Doing The Right Thing Can Be Painful

If you've seen the movie "It's A Wonderful Life," and I sure hope you have, the central character, George Bailey, is confronted with a number of key situations in his life. He has to make a choice about how to deal with each of those situations. The choices are difficult for him, because if he chooses to do nothing, other people will be hurt in some way; however, if he chooses to take action, he risks some sort of peril or pain for himself. He frequently agonizes over his choices. In one scene, even as he and his wife are departing on their honeymoon, a crisis develops at his family owned "Building & Loan." As is almost always the case with us humans, his first thought is about his own happiness, and he wants to keep going and not have to deal with the crisis. In the end, however, he turns back and gets involved. Of course, throughout the story, George faces the tough choices, endures the pain, and chooses to do the right thing. He doesn't always know exactly what the "pain" will be, but he does know that his choices will not be without potential consequences for him or his family; however, deep inside of him, he has a moral sense that tells him that he has to make the choices that may not always seem to be in his immediate best interest. I don't want to spoil the movie for you, but it will be tough to keep a dry eye at the end, even for some of the most "battle hardened" folks. (Having said that, please don't jump to the end of movie. You really have to watch the entire film to get the true meaning of the ending, even though for awhile, you may wonder what all of the scenes are leading up to.)

Now, "It's A Wonderful Life" is Hollywood; it's a movie. The thing is, in real life, we also have many choices to make, and I have to believe there isn't one among us who hasn't shirked his or her moral duty, and chosen to do nothing, or even worse, chosen to do the wrong thing; it's that way with us humans, although hopefully our poor judgment hasn't inflicted too much pain on others. History shows us that, just like in "It's A Wonderful Life," taking a moral stand can be painful indeed. Mahatma Gandhi made a choice to try to lead India out of colonial domination and into self governance. The road was long and painful at times. Gandhi chose "peaceful non-cooperation" with the British rulers. He was imprisoned several times in his life, as were many of his followers, and still many other of his followers were injured or killed during India's trek toward freedom. Gandhi was assassinated by an Indian malcontent not long after India had gained independence. In our own country, Martin Luther King tried to use many of Gandhi's methods as part of the "Civil Rights Movement" of the 1960s, achieving much, if not everything during his lifetime. Like Gandhi, King spent time in jail, as did many of his followers, he was assassinated in 1968. Abraham Lincoln took a strong stand against slavery, which brought about the Civil War, the bloodiest war ever involving Americans; it being fought American against American. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Where do each of US stand on the issues confronting us today? Upon their deaths, each of the above mentioned leaders was mourned by many in their respective nations, and even beyond the borders of their nations. When each of us passes from life to the other side, even though we may not be nearly as well known as the leaders above, will the people who knew us in some way grieve, or will many stand up and cheer? Think about it.

How Long Are We Going To Take It?

The title question is about the country in general. Polls show, and indeed have shown for awhile, that a sizable majority of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track. The Administration and it's dwindling number of supporters say the President gets little or no credit for the economy. Hmm, wonder if that's because most of us out here feel PINCHED! If you love the way gas prices have been, just wait, you're really going to really love them in the not too distant future. All of the nonsense with these futures markets (which produce NO gasoline or oil, by the way, but DO produce huge amounts;that is, billions in revenue for the wealthiest people in America) will touch your soul (and tap your already strained pocket book) very shortly, as they can't wait to get oil up to $80.00 a barrel or more, and gasoline up to $4.00 a gallon or more. They need justification, and they're waiting for an Atlantic storm, any old storm will do, or perhaps some threat from Iran or The Man In The Moon, and then you'll see what happens. They tried just recently, when a storm headed for Florida, not a hurricane, mind you, but a tropical depression type storm, and oil and gas jumped because they said "what might happen." That was just a prelude to what's coming, because now, we pay for "what might happen," as defined by the wealthiest people in America and their money grubbers, I mean managers, not what really does happen. Is this the "free market" they tout so much? They rant against anything that Congress might do to stop the nonsense, so I take it that "free market' means their ability to legally do anything they want to us, without anything being done legally BY US to counter them.

Don't just take this from me. I encourage everyone to listen to our own "Al Qaida in America," the ruthless business execs and money managers who openly tell us what they're going to try to do to us during interviews on CNBC. I'm not necessarily promoting CNBC, and I have no interest of any kind in the station or in it's parent network, NBC, but I've got to tell you, it is one VERY interesting channel to watch on weekdays, if you are available during that time. If you remember your history classes from your school days, you recall that people said Hitler laid out plans well in advance of his taking power in his book, "Mein Kampf." Well, just listen to "Al Qaida in America" and they aren't hiding anything! They're telling us what they want to do to us, just as Bin Laden's followers churn out videos spouting hatred and telling us what they want to do to others in the world. Again, it all begs the question, "How long are we going to take it?"

If you've gone to the store lately, you've had to notice how dairy products: milk, cheese, ice cream, cottage cheese, etc have all risen sharply. Not to be outdone by oil and gas, now we're told that this is further evidence of how energy prices are affecting other prices. Hmm, do you smell futures markets? You should! Now that "ethanol" (made from corn) is being touted more strongly, the money people have said there will be a shortage of corn for other purposes, like feeding cattle, and of course, we get dairy products from cattle, so...WHOOSH! Up go the prices for all of these items. If you still don't feel like you're on your knees with an Al Qaida swordsman about to lop off your head, just give our "Al Qaida" time, you'll feel the blade as it cuts into your wallet!

What amazes me is how docile Americans seem to have become. The business community has perfected the "divide and conquer" tactic to make war on America's working people. For those of you who feel you aren't part of the "working class," don't worry, your time is coming, too, as these things NEVER stop at some imaginary income or social standing line of demarcation. Why, during the Great Depression, did America see so many economic reforms championed? Because not only did the poor and working class suffer, but there was a huge spill over into the middle class and the professions. Even people who didn't necessarily see a big drop in their income feared that they might very well experience what the neighbors were going through. It was a wake up call, and Americans answered that call. Now, so many people seem so discouraged, there seems to be no fight left in us. I can't believe the things I hear from workers who just feel thankful to have a job and some income, and seem afraid to support anyone who challenges the control of the business execs, or those who want to see incomes and conditions improve for workers. They've got many people scared! Again, how long are we going to take it? Pose that question to yourself.

Paying For The Past On Immigration

America has long been seen as "The land of opportunity," and not without reason. The country has been built around immigrants down through the decades. The problem is, we got sloppy. Particularly along our southern border with Mexico, we really didn't do a hell of a lot to keep the border secure. By secure, I'm not meaning that we should have been fearful that General Santa Anna's son, grandson or great grandson might march a Mexican army across the border and try to once again take the Alamo (Hey, we don't have John Wayne anymore to stop them!), but we let the border go so unchecked that literally millions of people from "south of the border, down Mexico way" entered the U.S. without ever having proper immigration papers or guest visas issued. In many cases, according to what we hear, our government has no idea where most of these people are. Now, in 2007, the issue has become as hot as a habanero chili pepper.

To some extent, we're also worried about "terrorists" coming over our southern border, since it has been so poorly monitored. That makes me wonder if, in fact, we've been looking for Osama bin Laden and company in the wrong place for the last six years. Instead of them being in a cave in Pakistan or Afghanistan, maybe all the while they've been picking lettuce and spinach right here in the "good ole U.S. of A." Hell, maybe that's why are food isn't safe anymore!

Anyway, it does seem that some of the politicians are seriously interested in making the border much more secure. Since Bush and Putin seem to have kissed and made up, maybe the President could hire Putin to secure our "south side." After all, Putin, as a former Communist and KGB man certainly has experience in building walls, albeit to really keep people in, rather than out.

One thing Americans are going to have to realize is, this is all going to be expensive. Back in the 1980s, I traveled through Germany, going from then West Germany into East Germany. The amount of security, especially on the Communist side, was just incredible. Towers all along the border, giving heavily armed guards a great vantage point to keep Germans from the West from breaking into East Germany (Well, that's what they said! After all, I'm sure it was the dream of every [West] German to own one of those East German cars that broke down every 15 to 20 miles.) Well, border security is expensive, but we're going to have to do it. I still don't know how we're going to locate the estimated 12 to 20 million people illegally in this country, and that is a whole different issue, and another expensive proposition.

The Severely Mental Ill and Asylums

Just some general comments first: When writing about many subjects, and certainly about mental illness, it is difficult to keep from generalizing much of the time. After all, this is just a column, and entire books and multi-volume works have been done on some subjects, and still conclusive answers have not been agreed upon. I try to use words like "some," "many," "often," "tendency," to convey that I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush, and that certainly exceptions exist in whatever it is that I'm writing about. Mental health issues are a "touchy" subject, and correctly so. We all have certain behavior patterns that may seem somewhat strange to certain others. When we get angry, we lash out at one another. Just imagine if every time one of us got angry, that we called the authorities and had the focus of our anger committed to an institution. There wouldn't be any us us left...well, I wouldn't be able to watch all of you. (Just joking!) Anyway, I think you get the drift of what I'm saying.

Just about ten days ago here in Cleveland, a mentally ill man shot and killed a police officer who was responding to a call about a public disturbance. The shooting actually was in Cleveland Heights, an Eastside suburb. The dead officer was only 31. The man who killed him was only 27. As is too often the case, after the fact, it was discovered that the killer had had previous run ins with the law, and in one case dating only from 2005, he had been deemed incompetent by reason of insanity to even go to trial for an attack on another police officer. The lingering question is why he was released from any kind of court enforced monitoring. He was given four years' probation, but even that was reduced to just one year.

In response to the police killing, there was a great column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer entitled "Must Mentally Ill Be On The Streets," which suggested that we need to start reopening some of the closed asylums in the country. I'll bet the advocates for the mentally ill have inundated the columnist's email and regular mail with everything from curses to out-and-out threats. The whole mental health system in this country began to go through an evolutionary change many years ago, with folks I'll call "advocates" saying that mentally ill folks can lead productive lives and live on their own and take care of themselves. Some other folks, I'll call them "tightwads," wanted to reduce government outlays for mental institutions, and the two groups kind of became strange bedfellows. The "advocates" said to the other group, "Hey look, if we have laws that give mentally ill people a chance, they'll become taxpayers. You guys (the "tightwads") can't lose. Mental institutions can have budget cuts, or maybe even be eliminated, AND not only will you save money that way, but the mentally ill will work and pay taxes. So, you'll get more money for your coffers."

We should know better, but after many changes, the whole thing has not worked as we were told that it would. It certainly has not been a total failure, and I do not want to convey that impression, but many folks have fallen through the cracks (and some have even been ON crack) and some of the changes have been so bizarre, that I wonder if some of the "advocates" have more problems than the folks they defend. Mental illness can manifest itself in so many ways and with so many variables, that it is really tough to have a blanket law about such things, but the idea that some folks who have been diagnosed with mental illness can't be required to take and continue to take medication, or to visit a mental health facility on a regular basis, just because "this is a free country," is total NONSENSE. This is not like scraping your knee or cutting your finger. To say that many of these folks can make such decisions for themselves is further NONSENSE.

I go back to my Moody Blues album "A Question of Balance." The problem has been, there hasn't been a hell of a lot of balance on this issue. Some obviously VERY disturbed people have been left to wander our streets, frequently, but not always in big cities. They sleep on the streets, aggressively beg for money and even attack folks just trying to go about their own business. Others may not live on the streets, but have serious problems. (For the politically correct among you, I'm not saying that every person on the streets or who asks for money has severe mental problems.) Having been involved in apartment management for 17 years, I had to deal with some folks who had "problems." Many were not dangerous, in my opinion, and some were, to put it bluntly, a nuisance to others living near them, and to those involved in managing the places, including me. If YOU lived in an apartment building, or even in a private home for that matter, where your neighbor had "arguments" with imaginary people, or accused you of trying to kill or harm them in some way, or if they lived above you and left bathtubs, sinks, or toilets constantly overflow, bringing water down into your living quarters, how do you think you'd feel? I can pretty much guarantee that you'd be complaining, CORRECTLY, to the management, or the authorities.

In the case of apartment buildings, the management doesn't really have many options. For one thing, custodians, maintenance people, secretaries, and property managers aren't usually trained mental health people. Some of these tenants need lots of care and attention. The management can give warning letters about disturbing others in the building, or about letting water run down onto other parts of the property, etc, but in the end, after documenting a number of incidents, the management will have to proceed with evicting the "troubled" tenant. They go to eviction court, where the judge or magistrate sympathizes with the tenant's condition, but then they grant the eviction, and in many cases, the court will try to help the tenant being evicted find new housing, which now simply pushes the problem onto some other apartment building owner and the tenants there. There has to be some better way to handle some of these folks who have more than a little quirkiness. I'm not saying that it should be easy, but having them committed to some asylum is certainly preferable to what has been going on for years now.

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-do-we-deal-with-troubled-minds.html

The Economic Impact on Cleveland

The Census Bureau has issued an economic report on the period 2000 through 2005, which was published in Saturday's edition of the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. In that report, Ohio lost 287,000 jobs, with Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) losing more than 80,000 of those jobs. The article notes that this means that "more than one out of every ten" jobs was lost. Further, more than 49,000 of these lost jobs were in manufacturing. In all, Ohio only gained 225 companies, while Cuyahoga County lost 1216 companies. To put this into some perspective, during the same period, the country gained 2.2 million jobs and 430,000 companies.

Just a note, some of the area leaders say that there has been some improvement to the numbers since 2005, although they admit that it is slow growth here. Of course, I wonder if the local people are taking into account the closing of two parts of the large Ford complex here? To clarify, one part of the complex is scheduled to close in 2009, and the other is in the process of closing, supposedly on a temporary basis. There are more than 1800 above average wage jobs involved in these closings. (Note: The Cleveland area consists of seven counties, and info for the entire area was not included in the article. Whether that info is even presently available, I don't know.)

Now a few comments:

With the loss of manufacturing jobs nationwide, is this country going to make anything anymore? Again, it has to be a national security issue. I'm not Einstein, but even I know that. If we rely on business people to lead the way, forget it!!! They're in it for money, not national security. (I really don't mean that to be a nasty comment. It's just common sense.)

I live in Cleveland proper, and you can see the "damage" everywhere; vacant shops and hundreds and hundreds of homes for sale, even in the nicest parts of the city proper, and even in some suburbs. Further, the county is averaging more than 1000 foreclosure filings a month.

Further on jobs, while I don't have the figures to actually back this up, my impression is, even folks who have been able to get other jobs are not making the same money and benefits they had with their previous employment.

Other areas of the country are hurting, too, and the Cleveland numbers just show what can happen, and is happening to many working people and their families. Just this past week, even the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland has indicated that at least 30 churches will be closed, many in the city proper, but some even in the suburbs. I wonder if we have a prayer?