May 27, 2017

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Business May 27, 2017

Latest College Graduates Enter A More Optimistic Economy

Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai says the unemployment rate is the lowest its been in a decade. He speaks with NPR’s Michel Martin about the increasing options for recent graduates.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

As the class of 2017 prepares to enter the job market, there is some good news waiting for them. The unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since 2007, but these students have also come of age during a recession followed by a sluggish recovery. So we were wondering how all this could be affecting these freshly minted graduates and job seekers.

To talk about this, we called Mihir Desai. He’s a professor at the Harvard Business School. He has a new book out called “The Wisdom Of Finance.” But we called him because he published a piece this week in The Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper. In the spirit of full disclosure, that was my first journalism gig. Professor Mihir Desai, thank you so much for joining us.

MIHIR DESAI: Thanks so much. It’s a pleasure.

MARTIN: So the last time the unemployment numbers were this low, these students were in third grade. Do you see an impact on this generation of having grown up in this timeframe?

DESAI: Yeah. I think part of what’s happened is they don’t allocate as much importance to economic outcomes that, perhaps, previous generations did. So they grew up in an era of reduced expectations in some ways. And as a consequence, they look for different ways to fill their life up which is not purely professional.

In some ways, that’s quite helpful. On the other hand, it is a time in their life when they really should be dedicating themselves to building the human capital that will last them through the rest of their lives.

MARTIN: And let me get to the piece that caught our eye which is the piece that you posted in The Crimson, “The Trouble With Optionality” which is a way of saying – can you break it down in layman’s terms for us – what? – hedging your bets?

DESAI: Yeah, exactly.

MARTIN: Keeping your options open?

DESAI: Yeah. So the number of young people I see who talk about maximizing optionality which is just a fancy way of saying I want to make sure and have as many options as possible, so I think that sounds like a great strategy. But what I’ve observed over the last several years is these people become obsessed with optionality, you know, with having options. And instead of doing what we think that we do, which is enable risk-taking, you know, which is what options are supposed to be able to do. Right? You don’t acquire options just for their own use. You do it, so you can actually take on big risks. What I observed these people doing is just habitually acquiring options. They just get so used to the process of acquiring options that they never really execute on this larger vision of what they want.

So part of what I wanted to do in the piece is say, look, that’s not the right way to think about this. In fact, when you do these things that acquire options, for example, working at prestigious firms – these are, again, for the elite graduates going to grad school – you know, your social network, yes that’s wonderful. It allows you to have a lot of optionality. But don’t forget that the really great things in life come from big, risky investments. And I think that’s a really important piece of what people are missing out on. And in particular, you can get stuck. You can get stuck in a place where you think you’re maximizing your options, and then you wake up. And you’re, you know – you’re still there 20 years later.

MARTIN: That was going to be my last question. It’s commencement season, and everybody from Hillary Clinton to Will Ferrell is – as we just heard – are offering advice to recent graduates. So any other advice that I didn’t have the wit to squeeze out of you to this point?

DESAI: Well, yeah. It is – it’s always remarkable how in some ways consistent graduation advices, and, in some ways, that makes it anodyne, but that doesn’t make it any less true, which is the pursuit of things that we truly love is the secret to professional happiness and blocking out the noise.

I guess that’s one thing I would add which is there is so much noise out there, noise about what, you know, the unemployment rate is or noise about what you should be doing with your life or noise about what your friends are doing or what your parents want you to do. Just block it all out. Look inside yourself. Find out who you are and pursue that. So block out all the noise I think is an important piece of it as well.

MARTIN: That was Mihir Desai, professor at the Harvard Business School. His latest book is “The Wisdom Of Finance: Discovering Humanity In The World Of Risk And Return.” And as we said that we also called him for his piece posted in The Crimson, “The Trouble With Optionality.” Professor Desai, thank you so much for speaking with us.

DESAI: Thanks so much Michel.

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Sports May 27, 2017

Jim Bunning, Hall Of Fame Pitcher And Former U.S. Senator, Dies At 85

Then-Sen. Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame pitcher, delivers a pitch prior to a game in Arlington, Tex., in 2003. Bunning died Friday at age 85.

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Jim Bunning, an imposing Hall of Fame pitcher and a cantankerous, resolutely conservative U.S. Senator from Kentucky, died Friday at age 85.

The New York Timesreports that he had a stroke last October. The AP confirmed the death with Bunning’s former chief of staff, Jon Deuser.

Bunning served six terms in the House and two in the Senate. As a major league pitcher from 1955 to 1971, he played for the Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers. He was the only Hall of Fame baseball player to have served in Congress, according to the AP.

The six-foot-three ballplayer had a reputation as intimidating. As the Louisville Courier-Journalwrites:

“In his 15-year career in the big leagues, Bunning developed a reputation for throwing the ball close to batters, trying to back them off the plate. ‘If he had to brush back his mother, I think he’d do it to win,’ former Detroit Tigers second baseman Frank Bolling said of his one-time teammate.

In his second career, instead of baseballs, Bunning went after opponents and issues with strong rhetoric and an intense certainty in the correctness of his own views.

That was especially true with abortion. A Roman Catholic with nine children, Bunning voted consistently to limit abortion as an option for women and had contempt for colleagues who softened their position on the highly emotional issue.”

In 1964, Bunning pitched a perfect game, one of just 23 in the modern era. It was the first perfect game pitched in the National League since 1880. In addition to throwing no-hitters in both the American and National Leagues, he was also the second pitcher after Cy Young to win 100 games and pitch 1,000 strikeouts in both leagues, according to the Hall of Fame. Bunning was inducted into the Hall in Cooperstown, NY., in 1996.

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On June 21, 1964, Bunning pitched a perfect game, the ninth in major league history.

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In 1968 he led Athletes for Nixon, according to the Courier-Journal; Bunning first entered politics in 1977, winning a seat on Fort Thomas, Ky., city council. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1986 and to the Senate in 1998.

The Courier-Journalreports that in his 1998 Senate race, Bunning tried to look more moderate, “talking about the need to clean up the environment and educate children, endeavors that he had not emphasized previously. In fact, in the House he voted to cut the Environmental Protection Agency budget and kill the U.S. Department of Education,” it says.

“Bunning was best known for his efforts to safeguard Social Security benefits, sponsoring, among other things, legislation that made the Social Security Administration a separate agency,” writes Politico. “He also supported legislation to aid adoptive parents and was known for actively working on local Kentucky issues and, whenever they came before Congress, baseball-related issues.”

As a politician, he was known as “blunt and abrasive,” according to the publication. “In 1993, for instance, he referred to President Bill Clinton as ‘the most corrupt, the most amoral, the most despicable person I’ve ever seen in the presidency.’ In 2009, he made headlines by predicting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead of cancer within nine months.”

In 2009, he said he would not seek another term in the Senate; his fellow Kentuckian, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “all but pushed Bunning into retirement,” NPR’s David Welna reported at the time. McConnell’s hand-picked choice to succeed Bunning lost in the primary to Tea Party candidate Rand Paul, whom Bunning endorsed.

We mourn the passing of Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame pitcher and former U.S. Senator. He was 85. pic.twitter.com/NVTdhQuYmr

— MLB (@MLB) May 27, 2017

At the end of his run as a senator, in what NPR’s Ron Elving called “a lonely crusade to become a fiscal hero,” Bunning single-handedly held up unemployment payments for millions of Americans during a two-day filibuster against $10 billion in stimulus spending.

His son David Bunning is a U.S. district judge in Kentucky, who made the headlines in 2015 for jailing Kim Davis, the county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses. On Saturday morning, David tweeted “Heaven got its No 1 starter today. Our lives & the nation are better off because of your love & dedication to family.”

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Health May 27, 2017

Two Sisters Try To Tackle Drug Use At A Montana Indian Reservation

Charmayne Healy (l) and Miranda Kirk (r), co-founders of the Aaniiih Nakoda Anti-Drug Movement, have helped Melinda Healy, center, with their peer-support programs.

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There’s a narrative about the methamphetamine epidemic in Montana that says the state tackled it in the 2000s, yet now it’s back with a vengeance because of super labs and drug cartels in Mexico. But here on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, it never really went away.

“Getting high in your car in front of the store; that ain’t a big deal,” says Miranda Kirk.

Kirk works on the reservation, which is about 40 miles south of the Canadian border. She says no one even bothers to hide their drug use.

“Leaving your paraphernalia out in the open for someone to walk in, that’s alright. Having and seeing needles everywhere, that’s ok. Even talking about selling your needles — that’s normal too,” Kirk says.

Kirk is a 27-year-old mother of four. Born and raised in Fort Belknap, home to the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes, she grew up around drugs, alcohol and addiction. She struggled with opioids after a miscarriage landed her in the ER and she was discharged with a handful of prescriptions. But, she says, with the help of her church, she broke that addiction. Now, she wants to help others.

According to the Tribal Epidemiology Centers of the Indian Health Service, dependence on methamphetamine and other psychostimulants more than tripled for tribal members in Montana and Wyoming between 2011 and 2015.

“People are saying they’re seeing it as young as third grade, because, ‘Oh that’s ok, I see that at home — my aunt does this, my mom does this, my dad does this, my grandpa does this.’ So, they can’t see the error in it. Or they don’t see it as a risk,” says Kirk.

Miranda Kirk and her sister, Charmayne Healy, felt like everyone had given up trying to do anything about the rampant drug use. And, they worried about their kids falling into the same trap. So they went to tribal leaders last year and said someone needs to do something — now.

George Horse Capture, Jr., vice president of the Fort Belknap Tribal Council, helped the sisters persuade the council to declare a state of emergency against methamphetamine last January. Tribal leaders then gave Kirk and Healy $150,000 to fund a substance-abuse prevention and treatment program.

The sisters were caught off guard, but right away, Kirk started hunting for a model that might work with the strengths of Fort Belknap. She heard about something called peer recovery, a movement centered on the idea that people who have succeeded in conquering from their own addictions are uniquely equipped to coach others.

The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north central Montana is home to two tribes, and substance abuse is a major problem.

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“The light bulb came on,” Kirk says. “That works, because what got me clean, in a sense, were peer mentors. They’ve been there. That made it easier for me to be able to express myself and not feel judged, or condemned. Like I’m a horrible person for what I was going through.”

She’s determined to break the stigma attached to reaching out for help.

In early 2016, Kirk and her sister officially launched the Aaniiih Nakoda Anti-Drug Movement, a native-led peer recovery project.

Jessica Healy, 30, came knocking before they were even up and running. Her only son was taken away last year.

“They helped me. And it took a big step … it took all that I had,” Jessica Healy says.

She had been using drugs on and off since the age of 18.

Once a week, one of Kirk’s peer recovery groups, the Life Givers Circle, meets at the Lodge Pole Elementary school.

“We talk about stuff and we make ribbon skirts, [do] activities, and we just help each other out,” Jessica Healy says.

It’s one of about four peer support groups that Kirk and Charmayne Healy have helped start, both on and off the reservation.

“It was a good feeling to be clean and to be close to people that had been going through the same thing. To know that there are others out there,” Jessica Healy says.

In addition to peer meetings, Aaniiih Nakoda members go to schools and talk to kids about prevention. They help organize events like zombie walks, in which people pretend to be the drug-addled walking dead.

There’s only one outpatient drug treatment facility in Fort Belknap, and no emergency housing or sober-living facilities. The only longer-term support available is Kirk’s group.

Dr. Aaron Wernham, of the Montana Healthcare Foundation, says that what Montana needs is a more integrated, team-based approach to treating addiction. That means primary care doctors working next to behavioral health professionals, and coordinating care all along the way.

“Peer recovery fits in very well with it, but if you decided you were just going to build a whole treatment system around peer recovery, you probably wouldn’t end up getting the results you want,” he says.

A new state law enacted in March goes a long way toward recognizing peer support specialists as legitimate members of a treatment team.

The law sets clear professional standards, and paves the way for billing insurance companies and, potentially, Medicaid.

The challenge is how to bring that comprehensive care to Fort Belknap.

Until that happens, the sisters’ grassroots peer program is one of the only options available for people. And she’s intent on doing that work, no matter what.

“You have to keep your phone on during the night because addiction don’t sleep and normally we don’t either,” she says.

This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Montana Public Radio and Kaiser Health News.

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