March 8, 2013

Prepare to Cry.

We all know that lack of access to health care has condemned millions of children and adults in this country to jail. Kids whose parents can not afford to get them inpatient treatment for diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are told to have the courts declare them truant or unruly. Once they are locked up, the families are told, their child will be eligible for "free" mental health. They hear the same story when it comes to a suicidal brother or aunt or neighbor. "Let the criminal justice system take care of it."

We all know that the mental health services offered to these people while in custody are poor. Sometimes, there is no mental health care at all. Getting any type of medical care while in prison requires a clear head and perseverance. If you are a bright prisoner with a bad heart, you can probably get your state penitentiary to refer you to a cardiologist by threatening to sue them if they do not. But if you are not even sure who you are or where you are or what is wrong with you, then you can never hope to jump through the hoops the criminal justice system will set between you and the medical care you need.

We all know this. But a story at ABC allows us to feel what it is like to be mentally ill in a country that is more willing to incarcerate than it is to offer medical treatment.

Stephen Slevin, 59, was depressed in 2005 when he decided to drive across the country, with no particular goal or destination in mind, his lawyer Matt Coyte told ABCNews.com. After being pulled over in Dona Ana County, N.M., on Aug. 24 2005, Slevin was arrested on aggravated DWI charges, and for driving a vehicle that he did not own. He was brought into the Dona Ana County Detention Center.

From there, his long nightmare began.

"To find out what happened was difficult," Coyte said. "His mental health was so compromised from his time in jail, he had very little memory of his stay there."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/prisoner-left-solitary-years-receives-155m-settlement/story?id=18677197

Jail officials, recognizing that the patient suffered from mental illness, decided that looking him up in solitary for two years would be an adequate treatment. He was allowed access to mental health treatment for a couple of weeks in those two years, immediately got better---and then was forced back into solitary as he was awaiting his trial.

You caught that last part, right. He was awaiting trial. He was never convicted of anything. Prosecutors decided not to press charges, because he was not fit to stand trial. But he was considered fit to spend two years locked in a box where his mental status and health deteriorated.

This story does not have a happy ending. While he got a $15 million settlement, he is now dying of lung cancer. Would that cancer have been caught early enough to treat if he has not sent two years locked in a box? Probably not. The US denies all health care, not just mental health care to its uninsured citizens. But maybe his last few years of life would have been better if he could have seen a psychiatrist and gotten treatment rather than seeing a policeman and getting solitary confinement instead.

March 3, 2013

How Citizens United Encourages Corporations to Break the Law Like Enron

Surprise, Surprise, Sheldon Adelson's lawyers just admitted what we have known all along. His company used illegal bribes to get its Macau casino built.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/business/in-filing-casino-operator-admits-likely-violation-of-an-antibribery-law.html?hp

Last year, Adelson spent a measly $60 million of his $25 billion fortune attempting to unseat Obama and install a Republican---any Republican in the White House. In retrospect, it probably seemed like a good deal to him and his accountants. Remember what happen to Siemens? They settled their foreign bribery case for $1.34 billion. A gambling man, Adelson must have reasoned that $60 million spent to save $1 billion was a good bet. And though he lost the crap shoot, chances are if he had it to do over again---the bribes, the campaign donations--- he would. Because the Supreme Court has made it very profitable to ignore federal law.

Imagine what would have happened to Enron if Citizens United was already the law of the land in 2000. Ken Lay, Karl Rove and Antonin Scalia managed to get Bush selected. Their party controlled the House. However, the GOP had only a razor thin margin of the control in the Senate, and they lost that when one Republican turned Independent. Because the Senate was in Democratic hands, the bill which the House wrote and the White House endorsed to give Enron a huge infusion of taxpayer money in the wake of 9-11 was not passed. Enron's house of cards collapsed, much like the war that was lost for the want of a horseshoe nail in the nursery rhyme. Had Ken Lay been free to spend sixty million dollars shoring up the Senate in 2000, he would still be the head of the world's "biggest" company---

That is what Citizen United is all about. Giving corporate criminals like Ken Lay the ability to buy elections so that their crimes go unpunished and their debts get paid by you and me. The Supreme Court ruled the way they did in Citizens United because five of the Justices never, ever want to see any of their rich business buddies dragged through the mud again. Jail is for poor folks and minorities. The rich are different. If they sin, they buy a papal pardon. If they break the law, they buy a politician and get a bailout. It is the Neo Conservative American Way.