Batten Down the Hatches

Batten Down Your Hatches

I don't have any hatches, but I've had to batten down a lot of things lately and I feel that way a lot of the time.  Something important is going to break, or go wrong, or just not work.

We’ve all gotten used to it in this country.  We don’t expect to have electricity during the mildest of storms, and I am not even surprised when the power goes out for an hour or two on a beautiful day.

Now, don’t go blaming the government.  Government services suck because you  get what you pay for.  At least where government is concerned.  From Amtrak to the power grid, the people with all the money just don’t want to pay for quality for the rest of us, and they just keep convincing us voters that they shouldn’t have to.

And the next verse to that tune is that businesses would do a better job than government.  So look around you.  Where do you get better bang for the buck?

At the airport, the airlines got government to foot the bill for security when they were unenthusiastic about paying for a job that did not immediately and positively impact their bottom line, and then they cut staff at the customer service lines so they could make an even bigger buck by not offering customer service.

If you like your private health insurance better than Medicare, it just may be because those people you voted into office on the platform of cutting the fat out of government managed to cut the budget out of government health care while siphoning off our tax dollars to the private insurers.

And you may not remember the days before ObamaCare, but they are unforgettable if you or a loved one had a pre-existing condition, or you had or were a jobless college graduate that fell ill, but it will all come back to you when the Republicans get the Supremes to repeal that nasty old socialist health care law.

And why pay government employees, when our tax dollars can pay a corporation, say, Halliburton or Blackwater (Xe, for goodness sakes), to pay employees, and we get to pay their wages as well as a tidy profit for the shareholders and CEO’s.   And an extra added benefit to that is, there is absolutely no governmental control over the quality of the job done.  Remember Abu Ghraib?

Sell off our highways, and then hit the government up for repairs as an incentive for "job creation"; privatize our prisons rather than provide the government the funds to better our communities.

Our internet, which should be free, but is actually free to all who can pay for it, is the next mountain for corporate America to conquer.  Because a well-informed public would also want to be a well-educated public.  And a well-informed and well-educated public would not be led around by fear, and would see the contradictions in the rhetoric of privatization and deregulation, and would know that government should be for us all, and not just the wealthy.

And then we would insist on a dependable electrical grid, and attractive schools that children would be proud to spend the day in, with well-paid teachers that are respected for the important job they do for our children.

And we would know that a good, honest government would do this gladly, and then we would only need to batten down the hatches in a rare emergency, and not every time it rains.

Health Care or Prisons

As we look back on the shooting in Arizona, one of the questions that comes up is that of how could this act have been prevented.  And I have to admit, as cold as it is where I am, I appreciate the hot air.  But what it comes down to is something nobody really wants to do.  We need to put a great deal of effort, read, money, into mental health care.

Since Ronald Reagan saved us from ourselves by cutting budgets for psychiatric hospitals, throwing people with chronic mental illness on the streets, we alternate between trying to find bandages that won't cost much and ignoring the problem entirely, until the next crazed individual commits a violent act that cannot be ignored.

Understand, most of those psychiatric hospitals didn't work either.  Because they were bandages, albeit very large ones, as well.   After we found out that hosing people down and shocking them to within an inch of their lives didn't work, we found drugs.  And some drugs in some cases worked miracles, allowing people to return to homes and communities and live productive lives.  But in many cases drugs at best created compliance, and you know what?  That was good enough for us.

Because mental health is expensive.

Mental health requires something we no longer value in this country:  people.

It begins with a family that can afford good health care for their children.  And schools with low teacher to student ratios and qualified educators that are paid appropriately for the important job that they do, with comfortable and adequately heated buildings, nutritious lunches, stimulating and up-to-date instructional material and plans.  And parents to come home to, that are not working so many jobs for so little income that they are either not present or not emotionally available.

And since none of us is emotionally invulnerable, we need people there for when we slip.  Who these days has a family member not so mired in their own emotional crises that they will open their arms when a person is in need?  If you are not that fortunate, you are already among those at risk.

And yet we are fighting about whether or not health care should be provided to every individual in the country.  We are debating whether the unemployed should be entitled to subsistence funds until their luck and the economy turns around.  We are arguing about whether our moms and dads should have to work until they die, or simply break down.

So, if we can't even agree that people trying to function within society deserve to be fed, housed, and educated, and taken care of when they are sick, where does that leave the poor and poorly educated, those who lack the skills or support systems to help the family member with the psychiatric illness?

We have decided long ago to throw our limited resources at prisons rather than mental health care.  I fear that today's debate will end the same way.