The tension was heavy in a recent meeting. The participants had competing agendas, different personalities and diverse perspectives. Being privy to side conversations before the meeting, I knew that they were making judgments about each other. Instead of coming together as "we," they were defending and protecting the "me."
In his classic book "Nonviolent Communication," Dr. Marshall Rosenberg suggests that this behavior isn't so unusual:
In The Daily Signal, Rachel Sheffield highlights some states that have taken the lead in reconnecting welfare programs (notably SNAP, or "food stamps"), with the inclusion of New England's own Maine:
The decline in food stamp rolls between March and April of this year follows the re-establishment of work requirements in a number of states. On Jan. 1, 22 states had to reinstate the federal work requirement for areas of the state or the entire state because their waivers expired.
Some states did not wait until their waiver to end, however. Instead, they took a proactive approach to ensure that able-bodied adults were encouraged toward work.
Maine, one of the most proactive states in reinstating work requirements for food stamps, saw its caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents decrease by 80 percent within just a few months after re-establishing the work requirement.
