Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Awakened from my sleep while thinking out loud. . .

Please refer to yesterday's post.  Go ahead.  I'll wait for you.
_______________________________

Okay, now. 

Cost to keep a person locked up in Texas:  $140 per day or $51,100 per year.

Ready for this? 

Cost of one month of mental health care via Medicaid per patient:  $145 per month or $1,740 per year.

Anyone out there see any clue as to why we have a few problems in the Great State of Texas?

Anyone, just anyone at all awake in Austin? 

Hello, down there? 

Any preacher gotta sermon to preach?

Any voter a letter to write?

Any business owner a call to make?

Any neighborhood association a trip to organize? 

Come on, people, let me hear it for some better thinking! 

How on earth did we get here? 

Long way from "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

7 comments:

Chris said...

Wake up Larry, I'll wait for you while you check out "RJCTexas.org"
(Restorative Justice Community of Texas)

Join the thousands involved in this important work.

Larry James said...

chris, much of this work would not be needed if we did the right thing by our citizens who are ill before the fact of complete breakdown and addiction. Charity always responds/reacts, justice prevents.

Anonymous said...

I think someday we'll look back on our system of locking people away when treatment would be far more useful and effective and shake our heads, as we do now at medieval dungeons/torture.

Unknown said...

Larry, I appreciate your willingness to think differently than the status quo. It's refreshing.

Chris, do you have a blog? I think it would be really entertaining to read.

c hand said...

If Texas is wrong can you point to a state that is right? Vermont? Utah? Sweden?

Larry James said...

c hand, try Arizona--certainly no Massachusetts or Sweden. Their prison reform was prompted by initiative and referrendum and is saving the state loads of capital. Forget the human side, just focus on cost benefit analysis. It turns out that doing the right thing is also usually the smart thing. I'm not sure about their mental health services, but couldn't be worse than Texas.

Anonymous said...

Another great blog from the Alinsky manual Mr James.
Alinsky's revolution promised that by changing the structure of society's institutions, it would rid
the world of such vices as socio-pathology and criminality. Arguing that these vices were caused
not by personal character flaws but rather by external societal influences, Alinsky's worldview
was thoroughly steeped in the socialist left's collectivist, class-based doctrine of economic
determinism. "The radical's affection for people is not lessened," said Alinsky, "… when masses of them demonstrate a capacity for brutality, selfishness, hate, greed, avarice, and disloyalty. It is not the people who must be judged but the circumstances that made them that way." Chief among these circumstances, he said, were "the larcenous pressures of a materialistic society."