A Day in the Life: Delusion verses Reality

I never saw anyone hunt for game with semiautomatic weapons, but far too often, they have been used to kill lots of people quickly.When I wrote this in April 2007, we had just had one of a series of events that highlighted a reason to ask why and how can we prevent the mass killings. Now we have suffered many more of the same type of events with almost no action but  political theater. How many deaths will it take to achieve true awareness. Some say guns protect from gun violence, but at Fort Hood Army Base not even soldiers were immune and they indeed carry guns.

As I watched the news of the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia unfold, I thought of my own experiences with the mental health system in America. I have two step sons that have paranoid schizophrenia, and when they are taking their medication, they are not psychotic. The struggle to help them to lead meaningful and productive lives has encompassed the last twenty years of our existence. Once you have encountered the right of a mentally unbalanced person to not take their medicine, even though there is no possible way they can rationally make that essential decision; and then the criteria that they must actually be an immediate threat to themselves or others to get help to not be a threat, can you fully ask the question: which is more insane, the illness or the system?

I hear people debate whether to have more gun control or not despite the statistic that in gun deaths unrelated to wars, America has more gun deaths than all the rest of the world combined. In fact, we have 83% of the world’s gun non-military related deaths since 1980. But the question how an unmedicated mentally unbalanced person could seemingly legally buy two guns and then kill thirty-two people is answered that Virginia does not report mentally impaired individuals to the very data Federal base that determines if someone can legally buy a weapon. Why? Simply put, it is not illegal to be psychotic, but to not treat that psychosis is also not illegal.

I hear people say that mentally unbalanced people, that really want to kill people, can use other weapons. That is undeniably true. There is the case of a young woman being shoved into an oncoming train from a passenger platform by an unmedicated delusional individual that perceived her as an imaginary threat. If one wishes, one could possibly connect airline hijacking to unbalanced minds. However; that perceived threat met an immediate cry to safeguard boarding and passenger loading all across America. We have sky marshals and airline check-in procedures at all airports in every terminal, but we have averaged as many as thirty thousand gun deaths in America yearly since 1980. Why?

How many of these have been at the hands unbalanced individuals, one only can guess, but guns are not the main problem of society verses the individual on mental health. The root cause is proper treatment when that treatment is needed and the monitoring of that sick mind so that they can resume being a contributing member of society, not a potential time bomb that must explode to get the very help needed to prevent tragedy. I recently asked the question why mental health workers and social workers cannot help make sure ill and chemically imbalanced individuals take their medicine, and was met with the response that it’s not in the budget. Why? The next time a sick individual lets loose their unmedicated delusions and your loved one dies, will you be satisfied with that response?

_Thomas P Love 04/17/07

 Wall Street Journalreported, only 12 states account for the majority of mental health records in the FBI database. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reported that 19 states have each submitted less than 100 mental health records to the FBI database.

http://www.alternet.org/34ths-states-ignore-mental-illness-background-checks-gun-buyers?akid=9851.38024._JrUQE&rd=1&src=newsletter766339&t=2
 

The Fiscal Cliff Explained By Thomas Kenny

“Fiscal cliff” is the popular shorthand term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect.
Among the laws set to change at midnight on December 31, 2012, are the end of last year’s temporary payroll tax cuts (resulting in a 2% tax increase for workers), the end of certain tax breaks for businesses, shifts in the alternative minimum tax that would take a larger bite, the end of the tax cuts from 2001-2003, and the beginning of taxes related to President Obama’s health care law. At the same time, the spending cuts agreed upon as part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011 will begin to go into effect. According to Barron's, over 1,000 government programs - including the defense budget and Medicare are in line for "deep, automatic cuts."
In dealing with the fiscal cliff, U.S. lawmakers have a choice among three options, none of which are particularly attractive:

• They can let the current policy scheduled for the beginning of 2013 – which features a number of tax increases and spending cuts that are expected to weigh heavily on growth and possibly drive the economy back into a recession – go into effect. The plus side: the deficit, as a percentage of GDP, would be cut in half.
• They can cancel some or all of the scheduled tax increases and spending cuts, which would add to the deficit and increase the odds that the United States could face a crisis similar to that which is occurring in Europe. The flip side of this, of course, is that the United States' debt will continue to grow.
• They could take a middle course, opting for an approach that would address the budget issues to a limited extent, but that would have a more modest impact on growth.

Can a Compromise be Reached?
The oncoming fiscal cliff is a concern for investors since the highly partisan nature of the current political environment could make a compromise difficult to reach. This problem isn’t new, after all: lawmakers have had three years to address this issue, but Congress – mired in political gridlock – has largely put off the search for a solution rather than seeking to solve the problem directly. Republicans want to cut spending and avoid raising taxes, while Democrats are looking for a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Although both parties want to avoid the fiscal cliff, compromise is seen as being difficult to achieve – particularly in an election year. There's a strong possibility that Congress won't act until the eleventh hour. Another potential obstacle is that the next Congress won't be sworn in until January 3, after the deadline.
The most likely outcome is another set of stop-gap measures that would delay a more permanent policy change until 2013 or later. Still, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that if Congress takes the middle ground – extending the Bush-era tax cuts but cancelling the automatic spending cuts – the result, in the short term, would be modest growth but no major economic hit.
Possible Effects of the Fiscal Cliff
If the current laws slated for 2013 go into effect, the impact on the economy could be dramatic. While the combination of higher taxes and spending cuts would reduce the deficit by an estimated $560 billion, the CBO estimates that the policies set to go into effect would cut gross domestic product (GDP) by four percentage points in 2013, sending the economy into a recession (i.e., negative growth). At the same time, it predicts unemployment would rise by almost a full percentage point, with a loss of about two million jobs. A Wall St. Journal article from May 16, 2012 estimates the following impact in dollar terms: “In all, according to an analysis by J.P. Morgan economist Michael Feroli, $280 billion would be pulled out of the economy by the sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts; $125 billion from the expiration of the Obama payroll-tax holiday; $40 billion from the expiration of emergency unemployment benefits; and $98 billion from Budget Control Act spending cuts. In all, the tax increases and spending cuts make up about 3.5% of GDP, with the Bush tax cuts making up about half of that, according to the J.P. Morgan report.” Amid an already-fragile recovery and elevated unemployment, the economy is not in a position to avoid this type of shock.
The cost of indecision is likely to have an effect on the economy before 2013 even begins. The CBO anticipates that a lack of resolution will cause households and businesses to begin changing their spending in anticipation of the changes, possible reducing GDP before 2012 is even over.
Having said this, it's important to keep in mind that while the term “cliff” indicates an immediate disaster at the beginning of 2013, the impact of the changes - while destructive over a full year - will be gradual at first. What's more, Congress can act to change laws retroactively after the deadline. As a result, the fiscal cliff won't necessarily be an impediment to growth even if Congress doesn't address the issue until after 2013 has already begun.
The Next Crisis
Unfortunately, the fiscal cliff isn't the only problem facing the United States right now. At some point in the first quarter, the country will again hit the "debt ceiling" - the same issue that roiled the markets in the summer of 2011 and prompted the automatic spending cuts that make up a portion of the fiscal cliff.

http://bonds.about.com/od/Issues-in-the-News/a/What-Is-The-Fiscal-Cliff.htm

To learn more about this issue, see my article What is the Debt Ceiling? A Simple Explanation of the Debate and Crisis