There may be legitimate businesses out there who think that their time is so valuable that they shouldn’t have to waste time waiting for you to answer the phone while it rings. But nothing says “grifter” like a robo-caller. It’s impossible to miss. You say “hello” at least twice into dead air before the person who allegedly made a personal call to you picks up their phone to answer back. And then usually it’s a robot telling you that your credit card account is OK, but you can do better if you take their offer. When a real person actually answers, you can often hear the noise of a boiler room call center in the background.
But a matchmaking business? Yeah, I know. I’m old, I’m ugly, I’m poor and my health isn’t so good. Even if one did get find it by accident looking at dating sites on the internet, who would I be kidding? But a callback from matchmaking business? Here you go looking for one of the most intimate and private relationships one can possibly have, and they use a robo-caller. With boiler room noise. Nothing says romance like a robo-caller, eh? I’d say it sets a new standard. ***
Somehow, I just don’t believe in trickle-down economics. What the first George Bush called “voodoo economics”. Tell me how many ordinary middle class jobs Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have created out of their own millions of income. How many factories have they built? How many stores have they opened? How many new technologies have they helped to create making direct venture capital investments in small businesses with their own money? How many microloans have they made to help ordinary people? How many mortgages have they or their wealth personally financed to help people reach the American Dream? Without a record of experience and accomplishment like that, who are they to tell us that they can lead us out of the recession. Without efforts like those, it's all just posturing to justify paying lower taxes than middle class working people.
And Obama reminds me of an old joke of mine. You know you might be a lawyer if your pants are on fire. But if the fire has spread from your pants to your belly, then you know you’re a politician.
Speaking of lawyers; they like to build their arguments on the “reasonable person” hypothesis. A “reasonable person” is one whose thoughts and actions are so right and reasonable, that no one could possibly disagree with them. A lawyer often tells a jury what a “reasonable person” would think and find to save the jury the trouble of being reasonable persons and thinking for themselves. I say again, let’s send that guy to Congress – then we’ll get something done. Or dare one say, President?
Don’t you wish our political parties would give us candidates for President that we could all feel good voting for? No more liars who pander one way on the campaign trail and then work the other way in secret when elected. No more wing nuts. No more clueless wonders who think that their millions or party credentials make them qualified to lead a nation to their idea of salvation.
Does anyone else remember what happened to the last tell-it-like-it-is, verbal bomb throwing, true conservative Presidential candidate who went up against a liberal Democrat? I’ll give you some hints. His comments on how to use nuclear weapons in Asia and the Kremlin prompted one of the most successful negative TV ads in history, a little girl counting flower petals, followed by a countdown to a mushroom cloud. He lost in a landslide of those voting for Lyndon Baines Johnson. He earned the nickname “Barry the Bomber”.
Do you want to scare an independent at election time? Run an ad asking, “Nuclear Newt – do you really want his finger on the trigger?” Or run one of a Federal Judge handing down a decision that an independent would like, but would upset the Religious Right. Followed by men in black masks throwing a hood over the Judge in court, and dragging him off to Guantanamo.
Nor are Romney and Paul immune. Romney’s idea of job creation could be depicted by an entire generation of workers wearing McDonald’s uniforms. An effective attack ad might contrast Romney’s idea of a mortgage problem to those of the rest of us. This man who thinks that $375,000 in speaking and book income is pocket change. And imagine an ad showing tyrants, terrorists and China going hog wild after Paul pulls U.S. military forces out of even friendly countries. Or starving children and seniors after WIC, food stamps and social security are cut off.
Of course, President Barrack Obama is no LBJ. LBJ had a long history of arm-twisting success getting things done in the Congress, and was a gun-rights Democrat who actively hunted. Obama, on the other hand, merely promised fidelity to the Second Amendment in his campaign. After which high officials of his employ in the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms set up Operation “Fast and Furious”, which instructed firearms dealers in southern border states to allow suspect sales to proceed, sending hundreds of guns to drug cartels in Mexico.
Why? To gin up a campaign for gun control justified by phony claims that most drug guns in Mexico come from firearms dealers in the U.S. And what about dead Mexicans and one U.S. Border Patrol Officer? According to the statements of high BATF officials, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” Naturally, President Obama and his supporters in the news media don’t want that buck stopping at his desk. But it raises the potential for a truly effective attack ad addressing Obama’s honesty, and the reckless disregard of his administration for the human lives of people of color south of the border.
Our parties sure know how to pick ‘em.
It has been written that George Washington didn’t campaign to be the Father of our country. That he simply did it because it needed to be done, he was qualified, and no one else was available. The current crop of contenders merely illustrate the old adage that the person who most wants to run for an office is usually the one least qualified to fill it. Or that testosterone poisoning may win votes, but it doesn’t solve problems.
I can agree that commercial corporations are not people, but no such restrictions on campaign spending, lobbying and advertising should apply to the non-profit corporations that allow like-minded people to band together and seek to advance whatever cause they represent. That is the only way that ordinary people can compete politically with the rich and well-funded. News media, for example, are well-funded by effective taxes on the public through the advertising dollars that consumer dollars make possible. We buy products and some of that money gets spent funding news outlets which we may have had no intention of supporting. And no news outlet, which reaches millions of people, is entirely free of bias and self-interest. So if a major segment of the news media starts beating up on those ordinary non-rich people whom it sees as demons, how else can the demonized fight back in the political arena effectively? Five and ten dollar donations from a few million members adds up. News media and corporations are not obliged to support our values and issues with the money they get from us. But the non-profit lobbies that we support directly do. They are our voices and should be recognized as such. Some of us might vote the other ticket, if it's candidate had not pledged to do things that hurt us, just to please his or her party's wing nuts. When the politicians are selected by the most extreme elements of their parties, and the news media demonstrate whatever biases they have with politically selective reporting, how else can we make our voices heard?
There are several things terribly wrong with the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, Title 43A. One is the presumption that anyone with a mental illness is a second class citizen, not deserving the same standards of justice as any other citizen. Among others is the presumption that if any of those other citizens feel “threatened” by someone with mental illness, the fault lies automatically with the person with mental illness, who then has to be “fixed” by State counselors and psychiatrists. This denies the notions and existence of bigotry and simple dishonest malice in their entirety. For another, it encourages law enforcement and prosecuting authorities to use State mental facilities to detain and punish people they cannot otherwise prosecute under the law. For another, the Code fails to take into account the conflict of interest inherent in allowing the counselors and psychiatrists of a State mental facility to decide who should be incarcerated there. These do not exhaust the list.
Let us consider the last, conflict of interest. For the 1995 Session, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission of the Virginia General Assembly presented a “Review of the Involuntary Commitment Process”. In the main this report considered the budgetary costs and possible improvements in the expense of mental health operations in the State of Virginia. Thus any humanitarian or civil liberty improvement recommended also had to have the effect of reducing the expenditures for such operations.
Recommendation (26) stated “for adult commitment hearings … a qualified evaluator who is not and will not be treating the individual, who has no significant financial interest, and who is not employed by the facility to which the individual will be committed should complete the mental health evaluation. The independent evaluator should also be expected to attend and testify at the commitment hearing.” In other words, those who run a State mental facility should be strictly divorced from the process of deciding who gets put there, so as to avoid an abuse of power, incarcerating individuals without true necessity, that would cost the State money. And they should show up and be prepared to justify their findings, possibly subject to cross-examination.
Title 43A almost says that, but not quite. 43A-1-105 states, “No person admitted to any facility shall be considered or presumed to be mentally or legally incompetent except those persons who have been determined to be mentally or legally incompetent in separate and independent proceedings of an appropriate district court.” But it does not adequately state how those proceedings shall be “separate and independent”.
43A-5-104 states, “Any person who intentionally falsely attests to the mental illness, alcohol dependency, or drug dependency of any person, or whose false attestations as to mental illness, alcohol dependency, or drug dependency of any person is proved to be the result of negligence or deficient professional skill, or who signs such an evaluation or petition for pecuniary reward, or promise thereof, or other consideration of value or operating to his or her advantage, other than the professional fee usually paid for such service, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by payment of a fine not to exceed One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00), or imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one (1) year, or both such fine and imprisonment.” But it does not explicitly recognize that this could be a problem in allowing mental facility personnel to effectively decide for the Mental Health Court Judge who should be committed to the facility.
43A-10-109a.A.7 states that uniform policies for ODMHSAS personnel shall ensure that “no employee whose responsibilities relate in any manner to services provided to or on behalf of a vulnerable adult is subject to a conflict of interest which would impair the ability of the employee to carry out his or her employment duties in an impartial manner”. Yet it does not fully and explicitly define and enumerate possible conflicts of interest, such as the unethical practice of allowing treating physicians at the facility to decide for the Mental Health Court Judge who needs their involuntary “help”.
While 43A clearly indicates that it is a bad idea for the staff of an State or State-sponsored mental facility to make the evaluation or decision for involuntary commitment, for the jailers to decide who gets jailed, it does not does not make explicit prohibitions against such unethical behavior. Except in a round-about manner it 43A-5-104.
This ignores the long and squalid history of psychiatric institutions abusing their legal powers and patients. Psychiatrists and counselors at mental facilities have a natural tendency and self-interest to find that people need their services. Some decades past, such mental facilities were forced to release most of their inmates because of horrible abuses and inhumane treatment. For example, one harmless man was kept for years because he played an imaginary trumpet, and another for talking to an imaginary wife. But no one took up the slack with out-patien programs for those people, so they became the mentally ill homeless sleeping on the streets up to today. Even after that, psychiatric hospitals have been caught in insurance scams, snatching ordinary people off the streets and committing them just to milk their medical insurance. Even children.
So when, as in the City and County of Tulsa, the Mental Health Court Judge depends almost exclusively upon the evaluations of mental facility personnel, there are no checks and balances to restrict commitments to those who need such “help” and have no other alternative. The commitment process is not “separate and independent” as required in 43A-1-105, and taxpayers bear the burden. For an involuntary commitment, the treating psychiatrist from the facility can be the “witness”, “mental health evaluator” and petitioner for commitment. Thus ensuring a steady supply of involuntary “consumers”.
Furthermore, once an inmate is incarcerated, the facility psychiatrists and other personnel are the sole arbiters of who gets out when. Because the Judge typically rubber-stamps their decisions, disagreeing only to keep an inmate longer. This is a corrupt and corrupting system, costing the State money by filling beds without true medical necessity, and having them full when those people, if any, who really need such help can’t get it. There are no true checks and balances.
I defy anyone involved in this sordid process to demonstrate otherwise. Especially that any significant number of people brought before it, allegedly to be “helped”, have actually escaped it. Title 43A states in several places that those who are found not to be in need or are no longer in need of such “consumer services” shall be released immediately. Yet where are any independent checks and balances to make sure that this is done? They don’t exist. The local Mental Health Court Judge and mental facility will even go so far as to deny that an individual’s psychiatrists of long standing exist or have any say in the process. And if those psychiatrists are employed by the State, say at the University of Oklahoma, they will abandon a patient to avoid any confrontation with their fellow State employees. So much for the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm”.
Until the State Legislature sees fit to cease imposing its bent version of Sharia Law upon those of us with mental illness, until it restores to us and protects our constitutional rights to be treated with equal justice and due process, many more will face this psychiatric tyranny. And have their lives permanently damaged in this ugly process.
I contend that the shortcut of allowing mental facility to do the mental health evaluations that determine the need for commitment cannot save any money. That in the long run, this can only be done by accepting the cost of bringing in outside and truly independent mental health evaluators, who have utterly no self-interest in filling beds in the facility.
This Martin Luther King Day, people speak as if solving discrimination for women, gays and people of color would end it all. Then they continue to act like a flock of ducks, excluding and pecking at the injured one with a limp because it’s different. Thirty years after hundreds of legal and medical research papers found that only a small minority of people with mental illness, primarily those with violent histories, are significantly more violent than the general population, people who otherwise pride themselves on their commitment to civil rights still tolerate subjecting those with mental illness to discriminatory laws, secret and invisible courts, violations of due process and civil liberties, and violations of 30-year-old Supreme Court standards of evidence. If they think of it at all, they pat themselves on the back for “helping” people into the State-sponsored Guantanamos in their own back yards. Places where the people who run the facilities provide the only evidence, evaluation and judgment needed, transmuting what would be gossip and hearsay in a criminal case into Revealed Truth.
From the late 1980s to late 1990s, a scandal erupted in mental health care. Private mental institutions in states from Nevada to Texas to Florida used tactics such as dragooning people off the streets or enrolling them in false dieting programs. Some of them paid bounties to outside contractors to drag people in, much like medical schools of past centuries paid grave robbers for cadavers to dissect. Just so the mental hospitals could milk medical insurance. Military families and veterans were favorite targets because of generous benefits. The impact, especially on children, was horrific.
It is unknown if mental facilities sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services milk insurance. But there is no doubt that they prey on the misery of others. One may wonder if they keep their jobs by inflating evaluations of illness and “dangerousness” just to keep enough beds filled. Then, as one outside mental health case manager noted, when someone has a real crisis, the beds are too often full.
Where is our legal system in all this? The local mental health court is part of the city/county District Court. Each Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court supervises the District Courts in a designated section of the State. One might think that this would mean actively assuring that equal standards of justice, evidence and due process apply to all who come before those courts. Apparently not. One can complain to the Supervising Justice about gross violations in a local court, but one cannot expect to get any response.
As it happens, the Justice in charge of this section shares Dr. King’s much abused color. He arguably holds the highest position of his race in this State. His lack of response, along with some rulings and opinions of Justice Clarence Thomas, demonstrates that even a man of color in the highest position does not flinch from applying Jim Crow law to a minority that is not his.
"You're Asking Us?" Are you familiar with the term "rhetorical question"? One hears that even journalists use it on occasion to stimulate deeper realization and thinking.
Has anyone else been having trouble with AT&T DSL internet bills? Before I moved to a new apartment in October 2010, I had a reasonable and stable phone bill. LifeLine phone service and $19.95 DSL service came to about $24 every month, give or take some change. Then I moved and set up service in the new apartment, using my previously acquired DSL modem/router.
The AT&T agent offered me DSL service for $14.95 a month, and led me to believe that my voice line service would be about $20 a month plus surcharges, adding up to about $27, with a ¼ payment for the $51 new customer charge. Since the first bill covered only Oct 21st to Oct 26th, voice line services were prorated and the October 27th bill came to $54.74.
The next bill (November 27th) came to a whopping $88.04, in large part because the internet charge was $39.90 instead of $14.95. A typical bait and switch. In my 15 months of service I have had to call repeatedly to get bills adjusted. AT&T made repeated promises to fix my bill for good, and except for one month, never kept them. Including the first DSL charge, the charges have been as follows: $39.90 (November 2010), $39.06, $24.55 CR(credit), $35.00, $14.95, $5.10 CR, $35.00, $9.95, $30.00, $30.00, $10.91 CR, $5.10 CR, $5.10 CR, $44.22 (Dec 2012). Note that the amount of $14.95 appears only once in that list – one out of fourteen.
In January 2011, after getting the previous bill adjusted, followed by an overcharge again in December, I sent an e-mail complaining of billing fraud. AT&T promptly followed this with threat to disconnect service for allegedly unpaid charges of $58.62, which were never explained. Not even the AT&T agent who next adjusted my bill could explain where that came from.
Either the AT&T billing system is so unnecessarily complicated that neither its employees nor its computers can understand and deal with it, or it is set up this way deliberately, to extract higher fees from people who don’t want to argue about it, especially the elderly. In my opinion, it rises to the level of wire fraud and should be investigated as such. For anyone who wants to see, I’ve set up a web site with the entire set of bills and my phone notes at http://www.android-originals.com/blogs/AT&T Mess/AT&T Mess.html
To the Honorable Senator/Congressman (Fill In The Blank):
I miss the American Dream. Losing the Dream has been devastating to both my physical and mental health. The last time I was happy, I had a job and hope for the future. I want my own place, both to live and in productive society. I want to build a business, or at least a secure retirement. I don’t ever want to worry about homelessness again.
So I would really appreciate it if one of your staffers could take the time to find and send me the name of the millionaire or billionaire who is willing to offer me either a job or venture capital - out of his humongous tax cuts.
Why is the Oklahoma Court system and the legal community willing to allow the local District Attorney, Public Defender and (District) Mental Health Court to deny civil and due process rights to defendants in that Court? What else can you call it when the local Mental Health Court assumes that its Judge “may” dispense with a “right” that the defendant “shall have” according to law, and the Public Pretender neither objects nor informs the defendant of the right? What else can you call it when the DA’s proxy lies in Court, stating that the standard of evidence against the defendant need only be a majority or “preponderance”, instead of the “clear and convincing evidence” demanded eight times in the Mental Health Code, and neither the Judge nor the Public Pretender object, nor do they inform the defendant? Does it go too far to suspect some kind of public malfeasance, or malign prejudice against people who have been singled out by the Legislature and State Courts for heightened scrutiny and second-class treatment?
The Oklahoma Mental Health Code, Title 43A, states in section 43A-5-411.A, Rights of an individual alleged to require treatment, “An individual alleged to be a person requiring treatment shall have the following rights:”. They include in A.6 “The right to present and to cross-examine witnesses. The petitioner and witnesses identified in the petition shall offer testimony under oath at the hearing on the petition. …” As I understand it, the legal meaning of “shall” is mandatory. This is the way that it must be done to be legal. So when the petitioner and alleged “witnesses” don’t show up, and the Judge even cuts off the defendant when the defendant tries to explain what happened, the Judge has violated the defendant’s rights under law, denying to that defendant the due process of law.
And when the Public Pretender doesn’t even bother to object to this state of affairs, the defendant effectively has no counsel, as mandated in 43A-5-411.A.2. The would be the same Public Pretender who in 43A-5-411.D.1 “shall immediately, upon meeting with the person alleged to be a person requiring treatment, present to such person a statement of the (person’s) rights, including all rights afforded to persons alleged to be a person requiring treatment by the Oklahoma and the United States Constitutions.” (That didn’t happen.) This provision is repeated in 43A-5-401.D.1, which the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services has falsely listed on its web site as “REPEALED” since at least 2003.
The only fig leaf the Mental Health Court might point to appears in 43A-5-401.J, -5-415.C.2 and -5-511.D.1, where the law states that “If a jury trial is not demanded, the court may take as evidence and act upon” the evaluations, affidavits and reports presented the mental health examiners. Only in 5-401.J, which the ODMHSAS would have “REPEALED”, does it say “without further evidence being presented”. In legal terms, one would think that “may” is merely permissive and incapable of dispensing with due process rights for the personal, political or prejudicial convenience of a Judge. The clause does not say that the defendant may not or shall not be allowed to present testimony, evidence and witnesses.
So when a Judge overrides a defendant’s protests of innocence and attempts to tell the true story, and allows the mental facility, which will receive the benefit of another warm body to justify its existence, to be the sole source of evidence and evaluation, one is justified in calling this a kangaroo court. And when, after the damage is already done, one must discover for one’s self the nature and extent of violations of due process and civil liberties, without any help from the local or state legal community, one may reasonably suspect that legal community of being a nest of bigots.
In some agricultural and metropolitan areas, eastern Arkansas and central Utah for example, the water resources are literally being mined. Taken out of the ground at a rate faster than they can ever be replenished. Some of it is fossil water, laid down in geological epochs far in the past, which can never be replaced. In the rice and soybean fields of eastern AR, the farmers have to pump from deeper and deeper depths as the water surface drops. And when this happens, the aquifer often compacts from the pressure of the overburden of earth, reducing its capacity to accept any new water, even if any is available. To date, the water in an aquifer can only be replaced by rainfall in an area it can reach the aquifer by soaking into the earth. Perhaps the only other possibility is the desalinization of sea water, which will likely be possible only when new energy sources become very, very cheap. Note that Texas has a coastline, and a possible future resource. If Oklahoma water is going to be sold to Texas, the contract had better be year-to-year, contingent upon excess supply being replaced by rainfall. Or Oklahoma will regret it, and possibly end up buying water from Texas in the future.
It's quite likely that such people, like the school administrators who accept bullying in the schools, bully their own children at home. It's part of the culture in this area and Arkansas, that stems both from "spare the rod and spoil the child" and from the abuse they got from their own parents. It's supposed to "toughen up" the kids. And besides, they consider that if they lived through it, and they think it didn't hurt them, why not their kids, and everyone else's? Haven't we all seen and heard it before? They're going to raise their children just like they were raised because it's the "right way".
If you want to cut down on crime and violence, stop child abuse.
What’s the difference between a cultural or political belief and a delusion? Who are you going to ask, a Democrat or Republican congressperson? In Oklahoma it seems to depend upon whether or not the person who holds a belief that disagrees with someone else’s also happens to have an admitted or recognized mental illness, no matter how it was acquired. No mental illness = cultural belief (say, God’s gonna call Oral Roberts home if he doesn’t get that money). Mental illness = automatic delusion. So if you deal with depression or PTSD due to the experience of past involuntary violence, like a rape, tornado or car wreck, be careful who you talk to and disagree with.
For example, one of the white grad students in our Department had come back from Malawi in Africa with a black African wife, after a stint in the Peace Corps, or something like. He told of having black children flee from him in a terror that he would catch them and eat them. And how in her culture, cats are considered demonic creatures with no bones. One time, he said, they were visiting in this country and a kitten crawled up on her lap. She swatted it across the room. She was a nice woman, not the kind of woman to go hunting other people’s pets, but could not tolerate that kitten upon her body.
In Oklahoma, a habitual liar with a grudge could simply claim that his wife had threatened her cats, and that the liar was afraid his wife would attack her as well. Then, under the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, the Tulsa Police and the local community mental health emergency service would be only too willing to forgo any investigation beyond consulting the liar, and happy to drag her off to a local Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services facility. Where State counselors and psychiatrists would be only too happy to declare her paranoid, delusional and unfit to run her own life, without their special care in an involuntary commitment. With which the local mental health court would be only too pleased to agree.
All because she grew up in a different culture, had different experiences from theirs, and ran afoul of someone willing to make false charges. So here’s an important question, can State psychiatrists in State facilities tell the difference between a delusion and a cultural belief, or is it just their cultural belief that they can?
What do you call someone who thinks that any pain or upset you might still have from getting hit and maimed by a drinking driver is just something you have to take responsibility for and get over? An Oklahoma State psychiatrist or an Arkansas orthopedist - take your pick.
"...public television's none-too-subtle attempts to placate the noisy right by giving conservatives a pass on some hot-button issues."? Well, I don't get to watch public television any more, or much else. My Digital TV adapter doesn't pick it up. But I did notice lately that NPR's coverage of the Congress grilling Attorney General Eric Holder refers to Operation Fast and Furious as a "flawed program" in which "mistakes" were made. As if it had nothing to do with creating the liberal myth that most of the Mexican drug cartel guns come from over the border in the U.S., not from the black market in Central America. The BATF insisted that gun dealers who raised objections to suspicious purchases let them go through. Then didn't even tell its own people in Mexico what was going on. If you bend over backwards far enough to satisfy your extremist base of any stripe, you might find yourself crawling into a deep, black hole.
"All things to all men"? That statement could use a little more explanation. Isn't that how we accuse our politicians when we mean they are shifty, deceptive, amoral con-men and opportunists, who say whatever they think someone wants to hear? (I met her.) Not a few Christians are only one thing to all men: self-righteous.
Mr. Hamilton's argument on sales tax and larger government falls in line with some health care studies. They showed that if Doctors and clinics listed the cost of each procedure where consumers could see them, and customers were responsible for at least part of the bill, the cost of both offered and total provided services went down compared to the much more anonymous insurance-pays-all approach.
There's a good book I've been reading, "The Lean Startup" by Eric Reis, available at Amazon.com for less than $30. It discusses, among other things, how in many large businesses separate departments come to demand more and more of the pie, and sabotage other departments. In other words, office politics. Wouldn't it be nice if we could dispense with the bickering between dogmatic politicians, and concentrate on what works? Reis offers a way out that he shows can apply to all types of organizations, from business startups, to innovation centers in large companies, and to government and non-profit agencies.
Further, his suggestions for innovation "sandboxes" may show the way to improve the outcomes of the "technology incubators" that so often provide more promise than results. If Oklahoma were to consider this approach, it might get more people off the dole and back to work quicker. It would even help just to have State support in paying fees for Provisional Patent and Trademark Applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
In the interest of full disclosure, I live on disability and the State dole. I have three engineering degrees and a Ph.D., all currently useless. I'm stuck on the dole because if I earn just one dollar more a month, I suddenly lose many more dollars in State benefits that add up to $160 to $170 a month in expenses. A hit I can't take. This is no myth. A nice lady at DRS laid it out for me.
What if the State, using all the methods advocated by Reis, started doing small scale experiments in changing DHS rules and OSBDC programs to see if more people could get off the dole, and create jobs and businesses. Wouldn't it be worth a try? It's called split-testing, and has been proven to work in business. It wouldn't be kicking people off the dole or cutting benefits to save money. It would using some seed money to find the best ways, plural, to get the American dream back on track. Whatever works. How could either political Party rationally disagree with that?
I've heard that the Legislature is considering changes in DHS rules. If you have read Reis' book and happen to agree, please feel free to print this out and send it to your State and Federal representatives, along with your own comments.
Some are good parents and deserve their children. Some aren't and don't. Some are wise enough not to inflict themselves on innocents. Some will simply never have the joy and wonder of a family, and can only watch those who do.
What if energy was cheap again? Would we still be in this economic mess? Maybe the Democrats and Republicans both have it wrong, and it isn’t politics that will get us out, but the same kind of concentrated research and development work towards a goal that got us to the Moon. There are new and old technologies that would make that possible.
Not too long from now, we may very well have another Sputnik moment when China develops thorium reactors before we do. It used to be our technology. Is it something that we want to have to buy back from them?
The health risks of thorium are on par with radon gas, not directly toxic in small quantities, but able to stimulate tumors years after significant exposure. You are living with it right now; it’s everywhere, even in ordinary soil. The industrial risks of, and hazardous waste from, a liquid salt thorium reactor are many times less than a uranium reactor. No Chernobyl, no Three Mile Island, no China syndrome, no hydrogen explosions, no flood of neutrons to make all the surroundings highly radioactive, no bomb-grade material production, and much lower and safety shielding requirements. The reactor essentially burns all of the thorium, producing up to 1000 times less waste. So no Yucca Mountain storage site needed. Eventually, you might have one in your neighborhood or utility closet.
There is about four times as much thorium in the world as uranium. Together, Australia, the U.S. and Canada hold from 35 to 56% of those reserves, depending on who is doing the estimating. At current power consumption, the reserves in North America could last well over 500 years. Long enough to develop other energy sources and start mining the asteroids for it.
Because the reactor does not require all of the safety requirements and inspections, or highly trained and paid personnel to run, or the heavy shielding and pressure containment of a uranium reactor, it is much cheaper to build and run. At 1000KW per person, five of the proposed reactors, about the size of a railroad tanker car, could supply the greater Tulsa area. One estimate puts the initial cost of those reactors at 125 million dollars, once the new-technology costs have been reduced. The personal cost of the fuel and maintenance thereafter is estimated to be less than a dollar a year.
The U.S. Navy is putting modest amounts of R&D money into another technology it wants for use on its ships, called aneutronic fusion. A proton and a boron11 nucleus combine to produce three very energetic alpha particles, or helium nuclei. These positively charged particles can be used directly to produce electricity. Potential efficiencies could be in electricity production could be very high, estimated by one source at 80 to 85%. Since no neutrons are emitted, the process does not generate radioactive waste. One estimate puts operating of a commercial plant at 2020. There is even more boron in the world than thorium.
And guess who else is working on it? Iran. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing – a Sputnik moment with Iran.
How could this energy be put to use? One technology can kill several birds with one stone, the artificial synthesis of methyl alcohol or methanol. All it requires is electricity, carbon dioxide and water. The Indianapolis 500 has required its use in Indie cars since a fiery and horrific multiple-car pileup of gasoline engine cars. With some modifications to internal combustion engines to account for extra corrosion problems, it can be used now. It has already been used in a fuel called M85, which is 85% methanol and 15% gasoline.
Furthermore, fuel cells are being developed that can turn methanol and air back into electricity, carbon dioxide and water. According to Wikipedia, methanol has ten times the energy density of the highly compressed hydrogen proposed for hydrogen-powered cars, and 15 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, the current technology used in electric cars. Methanol can be dispensed from current service station pumps, and does not depend upon the foreign importation of lithium from Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and, you guessed it, China. I think that it could eventually replace natural gas in existing pipelines, and reduce the environmental problems caused by fracking.
Notice that it also removes carbon dioxide from the air. It can also be used as a feedstock to synthesize other organic compounds. So that part, not either burned or consumed in a fuel cell, if used in the production of solid compounds like plastic, paints and construction materials, could take carbon dioxide out of the air almost permanently.
The way the Oklahoma Mental Health Code is administered, it’s not about healing. Whatever good intentions people may have had when they wrote this flawed set of standards, it has degenerated into state-sponsored exploitation and bigotry.
Am I an expert on any of this? Imagine a horse making a rude noise from either end. I’m just a guy who got caught in society’s undertow and started reading up on it so that I could express myself as fully and accurately as possible.
But let’s back up a bit. I’ve had psychiatrists tell me that I’m not self-aware when I disagree with them. It’s a common tactic when they wish to impose their way of thinking, through the intimidation of the greater authority and opportunity to mess up one’s life with involuntary treatment. From my point of view, they have much in common with evangelists and threats of hell. Except that psychiatrists can make it come true in this life if one chooses one’s words poorly.
We’ve all seen people work themselves up into a perfect frenzy over things they think threaten their persons, lives, property and standard of living. For conservatives, it’s things like welfare mothers and Cadillacs, lack of personal responsibility, sharia law and one-world government. For liberals it includes gun control and political incorrectness, which covers a huge area in their psyche. For some people on the other side of the world, it’s things like the oppressive and creeping influence of Western corruption and imperialism. Political and religious hot buttons all.
Due to some rather unpleasant events in my life, and the ways I’ve been forced to look at it, at any time I can get a spontaneous and unwelcome echo either from past events, or the infinite possibilities of physical and verbal assault in the present. It feels almost real, and makes my body react. It’s very similar to the way that other people get upset about things, but mostly I know that it’s not real, that it’s unproductive, and that I don’t like it.
Other people can feel this way perfectly convinced of their truth and righteousness. But if I feel that way and know that it’s not real, it’s not self-knowledge, politics or religion, it’s a classification in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Not to mention a psychiatrist hot to tell me so. If a Christian admits that he or she is flawed and a sinner, that’s religion and protected by the Constitution. But if I admit that I’m flawed and don’t like the way I think sometimes, it’s a handle for a self-righteous and unscrupulous psychiatrists (not all are) to attempt forcing changes in behavior through involuntary drugging and incarceration. And then they expect me to thank them for it.
For example, consider the way that the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health follows the conservative standard of “personal responsibility”. At least one counselor, with the approval of TCBH, tells any involuntarily incarcerated inmate who is having trouble coping with the rest of society, that there is one common denominator in all those contacts. “And that’s you,” she says, making the inmate responsible for every reaction that ever comes from involuntary abuse or violence in the past. You just try that with a Black American complaining about racism, or a victim of rape complaining about sexual innuendos, and see how far you get. The people who get out of TCBH generally don’t get out because they have been helped or cured. They get out because they have toed the line and are now too frightened of future “treatment” to expose what ills or hurts they have, and may be left to fester in socially-approved silence.
The State Mental Health Code not only makes it legitimate to do this to a person still suffering from violence and abuse, either it or its administration makes it legitimate or common to incarcerate a person on any complaint from allegedly normal people, no matter how poorly an investigation of the facts of false, malicious or trivial allegations was done; no matter how inaccurate or malfeasant the mental health evaluation and evaluators; no matter how bigoted the assumptions or actions of the investigators or evaluators; no matter how poorly that person was represented and informed by public counsel; no matter how thoroughly the Judge abrogated his or her responsibilities in favor of rubber-stamping the evaluators; no matter how uninformed, poorly trained, or far back in the dark ages of medicine the investigators, evaluators and Judge may live; and no matter how unethically the State and local authorities treated that person’s rights to due process and equal treatment under the law.
Perhaps not many would stand up and testify, “Yes, they did this to me, too.” It’s not only an unpleasant topic, but in doing so any person who has been involuntarily committed risks both added adverse action from the State, and abandonment even by family. No matter what the unethical or illegitimate circumstances of a commitment, the commitment itself will be held up as a reason to disregard any testimony. It’s like trying to swim in an undertow. One of which most of society seems to approve, as it once did of segregation.
The racist grandmother of a friend would reportedly hurl epithets at any passing Black American. Her justification? “They don’t look like us. They don’t walk like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t even smell like us. They’re just different.” Tulsa and Oklahoma seem to be saying the same things about the people they secretly lock up in the gulag of facilities like TCBH.
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Posted by: Don B
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Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
But a matchmaking business? Yeah, I know. I’m old, I’m ugly, I’m poor and my health isn’t so good. Even if one did get find it by accident looking at dating sites on the internet, who would I be kidding? But a callback from matchmaking business? Here you go looking for one of the most intimate and private relationships one can possibly have, and they use a robo-caller. With boiler room noise. Nothing says romance like a robo-caller, eh? I’d say it sets a new standard.
***
Somehow, I just don’t believe in trickle-down economics. What the first George Bush called “voodoo economics”. Tell me how many ordinary middle class jobs Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have created out of their own millions of income. How many factories have they built? How many stores have they opened? How many new technologies have they helped to create making direct venture capital investments in small businesses with their own money? How many microloans have they made to help ordinary people? How many mortgages have they or their wealth personally financed to help people reach the American Dream? Without a record of experience and accomplishment like that, who are they to tell us that they can lead us out of the recession. Without efforts like those, it's all just posturing to justify paying lower taxes than middle class working people.
And Obama reminds me of an old joke of mine. You know you might be a lawyer if your pants are on fire. But if the fire has spread from your pants to your belly, then you know you’re a politician.
Speaking of lawyers; they like to build their arguments on the “reasonable person” hypothesis. A “reasonable person” is one whose thoughts and actions are so right and reasonable, that no one could possibly disagree with them. A lawyer often tells a jury what a “reasonable person” would think and find to save the jury the trouble of being reasonable persons and thinking for themselves. I say again, let’s send that guy to Congress – then we’ll get something done. Or dare one say, President?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Does anyone else remember what happened to the last tell-it-like-it-is, verbal bomb throwing, true conservative Presidential candidate who went up against a liberal Democrat? I’ll give you some hints. His comments on how to use nuclear weapons in Asia and the Kremlin prompted one of the most successful negative TV ads in history, a little girl counting flower petals, followed by a countdown to a mushroom cloud. He lost in a landslide of those voting for Lyndon Baines Johnson. He earned the nickname “Barry the Bomber”.
Do you want to scare an independent at election time? Run an ad asking, “Nuclear Newt – do you really want his finger on the trigger?” Or run one of a Federal Judge handing down a decision that an independent would like, but would upset the Religious Right. Followed by men in black masks throwing a hood over the Judge in court, and dragging him off to Guantanamo.
Nor are Romney and Paul immune. Romney’s idea of job creation could be depicted by an entire generation of workers wearing McDonald’s uniforms. An effective attack ad might contrast Romney’s idea of a mortgage problem to those of the rest of us. This man who thinks that $375,000 in speaking and book income is pocket change. And imagine an ad showing tyrants, terrorists and China going hog wild after Paul pulls U.S. military forces out of even friendly countries. Or starving children and seniors after WIC, food stamps and social security are cut off.
Of course, President Barrack Obama is no LBJ. LBJ had a long history of arm-twisting success getting things done in the Congress, and was a gun-rights Democrat who actively hunted. Obama, on the other hand, merely promised fidelity to the Second Amendment in his campaign. After which high officials of his employ in the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms set up Operation “Fast and Furious”, which instructed firearms dealers in southern border states to allow suspect sales to proceed, sending hundreds of guns to drug cartels in Mexico.
Why? To gin up a campaign for gun control justified by phony claims that most drug guns in Mexico come from firearms dealers in the U.S. And what about dead Mexicans and one U.S. Border Patrol Officer? According to the statements of high BATF officials, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” Naturally, President Obama and his supporters in the news media don’t want that buck stopping at his desk. But it raises the potential for a truly effective attack ad addressing Obama’s honesty, and the reckless disregard of his administration for the human lives of people of color south of the border.
Our parties sure know how to pick ‘em.
It has been written that George Washington didn’t campaign to be the Father of our country. That he simply did it because it needed to be done, he was qualified, and no one else was available. The current crop of contenders merely illustrate the old adage that the person who most wants to run for an office is usually the one least qualified to fill it. Or that testosterone poisoning may win votes, but it doesn’t solve problems.
Re: Future Election Shock
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Let us consider the last, conflict of interest. For the 1995 Session, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission of the Virginia General Assembly presented a “Review of the Involuntary Commitment Process”. In the main this report considered the budgetary costs and possible improvements in the expense of mental health operations in the State of Virginia. Thus any humanitarian or civil liberty improvement recommended also had to have the effect of reducing the expenditures for such operations.
Recommendation (26) stated “for adult commitment hearings … a qualified evaluator who is not and will not be treating the individual, who has no significant financial interest, and who is not employed by the facility to which the individual will be committed should complete the mental health evaluation. The independent evaluator should also be expected to attend and testify at the commitment hearing.” In other words, those who run a State mental facility should be strictly divorced from the process of deciding who gets put there, so as to avoid an abuse of power, incarcerating individuals without true necessity, that would cost the State money. And they should show up and be prepared to justify their findings, possibly subject to cross-examination.
Title 43A almost says that, but not quite. 43A-1-105 states, “No person admitted to any facility shall be considered or presumed to be mentally or legally incompetent except those persons who have been determined to be mentally or legally incompetent in separate and independent proceedings of an appropriate district court.” But it does not adequately state how those proceedings shall be “separate and independent”.
43A-5-104 states, “Any person who intentionally falsely attests to the mental illness, alcohol dependency, or drug dependency of any person, or whose false attestations as to mental illness, alcohol dependency, or drug dependency of any person is proved to be the result of negligence or deficient professional skill, or who signs such an evaluation or petition for pecuniary reward, or promise thereof, or other consideration of value or operating to his or her advantage, other than the professional fee usually paid for such service, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by payment of a fine not to exceed One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00), or imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one (1) year, or both such fine and imprisonment.” But it does not explicitly recognize that this could be a problem in allowing mental facility personnel to effectively decide for the Mental Health Court Judge who should be committed to the facility.
43A-10-109a.A.7 states that uniform policies for ODMHSAS personnel shall ensure that “no employee whose responsibilities relate in any manner to services provided to or on behalf of a vulnerable adult is subject to a conflict of interest which would impair the ability of the employee to carry out his or her employment duties in an impartial manner”. Yet it does not fully and explicitly define and enumerate possible conflicts of interest, such as the unethical practice of allowing treating physicians at the facility to decide for the Mental Health Court Judge who needs their involuntary “help”.
While 43A clearly indicates that it is a bad idea for the staff of an State or State-sponsored mental facility to make the evaluation or decision for involuntary commitment, for the jailers to decide who gets jailed, it does not does not make explicit prohibitions against such unethical behavior. Except in a round-about manner it 43A-5-104.
This ignores the long and squalid history of psychiatric institutions abusing their legal powers and patients. Psychiatrists and counselors at mental facilities have a natural tendency and self-interest to find that people need their services. Some decades past, such mental facilities were forced to release most of their inmates because of horrible abuses and inhumane treatment. For example, one harmless man was kept for years because he played an imaginary trumpet, and another for talking to an imaginary wife. But no one took up the slack with out-patien programs for those people, so they became the mentally ill homeless sleeping on the streets up to today. Even after that, psychiatric hospitals have been caught in insurance scams, snatching ordinary people off the streets and committing them just to milk their medical insurance. Even children.
So when, as in the City and County of Tulsa, the Mental Health Court Judge depends almost exclusively upon the evaluations of mental facility personnel, there are no checks and balances to restrict commitments to those who need such “help” and have no other alternative. The commitment process is not “separate and independent” as required in 43A-1-105, and taxpayers bear the burden. For an involuntary commitment, the treating psychiatrist from the facility can be the “witness”, “mental health evaluator” and petitioner for commitment. Thus ensuring a steady supply of involuntary “consumers”.
Furthermore, once an inmate is incarcerated, the facility psychiatrists and other personnel are the sole arbiters of who gets out when. Because the Judge typically rubber-stamps their decisions, disagreeing only to keep an inmate longer. This is a corrupt and corrupting system, costing the State money by filling beds without true medical necessity, and having them full when those people, if any, who really need such help can’t get it. There are no true checks and balances.
I defy anyone involved in this sordid process to demonstrate otherwise. Especially that any significant number of people brought before it, allegedly to be “helped”, have actually escaped it. Title 43A states in several places that those who are found not to be in need or are no longer in need of such “consumer services” shall be released immediately. Yet where are any independent checks and balances to make sure that this is done? They don’t exist. The local Mental Health Court Judge and mental facility will even go so far as to deny that an individual’s psychiatrists of long standing exist or have any say in the process. And if those psychiatrists are employed by the State, say at the University of Oklahoma, they will abandon a patient to avoid any confrontation with their fellow State employees. So much for the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm”.
Until the State Legislature sees fit to cease imposing its bent version of Sharia Law upon those of us with mental illness, until it restores to us and protects our constitutional rights to be treated with equal justice and due process, many more will face this psychiatric tyranny. And have their lives permanently damaged in this ugly process.
I contend that the shortcut of allowing mental facility to do the mental health evaluations that determine the need for commitment cannot save any money. That in the long run, this can only be done by accepting the cost of bringing in outside and truly independent mental health evaluators, who have utterly no self-interest in filling beds in the facility.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
From the late 1980s to late 1990s, a scandal erupted in mental health care. Private mental institutions in states from Nevada to Texas to Florida used tactics such as dragooning people off the streets or enrolling them in false dieting programs. Some of them paid bounties to outside contractors to drag people in, much like medical schools of past centuries paid grave robbers for cadavers to dissect. Just so the mental hospitals could milk medical insurance. Military families and veterans were favorite targets because of generous benefits. The impact, especially on children, was horrific.
It is unknown if mental facilities sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services milk insurance. But there is no doubt that they prey on the misery of others. One may wonder if they keep their jobs by inflating evaluations of illness and “dangerousness” just to keep enough beds filled. Then, as one outside mental health case manager noted, when someone has a real crisis, the beds are too often full.
Where is our legal system in all this? The local mental health court is part of the city/county District Court. Each Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court supervises the District Courts in a designated section of the State. One might think that this would mean actively assuring that equal standards of justice, evidence and due process apply to all who come before those courts. Apparently not. One can complain to the Supervising Justice about gross violations in a local court, but one cannot expect to get any response.
As it happens, the Justice in charge of this section shares Dr. King’s much abused color. He arguably holds the highest position of his race in this State. His lack of response, along with some rulings and opinions of Justice Clarence Thomas, demonstrates that even a man of color in the highest position does not flinch from applying Jim Crow law to a minority that is not his.
Re: Love Letters/Hate Mail
Are you familiar with the term "rhetorical question"? One hears that even journalists use it on occasion to stimulate deeper realization and thinking.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The AT&T agent offered me DSL service for $14.95 a month, and led me to believe that my voice line service would be about $20 a month plus surcharges, adding up to about $27, with a ¼ payment for the $51 new customer charge. Since the first bill covered only Oct 21st to Oct 26th, voice line services were prorated and the October 27th bill came to $54.74.
The next bill (November 27th) came to a whopping $88.04, in large part because the internet charge was $39.90 instead of $14.95. A typical bait and switch. In my 15 months of service I have had to call repeatedly to get bills adjusted. AT&T made repeated promises to fix my bill for good, and except for one month, never kept them. Including the first DSL charge, the charges have been as follows: $39.90 (November 2010), $39.06, $24.55 CR(credit), $35.00, $14.95, $5.10 CR, $35.00, $9.95, $30.00, $30.00, $10.91 CR, $5.10 CR, $5.10 CR, $44.22 (Dec 2012). Note that the amount of $14.95 appears only once in that list – one out of fourteen.
In January 2011, after getting the previous bill adjusted, followed by an overcharge again in December, I sent an e-mail complaining of billing fraud. AT&T promptly followed this with threat to disconnect service for allegedly unpaid charges of $58.62, which were never explained. Not even the AT&T agent who next adjusted my bill could explain where that came from.
Either the AT&T billing system is so unnecessarily complicated that neither its employees nor its computers can understand and deal with it, or it is set up this way deliberately, to extract higher fees from people who don’t want to argue about it, especially the elderly. In my opinion, it rises to the level of wire fraud and should be investigated as such. For anyone who wants to see, I’ve set up a web site with the entire set of bills and my phone notes at
http://www.android-originals.com/blogs/AT&T Mess/AT&T Mess.html
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I miss the American Dream. Losing the Dream has been devastating to both my physical and mental health. The last time I was happy, I had a job and hope for the future. I want my own place, both to live and in productive society. I want to build a business, or at least a secure retirement. I don’t ever want to worry about homelessness again.
So I would really appreciate it if one of your staffers could take the time to find and send me the name of the millionaire or billionaire who is willing to offer me either a job or venture capital - out of his humongous tax cuts.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The Oklahoma Mental Health Code, Title 43A, states in section 43A-5-411.A, Rights of an individual alleged to require treatment, “An individual alleged to be a person requiring treatment shall have the following rights:”. They include in A.6 “The right to present and to cross-examine witnesses. The petitioner and witnesses identified in the petition shall offer testimony under oath at the hearing on the petition. …” As I understand it, the legal meaning of “shall” is mandatory. This is the way that it must be done to be legal. So when the petitioner and alleged “witnesses” don’t show up, and the Judge even cuts off the defendant when the defendant tries to explain what happened, the Judge has violated the defendant’s rights under law, denying to that defendant the due process of law.
And when the Public Pretender doesn’t even bother to object to this state of affairs, the defendant effectively has no counsel, as mandated in 43A-5-411.A.2. The would be the same Public Pretender who in 43A-5-411.D.1 “shall immediately, upon meeting with the person alleged to be a person requiring treatment, present to such person a statement of the (person’s) rights, including all rights afforded to persons alleged to be a person requiring treatment by the Oklahoma and the United States Constitutions.” (That didn’t happen.) This provision is repeated in 43A-5-401.D.1, which the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services has falsely listed on its web site as “REPEALED” since at least 2003.
The only fig leaf the Mental Health Court might point to appears in 43A-5-401.J, -5-415.C.2 and -5-511.D.1, where the law states that “If a jury trial is not demanded, the court may take as evidence and act upon” the evaluations, affidavits and reports presented the mental health examiners. Only in 5-401.J, which the ODMHSAS would have “REPEALED”, does it say “without further evidence being presented”. In legal terms, one would think that “may” is merely permissive and incapable of dispensing with due process rights for the personal, political or prejudicial convenience of a Judge. The clause does not say that the defendant may not or shall not be allowed to present testimony, evidence and witnesses.
So when a Judge overrides a defendant’s protests of innocence and attempts to tell the true story, and allows the mental facility, which will receive the benefit of another warm body to justify its existence, to be the sole source of evidence and evaluation, one is justified in calling this a kangaroo court. And when, after the damage is already done, one must discover for one’s self the nature and extent of violations of due process and civil liberties, without any help from the local or state legal community, one may reasonably suspect that legal community of being a nest of bigots.
Re: Aqua Marine
Re: Love Letters/Hate Mail
If you want to cut down on crime and violence, stop child abuse.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
For example, one of the white grad students in our Department had come back from Malawi in Africa with a black African wife, after a stint in the Peace Corps, or something like. He told of having black children flee from him in a terror that he would catch them and eat them. And how in her culture, cats are considered demonic creatures with no bones. One time, he said, they were visiting in this country and a kitten crawled up on her lap. She swatted it across the room. She was a nice woman, not the kind of woman to go hunting other people’s pets, but could not tolerate that kitten upon her body.
In Oklahoma, a habitual liar with a grudge could simply claim that his wife had threatened her cats, and that the liar was afraid his wife would attack her as well. Then, under the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, the Tulsa Police and the local community mental health emergency service would be only too willing to forgo any investigation beyond consulting the liar, and happy to drag her off to a local Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services facility. Where State counselors and psychiatrists would be only too happy to declare her paranoid, delusional and unfit to run her own life, without their special care in an involuntary commitment. With which the local mental health court would be only too pleased to agree.
All because she grew up in a different culture, had different experiences from theirs, and ran afoul of someone willing to make false charges. So here’s an important question, can State psychiatrists in State facilities tell the difference between a delusion and a cultural belief, or is it just their cultural belief that they can?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
An Oklahoma State psychiatrist or an Arkansas orthopedist - take your pick.
Re: Forbidden Fantasy
Well, I don't get to watch public television any more, or much else. My Digital TV adapter doesn't pick it up. But I did notice lately that NPR's coverage of the Congress grilling Attorney General Eric Holder refers to Operation Fast and Furious as a "flawed program" in which "mistakes" were made. As if it had nothing to do with creating the liberal myth that most of the Mexican drug cartel guns come from over the border in the U.S., not from the black market in Central America. The BATF insisted that gun dealers who raised objections to suspicious purchases let them go through. Then didn't even tell its own people in Mexico what was going on. If you bend over backwards far enough to satisfy your extremist base of any stripe, you might find yourself crawling into a deep, black hole.
Re: Culture Matters
Re: Behind the Times
There's a good book I've been reading, "The Lean Startup" by Eric Reis, available at Amazon.com for less than $30. It discusses, among other things, how in many large businesses separate departments come to demand more and more of the pie, and sabotage other departments. In other words, office politics. Wouldn't it be nice if we could dispense with the bickering between dogmatic politicians, and concentrate on what works? Reis offers a way out that he shows can apply to all types of organizations, from business startups, to innovation centers in large companies, and to government and non-profit agencies.
Further, his suggestions for innovation "sandboxes" may show the way to improve the outcomes of the "technology incubators" that so often provide more promise than results. If Oklahoma were to consider this approach, it might get more people off the dole and back to work quicker. It would even help just to have State support in paying fees for Provisional Patent and Trademark Applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
In the interest of full disclosure, I live on disability and the State dole. I have three engineering degrees and a Ph.D., all currently useless. I'm stuck on the dole because if I earn just one dollar more a month, I suddenly lose many more dollars in State benefits that add up to $160 to $170 a month in expenses. A hit I can't take. This is no myth. A nice lady at DRS laid it out for me.
What if the State, using all the methods advocated by Reis, started doing small scale experiments in changing DHS rules and OSBDC programs to see if more people could get off the dole, and create jobs and businesses. Wouldn't it be worth a try? It's called split-testing, and has been proven to work in business. It wouldn't be kicking people off the dole or cutting benefits to save money. It would using some seed money to find the best ways, plural, to get the American dream back on track. Whatever works. How could either political Party rationally disagree with that?
I've heard that the Legislature is considering changes in DHS rules. If you have read Reis' book and happen to agree, please feel free to print this out and send it to your State and Federal representatives, along with your own comments.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
What's the difference between a State psychiatrist and a real Doctor? One heals. The other creates fear. The bigots like it that way.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Not too long from now, we may very well have another Sputnik moment when China develops thorium reactors before we do. It used to be our technology. Is it something that we want to have to buy back from them?
The health risks of thorium are on par with radon gas, not directly toxic in small quantities, but able to stimulate tumors years after significant exposure. You are living with it right now; it’s everywhere, even in ordinary soil. The industrial risks of, and hazardous waste from, a liquid salt thorium reactor are many times less than a uranium reactor. No Chernobyl, no Three Mile Island, no China syndrome, no hydrogen explosions, no flood of neutrons to make all the surroundings highly radioactive, no bomb-grade material production, and much lower and safety shielding requirements. The reactor essentially burns all of the thorium, producing up to 1000 times less waste. So no Yucca Mountain storage site needed. Eventually, you might have one in your neighborhood or utility closet.
There is about four times as much thorium in the world as uranium. Together, Australia, the U.S. and Canada hold from 35 to 56% of those reserves, depending on who is doing the estimating. At current power consumption, the reserves in North America could last well over 500 years. Long enough to develop other energy sources and start mining the asteroids for it.
Because the reactor does not require all of the safety requirements and inspections, or highly trained and paid personnel to run, or the heavy shielding and pressure containment of a uranium reactor, it is much cheaper to build and run. At 1000KW per person, five of the proposed reactors, about the size of a railroad tanker car, could supply the greater Tulsa area. One estimate puts the initial cost of those reactors at 125 million dollars, once the new-technology costs have been reduced. The personal cost of the fuel and maintenance thereafter is estimated to be less than a dollar a year.
See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html
http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_costs/thorium_costs.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cyclehttp://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
The U.S. Navy is putting modest amounts of R&D money into another technology it wants for use on its ships, called aneutronic fusion. A proton and a boron11 nucleus combine to produce three very energetic alpha particles, or helium nuclei. These positively charged particles can be used directly to produce electricity. Potential efficiencies could be in electricity production could be very high, estimated by one source at 80 to 85%. Since no neutrons are emitted, the process does not generate radioactive waste. One estimate puts operating of a commercial plant at 2020. There is even more boron in the world than thorium.
And guess who else is working on it? Iran. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing – a Sputnik moment with Iran.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
http://earthsociety.org/wordpress/archives/320
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/35/
http://www.crossfirefusion.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor/overview.html
http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/index.html
http://users.erols.com/iri/FocusFusion-Ver6.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
http://www.tomligon.com/fusion.htm
http://research.duke.edu/blog/archive/201103
http://www.economist.com/node/106651
and
http://books.google.com/books?id=lUUiqa8RiIUC&pg=PA359&lpg=PA359&dq=boron+fusion+reactor+success&source=bl&ots=0CWxU_v3nI&sig=uyT5ea3q0LFiadQ2DDjOFlvohgM&hl=en&ei=6auyTqKiPOXjsQK8t-X6Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFUQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=boron%20fusion%20reactor%20success&f=false
How could this energy be put to use? One technology can kill several birds with one stone, the artificial synthesis of methyl alcohol or methanol. All it requires is electricity, carbon dioxide and water. The Indianapolis 500 has required its use in Indie cars since a fiery and horrific multiple-car pileup of gasoline engine cars. With some modifications to internal combustion engines to account for extra corrosion problems, it can be used now. It has already been used in a fuel called M85, which is 85% methanol and 15% gasoline.
Furthermore, fuel cells are being developed that can turn methanol and air back into electricity, carbon dioxide and water. According to Wikipedia, methanol has ten times the energy density of the highly compressed hydrogen proposed for hydrogen-powered cars, and 15 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, the current technology used in electric cars. Methanol can be dispensed from current service station pumps, and does not depend upon the foreign importation of lithium from Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and, you guessed it, China. I think that it could eventually replace natural gas in existing pipelines, and reduce the environmental problems caused by fracking.
Notice that it also removes carbon dioxide from the air. It can also be used as a feedstock to synthesize other organic compounds. So that part, not either burned or consumed in a fuel cell, if used in the production of solid compounds like plastic, paints and construction materials, could take carbon dioxide out of the air almost permanently.
See:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie100508w
http://ses.nau.edu/AZSynFuels/literature-refs/Methanol%20Energy%20Balance.pdf
http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v69/v69-16.pdf
http://ourenergypolicy.org/docs/8/ZSWMethanolCycle.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_methanol_fuel_cell
http://www.mtimicrofuelcells.com/technology/methanol.asp
http://www.icis.com/blogs/green-chemicals/2010/07/plastics-from-biomethanol-comi.html
http://www.wiley.com/college/boyer/0470003790/cutting_edge/methanol/methanol.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Production
and
http://books.google.com/books?id=Qdnc7uK-aH8C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=methanol+electric+synthesis&source=bl&ots=tUGuaxptxp&sig=ZoFW_NQnqyARIbHEB_ZyA4zvfoo&hl=en&ei=FZ-yTsuNCoX42gXUoqHKAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=methanol%20electric%20synthesis&f=false
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Am I an expert on any of this? Imagine a horse making a rude noise from either end. I’m just a guy who got caught in society’s undertow and started reading up on it so that I could express myself as fully and accurately as possible.
But let’s back up a bit. I’ve had psychiatrists tell me that I’m not self-aware when I disagree with them. It’s a common tactic when they wish to impose their way of thinking, through the intimidation of the greater authority and opportunity to mess up one’s life with involuntary treatment. From my point of view, they have much in common with evangelists and threats of hell. Except that psychiatrists can make it come true in this life if one chooses one’s words poorly.
We’ve all seen people work themselves up into a perfect frenzy over things they think threaten their persons, lives, property and standard of living. For conservatives, it’s things like welfare mothers and Cadillacs, lack of personal responsibility, sharia law and one-world government. For liberals it includes gun control and political incorrectness, which covers a huge area in their psyche. For some people on the other side of the world, it’s things like the oppressive and creeping influence of Western corruption and imperialism. Political and religious hot buttons all.
Due to some rather unpleasant events in my life, and the ways I’ve been forced to look at it, at any time I can get a spontaneous and unwelcome echo either from past events, or the infinite possibilities of physical and verbal assault in the present. It feels almost real, and makes my body react. It’s very similar to the way that other people get upset about things, but mostly I know that it’s not real, that it’s unproductive, and that I don’t like it.
Other people can feel this way perfectly convinced of their truth and righteousness. But if I feel that way and know that it’s not real, it’s not self-knowledge, politics or religion, it’s a classification in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Not to mention a psychiatrist hot to tell me so. If a Christian admits that he or she is flawed and a sinner, that’s religion and protected by the Constitution. But if I admit that I’m flawed and don’t like the way I think sometimes, it’s a handle for a self-righteous and unscrupulous psychiatrists (not all are) to attempt forcing changes in behavior through involuntary drugging and incarceration. And then they expect me to thank them for it.
For example, consider the way that the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health follows the conservative standard of “personal responsibility”. At least one counselor, with the approval of TCBH, tells any involuntarily incarcerated inmate who is having trouble coping with the rest of society, that there is one common denominator in all those contacts. “And that’s you,” she says, making the inmate responsible for every reaction that ever comes from involuntary abuse or violence in the past. You just try that with a Black American complaining about racism, or a victim of rape complaining about sexual innuendos, and see how far you get. The people who get out of TCBH generally don’t get out because they have been helped or cured. They get out because they have toed the line and are now too frightened of future “treatment” to expose what ills or hurts they have, and may be left to fester in socially-approved silence.
The State Mental Health Code not only makes it legitimate to do this to a person still suffering from violence and abuse, either it or its administration makes it legitimate or common to incarcerate a person on any complaint from allegedly normal people, no matter how poorly an investigation of the facts of false, malicious or trivial allegations was done; no matter how inaccurate or malfeasant the mental health evaluation and evaluators; no matter how bigoted the assumptions or actions of the investigators or evaluators; no matter how poorly that person was represented and informed by public counsel; no matter how thoroughly the Judge abrogated his or her responsibilities in favor of rubber-stamping the evaluators; no matter how uninformed, poorly trained, or far back in the dark ages of medicine the investigators, evaluators and Judge may live; and no matter how unethically the State and local authorities treated that person’s rights to due process and equal treatment under the law.
Perhaps not many would stand up and testify, “Yes, they did this to me, too.” It’s not only an unpleasant topic, but in doing so any person who has been involuntarily committed risks both added adverse action from the State, and abandonment even by family. No matter what the unethical or illegitimate circumstances of a commitment, the commitment itself will be held up as a reason to disregard any testimony. It’s like trying to swim in an undertow. One of which most of society seems to approve, as it once did of segregation.
The racist grandmother of a friend would reportedly hurl epithets at any passing Black American. Her justification? “They don’t look like us. They don’t walk like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t even smell like us. They’re just different.” Tulsa and Oklahoma seem to be saying the same things about the people they secretly lock up in the gulag of facilities like TCBH.