As I turned on the local news this morning, there was video of a gunman in a Phoenix, Arizona mall on January 5th going on a shooting rampage. The gunman eventually surrendered to police, and because it did not involve the number of fatalities or a famous person, the story received much less attention than the Giffords shooting tragedy.
With all of the discussions asserting Jared Loughner may be mentally ill, and that it was mental illness that was the problem with Congresswoman Giffords being shot, it is worth noting that Arizona's Governor Brewer just moved to cut the funding for the care of 5,200 of the most severely mentally ill people in that state. They already don't provide the names to the NCIS of most of the dangerously mentally ill; this suggests they won't even be 'on the radar' of that state, at all.
While browsing for sources for this story, I came across this graphic which shows the intersection of inadequate funding for health issues, including mental health care, the beginnings of which date back to President Reagan, and the underfunding of the NCIS gun check data base.
Check out compliance in the state where YOU live, and contemplate your state's funding for the mentally ill, including the dangerously mentally ill. My state, Minnesota, was 6th from the top, with 0 reported. I wish I was confident we had 0 dangerously mentally ill people who shouldn't own guns, but I know that is not the case.
This is not so much a gun issue post, as it is a reminder to Penigma readers to realize that when we see the grandstanding in the Congress by Republicans and Tea Partiers about NOT funding the activities of the government, about cutting government employees............remember this is the kind of essential services that are being cut.
Those cuts make each and every one of us less safe, less safe because of untreated mental illness, less safe because of unfunded and non-participation in the gun sales data base, less safe because we have not repaired or replaced bridges, and other essentials, less safe because essential personnel are cut like the reduction to half their previous level in Camden, New Jersey for police and fire. Cuts in some school districts in Michigan will double their class room size from 32 to 64 (not 62, the republican math, as ridiculed by Jon Stewart) as they close half their schools. Other suggestions include eliminating 12th grade, because hell, we are already slipping badly in comparisons with other countries in education and have declining rates of graduation from high school. This as the latest ranking of the students in the U.S. compared with other developed countries is released by Secretary Duncan. Conservatives can chant "we're number 1!" until they are hoarse, but we're not, and chanting a stupid and inaccurate slogan isn't going to change that, nor are drastic cut backs.
My state, Minnesota, is where we had a major bridge collapse, now rebuilt, because of underfunding of the repair and maintenance of our infrastructure, for years, under both Republicans and Democrats. We desperately hoped for that to change after the disaster of that collapse. Many of those rebuilding projects that would address that infrastructure repair and replacement is what is on the table to be cut by Republicans and Tea Partiers from the budget, taking it away, just when it appeared to finally be funded.
The bottom line is not reducing necessary spending by trying to call it something else. The real bottom line is facing up to necessary government spending, and biting the bullet instead of shooting it. Even if that means taxing the wealthy few percent who have bought Republican politicians and the tea party.
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