Middle Class America, too big to fail.

By Jorge Reyes

There was a time when the United States had the largest middle class that the world has ever seen. We were the ones too big to fail, to quote a slogan made popular by those much maligned group of people known as Occupy Wall Street. There was a time when, like my parents and grandparents, we were able to buy homes, cars, and many of the things that made this country great. Unfortunately, as you well know, that is rapidly changing. Sadly, also, politicians do not even seem to be aware of this, or are simply ignoring this fact.

The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012. In fact, the middle class American is poor America, make no bones about it.

 

 

This has not been a sudden decline.  It has been slowly corroding our way of living on the edges. Millions of our jobs have disappeared, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate of wages, and overwhelming debt, including student loan debt for our youth, has choked the financial life out of millions. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace. But let me give you an example.

Today I went to a local supermarket. The prices of items, even those on sale, were so high that for the time I wondered how any family makes it. Which is why, I guess, so many people have started to go on food stamps. With savings, genetic brands and coupons, I paid over $100 total. Another social issue about to explode is the housing crisis. All those families thrown out of their homes in the foreclosure debacle will, eventually, become renters. Any cursory look at the rents in my local community will simply become appalling. A small studio, $800 to $900. A one bedroom apartment $1,000. And so on.
 

This is a social embarrassment.   The broad based swathe of people that built this nation has become an anachronism, another myth to defend which, nonetheless, remains a myth.  The problem might be that a new redefinition of what middle class is be needed. 

When the cost of the basic things that we need - housing, food, gas, housing, electricity - go up faster than our incomes do, that means we are getting poorer.

Audit Reveals Federal Reserve Gave $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

By Jorge Reyes

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill (HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.  Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

“This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

– Bernie Sanders(I-VT)

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.

Americans, already losing their homes to banks that later on leave homes vacant and vandalized, losing their jobs, and losing their middle class status, should swell with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)

Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)

Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)

Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)

Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)

Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)

Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)

Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)

JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)

Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)

UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)

Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)

Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)

Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)

BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011): http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation

Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696

FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf

Senator Sander’s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

Equal Rights Under the Law?

By Jorge Reyes

47 years ago, most of us were satisfied with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and, not to be outdone, a year later, with the Voting Rights Act. Today, we have new challenges with new areas of civil rights law that, unfortunately, still seem to linger far behind from the evolving mores of the nation.

I am referring to one remaining example of institutionalized, government-sanctioned discrimination: The 1996 law that denies the right of marriage to same-sex couples, the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, that was passed in the heat of election-year fear and bigotry against men who want to marry other men, and women who want to marry other women. That bill was sponsored by a Republican congress and signed by then President Bill Clinton.

The law denies federal benefits to same-sex marriages. It explicitedly states that marriage is solely defined by two heterosexual couples. President Obama, who used to say his views on marriage were “evolving,” allowed his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to do what the executive branch should have done long ago and declare that Doma is unconstitutional. The administration is no longer defending Doma against legal challenges.

And today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is beginning consideration of a bill that would repeal the law. Dorothy Samuels, a reporter for a national newspaper, believes that the bill will pass the committee with the votes of all 10 Democratic members. Eight Republicans will probably vote against it, and the Democrats may not be able to muster the 60 votes needed to block a filibuster in the Senate. Prospects in the House are not so great, either.

Sadly, I feel that all of this is a pointless debate because it doesn’t even begin to address the fundamental issue at stake. All this talk of what constitutes marriage is all based on religious beliefs, none of which ought to have much sway in a secular form of government if it is just a way to express discrimination against a particular group of people.

It is far past time to disentangle the religious and the civic aspects of marriage. In such a heterogeneous, secular, and diverse society as ours, it is not the role of government to interfere in an area that is, basically, religious. And, again, that is what all these laws and regulations are all about: religious in nature. True equality in a democracy ought to emphasize equality before the law, not have an oligarchical system pick and choose what is right for some based on some historical misreading of our founding principles.

The only way to ensure true marriage equality is to remove the ability of churches to give its blessing on the legality on any matter that is of a civil nature, such as marriage and family. There are other hot button issues which are all religious in nature, of course. If that continues to happen indiscriminately, we will find ourselves no different from other countries that base their government on a god.

The role of drafting laws or ordinances is reserved to the government, federal, state, or local, not a church. Couples, regardless of their sexual orientation, should be able to marry and their avowals, civil or religious, ought to be respected and encouraged. If they so choose, they can then seek the religious (non-legal) blessing of their church, or mosque or synagogue. But that is only a choice, which is a personal matter that should not concern any of us.

Otherwise we really are no different from noxious laws that, though on principle were equal under the law, were on principle second class citizens. We have had plenty of those throughout our history. Let us not go down that path again.

Tot Mom Drama: the Casey Anthony trial

By Jorge Reyes

Lately, the news media on TV, the Internet and the blogosphere is filled with news about Casey Anthony, the Orlando tot mom accused of killing in 2008 her two year old daughter, Caley Marie Anthony.

Interesting enough, every time I read something about it in an opinion page there is the almost immediate apology from the writer, a sort of mea culpa for being so riveted by this court drama. I must say I have also become a daily fan of the Anthony dysfunction, which is broadcast live on HLN every day, and then continues throughout the rest of the night. I recently caught myself flipping through HLN and CNN Anderson Cooper just to make sure I was not missing anything.

My own fascination was something of a mistake. When the trial started, I tried to give it but a passive glance on TV and then tried to go about my business. That is what I did with the OJ Simpson trial more than a decade ago.  Little by little, though, this time around I became fascinated by tot mom, to paraphrase Nancy Grace.

What does this say about how we, as a culture, respond to the dark side within us, a dark side that seem to be so gratified by the tragedy of the death, or murder, of an innocent two year old.

Not sure how to answer that question.

I think that some of the answer lies in the fact that this is uncanny, cognitively senseless. Unlike what some TV commentators have said, I don’t think Cindy Anthony is a sociopath or suffering from some deep seated mental disorder. I think she is as normal as you and me. I also equally believe she is gloating in her five minutes of fame.

But these are some of the facts, and it is a circus show.

Casey Anthony, a beautiful 25 year old party girl, who had a daughter out of wedlock, seems to have been a loving mom, but who also had a love hate relationship with her own mom, Cindy Anthony, the woman who just days earlier blamed herself for having done some of those sinister google search, like "chloroform". She denied having searched "shovel", though she remembers seeing a pop up about "neck breaking" feat on youtube. Casey, a liar who knows no bounds and who is very good at convincing people of them. Then there is her brother, Lee, who breaks down in the witness stand admonishing himself for having failed the little girl as an uncle. There are many secrets in this family, and none of it makes much sense unless to me. When the patriarch of the family, George, testifies he seems to be on the defensive. At the beginning of the trial it was hinted that this death was a freakish accident, that the little girl drowned in the family pool, something everyone in the family knew about.

Let us not forget the equally bizarre jinx of those waiting outside the courtroom waiting and hoping to be one of the lucky few to get a ticket into the trial. I suppose that accused murderers have replaced singers and sports players as icons. Forget about a Madonna concert, a murder trial is the only thing that seems to rid ourselves of our ennui. Don’t any of these people work? I have a friend in Italy that follows the live trial everyday. I even have a friend who confessed to me that he wanted to write a letter to Casey Anthony in jail hoping for a reply. He was hoping to sell the letter at auction.

While all of this is going on, there are even Anthony family mementos being sold online, mainly on EBAY. Recently, a baseball signed "Jesus Loves You, Cindy Anthony", sold for about $250.00.

This entire trial is a modern day tragedy. It reeks of decomposition, from which one day we are told it is the smell of a dead body and the next that it is the smell of pizza. What a show. No wonder we are all riveted by this. It is a trial filled with lies, betrayals, hints of incest, murder. Shakespeare could have done no better.

When I stare at the glassy eyed face of Casey Anthony, I see a void within as much as the void that exists in our society, me included. Lest we forget, this is not about a dysfunctional, circus like atmosphere of a family at odds with itself. This is about the life of a little girl who, no matter how she died and I doubt it if any of us will ever find out the truth, had her life tragically taken away from her by the negligence of a mother who, ironically, tattood on her shoulders bella vita, beautiful life in Italian, when her daughter was dead. Bella vita, yes, something Caley Anthony will never know.

President Obama did what none of his predecessors could accomplish, and without waterboarding.

by Jorge Reyes

A lot of right wing ideologues are infuriated, to say the least, at the fact that it was a center to left President who successfully sent the order to murder America's Public Enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden. As a refresher, we must never forget that one of the many ironies of this same President who signed an executive order clearing the way to ban interrogation techniques of detainees in Guatanamo. Those interrogation techniques had been a hallmark of the Bush administration's war on terror. In fact, it was a program perversely relished by the political right at all levels.  Ex President George W. Bush is nowhere to be found these days. According to what his wife Laura to a news outlet, he just wants to enjoy the fruits of a private citizen. Good riddance, really. He was, by far, the most idiotic President we have ever had.

Regardless of this, key figures from Bush's administration are claiming that most of this victory is theirs too. After all, they were bold enough to inflict waterboarding and other harsh methods on helpless prisoners.

Dick Cheney, a man I have never been able to stand, told some media outlets that "it wouldn't be surprising" if the enhanced interrogation program put in place during "our first term" produced results that contributed to its success. Some of Bush's closest political advisers, joined the fray too. According to them, it is very clear that enhanced interrogation helped "create an environment that gave rise to this information."

What these men conveniently don't mention is they were also part of an administration that let bin Laden slip out of the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan and eventually find refuge in Abbottabad, Pakistan, living it off in a million dollar compound and not in a cave as it was assumed. Like most and much of what that Bush dude did, it was up to Obama to clean up the mess, which includes a war in Iraq, an economy on the brink of a depression, and our standing with the international community. Further, they also left us an extremely bloated bureaucracy, Homeland Security, estimated to have cost us more than a trillion dollars. All in the spirit, of course, to fight terror. Along the way, many of our civil liberties went to hell, too. But as it is, we already live in a police state. We just dont want to admit it.

What is left in much of these discussions is the fact that brutal interrogation methods had very little to do with the capturing of bin Laden. The key to locating bin Laden was to find his trusted courier, a man with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee, told the New York Times that coercive techniques "didn't provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information" and most of his colleagues felt it was "un-American and did not work."

For a country that wants to be a beacon of morality, admonishing other nation states when they are failing to do the same, it is one of the strangest twists of fate that we seem to legitimize torture, when need be, when desired, when it is part of our national interest, which in this day and age means just about anything.

Obama achieved his mission accompkished not by continuing on the same habit of his predecessors. He did their unfinished work without adopting any of their methods. That's something to think about, at a time when everyone is now claiming victory for a job well done.

"The Standing Babas" in the novel Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

By Jorge Reyes

I am reading an almost 1,000 page novel titled Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. The basic plot of the book, loosely based on the author's own life, is about a man who escapes from prison in Australia (where he was serving a 19-year sentence for armed robbery, which he committed to maintain his heroin addiction) before fleeing to India. By fleeing, he in essence becomes a lifelong fugitive. In India, among many things, he reinvents himself and becomes a "doctor" for people living in a Bombay slum of twenty five thousand families.

The novel, full of amazing stories within stories, describes a religious sect known as the Standing Babas, who have vowed to remain standing for many years. Here's a quote from the book about them.

''Bajrang Das, a 'standing' baba, who never sits down, day and night. He sleeps standing too, hanging over this swing. A metal chastity belt covers his genitals.

''A ‘standing’ Baba, who is called khareshwari, has taken the vow not to sit or lie down for twelve years. He may rest one leg by hanging it in the sling under his swing. It is a painful austerity: the swollen legs and feet tend to develop persistent ulcers.

''Khareshwaris may walk about, but usually just hang in their swing in their corner -- and stand.''

I have yet to finish reading this beautifully crafted and complex novel. But thinking that the standing babas was a fictional ploy, I researched them online and to my even greater disbelief I discovered that the standing babas are real.

As I quoted above, members of this religious group actually make a vow never to sit, not even to sleep. They stand for a specified number of years, 12 years seems to be the target, or they commit themselves never to sit for the remaining of their lives.  To read that particular chapter on the standing babas is to almost to feel the pain and misery these people must endure for their religious beliefs. 

What does the discovery of new life forms mean for God and faith?

By Jorge Reyes Figueras

The discovery in California by NASA scientists what is apparently an entirely new life form, a toxic arsenic bacteria rather than phosphorus, which is one of the six building blocks of all life on Earth, has set the scientific world on fire, threatening longstanding beliefs about biology and religious faith.

The discovery implies that life can spring forth unexpectedly on earth and even other planets in unexpected forms-- developments that seem to run counter to literal readings of biblical creation accounts.

"The polite thing to say is that discoveries such as this don't really impeach the credibility of established religion, but in truth of course they really do," David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association (AHA) said of this week's revelations about the microbes discovered in Lake Mono, California.

"The fact that life can spring forth in this way from nature, taken in context with what else we've learned in recent centuries about space and time, surely makes it less plausible that the human animal is the specially favored creation of all-powerful, all-knowing divinity," Niose said.

Another example of the war between science and religion?

It all depends.

The arsenic-based microbe discovery "sounds like a nice piece of work; we'll see where it goes from here," Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit and a planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory, wrote in an e-mail to Politics Daily. "But," he added, "any scientific discovery that broadens our knowledge of creation, deepens our understanding of the Creator."

Consolmagno, who a few weeks ago made news for saying he'd be delighted to find intelligent life on other planets, is typical of religious believers who don't see faith and science as natural enemies.

Atheists who historically have seen belief and science as opponents in a warring duel-- with belief of any type as the problem, not the solution-- weren't buying the AHA's arguments about the discovery's importance.

"I regret to say that the American Humanists got the story wrong," PZ Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota and a famously trenchant critic of religion.   "They say 'a new form of life has been discovered that apparently evolved outside the scope of all previously discovered life on Earth,' and this is not correct: the bacteria studied share a common ancestor with us, and the novelty of the discovery was not the organism, but that this entirely earthly organism was capable of incorporating arsenic into its chemistry. So no, their claims of its significant impact on our understanding of the history of life on earth are overblown."

Faith, it seems, comes in many forms though.  And one thing about is faith is this, it can withstand any attacks no matter how strong is the evidence against it. 

Niose of the American Humanist Association did concede that it is "unlikely that this discovery will change the minds of those who insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible." He went on to add that, "to them, the world is about 6,000 years old and evolution is a hoax, and no amount of scientific evidence will change that. For the rest of us, however, this discovery is indeed profound, and it adds to the mountains of evidence that already point to the humanistic lifestance as being our best hope."

It remains to be seen what the implications of this recent discovery will have for a plethora of interrelated issues, such as life in other planets, the nature of the universe, and of course faith in God. What I can only say is that faith has thus far survived attempts to explain the universe in a naturalistic way seemingly devoid of any deity, and discoveries made by science in the last hundred years. And perhaps that is the nature faith, to believe in things unknown, to believe in things impossible, to have faith in a universe that seems to be, in fact, miraculous.

So what now for Cuba?

By Jorge Reyes

When Raúl Castro took on the reigns of power Cuba, many people though skeptical actually had hopes that some political opening would take place in Cuba. I, like them, were wrong.

The Cuban government under him has continued to harass and jail political dissenters—even as the blogosphere, egged on by TV stations in Miami, provides new ways for some Cubans to express their criticism.

A couple of days ago, the Cuban government announced that fifty-two political political prisoners will be released, after a decision made after the archbishop of Havana and the Spanish foreign minister interceded directly with Raúl Castro himself. The announcement is good news and a welcome relief to many observers, not to mention the prisoners' families. They have been through enough since their arrest in 2003.

According to Freedom House, this is a welcome posture but don't forget that there are 167 other political prisoners of whom very little has been spoken about. 

Is this a new willingness by Castro to tolerate dissent? To stop harassing people whose only crime is simply to act and think differently?

Some have seen this as a major concession by the Castro government, and in many ways it is. Whatever this may ultimately lead to, let's see what this is not about.

Throughout the years, there have been many negotiated releases with very little political change. 

In 1984, Jesse Jackson convinced Fidel Castro to release twenty-six political.  In 1996, Bill Richardson secured the release of three.  In 2002, Jimmy Carter got one prisoner released. In 1995, the Human Rights Watch managed to get half a dozen released after six grueling hours of negotiation with Fidel Castro in 1995. Pope John Paul II has been the most successful negotiator thus far, who in 1998 obtained the release of eighty jailed dissidents.

Those prisoner releases were also welcome news at the time each occurred. But they did not bring an end to repression in Cuba. The government never stopped locking up its critics and stifling dissent on the island. There is little reason to think this time will be different. Since Raúl Castro took over from his ailing brother in 2006, the Cuban government has jailed scores of political prisoners, including journalists, human rights defenders, and ordinary citizens engaged in “counterrevolutionary” activities. None of these newer prisoners are among the fifty-two the government now plans to release.

In any case, for now, only five of the fifty-two will actually leave prison—and apparently not for their homes, but rather for forced exile to Spain. “They will go directly from the prisons to the planes,” Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez wrote on Wednesday, citing “a gentleman who keeps his ear glued to the radio” listening to “the prohibited broadcasts from the North.

"The ability to rid themselves of the inconvenient," she continues, "the skill to push off the island platform anyone who opposes them, this is a talent in which our leaders are quite adept…. [S]o many Cubans find themselves caught between the walls of prison and the sword of exile.”

Also, Yoani's sentiments are equally shared by many editorials worldwide.  As Daniel Calingaert, deputy director of Freedom House said: "we’re concerned that these prisoners are being forced to leave Cuba as a condition of their release and, in this way, the Cuban government is trying to physically remove political opposition from the island. The Cuban government should respect the right of its citizens to return home.”

There are no easy answers when it comes to Cuba.

I, for one, has stopped thinking of possible scenarios. What is true is that the release of political prisoners won't do anything to solve any of Cuba's political problems. I was always of the belief that by simply opening an immigration valve allowing Cubans to leave the island, we were doing more harm against the cause of Cuba's freedom than not.  It doesn't solve anything.  It leaves a vacuum for any meaningful and strong dissent. 

Now these 52 released political prisoners are forced to leave Cuba and live somewhere else, like thousands of other dissidents have done. The other political prisoners will remain locked up, their voices muffled, and the dissident movement as weak as ever.

That has always been the problem that has plagued the Cuban nation; those who should stay behind and fight leave by choice or are forced to leave. Others simply remain to whatever they can do to solve a seemingly intractable situation; their voices barely audible in a din of repressive revolutionary distopia.

Changes are needed in how our judicial system treats the mentally ill

By Jorge Reyes

Not long ago, I had a chance to meet Judge Steven Leifman, a circuit court judge who is also an advocate for the mentally ill inmates. In a speech in 2007 he said, "When I became a judge I had no idea that I was becoming a gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric facility in the state of Florida - the Miami-Dade Jail." And since that time, indeed he has.

Judge Leifman was instrumental in drafting and presenting a massive report to judges and legislators titled "Mental Health: Transforming Florida's Mental Health System" about mentally ill patients and how they have become the forgotten few in our legal system.  The 170-page report is hair-raising.  It highlights in detail how the legal system treats under its case mentally incompetent defendants. 

The report itself was so grim that a local TV station reporter, Michelle Gillen, did an investigative documentary called "The Forgotten Floor."
Here are some statistics taken right out from the report:

"On any given day in Florida, there are approximately 16,000 prison inmates, 15,000 local jail detainees, and 40,000 individuals under correctional supervision in the community who experience serious mental illness (SMI). Annually, as many as 125,000 people with mental illnesses requiring immediate treatment are arrested and booked into Florida jails. The vast majority of these individuals are charged with minor misdemeanor and low level felony offenses that are a direct result of their psychiatric illnesses. People with SMI who come in contact with the criminal justice system are typically poor, uninsured, homeless, members of minority groups, and experience co-occurring substance use disorders. Approximately 25 percent of the homeless population in Florida has an SMI and over 50 percent of these individuals have spent time in a jail or prison.

"A 2006 report by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) Research Institute reported that the State of Florida ranked 12th in the nation in spending for forensic mental health services. Today, this estimate is likely to be considerably higher as this ranking did not take into account the state’s investment earlier this year of more than $16 million in emergency funding allocated by the Legislative Budget Commission and the addition of $48 million in annual funding to add 300 desperately needed treatment beds to the overflowing forensic system. Individuals ordered into forensic commitment are now the fastest growing segment of the publicly funded mental health marketplace in Florida. Between 1999 and 2007, forensic commitments increased by 72 percent, including an unprecedented 16 percent increase between 2005 and 2006.

"To put this in a more acute perspective, the State of Florida currently spends roughly a quarter of a billion dollars annually to treat roughly 1,700 individuals under forensic commitment; most of whom are receiving services to restore competency so that they can stand trial on criminal charges and, in many cases, be sentenced to serve time in state prison. Furthermore, the treatment provided in Florida’s forensic hospitals is funded entirely by state general revenue dollars, as Federal law prohibits Medicaid from providing payment for psychiatric services rendered in such institutional settings. As a result, the state is investing enormous sums of taxpayer dollars into costly, back-end services that may render a person competent to stand trial, but will do nothing to provide the kind of treatment needed to facilitate eventual community re-entry and reintegration.

"Roughly 150,000 children and adolescents, under the age of 18, are referred to Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) every year. Many of these youth have been impacted by poverty, violence, substance abuse, and academic disadvantage. Over 70 percent have at least one mental health disorder, with females experiencing higher rates of disorders (81%) than males (67%). Of youth diagnosed with a mental health disorder, 79 percent meet criteria for at least one other co-morbid psychiatric diagnosis, the majority of whom (approximately 60 percent) are diagnosed with a co-occurring substance use disorder."

These are just some of the highlights of the report. There is more, much more, and the more you read it the more alarming this issue will be to you, too.

I ask you to read it for yourself.

Changes are obviously needed, and fast. The problem is that at a time when there are so many budget cuts across a wide variety of services and programs, I feel that the report will simply be an irritant to our legislators who are fully aware of the problem, yet are unable to do much to lead by example and do the right thing.

To read or download the report, please click here: http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/pub_info/documents/11-14-2007_Mental_Health_Report.pdf

The death by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner: how our civilized society perpetuates barbarism

Bullet holes in the wood panel after Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a firing squad

by Jorge Reyes

On Friday, June 18, 2010, the state of Utah ended the life of Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad. Shortly before the shooting, Gardner was strapped into a chair and a team of five marksmen aimed their guns at a white target pinned to his chest.

At 12:20 a.m. he was pronounced dead.

Utah adopted lethal injection as the default execution method in 2004, but Gardner was one still allowed to choose the controversial firing squad option because he was sentenced before the law changed. He told his lawyer he did it because he preferred it — not because he wanted the controversy surrounding the execution to draw attention to his case or embarrass the state.

Whatever your personal views on the death penalty, I personally consider this type of execution as barbaric. It is barbaric.

The executioners, all certified police officers, volunteered for this task. All of whom, of course, remain anonymous. They carried the execution standing about 25 feet from Gardner, behind a wall cut with a gunport, armed with a set of .30-caliber Winchester rifles. One was loaded with a blank so no one knows who fired the fatal shot. Sandbags stacked behind Gardner's chair kept the bullets from ricocheting around the cinderblock room.

About nine journalists were allowed to witness the execution. One wrote that before the barrage of bullets killed him, Gardner's left thumb twitched against his forefinger. When his chest was pierced, he clenched his fist, his arm pulling up slowly as if he were trying to lift something.

Gardner was sentenced to death for a 1985 capital murder conviction stemming from the fatal courthouse shooting of attorney Michael Burdell during a failed escape attempt. He was at the Salt Lake City court facing a 1984 murder charge in the shooting death of a bartender.

Last-minute appeals failed
A flurry of last-minute appeals and requests for stays were rejected Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Gov. Gary Herbert.

The Supreme Court turned down three appeals late Thursday, although one of its orders showed that two justices, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens, would have granted Gardner's request for a stay.

"We are disappointed with the court's decisions, declining to hear Mr. Gardner's case," one of his attorneys, Megan Moriarty, said in a statement to The Associated Press. "It's unfair that he will be executed without a full and fair review of his case."

After a visit with his family, Gardner was moved from his regular cell in a maximum security wing of the Utah State Prison to an observation cell Wednesday night, Department of Corrections officials said.

On Thursday, they said Gardner was spent time sleeping, reading the novel "Divine Justice," watching the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy and meeting with his attorneys and a bishop from the Mormon church. Gehrke said officers described his mood as relaxed.

Quench that thirst!
Although officials had said he planned to fast after having his last requested meal Tuesday, Gardner drank a Coke and a Mountain Dew on Thursday night. His Tuesday meal consisted of steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7UP.

Attorney Andrew Parnes, who has represented Gardner for 12 years, had his last visit with Gardner around 10 p.m. MDT (1 a.m ET Friday). Parnes said Gardner had been focused on other people and programs he wanted to start, including one for at-risk youth.

"He's concerned about how his family is doing. He's concerned about how I'm doing," Parnes said. "He's just really strong. Now is that bravado? I don't know."

Gardner was the third man killed by firing squad in the U.S. since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Although Utah altered its capital punishment law in 2004 to make lethal injection the default method, nine inmates convicted before that date, including Gardner, can still choose the firing squad over lethal injection.

Troubled Life
I don't mean to excuse anyone's bad behavior, especially when this involves murder. But in trying to piece together the tortured life of this man, I found some interesting, if disturbing, biographical information which might help to explain the destiny he was slated to fulfill. Gardner first came to the attention of authorities at age 2 as he was found walking alone on a street clad only in a diaper. At age 6 he became addicted to sniffing gasoline and glue. Harder drugs — LSD and heroin — followed by age 10. By then Gardner was tagging along with his stepfather as a lookout on robberies, according to court documents.

Not necessarily a perfect childhood. 

After spending 18 months in a state mental hospital and being sexually abused in a foster home, he killed Otterstrom at age 23. About six months later, at 24, he shot Burdell in the face as the attorney hid behind a door in the courthouse.

"I had a very explosive temper," Gardner said last week. "Even my mom said it was like I had two personalities."

Many of us come troubled and dysfunctional family lives. Luckily, few of us decide to take on a gun and become serial killers or murderers. I've always been fascinated by the troubled minds of those few who do. It seems that somewhere in the deep recesses of one's mind, something snaps, something turns into a cauldron of passion which leads to the desire to destroy and annihilate another human being. What that psychic decision is, no one will probably know. What's so frightening for me to come to grips is that, perhaps, all of us are capable of it. The big mystery remains, though, why some do and others don't.

Either way one looks at this, it is a sad, and tragic, ending to a life. Whatever symbolisms and lessons one may learn about the path of destruction Ronnie Lee Gardner left behind, everyone, including himself, is a victim: to the family he destroyed just as much as himself by the death sentence carried by the state against one of its own citizens.

After the execution, reporters were allowed into the execution chamber. There was only the strong smell of bleach, no blood. The only evidence that a man had been executed in here an hour earlier were four small holes in the black wood panels behind the chair.

I ask: after the state carried out its sentence against Gardner, will this bring closure to the families torn asunder by the killing?  will it help us understand why an abused 6 year old kid became a killer?  will it help deter the crime of other 6 year olds in the future?  Those questions won't even start to answer why we even allowed the precious life of a 6 year old fall through the cracks of the system until it was too late.