The Washington Post has an interesting article on mass murderers at http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/predicting-violence-is-a-work-in-progress/2013/01/03/2e8955b8-5371-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html
But, trust the math- and science-challenged Post. On page 2, it lists success rates of 1/3 (Monahan) and/or 41% (http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4692?view=long&pmid=22833604) in predicting violence as "slightly better than chance". That would be a success rate of better than 50%. They fail to mention that the figure of 41% was the median of a interquartile range of (27%-60%). Median is not the same as average, which is the generally accepted way to express statistical expectation. You might want to check the math and statistics.
The abstract of the British Medical Journal articles says: Conclusions Although risk assessment tools are widely used in clinical and criminal justice settings, their predictive accuracy varies depending on how they are used. They seem to identify low risk individuals with high levels of accuracy, but their use as sole determinants of detention, sentencing, and release is not supported by the current evidence. Further research is needed to examine their contribution to treatment and management.
At the end of the 1960s, I forget exactly what the chief environmental concern was, probably acid rain. But I met this hippy dude who had the answer to it all. Somehow I doubted that he could explain the chemistry or physics, exactly what was affecting what how, the amplitude, frequency or type: particle, acoustic or electromagnetic. But he knew what was causing it all. It was what those jet airplanes high up in the atmosphere were putting out. It was Vibrations.
Now I hear that other people have the answer to the cause of all our economic woes. They may not be able to tell you which ones affect businesses and families how. They may not be able to tell you which ones are good and which are bad, or why. But they know that it's what government puts upon the marketplace. It's Regulations.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the shovel that dug this hole the unaccountable, unwise and unethical excesses of mortgage lenders and investment firms? Those Ponzi schemes and banks "to big to fail"? Those byzantine derivative trades in imaginary financial value? And less regulation would have helped us avoid that how, exactly? Will the people with all the answers kindly explain, in detail, with evidence that can be confirmed, exactly how we got from the budget surpluses under Clinton to our current fine mess. Not that I would credit any President for budget surpluses, but didn't we have a conservative Republican anti-regulation administration between then and now?
Whether it's a long-haired bearded hippy or a short-haired Tea Party partisan spouting them, I don't see how, without some deeper thought, mere buzzwords give us much hope for something better.
Right on, Scott. Mr. Hamilton is a decent man and humanitarian who seems to have little if any experience with and expertise in firearms. If he did, he would know that even revolvers, which fire "with every pull of the trigger", can be reloaded in about a second or so with a speed clip. And I think that a .357 magnum round would probably penetrate multiple small victims, whereas a .223 round would might blow up in the first one. An ugly math, that.
Personally, I don't think a single CLEET training course would be enough. Any school official who is going that route would be well advised to join or form a practical shooting club, and practice safe handling and scenarios monthly. Or, they could train with law enforcement officers on a regular basis, if those organizations run practical shooting schools. For those who can afford it, there are defensive combat firearms courses, such as those at Gunsite, which one can read about in most firearms magazines.
Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Hamilton has ever been to a shooting range, and observed the absolute emphasis that most if not all place upon safety and respect for innocent human life.
There was a time when I was living in hell and needed someone to come see about me. I'd been maimed and disabled by a drinking driver, and given the kind of hospital experience you might wish on Sadaam Hussein. I got the impression that Baptist thinking at the time concluded that it would only weaken people with cancer (my departed Aunt, among others) and crushed bones to give them enough painkiller to rest comfortably, and tempt them onto the road to addiction. My job had gone away when I couldn't take a vain Zebco executive's verbal abuse. I had gone back to graduate school in Colorado to work on physical therapy and getting my life back together, but was reliving that hospital experience every night.
I'd hear from Mom about family going to the ski slopes almost every winter, often in the same state. But no one came to visit me. Well, why see about a brother in hell when you can Praise His Name on the slopes. Maybe it was a Christian family values package tour. I really learned to hate Christmas then. Job might have understood, but he had the advantage of a good family life before God let Satan put him on the ash heap.
I seem to recall that Christ told the Pharisees (aggresively proud of their religiousity and truthyness) that they were like whitewashed tombs, gleaming on the outside, bones and corruption on the inside. Sonehow I don't think that Christ died on a cross just to have his followers walk around with one inserted next to their backbones. If for no other reason than it's terribly constipating.
So you can coexist with people who have guns and mental illnesses, and don't have to worry about someone with the combination going postal, especially at school. Then stop child abuse, and give everyone a valued productive place in society of which they can be proud, whatever their abilities. Until you have done that, you haven't yet done much of anything.
Now imagine someone in a schoolroom skilled with a sword or machete. You can always find a bogeyman to justify something you want to do, that makes a criminal out of someone else who has not done and will not do anything to hurt you. It's called propaganda. It's what is bad when directed at you, but good when directed elsewhere, especially if it serves as a shield to prove that you are "reasonable" to your detractors.
Especially detractors who have misused power over you. People who have or are fighting for the rights of people with mental illnesses to be free of bigotry have blamed "high-capacity magazines" for the deaths in Connecticut. The NRA has, just as wrongfully and stupidly in my opinion, directed criticism away from magazines and onto people with mental illnesses, asking for an expansion of the NICS.
I'm not sure I have enough personal courage to go around wearing black triangles or six-pointed stars in protest. Although in the large majority, Jews weren't the only ones to die by gassing or in the Nazi camps. Black would have been my color. On January 1st, I wrote to the people on the Yarrow Campus in Tulsa asking for help with a legal problem on that basis. No response. Perhaps it's fear of association.
Consider all the laws in different places that have been passed on this kind of reasoning: you can't tell which Jew will cheat you; you can't tell which Arab will throw a bomb; you can't tell which Black will rape a white woman; you can't tell which person with mental illness will go postal; you can't tell which "assault weapon" or "high capacity magazine" will be used to kill. Guilt by association, without need of individual proof. Somewhere I read that our Constitution is supposed to be against that.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. - Dorthy Parker
My family didn't abandon me physically after the car wreck. My parents gave me a place to stay while I was on the walker and not released to go back to work. And when I came back to Tulsa, she came with me to help out, because I couldn't drive. I couldn't even walk down stairs at Pelican's Wharf. I had to bump down on my butt. Carefully.
The way PTSD works, if you can't talk it out, then according to medical research, it stands a good chance of becoming permanent. Every time I tried to, my family refused to hear about it, often claiming that by doing so I was only hurting myself. Some even jeered.
I forgave Mom because she's given me so much other love and support. But it hurt. And the others ... I don't have the kind of family that necessarily demonstrates the love and values I've read that Christ asked of his followers.
What Public Defenders in the Mental Illness section ought to be doing
I came across this in Google, searching on the term: mental illness zealous counsel
[PDF] Working with Clients - Indigent Defense Services www.ncids.org/other%20manuals/.../Appendix%20C_new.pdf File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat Even though we are trained to zealously advocate for our clients, we are only ... procedures, is designed to require that the prosecuting attorney must make the .... evidence and conclusions regarding mental illness and danger, thereby
For some reason, Google now makes it hard to extract a clean URL.
It was a little sickening to download and read, because it shows what we don't get here in Oklahoma.
If you are like me, you never heard of him before today, or knew that he was an internet prodigy who helped to develop technologies that millions use. He also had trouble with depression. The news says that he believed in an open and free internet, and that the U.S. Justice Department was prosecuting him to the limit for downloading millions of pages from the online journal library, JSTOR, without paying for them.
I don't agree with Swartz's action, but I think I know how he felt. Some say that genius and madness are close. Witness the painter Vincent van Gogh, his missing ear and his reported suicide. More like, it's because anyone with depression who wants to feel good about something has to try harder. Whether it is art, science, engineering or some other challenge, sometimes, if not often, only the satisfaction of accomplishment can ease the pain. Otherwise, it's like Prometheus, with his liver growing back time after time just so the eagle can tear it out and eat it again, bit by agonizing little bit.
The loss of all hope of accomplishment is worse than death. In its zeal to prosecute and make an example of him, this is what the U.S. Department of Justice took from Aaron Swartz. Almost like it did when the FBI went to prove its manhood on the Branch Davidians. But this time, they took out someone who arguably had a lot more to contribute to the world. Someone whose future work might conceivably have helped with the battle against terrorists. All over a philosophical difference that JSTOR reportedly didn't want to prosecute, and already-published academic information that had no apparent national security implications.
Oddly enough, some people never seem to realize that when they start a peter-matching contest, the only peters anyone else can see are the ones sticking up above their shirt collars. Something the Justice Department has a hard time learning. So if yahoos are cheering or jeering about this death, the hell with them.
What do the two states, one ranking near the bottom in education and health care, have in common? Apparently, it's the acceptance of "negative charting" in health care as "good faith" performance of state employee duties in the first case, and "proper" in the second. "Negative charting" has at least two different definitions in health care. It can be a) not recording ordinary or normal conditions on a patient's chart, or b) doing exactly the opposite, and recording normal results which would be "negative" indications of illness, or c) emphasizing only negative aspects of the patient's condition in order to ensure insurance payments. Depends on who you ask.
Since at least 1995, both Congress and the U.S. Government Accounting Office have recognized definition (c) as health care fraud. See GAO Reports 95-17, Medicare: Allegations Against ABC Home Health Care, and Waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare program : joint hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and Environment and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, May 16, 1995 (1995)
The State of Florida thinks so, too, in it's training on the Florida Baker Act, it's own mental health and commitment law. See www.bakeracttraining.org/files/faq/ba-receiving_facilities.pdf, page 29: "Since negative charting for the purpose of obtaining insurance payments would be inappropriate, one would assume that the insurers aren't aware of Florida law."
As does the Journal of Financial Crime. See Brian K. Payne, (2006) "Problems controlling fraud and abuse in the home health care field: Voices of fraud control unit directors", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 13 Iss: 1, pp.77 - 91. At least, one would suppose so from Mr. Payne's other publications, such as White-Collar Crime: The Essentials, Brian K. Payne, Sage Publ, Los Angeles, London, etc.; Chap IV Crimes in the Health Care System, p 83: "Types of home health care fraud include providing unnecessary services, billing the system for services that were not provided to the client, overcharging, forgery, negative charting, substitute workers, double billing and kickbacks." Which Mr. Payne held earlier in "Crime in the Home Health Care Field - Workplace Violence, Fraud, and Abuse", Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Ltd., Springfield, IL; 2003.
But not the State of Mississippi, which in its Court of Appeals in Whitt v. MMRC, Case No. 95-CA-00946 COA, 8/12/97, it held that, "The difference between negative charting and false charting is that false charting is lying; whereas, negative charting is a form of documentation used by home health care nurses which focuses on the problems of the patient, and not the positive aspects of the patient's health. By focusing on the negative, Medicare payments are assured. ... Negative charting is a widely accepted practice within the profession [home health care]. ... Whitt has not shown that she was asked to falsify records, but merely asked to change the records to reflect proper negative charting, a procedure widely recognized in the home health care industry."
It seems that the Oklahoma Attorney General and the Executive Branch do not even make that distinction. When presented with evidence that not only was medical evidence exaggerated in an involuntary commitment to the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, but that it was also falsified, the A.G. has responded that no state employee can be sued for the "good faith" performance of their duties. Following complaints sent to the State Department of Health and Board of Osteopathic Examiners, those worthy bodies could find no cause for action.
Ain't politics and bigotry grand? I wonder how much it costs the taxpayers.
In researching Federal Fraud laws with regard to medical information, I found the following interesting items:
AMA information sheet, Federal Fraud and Abuse Laws, citing: Federal Civil Monetary Penalties (Section 1128A of the Social Security Act/42 USC 1320a-7aa), (Section 1128B of the Social Security Act/42 USC 1320a-7b), Federal Civil False Claims Act (31 USC 3829-3733), Health Care Fraud and Scheme (18 USC 1347), Theft or Embezzlement in Connection with Health Care Benefit Program (18 USC 669), and False Statements Relating to Health Care Matters (18 USC 1035). Including the statement: "The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191 (HIPAA), clarified that the term "should know" includes, with respect to information set out in a claim, "acts in deliberate ignorance" or in "reckless disregard of the truth or falsity" and "no proof of specific intent to defraud is required.""
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001: with (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;
U.S. DOJ Criminal Resource Manual 903, which states with regard to 18 USC 1001: An often-raised defense is the claim that because the alleged act or activity has no reasonable relation to the Federal government, no Federal jurisdiction exists. … In describing the situations in which the prohibited conduct must occur, the courts have construed the statute broadly and stressed that Section 1001 protects the government "from the perversion which might result from the deceptive practices described." Bryson v. United States, 396 U.S. 64 (1969).
I could be wrong, but wouldn't you think that applies to people exaggerating and falsifying medical information in order to assure an involuntary commitment in the State mental health system, which accepts money from both state and federal taxpayers? And that Federal laws about the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law, and conspiracies to commit such acts, would then apply. And then, if it is a violation of Federal law, you might even think that a Federal District Court would be willing to hear about it. Well, unless there's some bigotry involved.
Banning large-capacity magazines and rifles with military appearances (but not the same full-auto function), is a bit like banning beer kegs and big cars with tail fins (like those on rockets and military jets) to cut down on drunk driving fatalities.
The whole thing was started by a gun control advocate named Josh Sugarman (of the Violence Policy Center and National Coalition to Ban Handguns) who deliberately styled military look-alikes as "assault weapons" to make people afraid of them and set a precedent for banning all firearms.
"Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons." -Josh Sugarmann, Assault Weapons and Accessories in America, 1988 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sugarmann
Now, who ever heard of anyone using this particular style of rifle to blow people away in mass killings, until Sugarman and the news media made a big issue of them, making people afraid that this is what would happen. It is quite possible that in creating the fear, they created the monsters, terrorists who want that kind of attention for whatever twisted reasons suit them. When teachers do this to children, making them fail in school by constantly telling them they will fail, it's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy". Create the monsters and they will come.
Ain't politics grand?
Some say these firearms have no use but to kill people. Wrong. In the vast majority of cases, decent people use them for target shooting competitions, including those which train civilians as marksmen before they ever volunteer for the military. The Congress created the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship in 1903, run by the U.S. Army until 1996, which administered the Civilian Marksmanship Program. Now known as the non-profit Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice & Firearms Safety, according to wikipedia, it still sells military surplus bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles for training purposes to qualified law-abiding buyers. Which helps to make our military arguably the most effective in the world.
I've had surgeons cut me open from one side to the other looking for cancer I've had witch doctors and a kangaroo judge keep me in the local loony bin for their own special purposes
I stopped over at my brother's house last weekend to visit Mom, only to have him scream to get my attention and demand that I park out on the street because "your truck leaks a lot of oil". That's one of the important things in my family's life, and it brought back a few more.
About 15 years ago, as I recall, I was living at my parents' house again after surgery looking for cancer (not found, but still not forgotten) and the failure of hundreds of letters for employment to make use of my new Ph.D. I was tired, depressed, sitting on the couch, and laid my head back to rest. Only to have Dad scream at me to get it off the couch so I wouldn't leave an "grease" on it.
Not only did I not use anything in my hair because of asthma, I scrubbed and scraped it and my scalp every night with soap and my fingernails to keep from getting ugly wens. But there wasn't any point in telling him that. He knew for a fact that I was dirty.
Another time, when my uncle was visiting, Dad got infuriated about a toilet with a liberal spray pattern on the seat and the floor. This had not happened in the months preceding while I was there. But there wasn't any need for him to yell at his brother (a mostly nice guy) with a belly so big that he may not have seen his own equipment in many years, much less where it aimed. No, I was there. So he yelled at me. He knew for a fact that I had to be the dirty person who did that.
Fortunately, in another context but still related, Licensed Professional Counselor Julie King explained it all for me a couple years back at the local loony bin. "All that matters," she said, "is how people perceive you." And on that basis, they kept me there for 66 days until they were sure enough that I had gotten the point. Still dirty after all these years. Most illuminating, I'm sure.
At the very bottom of this issue, we have ingrained bigotry against people with mental illnesses in society, in the legislatures and on the judicial bench. If a Court searches the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, Title 43A, it will find that one type of penalty does not exist. There are penalties for such things as stealing from petty cash, operating a mental facility without a license, malfeasance with narcotics, physically assaulting patients, failing to report elder abuse, falsely accusing someone of elder abuse, falsely accusing someone of having a mental illness, and misrepresenting to police that someone has a mental illness. There are even perjury penalties for swearing in court documents that someone has a mental illness.
But there is not one single penalty either for falsely accusing someone with a mental illness of being a threat, or for falsely depriving a person with mental illness of liberty and due process. It comes closest to the latter in 43A-5-103, making it a mere misdemeanor to unlawfully or maliciously confine a person in a mental or drug treatment facility. But the language in 43A-1-103 that defines a person with a mental illness to be in need of treatment if anyone alleges a “reasonable fear” of threat, and the language in 43A-5-204 that gives immunity from civil suits for medication (and treatment) prescribed in “good faith”, virtually nullify that provision. Nor does Title 43A demand that the methods and means of “treatment” and the results of that treatment be tabulated and recorded to assure that they are safe, fair and effective.
If the U.S. Supreme Court searches its own record, it will easily find implicit and explicit references to the “dangerous tendencies” (Addington v. Texas, 1979) of people with mental illness, used to justify society’s need to protect itself from them, and the state’s parens patriae right to protect people with mental illness from themselves. It puts people with mental illnesses in a special category that allows the states to preventively detain them on the mere suspicion of "dangerousness", and then deny to them the full protections of law given to those who have actually committed violent crimes. We don’t have to go far in our history to see a striking parallel. All we have to do is to substitute the terms “Black” for “mentally ill” and “nigger” for “disturbed” to see that every concept of inferiority and threat involving people with mental illnesses has already be applied to people of color. It was and is called Jim Crow.
Justia columnist and Cornell law professor Sherry Colb (2011) notes for the purpose of argument that while the ratio of people committing violence is reportedly 2 to 1 mentally ill to not, the ratio of people committing homicide is 8 Black to 1 White, and 10 male to 1 female. Demonstrating that some forms of bigotry are, in the terms of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “more equal than others”. Parens partiae becomes Big White Brother only when the same principles are applied to people that Judges care about.
Colb, Sherry F., Aug 10, 2011, Armed and Crazy: Should Mentally Ill People Be Permitted to Own Firearms?, http://verdict.justia.com/2011/08/10/armed-and-crazy
The fact that Courts let this sorry set of circumstances continue on and on and on, because we don’t know how to put our complaints about them in lawyers’ terms, may be our burden, but it is not _our_ shame.
Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing. No refunds are issued. Back issues are available for $10/copy.
We accept Visa, M/C, checks and money orders. Call to charge by phone 918-592-5550. Enter your contact information in the form below and we will contact you.
If ordering by mail, make checks and money orders payable to Urban Tulsa Weekly. Send your payment along with your complete postal delivery address to Urban Tulsa Weekly, Attn: Samantha, PO Box 50499, Tulsa, OK 74150
Address:
Address2:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Email:
Phone:
Comments:
Urban Tulsa Weekly
1924 E. 6th St.
Tulsa OK 74104
Phone: (918) 592-5550
Fax: (918) 592-5970
e-mail: Subscriptions
COMMENTS
Posted by: Don B
208 comments total
Sort Comments: Most Recent | Oldest First
Re: Love Letters, hate mail
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/predicting-violence-is-a-work-in-progress/2013/01/03/2e8955b8-5371-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html
But, trust the math- and science-challenged Post. On page 2, it lists success rates of 1/3 (Monahan) and/or 41% (http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4692?view=long&pmid=22833604) in predicting violence as "slightly better than chance". That would be a success rate of better than 50%. They fail to mention that the figure of 41% was the median of a interquartile range of (27%-60%). Median is not the same as average, which is the generally accepted way to express statistical expectation. You might want to check the math and statistics.
The abstract of the British Medical Journal articles says:
Conclusions Although risk assessment tools are widely used in clinical and criminal justice settings, their predictive accuracy varies depending on how they are used. They seem to identify low risk individuals with high levels of accuracy, but their use as sole determinants of detention, sentencing, and release is not supported by the current evidence. Further research is needed to examine their contribution to treatment and management.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
At the end of the 1960s, I forget exactly what the chief environmental concern was, probably acid rain. But I met this hippy dude who had the answer to it all. Somehow I doubted that he could explain the chemistry or physics, exactly what was affecting what how, the amplitude, frequency or type: particle, acoustic or electromagnetic. But he knew what was causing it all. It was what those jet airplanes high up in the atmosphere were putting out. It was Vibrations.
Now I hear that other people have the answer to the cause of all our economic woes. They may not be able to tell you which ones affect businesses and families how. They may not be able to tell you which ones are good and which are bad, or why. But they know that it's what government puts upon the marketplace. It's Regulations.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the shovel that dug this hole the unaccountable, unwise and unethical excesses of mortgage lenders and investment firms? Those Ponzi schemes and banks "to big to fail"? Those byzantine derivative trades in imaginary financial value? And less regulation would have helped us avoid that how, exactly? Will the people with all the answers kindly explain, in detail, with evidence that can be confirmed, exactly how we got from the budget surpluses under Clinton to our current fine mess. Not that I would credit any President for budget surpluses, but didn't we have a conservative Republican anti-regulation administration between then and now?
Whether it's a long-haired bearded hippy or a short-haired Tea Party partisan spouting them, I don't see how, without some deeper thought, mere buzzwords give us much hope for something better.
Could you be a little more specific, please?
Re: Arming Teachers Ain't the Answer
Personally, I don't think a single CLEET training course would be enough. Any school official who is going that route would be well advised to join or form a practical shooting club, and practice safe handling and scenarios monthly. Or, they could train with law enforcement officers on a regular basis, if those organizations run practical shooting schools. For those who can afford it, there are defensive combat firearms courses, such as those at Gunsite, which one can read about in most firearms magazines.
Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Hamilton has ever been to a shooting range, and observed the absolute emphasis that most if not all place upon safety and respect for innocent human life.
Re: Opting Out of the State
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
There was a time when I was living in hell and needed someone to come see about me. I'd been maimed and disabled by a drinking driver, and given the kind of hospital experience you might wish on Sadaam Hussein. I got the impression that Baptist thinking at the time concluded that it would only weaken people with cancer (my departed Aunt, among others) and crushed bones to give them enough painkiller to rest comfortably, and tempt them onto the road to addiction. My job had gone away when I couldn't take a vain Zebco executive's verbal abuse. I had gone back to graduate school in Colorado to work on physical therapy and getting my life back together, but was reliving that hospital experience every night.
I'd hear from Mom about family going to the ski slopes almost every winter, often in the same state. But no one came to visit me. Well, why see about a brother in hell when you can Praise His Name on the slopes. Maybe it was a Christian family values package tour. I really learned to hate Christmas then. Job might have understood, but he had the advantage of a good family life before God let Satan put him on the ash heap.
Re: Unbuckling the bible belt
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
So you can coexist with people who have guns and mental illnesses, and don't have to worry about someone with the combination going postal, especially at school. Then stop child abuse, and give everyone a valued productive place in society of which they can be proud, whatever their abilities. Until you have done that, you haven't yet done much of anything.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Now imagine someone in a schoolroom skilled with a sword or machete. You can always find a bogeyman to justify something you want to do, that makes a criminal out of someone else who has not done and will not do anything to hurt you. It's called propaganda. It's what is bad when directed at you, but good when directed elsewhere, especially if it serves as a shield to prove that you are "reasonable" to your detractors.
Especially detractors who have misused power over you. People who have or are fighting for the rights of people with mental illnesses to be free of bigotry have blamed "high-capacity magazines" for the deaths in Connecticut. The NRA has, just as wrongfully and stupidly in my opinion, directed criticism away from magazines and onto people with mental illnesses, asking for an expansion of the NICS.
I'm not sure I have enough personal courage to go around wearing black triangles or six-pointed stars in protest. Although in the large majority, Jews weren't the only ones to die by gassing or in the Nazi camps. Black would have been my color. On January 1st, I wrote to the people on the Yarrow Campus in Tulsa asking for help with a legal problem on that basis. No response. Perhaps it's fear of association.
Consider all the laws in different places that have been passed on this kind of reasoning: you can't tell which Jew will cheat you; you can't tell which Arab will throw a bomb; you can't tell which Black will rape a white woman; you can't tell which person with mental illness will go postal; you can't tell which "assault weapon" or "high capacity magazine" will be used to kill. Guilt by association, without need of individual proof. Somewhere I read that our Constitution is supposed to be against that.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. - Dorthy Parker
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
My family didn't abandon me physically after the car wreck. My parents gave me a place to stay while I was on the walker and not released to go back to work. And when I came back to Tulsa, she came with me to help out, because I couldn't drive. I couldn't even walk down stairs at Pelican's Wharf. I had to bump down on my butt. Carefully.
The way PTSD works, if you can't talk it out, then according to medical research, it stands a good chance of becoming permanent. Every time I tried to, my family refused to hear about it, often claiming that by doing so I was only hurting myself. Some even jeered.
I forgave Mom because she's given me so much other love and support. But it hurt. And the others ... I don't have the kind of family that necessarily demonstrates the love and values I've read that Christ asked of his followers.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I came across this in Google, searching on the term: mental illness zealous counsel
[PDF] Working with Clients - Indigent Defense Services
www.ncids.org/other%20manuals/.../Appendix%20C_new.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Even though we are trained to zealously advocate for our clients, we are only ... procedures, is designed to require that the prosecuting attorney must make the .... evidence and conclusions regarding mental illness and danger, thereby
For some reason, Google now makes it hard to extract a clean URL.
It was a little sickening to download and read, because it shows what we don't get here in Oklahoma.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
If you are like me, you never heard of him before today, or knew that he was an internet prodigy who helped to develop technologies that millions use. He also had trouble with depression. The news says that he believed in an open and free internet, and that the U.S. Justice Department was prosecuting him to the limit for downloading millions of pages from the online journal library, JSTOR, without paying for them.
I don't agree with Swartz's action, but I think I know how he felt. Some say that genius and madness are close. Witness the painter Vincent van Gogh, his missing ear and his reported suicide. More like, it's because anyone with depression who wants to feel good about something has to try harder. Whether it is art, science, engineering or some other challenge, sometimes, if not often, only the satisfaction of accomplishment can ease the pain. Otherwise, it's like Prometheus, with his liver growing back time after time just so the eagle can tear it out and eat it again, bit by agonizing little bit.
The loss of all hope of accomplishment is worse than death. In its zeal to prosecute and make an example of him, this is what the U.S. Department of Justice took from Aaron Swartz. Almost like it did when the FBI went to prove its manhood on the Branch Davidians. But this time, they took out someone who arguably had a lot more to contribute to the world. Someone whose future work might conceivably have helped with the battle against terrorists. All over a philosophical difference that JSTOR reportedly didn't want to prosecute, and already-published academic information that had no apparent national security implications.
Oddly enough, some people never seem to realize that when they start a peter-matching contest, the only peters anyone else can see are the ones sticking up above their shirt collars. Something the Justice Department has a hard time learning. So if yahoos are cheering or jeering about this death, the hell with them.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
What do the two states, one ranking near the bottom in education and health care, have in common? Apparently, it's the acceptance of "negative charting" in health care as "good faith" performance of state employee duties in the first case, and "proper" in the second. "Negative charting" has at least two different definitions in health care. It can be a) not recording ordinary or normal conditions on a patient's chart, or b) doing exactly the opposite, and recording normal results which would be "negative" indications of illness, or c) emphasizing only negative aspects of the patient's condition in order to ensure insurance payments. Depends on who you ask.
Since at least 1995, both Congress and the U.S. Government Accounting Office have recognized definition (c) as health care fraud. See GAO Reports 95-17, Medicare: Allegations Against ABC Home Health Care, and Waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare program : joint hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and Environment and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, May 16, 1995 (1995)
The State of Florida thinks so, too, in it's training on the Florida Baker Act, it's own mental health and commitment law. See www.bakeracttraining.org/files/faq/ba-receiving_facilities.pdf, page 29: "Since negative charting for the purpose of obtaining insurance payments would be inappropriate, one would assume that the insurers aren't aware of Florida law."
As does the Journal of Financial Crime. See Brian K. Payne, (2006) "Problems controlling fraud and abuse in the home health care field: Voices of fraud control unit directors", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 13 Iss: 1, pp.77 - 91. At least, one would suppose so from Mr. Payne's other publications, such as White-Collar Crime: The Essentials, Brian K. Payne, Sage Publ, Los Angeles, London, etc.; Chap IV Crimes in the Health Care System, p 83: "Types of home health care fraud include providing unnecessary services, billing the system for services that were not provided to the client, overcharging, forgery, negative charting, substitute workers, double billing and kickbacks." Which Mr. Payne held earlier in "Crime in the Home Health Care Field - Workplace Violence, Fraud, and Abuse", Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Ltd., Springfield, IL; 2003.
But not the State of Mississippi, which in its Court of Appeals in Whitt v. MMRC, Case No. 95-CA-00946 COA, 8/12/97, it held that, "The difference between negative charting and false charting is that false charting is lying; whereas, negative charting is a form of documentation used by home health care nurses which focuses on the problems of the patient, and not the positive aspects of the patient's health. By focusing on the negative, Medicare payments are assured. ... Negative charting is a widely accepted practice within the profession [home health care]. ... Whitt has not shown that she was asked to falsify records, but merely asked to change the records to reflect proper negative charting, a procedure widely recognized in the home health care industry."
It seems that the Oklahoma Attorney General and the Executive Branch do not even make that distinction. When presented with evidence that not only was medical evidence exaggerated in an involuntary commitment to the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, but that it was also falsified, the A.G. has responded that no state employee can be sued for the "good faith" performance of their duties. Following complaints sent to the State Department of Health and Board of Osteopathic Examiners, those worthy bodies could find no cause for action.
Ain't politics and bigotry grand? I wonder how much it costs the taxpayers.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
In researching Federal Fraud laws with regard to medical information, I found the following interesting items:
AMA information sheet, Federal Fraud and Abuse Laws, citing: Federal Civil Monetary Penalties (Section 1128A of the Social Security Act/42 USC 1320a-7aa), (Section 1128B of the Social Security Act/42 USC 1320a-7b), Federal Civil False Claims Act (31 USC 3829-3733), Health Care Fraud and Scheme (18 USC 1347), Theft or Embezzlement in Connection with Health Care Benefit Program (18 USC 669), and False Statements Relating to Health Care Matters (18 USC 1035).
Including the statement: "The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191 (HIPAA), clarified that the term "should know" includes, with respect to information set out in a claim, "acts in deliberate ignorance" or in "reckless disregard of the truth or falsity" and "no proof of specific intent to defraud is required.""
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001: with
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;
U.S. DOJ Criminal Resource Manual 903, which states with regard to 18 USC 1001: An often-raised defense is the claim that because the alleged act or activity has no reasonable relation to the Federal government, no Federal jurisdiction exists. … In describing the situations in which the prohibited conduct must occur, the courts have construed the statute broadly and stressed that Section 1001 protects the government "from the perversion which might result from the deceptive practices described." Bryson v. United States, 396 U.S. 64 (1969).
I could be wrong, but wouldn't you think that applies to people exaggerating and falsifying medical information in order to assure an involuntary commitment in the State mental health system, which accepts money from both state and federal taxpayers? And that Federal laws about the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law, and conspiracies to commit such acts, would then apply. And then, if it is a violation of Federal law, you might even think that a Federal District Court would be willing to hear about it. Well, unless there's some bigotry involved.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Banning large-capacity magazines and rifles with military appearances (but not the same full-auto function), is a bit like banning beer kegs and big cars with tail fins (like those on rockets and military jets) to cut down on drunk driving fatalities.
The whole thing was started by a gun control advocate named Josh Sugarman (of the Violence Policy Center and National Coalition to Ban Handguns) who deliberately styled military look-alikes as "assault weapons" to make people afraid of them and set a precedent for banning all firearms.
"Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons."
-Josh Sugarmann, Assault Weapons and Accessories in America, 1988
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sugarmann
Now, who ever heard of anyone using this particular style of rifle to blow people away in mass killings, until Sugarman and the news media made a big issue of them, making people afraid that this is what would happen. It is quite possible that in creating the fear, they created the monsters, terrorists who want that kind of attention for whatever twisted reasons suit them. When teachers do this to children, making them fail in school by constantly telling them they will fail, it's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy". Create the monsters and they will come.
Ain't politics grand?
Some say these firearms have no use but to kill people. Wrong. In the vast majority of cases, decent people use them for target shooting competitions, including those which train civilians as marksmen before they ever volunteer for the military. The Congress created the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship in 1903, run by the U.S. Army until 1996, which administered the Civilian Marksmanship Program. Now known as the non-profit Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice & Firearms Safety, according to wikipedia, it still sells military surplus bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles for training purposes to qualified law-abiding buyers. Which helps to make our military arguably the most effective in the world.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
from one side to the other
looking for cancer
I've had witch doctors
and a kangaroo judge
keep me in the local loony bin
for their own special purposes
Better cancer - it's more dignified
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I stopped over at my brother's house last weekend to visit Mom, only to have him scream to get my attention and demand that I park out on the street because "your truck leaks a lot of oil". That's one of the important things in my family's life, and it brought back a few more.
About 15 years ago, as I recall, I was living at my parents' house again after surgery looking for cancer (not found, but still not forgotten) and the failure of hundreds of letters for employment to make use of my new Ph.D. I was tired, depressed, sitting on the couch, and laid my head back to rest. Only to have Dad scream at me to get it off the couch so I wouldn't leave an "grease" on it.
Not only did I not use anything in my hair because of asthma, I scrubbed and scraped it and my scalp every night with soap and my fingernails to keep from getting ugly wens. But there wasn't any point in telling him that. He knew for a fact that I was dirty.
Another time, when my uncle was visiting, Dad got infuriated about a toilet with a liberal spray pattern on the seat and the floor. This had not happened in the months preceding while I was there. But there wasn't any need for him to yell at his brother (a mostly nice guy) with a belly so big that he may not have seen his own equipment in many years, much less where it aimed. No, I was there. So he yelled at me. He knew for a fact that I had to be the dirty person who did that.
Fortunately, in another context but still related, Licensed Professional Counselor Julie King explained it all for me a couple years back at the local loony bin. "All that matters," she said, "is how people perceive you." And on that basis, they kept me there for 66 days until they were sure enough that I had gotten the point. Still dirty after all these years. Most illuminating, I'm sure.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
At the very bottom of this issue, we have ingrained bigotry against people with mental illnesses in society, in the legislatures and on the judicial bench. If a Court searches the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, Title 43A, it will find that one type of penalty does not exist. There are penalties for such things as stealing from petty cash, operating a mental facility without a license, malfeasance with narcotics, physically assaulting patients, failing to report elder abuse, falsely accusing someone of elder abuse, falsely accusing someone of having a mental illness, and misrepresenting to police that someone has a mental illness. There are even perjury penalties for swearing in court documents that someone has a mental illness.
But there is not one single penalty either for falsely accusing someone with a mental illness of being a threat, or for falsely depriving a person with mental illness of liberty and due process. It comes closest to the latter in 43A-5-103, making it a mere misdemeanor to unlawfully or maliciously confine a person in a mental or drug treatment facility. But the language in 43A-1-103 that defines a person with a mental illness to be in need of treatment if anyone alleges a “reasonable fear” of threat, and the language in 43A-5-204 that gives immunity from civil suits for medication (and treatment) prescribed in “good faith”, virtually nullify that provision. Nor does Title 43A demand that the methods and means of “treatment” and the results of that treatment be tabulated and recorded to assure that they are safe, fair and effective.
If the U.S. Supreme Court searches its own record, it will easily find implicit and explicit references to the “dangerous tendencies” (Addington v. Texas, 1979) of people with mental illness, used to justify society’s need to protect itself from them, and the state’s parens patriae right to protect people with mental illness from themselves. It puts people with mental illnesses in a special category that allows the states to preventively detain them on the mere suspicion of "dangerousness", and then deny to them the full protections of law given to those who have actually committed violent crimes. We don’t have to go far in our history to see a striking parallel. All we have to do is to substitute the terms “Black” for “mentally ill” and “nigger” for “disturbed” to see that every concept of inferiority and threat involving people with mental illnesses has already be applied to people of color. It was and is called Jim Crow.
Justia columnist and Cornell law professor Sherry Colb (2011) notes for the purpose of argument that while the ratio of people committing violence is reportedly 2 to 1 mentally ill to not, the ratio of people committing homicide is 8 Black to 1 White, and 10 male to 1 female. Demonstrating that some forms of bigotry are, in the terms of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “more equal than others”. Parens partiae becomes Big White Brother only when the same principles are applied to people that Judges care about.
Colb, Sherry F., Aug 10, 2011, Armed and Crazy: Should Mentally Ill People Be Permitted to Own Firearms?, http://verdict.justia.com/2011/08/10/armed-and-crazy
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.