It is amazing and sad how good 'ole Ronnie Raygun's words still have obvious perlocutionary affects/affects on the society at large.

"Government is not the solution to our problem. Government IS the problem!"

He then went on to convince enough folk of the need for Reaganomics(trickle down), subsequently giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest folk in the country while offsetting the costs of this by cutting spending on social programs and/or dissolving some of them altogether. The records clearly show that, on average, the wealth has not trickled down. In fact, the wealthiest folk have had their overall worth multiply at an exponentially faster rate than those who are not.

This is a bit of support for what has been said thus far.

That much being said, it is not at all a stretch to say that some of the direct consequences of our taking these actions have been disasterous. One very curious example would be the nationwide closing of all of the mental health institutions that housed folk who were a danger to themselves and/or to our society. We used to house mentally disturbed folk in the 'looney bins'. You know folk like most if not all of the different perpetrators of the numerous mass killings? Those folk who may have never had the opportunity to do such a thing had the powers at be not decided that it would be better to put that money into the pockets of the wealthiest folk in the country.

The real irony, the thing that really gets to me now lies in the fact that so many talking heads, especially those who identify with the conservatives, and/or the conservatives themselves who are parroting each others' talking points are currently shifting the focus away from the need for better gun safety(which they like to call 'gun control') onto the idea that we need to have a better mental health system in place. That that is the real problem!

Fancy that!

Now, here's the most bothersome part. How do you think that the conservative politician's will propose funding that idea? I strongly suspect that they will not suggest going back to the way it was previously funded, for that would amount to an increase in revenue through taxation. Rather, true to their current dogma of austerity, they will propose to do so by cutting even more spending from yet more social programs. That is taking more things away from the folk who already have the least in order to fix a problem - that they've brought into the light - that was, by and in large, originally caused by giving the ones with the most even more!

Wake up America!

No takers?

obamby is the messiah. Correct answer?

By 2016. the number of liberals working in Gubament jobs will be so great, no Gubament cuts will be voted in.

Brilliantly stated. Impressive rhetorical devices. Eloquent. Concise. Perfectly perfect.

Although I agree, mental health has been poorly and in most cases completely ignored in this country since before Reagan actually. Those warehouses were not healthy for the mentally unwell either.

Can I make a prediction, like my prediction of the gun control already happening.....The gun advocates (those who kiss the butt of the gun manufacturers) are reaching right now for anything that will not effect their bottom line. They couldn't care less if kids get shot every day by their parents, their neighbors, their teachers who have guns as long as someone is buying em. They might care if enough people die that they can't sell anymore but that would take a lot of loss of life. Ok, back to the prediction, they will make it appear to the American people that they care about their gun totin as ses and the mental health of the gun totin as ses as long as gun restrictions that will stop the selling of guns will be shelved. They couldn't care less about the mental health of the gun owners, actually the crazier they are the more guns they will buy...

And if they can get the attention elsewhere for long enough a new crisis will take the attention and this will pass.

But there are those like myself who will not let it pass. I have always been an advocate of not letting gun crazies do their crazy shyte but when 20 six year olds were mowed down in a class in just a few minutes, it brought home how very crazy it has gotten. Stuff will get done this time.

Now the gun crazies don't want you to "use" this "one time" kinda thing (there are many now) as a method to take away their protection from the boogie man. Cause the gun is no protection from the government, no protection from the criminals, etc... it is usually used when they finish losing their mind to hurt their own family friends coworkers neighbors, etc... or irresponsibly used by their kids to kill their brother or sister or neighbor or irresponsibly stolen and used to commit a crime against some other innocent person, etc... the list goes on and on but very seldom does it save the day for anyone for real. They have a lot of "what if" scenarios but in actuality they are just a wishful thinking on the gun toters hope list.

So, yea mental health is a super big issue in this country. Will anything be done about it of mass proportion like needed? Hell no. Republican wouldn't fund a sure fire way to make all poor people unlazy let alone make everyone healthier mentally or otherwise. We would just live longer and be a burden to the unlazy god blessed 1 percent. God forbid the poor actually take some time out of their life struggle and investigate what the repubs have been doing to them for years, they might be in trouble. Corporations might actually be treated as businesses again. Big money might be taken out of government. People might be able to send their kids to school and know that no one, not even a gun toting teacher, is gonna even accidentally shoot their children. Oh the horror.

Well, you sure are long winded. I'll tell you something you probably didn't know, there was a movement in the 60's and 70's to eliminate involuntary commitment of mental patients, except in cases where they were violent.

Me? Long winded? Never

I was talking about the feller who started this topic. You put yours up there while I was still pecking my response out on the ol' keyboard.

I can be so also but I try to be short and to the point.

Hmph...

Is there a valid point hidden in there somewhere?

A man can find wisdom anywhere, if he's wise enough to recognize it.

Okay, I know I tend to be disorganized with my thoughts and I did curse a bit but I thought there was one point made

Not you silly. I was talking about the "feller" who has written much but said much of nothing.

The issues described in the OP did not begin with Reagan (1980s), they began much earlier. Perhaps it began with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 – or more likely it began with the earliest economic philosophies by people like John Locke and Adam Smith which the U.S.A. purportedly adopted and idealized.

More precisely however, it is about how such philosophies became so twisted that what holds the greatest value is not that which are the commons – the necessary, abstract, hard to pin down common elements for sustainable existence. So twisted the ideologies of value have become that ‘the bottom line’ falls well above the mark of human life or even life at all.

That which holds the greatest value today, in our modern societies, is paper or pieces of metal or plastic through which one’s wealth is conferred. The value of wealth is that it buys either the necessities of life or it buys power to control the commons from which the necessities for sustainable existence were once freely accessed and shared by all life and preserved for the common good of all life.

When individual lives are worth less than a piece of paper, when the necessities of life demand that we conform to the ethics that put paper above life, and then we put the weapons of violence in the hands of the masses – what else is to be expected, but violence?

I'm sorry, but I don't follow along too well. What piece of paper are you talking about?

It's alright. I expect that you are much like the rest of us, no real paper that denotes your wealth as it is traded for the necessities of life, even before the powerful have doled it out to you.

The company store is not myth, it is real, and we all consume there.

Redy,

I'm in partial agreement with the notions regarding the influence of Locke and Smith. The Wealth of Nations was ironically released in 1776 and it was largely overshadowed by the Revolutionary War. However, some of the more notable revolutionaries did not necessarily agree with Smith.

Thomas Paine comes immediately to mind. The problem is that history has Orwellianized some of those notions to the point that they no longer align with the tenets was held firm. That being said...

I was merely shining some light upon what will undoubtedly be a number of folk who've forgotten or chose to forget what the policies of the Reagan administration were, and will subsequently refuse or neglect to connect the dots. I'm hoping that some of our friendly neighborhood liberal members of the press will soon remember. However, I've not see that yet.

It's going to be a long wait, because your history isn't so. Governor Reagan cut mental health services, after the majority of the involuntarily committed people had been released. He closed hospitals, it's true, but he didn't kick out any patients. As president, he repealed a law passed by President Carter that would have nationalized mental healthcare. He felt it should be left up to the states. So what is there to blame President Reagan for? He didn't kick any patients out of beds and he was dead right about Washington DC not having the right to run national mental healthcare. Get over it friend and find someone alive to blame for the problem. If what Reagan did was such a tragedy, why didn't Obama take over mental healthcare when he pushed through Obamacare? Maybe it's because people don't think folks with autism, depression, homosexuals, conspiracy theorists and like shouldn't be locked up against their will?

well, conspiracy theorists probably should be