Nuthin' but Snow!!!

The hanging baskets abloom with winter!

...the sort of thing that made it hard to get to work!



Modern devices compete with mother nature.


But it IS beautiful, dontcha think??!!

Merry Christmas, Everybody!!

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Hope Dawns

Hope Dawns

Well we've almost made it. The Republican Administration here in Colorado is nearly at its end; there's new hope dawning for Colorado.

As you know, I've been keeping an eye on Florida, which has been in the news for problems, similar to ours, caring for their disabled citizens. And I'm pleased to report that their new governor, Charlie Crist, has provided an example of how a governor can be.

In the Miami Herald on the 10th: Crist's check and the state's shameful stance .

According to the article, Florida's "...Agency for Persons with Disabilities refused to provide thermal blankets for Kevin Estinfil, a 12-year-old boy in state care suffering from cerebral palsy, blindness, mental retardation, fluid on the brain. He suffers severe seizures. A compromised immune system. His body's internal thermostat doesn't function. Without thermal blankets, his body temperature can fall into the low 90s. Kevin needs thermal balankets to survive."

Florida's APD refused to pay, saying the blankets "weren't medically necessary"...then they spent thousand of dollars fighting a lawsuit filed on his behalf. The article goes on....you should read it (just click on the link above)....but the bottom line is that Crist, the incoming Governor, just wrote a check - a personal check - for the blankets. "The AG immediately told his lawyers to abandon APD's defense."

Talk about Shine the Light and Can You See It? Doesn't it make you feel that faint gush of warmth in your chest to read that? Hope never does die....and I'm thinkin' there may be hope, yet, for Colorado's disabled citizens!!! We've got a new governor, and his wife will be visiting the madhouse on Wednesday morning...around 9:30, I'm guessing.

Oh, Madhouse Workers! Talk to her!! She's a former Peace Corps volunteer and she has the ear of the new Governor!! Think about what you want the guv to know and tell her!! I hope you'll all get your thoughts in a row ... there won't be much time...welcome her and include her (and beg for help)...she's very likely a wonderful ally!!

This really was a great week in news. We had Marva filing for retirement..."The director is not interested in serving in the Ritter administration and has filed for retirement instead" it says in the article. I'll bet.

And, of course, all the stuff about the mentally ill in jail.

But did you get this?? Private Prison Bid Probed, Rocky Mountain News...(I think it was Sunday or Monday). Remember my "paranoid vision" in Happy Guy Fawkes Day? I was envisioning deals "on the side" between state officials and the Geo Group (Wackenhut)? Guess what!! "A retired state prison official stands to be paid $1 million - and possibly face criminal charges - for helping a private prison company win a state bid while he was still working for the state." And, yes, it was with the Geo Group. Am I psychic or what???!!

Change is in the air; 2007 is right aroung the corner. Let's

Get Civilized in 2007!

Let's renew our determination to make the world a place we're proud to live in. It's a mess; let's fix it!!

Dawn is beautiful!!

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Marva to Jail?

Oh boy! Oh boy! Something to blog about! (It's been more and more difficult to come up with topics since I've changed jobs and gotten so relatively contented...speaks to the efficacy of keeping me busy.)

But this week we've got Marva being threatened with contempt of court!! And just today, we have "Emergency funds are being withheld from the Pueblo state mental hospital because officials there have ignored repeated requests for information..." ( "Emergency funds held back", Rocky Mountain News, 12/9/06)

Now I ask you, does this ring a bell???
Ignoring repeated requests for information is the motto of the Department of Human Services as enacted by our very own favorite leader! I wonder if Keith learned it from Marva, or is it just that the two personalities are very sympatico...and that's why Marva's never fired him, in spite of the multitude of reasons to do so!

So now Colorado follows Florida (see my Give Thanks" blog) in having the judicial branch step in to right the egregious wrongs of the Republican administration. I've got a whole rave I could give you about society's obligation to its disabled members...what it says about a society that refuses to take care of its own; how it demonstrates a clear deficit of "civilized" behavior that can lead to no good, in my view. In fact, I've probably already raved that somewhere in this blog. I'll spare you that today. And I AM relieved to see a backlash in America these days; thank heavens there still exists a sizeable number of people who prefer civilization to consumerism...and for the moment, they're in the majority.

However! I want to warn you all, that this potentially optimistic moment, may really be the first public steps in the waltz that leads to privitization. Please notice that in today's Rocky Mountain News article Rep. Bernie Buescher is quoted as saying, "Are there other private providers who can do these assessments?" I predict that the State will move to outsourcing the State Mental Health Institutes...they'll contract with Wackenhut, parent of the Geo group, in Florida (see "It's Private!") and for a fixed price, they'll be done with it.

And it'll have been Marva and Keith and their ilk who will have made it all possible...lousy management with lousy lobbying produces a problem-laden organization with no passionate advocates at the legislature. Instead of being the clear, convincing voice for the mentally ill, they have been the poster children for badly run government....who would want to give them more money? One suspects that it wouldn't help the mentally ill...it would be spent replacing and retraining underqualifed staff in crumbling facilities to do a worse and worse job.

Too harsh? What do you think?

I can hardly wait to see all the fingerpointing and blaming that are about to ensue.
Steve and Marva will blame the legislature who will blame Steve and Marva...Keith is too small a potato to be in this particular dog fight...but it's all the same problem, really. The State doesn't want to be in the Mental Health business...it's expensive, it's run by morons, it's one problem after another. So it doesn't fund it. Finally a judge points out that the whole mess is violating the rights of patients and brings the situtation to a head. The State's solution will be to bail out, privatize, outsource. The company that has the experience is Wackenhut. They do jails, too.

Suggested "Truth in Advertising" slogan for the Colorado Department of Human Services

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