The great charitable-giving boom we're in nowadays has caught the attention of neurological researchers. Several studies have concluded that the act of giving (either in money or in volunteerism) makes people feel good at a really primal level.
Logical questions include both why and how that would be the case. Taking the broad evolutionary view, some researchers have argued that altruistic behavior is a positive for natural selection at a group level as distinct from Darwinian individualism. But homo sapiens is the only species which practices altruism outside its own genetic relatives -- is that a cultural adaptation or does it have a long-term natural-selection payoff? Creationists have taken to arguing that widespread human charity cannot be explained in Darwinian terms and hence represents a flaw in the science that they hate so much. Researchers more interested in the scientific method are actively exploring several hypotheses on the issue.
On the second part (how exactly are we wired to enjoy being charitable?), some researchers have concluded that it stimulates the same part of our gray matter which drives our gut-level interest in things like food, drugs and sex. (The joy of giving, indeed...say sweetheart is that a charitable remainder trust in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?) This reminds me of a development director I once worked with who grumbled when another staffer referred to a particular individual-donor solicitation idea as "sexy"; turns out he was just accurately "following the donors"!
Showing posts with label contributions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contributions. Show all posts
Friday, April 13, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
Donor cultivation conversation, part II
Albert Ruesga, proprietor of the excellent White Courtesy Telephone, posted a thoughtful response to Saturday's little rant here about donor-cultivation practices. (Today someone else has also left a comment which is specious, and anyway I don't debate with folks who aren't willing to put their names behind their ideas.) The subject seems worth some continuing examination as opposed to simply dueling comments.
Albert makes several good points, including that we should distinguish between opt-in and opt-out followup practices by organizations. Read his comment in full for more. I think though that our differing perspectives are more at a macro level.
It's probably worth noting that as a non-profit careerist I am reasonably well-versed in modern standards and practices of donor cultivation. At the Nature Conservancy in the late 1990s I had a stretch getting trained in it (attended some AFP conferences and trainings) and for a year I supervised a team of annual-fund staffers and major-gift officers. Then as executive director of a growing performing-arts organization I personally instituted the basics of professional donor management, under the expert guidance of a board vice-chair who had been an experienced successful director of development at a larger organization. I am certainly not as knowledgeable in that subject as Albert or his colleagues, but the point is simply that I do have hands-on familiarity with the theory and practice.
The sense I have today, which I did not have in 2002 or 1997, is that some core assumptions in the non-profit development field (reflected in that NonProfit Times essay) are rooted in a dated understanding of what donors know, want and expect of us. I'm quite sure that Albert is right that a majority of AFP members would agree with the article, and that is exactly my concern. It feels increasingly as if a rapid shift in donor tastes and donor behavior is underway right now and that donor-cultivation best practices are not keeping up.
For example: clearly anyone like me who regularly makes contributions to a variety of non-profits is interested in staying up to date on what those groups are doing. A decade or two ago the only practical way for that to happen was to receive periodic missives from those organizations, and any reasonable adult would accept continuing solicitation or cultivation as the overhead cost of thusly staying informed about the group's work. Today though, the cost in time and effort to seek that knowledge on our own is orders of magnitude lower, and we happily do that because we get to do it on our time and schedule. Put another way: two whole generations of American adults have grown up expecting a sort of control of their own time and information flow which is fundamentally different than was true for my peers or my parents.
Several other examples come to mind. Now of course I know that AFP conferences today are full of discussion of how to adapt donor-contact and -cultivation best practices to the online world; so are any number of well-written blogs, and so forth. The concern I have, or the button which that NonProfit Times columnist pushed I guess, is that discussing how to adapt the existing paradigm seems to really miss the forest for the trees as far as what charitably-minded Americans of today expect and will tolerate, and how they will respond.
Albert makes several good points, including that we should distinguish between opt-in and opt-out followup practices by organizations. Read his comment in full for more. I think though that our differing perspectives are more at a macro level.
It's probably worth noting that as a non-profit careerist I am reasonably well-versed in modern standards and practices of donor cultivation. At the Nature Conservancy in the late 1990s I had a stretch getting trained in it (attended some AFP conferences and trainings) and for a year I supervised a team of annual-fund staffers and major-gift officers. Then as executive director of a growing performing-arts organization I personally instituted the basics of professional donor management, under the expert guidance of a board vice-chair who had been an experienced successful director of development at a larger organization. I am certainly not as knowledgeable in that subject as Albert or his colleagues, but the point is simply that I do have hands-on familiarity with the theory and practice.
The sense I have today, which I did not have in 2002 or 1997, is that some core assumptions in the non-profit development field (reflected in that NonProfit Times essay) are rooted in a dated understanding of what donors know, want and expect of us. I'm quite sure that Albert is right that a majority of AFP members would agree with the article, and that is exactly my concern. It feels increasingly as if a rapid shift in donor tastes and donor behavior is underway right now and that donor-cultivation best practices are not keeping up.
For example: clearly anyone like me who regularly makes contributions to a variety of non-profits is interested in staying up to date on what those groups are doing. A decade or two ago the only practical way for that to happen was to receive periodic missives from those organizations, and any reasonable adult would accept continuing solicitation or cultivation as the overhead cost of thusly staying informed about the group's work. Today though, the cost in time and effort to seek that knowledge on our own is orders of magnitude lower, and we happily do that because we get to do it on our time and schedule. Put another way: two whole generations of American adults have grown up expecting a sort of control of their own time and information flow which is fundamentally different than was true for my peers or my parents.
Several other examples come to mind. Now of course I know that AFP conferences today are full of discussion of how to adapt donor-contact and -cultivation best practices to the online world; so are any number of well-written blogs, and so forth. The concern I have, or the button which that NonProfit Times columnist pushed I guess, is that discussing how to adapt the existing paradigm seems to really miss the forest for the trees as far as what charitably-minded Americans of today expect and will tolerate, and how they will respond.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Too many for what, exactly?
Next month I'm attending a discussion gathering of foundation staffs for which the invitation begins, "As non-profits grow in number and stretch available resources..." Notice that this premise is stated as simple obvious fact: that the number of non-profits has been growing faster than the available funding for them. That's a widely-believed factoid which has made it into the mainstream media; its a commonplace among foundation staffers. It is easily the most-common reaction I hear to this recent report that my foundation published online.
The thing is, as stated it simply isn't true: the number of non-profits in the U.S. has not grown faster than overall non-profit revenues, indeed hasn't even kept up with the growth in charitable giving.
Independent Sector says that non-profits roughly doubled in number from 1980 to 2005; or put another way, that non-profit employment doubled from 1977 to 2001. The IRS reports (see Table 16 there) that the number of tax returns filed by non-profits increased by 138% from 1985 to 2002. [It makes sense that this increase would be a bit higher than the overall creation of new groups because the filing threshold has not been indexed for inflation.] So okay let's take that basic premise as documented: that there are somewhere around twice as many non-profits as a quarter century ago.
That same IRS table shows that total non-profit revenues increased by 112% above inflation from 1985 to 2002. (The table shows raw totals not adjusted for inflation; I applied this inflation calculator which uses the official federal Consumer Price Index through the years to make conversions.) And apparently non-profit spending has not been increasing as fast as have the revenues, because the IRS figures show total non-profit fund balances increasing by 161% above inflation in the same period.
For some corroboration I checked the printed Giving USA 2005 report: it says (page 26) that total charitable contributions in the U.S. increased by 148% above inflation from 1980 to 2004. [The heavy growth has been in non-religious giving: giving to religious organizations grew only 66% during those years (page 37).]
The time periods of these various figures don't match up exactly, and obviously there may be large differences between types of non-profits. With all that stipulated, it is clear that overall this particular piece of conventional wisdom is not rooted in reality: the booming growth in this sector is not at all "stretching available resources". At a minimum, arguments that we now have "too many non-profits" need to be driven by a different issue.
The thing is, as stated it simply isn't true: the number of non-profits in the U.S. has not grown faster than overall non-profit revenues, indeed hasn't even kept up with the growth in charitable giving.
Independent Sector says that non-profits roughly doubled in number from 1980 to 2005; or put another way, that non-profit employment doubled from 1977 to 2001. The IRS reports (see Table 16 there) that the number of tax returns filed by non-profits increased by 138% from 1985 to 2002. [It makes sense that this increase would be a bit higher than the overall creation of new groups because the filing threshold has not been indexed for inflation.] So okay let's take that basic premise as documented: that there are somewhere around twice as many non-profits as a quarter century ago.
That same IRS table shows that total non-profit revenues increased by 112% above inflation from 1985 to 2002. (The table shows raw totals not adjusted for inflation; I applied this inflation calculator which uses the official federal Consumer Price Index through the years to make conversions.) And apparently non-profit spending has not been increasing as fast as have the revenues, because the IRS figures show total non-profit fund balances increasing by 161% above inflation in the same period.
For some corroboration I checked the printed Giving USA 2005 report: it says (page 26) that total charitable contributions in the U.S. increased by 148% above inflation from 1980 to 2004. [The heavy growth has been in non-religious giving: giving to religious organizations grew only 66% during those years (page 37).]
The time periods of these various figures don't match up exactly, and obviously there may be large differences between types of non-profits. With all that stipulated, it is clear that overall this particular piece of conventional wisdom is not rooted in reality: the booming growth in this sector is not at all "stretching available resources". At a minimum, arguments that we now have "too many non-profits" need to be driven by a different issue.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
More direct giving services, and some caveats
In addition to DonorsChoose which I wrote about on Wednesday, there are at least a couple other examples of new organizations using the web to let donors choose exactly what project their small checks go to.
Modest Needs does the same thing with individual families that DonorsChoose does with teachers or students: families describe their immediate needs and donors pick and choose. The mission aim is what used to be called the "working poor" as well as folks with specific disabilities, so the lead goal expressed is "to prevent otherwise financially self-sufficient individuals and families from entering the cycle of poverty."
(I wonder though if Modest Needs doesn't actually demonstrate the limitations of this philanthropic concept...how is a well-meaning individual donor supposed to tell which requests are truly authentic? Which donees are truly "willing to work but temporarily unable to do so"? The value-added of trained professional staffs to vet and prioritize needs might become more apparent to a donor who's tried Modest Needs.)
And then MissionFish is enabling charitable impulses on the part of eBay sellers. The challenge here might be how complex the process inherently is -- a program that requires a large flow chart to explain itself seems relatively unlikely to really catch on.
So neither of these two seems as likely to gain traction as DonorsChoose, for different reasons.
Modest Needs does the same thing with individual families that DonorsChoose does with teachers or students: families describe their immediate needs and donors pick and choose. The mission aim is what used to be called the "working poor" as well as folks with specific disabilities, so the lead goal expressed is "to prevent otherwise financially self-sufficient individuals and families from entering the cycle of poverty."
(I wonder though if Modest Needs doesn't actually demonstrate the limitations of this philanthropic concept...how is a well-meaning individual donor supposed to tell which requests are truly authentic? Which donees are truly "willing to work but temporarily unable to do so"? The value-added of trained professional staffs to vet and prioritize needs might become more apparent to a donor who's tried Modest Needs.)
And then MissionFish is enabling charitable impulses on the part of eBay sellers. The challenge here might be how complex the process inherently is -- a program that requires a large flow chart to explain itself seems relatively unlikely to really catch on.
So neither of these two seems as likely to gain traction as DonorsChoose, for different reasons.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Newsweek on non-profit transparency
Newsweek lead columnist Jane Bryant Quinn's current column is preaching to this choir in general, though she's off base on some details. It's about the "budding transparency movement for public charities," and she correctly notes that the better non-profits seethe when they see less-worthy groups (let alone outright con artists) suckering well-meaning donors.
Quinn's overall point is that donors are being more and more empowered to seek out and compare real information about non-profits -- a fine thing for sure. (The true fact that as of yet the only information donors can use is about efficiency rather than effectiveness is not a reason for them to ignore it, rather it is a problem for the sector to solve.) Missing from her column is the reality that when charitable-minded folks choose not to do even minimal investigation about giving decisions, they are complicit in the inevitable bad results like 50% of their check going to a professional fundraiser rather than the cause. Hence I cringed recently upon learning that a relative blindly sends a check to every single group which sends him those pre-printed address labels -- generous in spirit but regrettable in practice. Much better for charitably-minded folks to think and act like consumers with their donation dollars.
Also, readers here know that my favorite current contributor to this sector's improvement is Charity Navigator, which I recently added to our family's list of annual donations. They unfortunately got a mild rebuke from Quinn for a really dumb reason. She thinks the fact that a GAO study claimed 64% of non-profits report zero fundraising expenses on their tax returns must mean those documents are unreliable sources of information, and since Charity Navigator collects its data from those forms she wrote that their rankings "could mislead."
Sigh. The vast majority of non-profits filing tax returns are small volunteer groups reporting zero staff or fundraising expenses for the simple reason that they have zero staff or fundraising expenses. (There are scores of all-volunteer local land trusts for every one Conservation Fund, and they all have to file a tax return if they have just $25,000 in revenues.) I guess Quinn imagined the GAO study to be claiming that two-thirds of staffed organizations reported no fundraising expenses; a shame that she couldn't have been bothered to place one phone call to the IRS or the GAO and ask one or two questions.
That laziness aside Quinn is on the mark overall, and tipped me off to a new site in the works which I think aims to be the home of Ebay-style consumer comment and reviews of non-profits. More on that after it launches.
Quinn's overall point is that donors are being more and more empowered to seek out and compare real information about non-profits -- a fine thing for sure. (The true fact that as of yet the only information donors can use is about efficiency rather than effectiveness is not a reason for them to ignore it, rather it is a problem for the sector to solve.) Missing from her column is the reality that when charitable-minded folks choose not to do even minimal investigation about giving decisions, they are complicit in the inevitable bad results like 50% of their check going to a professional fundraiser rather than the cause. Hence I cringed recently upon learning that a relative blindly sends a check to every single group which sends him those pre-printed address labels -- generous in spirit but regrettable in practice. Much better for charitably-minded folks to think and act like consumers with their donation dollars.
Also, readers here know that my favorite current contributor to this sector's improvement is Charity Navigator, which I recently added to our family's list of annual donations. They unfortunately got a mild rebuke from Quinn for a really dumb reason. She thinks the fact that a GAO study claimed 64% of non-profits report zero fundraising expenses on their tax returns must mean those documents are unreliable sources of information, and since Charity Navigator collects its data from those forms she wrote that their rankings "could mislead."
Sigh. The vast majority of non-profits filing tax returns are small volunteer groups reporting zero staff or fundraising expenses for the simple reason that they have zero staff or fundraising expenses. (There are scores of all-volunteer local land trusts for every one Conservation Fund, and they all have to file a tax return if they have just $25,000 in revenues.) I guess Quinn imagined the GAO study to be claiming that two-thirds of staffed organizations reported no fundraising expenses; a shame that she couldn't have been bothered to place one phone call to the IRS or the GAO and ask one or two questions.
That laziness aside Quinn is on the mark overall, and tipped me off to a new site in the works which I think aims to be the home of Ebay-style consumer comment and reviews of non-profits. More on that after it launches.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Donating while bankrupt: addendum
Monday, December 11, 2006
Glossy magazines about giving
An interesting new blog called Tactical Philanthropy is devoted to "chronicling the second great wave of philanthropy". Blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton, who is a professional money manager and donor advisor, got my attention the other day with the news an entire new genre of glossy magazine is being established, aimed at people who do a lot of charitable giving.
At least five such magazines have either just launched or are about to:
Contribute, Good, Generocity, Benefit, and Giving. (The physical resemblances to Martha Stewart Living are, I assume, intentional.)
A quick perusal of those websites left me feeling that "Generosity" is at least as much aimed at non-profit staffers as donors. "Good" seems to have an interesting business model: send 100% of subscription proceeds to charities and pay the bills with advertisers who are after the high-disposable-income readership that is thereby attracted. "Benefit" subtitles itself "the lifestyle of giving" and appears to be basically focused on the Bay Area at least to start. "Contribute" claims to be the only one that is entirely focused on donors as its audience. "Giving", which hasn't printed an issue yet, appears to be the best-funded of these and looks like its aiming to be the biggest/slickest player in this new magazine genre.
At least five such magazines have either just launched or are about to:
Contribute, Good, Generocity, Benefit, and Giving. (The physical resemblances to Martha Stewart Living are, I assume, intentional.)
A quick perusal of those websites left me feeling that "Generosity" is at least as much aimed at non-profit staffers as donors. "Good" seems to have an interesting business model: send 100% of subscription proceeds to charities and pay the bills with advertisers who are after the high-disposable-income readership that is thereby attracted. "Benefit" subtitles itself "the lifestyle of giving" and appears to be basically focused on the Bay Area at least to start. "Contribute" claims to be the only one that is entirely focused on donors as its audience. "Giving", which hasn't printed an issue yet, appears to be the best-funded of these and looks like its aiming to be the biggest/slickest player in this new magazine genre.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Your tax dollars at work
The U.S. government, it turns out, has been passing federal-employee personal contributions on to more than 1,200 non-profits which owe federal taxes, and has issued billions of dollars in federal grants to the same delinquent charities.
This revelation comes from the General Accounting Office, as reported by MSNBC and written about by Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator. The watchdog agency says that the true number of non-profits delinquent on payroll taxes but still receiving federal-employee donations is undoubtably even higher. That's because federal law for some bizarre reason prohibits the relevant officials from checking whether charities that are to receive employee donations are up to date on their routine federal tax returns.
The GAO picked 15 of the delinquent charities at random to check out further, and concluded that every one of them was probably acting illegally -- doing things like buying a boat for the executive director while failing to pay federal payroll taxes. (And let's keep in mind that most of what is called "payroll taxes" is actually money withheld from employee paychecks.) The GAO made up a bogus charity, applied for funding from three local offices of the federal employee-contributions system, and received funds from all three with no trouble.
Ok clearly part of the story here is serial incompetence in our federal bureaucracy. But for me the bigger issue is this: the fact that fewer and fewer Americans still think non-profits to be highly trustworthy is not simply due to "a few prominent rotten apples that have made headlines" as I keep hearing people tell each other at conferences. There is a broader problem here in this sector and it is not being faced.
This revelation comes from the General Accounting Office, as reported by MSNBC and written about by Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator. The watchdog agency says that the true number of non-profits delinquent on payroll taxes but still receiving federal-employee donations is undoubtably even higher. That's because federal law for some bizarre reason prohibits the relevant officials from checking whether charities that are to receive employee donations are up to date on their routine federal tax returns.
The GAO picked 15 of the delinquent charities at random to check out further, and concluded that every one of them was probably acting illegally -- doing things like buying a boat for the executive director while failing to pay federal payroll taxes. (And let's keep in mind that most of what is called "payroll taxes" is actually money withheld from employee paychecks.) The GAO made up a bogus charity, applied for funding from three local offices of the federal employee-contributions system, and received funds from all three with no trouble.
Ok clearly part of the story here is serial incompetence in our federal bureaucracy. But for me the bigger issue is this: the fact that fewer and fewer Americans still think non-profits to be highly trustworthy is not simply due to "a few prominent rotten apples that have made headlines" as I keep hearing people tell each other at conferences. There is a broader problem here in this sector and it is not being faced.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Giving high and giving low
Slate the other week ran a fun essay by successful business writer named Doug Smith, who proposes the creation of a legal futures market in charitable contributions.
His writeup will make many people's eyes glaze, alas, but it is an interesting concept. The idea is that someone wanting to make a donation to Favorite Charity would actually "buy" a clump of futures contracts from someone else who previously gave to that charity. Someone else wanting to make a donation would actually "buy" the clump of futures from the first person; in both transactions the charity gets the proceeds. The actual amounts involved would vary the way hog-belly futures contracts do: rising and falling as they are bid up or down in a (no doubt online) trading system.
The contracts would rise and fall in value due to the demand for making charitable gifts to that specific charity compared to others, which is the first potential social value of this: an efficient way for donors to express (and therefore be motivated to research) their conclusions about the relative merits of different non-profits. Some folks in the audience are now recoiling in horror but from me this gets a big cheer. The specific amount of each donor's tax deduction would also end up varying, which has some other interesting implications. (It's all contrived but of course so are lots of systems we take for granted, including the concept of nongovernmental not-for-profits that are exempt from taxes.)
Smith thinks that such a system governing charitable contributing would sharply increase the annual amount of philanthropy in the U.S., for a couple of reasons; could be, though I can also think of reasons why maybe not. There's no serious proposal in Congress for anything like this and the new political lineup in DC probably ensures there won't be, so for now it's just a think-tank exercise.
His writeup will make many people's eyes glaze, alas, but it is an interesting concept. The idea is that someone wanting to make a donation to Favorite Charity would actually "buy" a clump of futures contracts from someone else who previously gave to that charity. Someone else wanting to make a donation would actually "buy" the clump of futures from the first person; in both transactions the charity gets the proceeds. The actual amounts involved would vary the way hog-belly futures contracts do: rising and falling as they are bid up or down in a (no doubt online) trading system.
The contracts would rise and fall in value due to the demand for making charitable gifts to that specific charity compared to others, which is the first potential social value of this: an efficient way for donors to express (and therefore be motivated to research) their conclusions about the relative merits of different non-profits. Some folks in the audience are now recoiling in horror but from me this gets a big cheer. The specific amount of each donor's tax deduction would also end up varying, which has some other interesting implications. (It's all contrived but of course so are lots of systems we take for granted, including the concept of nongovernmental not-for-profits that are exempt from taxes.)
Smith thinks that such a system governing charitable contributing would sharply increase the annual amount of philanthropy in the U.S., for a couple of reasons; could be, though I can also think of reasons why maybe not. There's no serious proposal in Congress for anything like this and the new political lineup in DC probably ensures there won't be, so for now it's just a think-tank exercise.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Bankruptcy: should non-profits get to be first in line?
A current tempest in Washington DC was started by a federal judge's ruling that some people filing for personal bankruptcy can't keep making charitable contributions before a bankruptcy court decides how much their creditors will get. The judge's logic is being interpreted as an unintended consequence of the 2005 revision of U.S. bankruptcy law, which was already widely seen as basically a giveaway to the credit card companies who everybody loves to hate. Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have quickly proposed legislation that would allow individuals in bankruptcy to continue giving to churches and charities; that bill has passed the Senate and is now before the House.
I was surprised to learn that a 1998 law had specifically allowed people in bankruptcy to exempt up to 15 percent of their annual income from creditors for tithing or charitable donations.
So the narrow issue is simply whether Congress with the 2005 law actually meant to undo that provision or not.
Nobody involved seems willing to face the broader question, namely: what all should someone who is availing themselves of the modern legal privilege called "bankruptcy protection" be allowed to hold back from that process? Bankruptcy is after all not a natural right but a highly-progressive social contract: our society agrees to impose undeserved losses on creditors so we don't have to have debtors' prisons and so that families that are hopelessly ruined financially can get a chance to start over. That's a concept which the U.S. pioneered and is rightly proud of (like the independent professionalised not-for-profit sector actually), and bankrupt families already get to keep their home and some other things safe from creditors and that's a good thing. So is writing another annual check to a favorite non-profit really fair to the parties about to be legally deprived of piles of money which they had voluntarily lent?
P.S. No doubt the preachers and their politicians will make this a religious-liberty issue (and Senator Obama climbs down into a similar rhetorical gutter with his absurd poverty straw man in that article linked above). But if we're gonna get biblical here then that columnist makes a valid counterpoint: the Bible, like every major holy writ that encourages tithing, also does not speak highly of failing to repay debt.
I was surprised to learn that a 1998 law had specifically allowed people in bankruptcy to exempt up to 15 percent of their annual income from creditors for tithing or charitable donations.
So the narrow issue is simply whether Congress with the 2005 law actually meant to undo that provision or not.
Nobody involved seems willing to face the broader question, namely: what all should someone who is availing themselves of the modern legal privilege called "bankruptcy protection" be allowed to hold back from that process? Bankruptcy is after all not a natural right but a highly-progressive social contract: our society agrees to impose undeserved losses on creditors so we don't have to have debtors' prisons and so that families that are hopelessly ruined financially can get a chance to start over. That's a concept which the U.S. pioneered and is rightly proud of (like the independent professionalised not-for-profit sector actually), and bankrupt families already get to keep their home and some other things safe from creditors and that's a good thing. So is writing another annual check to a favorite non-profit really fair to the parties about to be legally deprived of piles of money which they had voluntarily lent?
P.S. No doubt the preachers and their politicians will make this a religious-liberty issue (and Senator Obama climbs down into a similar rhetorical gutter with his absurd poverty straw man in that article linked above). But if we're gonna get biblical here then that columnist makes a valid counterpoint: the Bible, like every major holy writ that encourages tithing, also does not speak highly of failing to repay debt.
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