Its too bad people failed to see the value in following science and chose to resist vaccination and/or boosters. I not only thought, but I know that by being vaccinated and later boosted I DID protect myself and those around me. Its not harassment, its shaming. Unless you follow guidance from the medical community and believe in science, you are endangering myself and those I love. Shame on you. Unless you have a medical reason, based upon SCIENCE, that is When you become infected, know that those who choose to be vaccinated will not be as likely to become infected. Know we will not suffer as severely as you will. Do you not remember or know anything about the polio epidemic? My grandmother and others died at a young age during the 1913 Spanish flu epidemic. All victims would LEAP at the opportunities afforded us today through the knowledge of modern medicine and current vaccines. Do you not protect your own children with the MM&R vaccines? You sound like you havent got time for the shame. Why not take time to avoid the pain? Consider where you get your information, and make informed decisions about your life.
The bottom line is horse racing is what makes the fair tick, financially. The current situation has screwed up the fair’s financial standing and now the foundation upon which it rests, horse racing, is in jeopardy. The article details the ways and hows. Clear message of the article cuts through the Humbolt Fog beyond the hurt feelings of critics stifled by small town morays from hearing and speaking the obvious - as did the author.
Voters should not support less qualified candidates for the sake of party politics. That is the thinking that brought us to our current mess of bipartisan obstructionism.
A culture wherein people self-medicate their cares away and, in their altered reality, perform poorly in the schools, create hazards on the roadway while they are drive, attract a criminal element, and shatter standards of character / health / and respect for others needs to change alright....but not in the direction the marijuana industry wants it to.
Several of my conservative friends have said that we should "work together" with the president and the Republican majority because they won the election and Trump is "everyone's president." This is my response:
I will not forget how badly he and so many others treated former President Barack Obama for 8 years...
I will not "work together" to privatize Medicare, cut Social Security and Medicaid.
I will not "work together" to build a wall.
I will not "work together" to persecute Muslims.
I will not "work together" to shut out refugees from other countries.
I will not "work together" to lower taxes on the 1% and increase taxes on the middle class and poor.
I will not "work together" to help Trump use the Presidency to line his pockets and those of his family and cronies.
I will not "work together" to weaken and demolish environmental protection.
I will not "work together" to sell American lands, especially National Parks, to companies which then despoil those lands.
I will not "work together" to enable the killing of whole species of animals just because they are predators, or inconvenient for a few, or because some people like killing them.
I will not "work together" to remove civil rights from anyone.
I will not "work together" to alienate countries that have been our allies for as long as I have been alive.
I will not "work together" to slash funding for education.
I will not "work together" to take basic assistance from people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
I will not "work together" to get rid of common sense regulations on guns.
I will not "work together" to eliminate the minimum wage.
I will not "work together" to support so-called "Right To Work" laws, or undermine, weaken or destroy Unions in any way.
I will not "work together" to suppress scientific research, be it on climate change, fracking, or any other issue where a majority of scientists agree that Trump and his supporters are wrong on the facts.
I will not "work together" to criminalize abortion or restrict health care for women.
I will not "work together" to increase the number of nations that have nuclear weapons.
I will not "work together" to put even more "big money" into politics.
I will not "work together" to violate the Geneva Convention.
I will not "work together" to give the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party and white supremacists a seat at the table, or to normalize their hatred
And racism.
I will not "work together" to deny health care to people who need it.
I will not "work together" to deny medical coverage to people on the basis of a "pre-existing condition."
I will not "work together" to increase voter suppression.
I will not "work together" to normalize tyranny.
I will not work together to eliminate or reduce ethical oversite at any level of government.
I will not "work together" with anyone who is, or admires, tyrants and dictators.
I will not "work together" to give less support to government employees.
I will not "work together" to find ways for the billionaires to cheat the system.
I will not "work together" to implement a hiring freeze at government agencies.
I will not "work together" to suppress reporters' right to ask questions the administrations does not like.
I will not "work together" to bully any country, big or small.
I will not "work together" to craft a message diminishing women and young adults.
I will not support anyone that thinks its OK to put a pipeline to transport oil on Sacred Ground for Native Americans. And, it would run under the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for millions of people. An accident waiting to happen.
This is my line, and I am drawing it.
I will stand for honesty, love, and respect for all living beings.
Wow, how did this story escape my radar! Now long retired, I feel like it reads to the core of my early professional roles in the mental health field. First as a psychiatric technician then as a psychiatric social worker at Atascadero State Hospital. Later my career included a stint with CONREP delivering outpatient treatment to and supervision of released patients in the community. I have written numerous reports to judges, voiced my clinical opinion on numerous occasions regarding a clients readiness to re-enter society, testified in courts throughout the state, and even made risk assessments and decisions in part based on review of thousands of individual rap sheets while working for the State of California.
The story as printed seems extremely factual to the process although I must admit it has been several decades since I worked in the mental health field and have not kept current on the most recent changes in law. Some of my earliest occasions to visit Eureka in the late 1980s came about in my role of interviewing prisoners in the HC Jail prior to writing CONREP evaluations to the Superior Court re: those inmates suitability for community treatment.
Heres what I learned then and what I believe now. First, people with mental health issues can clear their mind of symptoms obvious to others in society by taking prescribed psychotropic medication. The extra-pyramidal symptoms associated with taking them leave most almost universally loathe to continuing them when not supervised. Second, when supervised to ensure they do take psychotropic medication their psychotic symptomology abates. When they feel better, they rarely attribute their improvement to the medication. Rather, they see their improvement as evidence they are symptom free and dont require medication any longer. The fallacy in that thinking is they fail to realize/connect to the fact that the only reason they can think more clearly is because of the medication, not some divine healing that has miraculously occurred.
Rap sheets are notoriously incomplete and renown to have omissions of arrest and/or convictions on them. I have also read past studies regarding reliability of certain groups of individuals to make an accurate prediction as to whether persons with a history of mental illness will re-offend. The ones I remember showed that a group of citizens picked at random off the street could predict recidivism with as much accuracy as could a clinical treatment team consisting of therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists. That would be the same clinical treatment team that would have working knowledge of all facets of the patients history and background as well as benefit of prolonged observation of behaviors in the inpatient setting.
One of the most trusted and seemingly recovered (from symptoms of psychosis and effects of a personality disorder) patients I knew and observed over a course of treatment bludgeoned to death a non-clinician maintenance supervisor with a hammer at Atascadero more than twenty-five years ago. It is the only staff murder on record at that institution over the past 40 years that Im aware of. (More than one patient has been killed, however.) Assaults against staff members holding many different job titles are rampant there to the point of being a daily occurrence. More than 1,000 men in that maximum-security level institution are treated under constant 24-hour supervision by staff of multiple disciplines working three shifts around the clock to ensure order and a therapeutic milieu. Many patients, ironically, are there as transfers from the Department of Corrections because, in addition to their criminality, they are psychotic too. In others words, Corrections is sent by the courts those who are bad (only). The Department of Mental Health gets them when they are both bad and become mad.
It is in this surreal, crowded, male only, maximally secure imitation of civilized society that patients under constant supervision and monitored medication compliance are evaluated for their suitability to be released to the community. My sincere belief born from years of clinical experience / exposure to patients within both in and outpatient treatment settings is that the most accurate predictor of future behavior comes from ones history of same.
Re: “'As a Victim ...'”
Daniel Berman, you said it much better than I. Google the letter writer’s name and the results will reveal who we are responding to. For her to redeem herself at this point in life is akin to attempting to board a ship that set sail much too long ago….