right. Reading brings you to new worlds,” said Octavia Loving, a 17-year-old student at Special Music High School, as she stood amid the stacks at Countee Cullen Library in Harlem, one of the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of children with blocked cards, according to library officials. “They shouldn’t block us from reading because of money.”

On Thursday, the city’s three library systems — the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island; the Queens Library; and the Brooklyn Public Library — will forgive all fines for children 17 and under and unblock their cards. The one-time amnesty is being underwritten by the JPB Foundation, a philanthropy that supports civic causes, which will make up $2.25 million of the shortfall in revenue from the forgiven fines."

Criminal Justice, Poverty, Bail

The Criminal Justice Gospel

"In May 2016, Maranda Lynn O’Donnell, a waitress and mother of a 4-year-old girl in Harris County, Texas, was arrested for allegedly driving with a suspended license, a misdemeanor offense. She did not have $2,500 to bail herself out, so she was locked up in jail for two days, unable to go home to her daughter. The same day, Robert Ford was arrested for allegedly stealing cosmetics worth $100, also a misdemeanor. He too was sent to the Harris County jail, where he remained for five days, unable to shell out $5,000 for bail. The day after that, Loetha McGruder—who was pregnant with two children at home, including one with Down syndrome—was arrested and detained for falsely identifying herself to an officer. With bail set at $5,000, she remained in jail for four days.

All three of the defendants are plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that aims to overhaul the bail system in Harris County, Texas, home of the nation’s third-biggest county jail system. The suit, filed in May 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, calls bail setting in the state’s largest county a “wealth-based detention scheme” that punishes defendants accused of misdemeanors for being poor and encourages them to plead guilty to avoid jail time.

In April, Chief Judge Lee H. Rosenthal decided in their favor, writing that it was unconstitutional to jail people because they can’t afford bail. Rosenthal ruled that Harris County would have to ask defendants about their financial backgrounds and release them if they didn’t have enough money to pay their bonds. The county challenged the decision, and the case now sits with the 5^thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, known as one of the most conservative courts in the country. In light of this setback, the plaintiffs and their lawyers have been searching for allies to support their case. They now have a powerful group on their side: religious leaders that say they have a duty to fight for the poor."

Aging, Adventure

Pennsylvania woman celebrates 94th birthday by skydiving

"A Pennsylvania woman has celebrated her 94th birthday by going skydiving along with her granddaughter and great-granddaughter.

Williamsport resident Eila (AY’-lah) Campbell says she figured she might not “make it for another year” at her age, so she took the 10,000-foot (3,048-meter) plunge on Sunday at Hazleton Regional Airport."

Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for A Better Tomorrow - June 29 Edition

Criminal Justice Reform

New Connecticut Law Will Keep People From Being Jailed Just Because They’re Poor

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

It’s Time for a New Discussion About Race in America

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

Foreign Aid Is About U.S. Interests

…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 Right Way to Reform 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

7 Habits Every Employer Looks for in Awesome Employees

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.