I received the following press release that I am happy to post —
FREE LWV 90th Birthday cupcakes!
230 S. Cottage St. Whitewater
Sat. Aug. 28th 8 AM – 4 PM
Great assortment of household and miscellaneous items!
FREE piano (needs work), partial penguin collection, and don’t miss the many vintage movie and other ads from the 40’s and 50’s and boxes of vintage magazines.
From last Friday’s Comments Forum, here’s one of a reader’s favorite films:
One need wait no more than a few hours to hear yet worse news about John Chianelli’s tenure as administrator of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Chianelli let [his] professional license lapse: “State records show that the county official let his occupational therapy license lapse in 2007. He first got the license in 1990.”
How long will County Executive Scott Walker and his aides continue to excuse John Chianelli?
At least through the date of this post, and that’s far too long —
A spokeswoman for County Executive Scott Walker dismissed questions about the status of Chianelli’s license.
“An Occupational Therapy license has nothing to do with his role as an administrator,” said Walker communications director Fran McLaughlin. “A professional license is not a requirement for the position.”
Quick reply to Ms. McLaughlin — you’ve right that a professional license isn’t required for the position, and Chianelli’s tenure is proof that one can cling to a well-paid public post, during which patients are abused and neglected, without the slightest evidence of professional licensure, judgment, dedication, or accountability.
Any man, plucked from the population at random, never having had a license, would have done better than Chianelli. And yet, Milwaukee County could have done better still: a licensed, judicious, dedicated, and accountable administrator over the Behavioral Health Division and its Mental Health Complex.
This issue will only go away when those responsible have been disciplined or removed, and those who come after assure more humane treatment.
I’ve posted about Chianelli’s policy, and the tragedy that is conduct at the MHC, before. See, A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update: A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, Update 10, Update 11, Update 12, Update 13, Update 14, Update 15, Update 16, and Update 17.
In a central Ohio county, a libertarian candidate complained about the presence of an elephant and donkey figurine on the counter of the elections board office.
County officials removed the major political parties’ figurines from the counter.
Although I understand that bias in favor of major parties, against alternatives, is objectionable, libertarians should focus on bigger issues of substance and policy.
Fussing over figurines takes attention away from our message of hope and opportunity through individual liberty, limited government, and peaceful relations with other countries through commerce and joint scientific inquiry.
I am convinced that there are surely many in that county – and every county in America – whose lives would be better for the solutions libertarians advocate.
We shouldn’t be distracted by a few figurines.
See, Ohio Elections Office Hides Elephant, Donkey After Compliant.
There’s a new story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Milwaukee’s troubled Mental Health Complex, entitled, Assault suspect at mental facility competent for trial, judge says. It’s the sub-heading that tells how poorly Behavioral Health Division administrator and others have responded to allegations of assault, neglect, and starvation of patients: “Meanwhile, investigators of the troubled Mental Health Complex have expressed difficulty getting records.”
Meg Kissinger and Steve Schultze of the JS report that “a patient who has cycled between the courts and the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, where he was allowed to roam free and hurt other patients, was found competent Tuesday by a judge to stand trial on charges of sexually assaulting a fellow patient.”
For all the prior reporting of the Journal Sentinel, on assaults, abuses, neglect, and immoral policies imposed on mental patients confined to the MHC, one reads that
Meanwhile, investigators working on two separate reviews of the complex – including an audit ordered by the County Board – said Tuesday they have had trouble getting key records from the Behavioral Health Division, which oversees the complex….
County Auditor Jerome Heer said county lawyers, on behalf of the division, challenged Heer’s authority to review patient records, something that had not happened during previous audits.
“It did cause us some initial concern,” Heer said. “It was obviously something we had to deal with. It was just some additional work we needed to do to get the access.”
Investigators from Disability Rights Wisconsin, the agency designated by the state as patient ombudsman, are also reviewing the records and said they had been frustrated with the failure by the division to provide the records they had requested.
Disability Rights has authority under state law to investigate reports of patient abuse, including the right to review normally confidential patient care records. Federal law otherwise imposes strict limitations on disclosure of patient records unless a particular patient authorizes the release.
Barbara Beckert, director of the agency’s Milwaukee office, said the requested records were key to her agency’s investigation. Though she had previously said the group’s final report would likely be released in September, she said Tuesday that was now in doubt because of stalling by the county.
Milwaukee County officials use their legal authority over the public when it suits them, but also shirk their legal responsibilities to that public through delays and obstruction when they would rather hide embarrassing information.
This issue will only go away when those responsible have been disciplined or removed, and those who come after assure more humane treatment.
I’ve posted about Chianelli’s policy, and the tragedy that is conduct at the MHC, before. See, A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update: A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, Update 10, Update 11, Update 12, Update 13, Update 14, Update 15, and Update 16.
From last Friday’s Comments Forum, here’s one of a reader’s favorite films:
Good morning,
Whitewater’s forecast calls for a sunny day with a high temperature of seventy-five degrees.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skGQ0fVx75o
On this day in 1944, Allied forces liberated Paris from four years of Nazi occupation. The New York Times reported on the allied triumph at the time —
more >>….On all sides the liberating French and Americans were greeted by hungry Parisians, made with joy, who had fought alone against the German oppressors since they were called to arms last Saturday.
General Leclerc, hero of the Fighting French in the North African campaign, was in the forefront of the battle, leading the tanks to the rescue of patriots who had been fanatically calling for help as the Germans fought back throughout the night.
Those on the outside had heard the electric cry over the radio, “To the barricades!”- historic call to arms of the French Revolution- which testified to the plight of the patriots.
Soon fighting raged throughout the city, along the Place de la Concorde, before the Chamber of Deputies, toward the Hotel des Invalides, as Americans and French drove the Germans from their barricades and buildings converted into fortresses.
An Associated Press correspondent, who was with the first American troops to enter Paris, said the Germans were holding out on both sides of the Seine along the Champs-Elysee, the Place de la Concorde, the Quai d’Orsay, the Tuileries, the gardens of the Louvre, the Madelaine, the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the Hotel Crillon-Coislin.
Another Associated Press correspondent reported earlier that an Allied column, driving due east toward the capital, had stormed into Versailles, ten miles from the center of the city.
The Germans were driven from many strategic parts of the city by the combined onslaught of the French military and the fury of citizens fighting for their liberties, and themselves fell back behind barricades for a last ditch stand.
Lieut. Gen. Joseph-Pierre Koenig, Commander in Chief of the French Forces of the Interior, announced in a communique that all the main official buildings and most of the highways were now under the protection of General Leclerc’s Second Armored Division….
From last Friday’s Comments Forum, here are two related, favorite films of readers:
Alien from 1979 —
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eIpvZsEky4
Aliens from 1986 —
What led to U.S. Representative Hal Rogers’s victory as the Citizens Against Government Waste’s Porker of the Month?
Here’s the description accompanying the embedded video:
Conservation or nepotism? Since 2007 Rogers has been promoting a bill which would provide federal grants to overseas wildlife protection for lions and cheetahs.
Rogers’ daughter is the grants administrator for the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund, and has been since – you guessed it – 2007. Congratulations, Hal!
“Porker of the Month” is written and produced by Austin Bragg. Approximately 1 minute.
That’s the stuff: seventy-nine-year-old Margaret Street encountered a prairie rattlesnake, couldn’t find help to handle it, and so dispatched the reptile with an ice chopper.
Although some rattlesnakes are endangered in Wisconsin, this was a prairie rattler, a non-native species that’s not endangered.
It does no good, in strength of argument, to repeat the same errors again, in the hope they’ll be more convincing the second time.
From the August 24th edition of the Daily Union, Whitewater school board advances two referendums:
If the new referendum is approved, the taxpayers will not see an increase in what they currently pay.
“At this point, it is tax neutral, since it is already in the levy,” said district business director Jim Strasburg.
From an August 16th post at FREE WHITEWATER, A Referendum for Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Schools:
….it’s unconvincing to suggest that the referendum carries no additional tax impact, since it’s a continuation of an existing tax burden. The WUSD’s Director of Business Services, Jim Strasburg, makes that contention:
Strasburg said the referendum – because it is a
continuation of an original referendum and its related tax
burden – carries no additional tax impact for district
residents. “That money is already in the levy,” he said.There may be a justification for the referendum’s passage; this is not it.
Director Strasburg is wrong in his analysis. The extension of an existing tax burden, set to expire, is an additional burden, and so has an additional (tax) impact. For that matter, the imposition of a tax or cost is a burden at each time and occasion it’s imposed. It’s impossible for it to be otherwise. All resources are allocated, all costs borne, in conditions of scarcity where one use precludes other possible uses.
This is no reason to support the extension of tax or spending proposals – that something has been a burden and obligation in the past does not justify continuing it. The presumption in a community should always be against taking privately earned money from those who earned it. It may be a rebuttable presumption, but it should be a presumption nonetheless. To suggest otherwise it to declare that current tax and spending policy is unalterable, except by way of increase.
There’s a seeming change in the defense of the existing tax, from the contention that it presents no additional burden (of course it does) to the contention that it’s tax neutral.
Tax neutrality is another way of saying, as I noted over a week ago, that “current tax and spending policy is unalterable, except by way of increase.” In any event, there’s nothing neutral about a tax that one feels year after year, need not feel without a new referendum, and under a theory that defines neutrality only the same or more (never less) in taxes.
There may be a good case for this referendum. Unpersuasive claims about lack of additional impacts or ersatz neutrality aren’t part of that case.
Update: 9:22 PM — The argument here isn’t that there’s nothing such as tax neutrality as a concept (in any possible fiscal plan for any entity), but rather that the given referendum question on exceeding revenue caps for this district isn’t tax neutral, and to contend otherwise is a misuse of the term.
There are, I think, two principal ways that a government spending proposal in a small town succeeds. (There are more than two ways, but here I’m simply considering principal ways.)
The first way is how all spending proposals should be considered — on the merits. Is it necessary to tax for a public purpose, and even if so, what’s the least burdensome amount that taxpayers should be asked to bear? The presumption should rest against taxation and public spending, in favor of a wage earner’s retention of his or her earned income.
What begins as the income of a man or woman, only later becomes money for government to take, and use for a supposedly public purpose.
(Genuine public safety needs, and emergency assistance to vulnerable people, come to mind as legitimate expenditures.)
There’s a second way, however, that creeps into the thinking of politicians, bureaucrats, and boosters (boosters supposedly of the community, but mostly of themselves). It’s the idea that people have to get on board, be part of the team, go along, to cheer for bigger and better government projects. There are deadly narcotics less intoxicating than need to fall in line that a few exploit to turn people into lemmings.
It’s a nearly irresistible siren call reminiscent of a childhood exhortation: “Hey kids, lets put on a show…”
It’s often a tax-from-others to build-for-our-own-pride undertaking. Those who raise objections are deemed misfits, malcontents, complainers, lunatics, anarchists, misanthropes, community-haters, etc. The pressure that a small clique — only a few hundred of a town of many thousands — will exert is too much for many people. They find themselves unsettled, and worried that if they don’t agree with the latest project proposal, they’ll be picked on, etc.
Sometimes, they’re right — that is what happens. It’s how small officials abuse their authority by exercising petty tyrannies over others. These can be big problems in a small town.
Mostly, however, those who raise objections are carefully and deliberately excluded from task forces and appointed public boards where they might demonstrate how ill-considered the latest Next Big Project really is. Instead, a weak and manipulative municipal manager, for example, will rely on the same collection of People Who Can be Depended Upon to Agree with Any Project Proposed.
That’s a loss for a community, but no great impediment for honest, determined, and diligent critics. Those placed on committees simply as yes men are dull and narrow. A dozen of them are less effective than one sensible, common person.
I’m curious, though, which line of advance one is most likely to see in my town in the months ahead. One could guess, but the answer’s sure to be just around the corner….
Dr. John Chianelli’s leadership of Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Division and its Mental health Complex has been one of failure. He’s advocated and defended immoral policies, policies that have led to assault, neglect, and death. He’s unworthy of a public (or private) position, and should have been fired months ago.
In yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the editorial board called for the firing of John Chianelli and those others responsible for abuse, neglect, and dishonesty (for some have lied about their involvement). It’s the right position.
In Those at the center of Mental Health Complex mismanagement must go, the paper sets out the clear and convincing case against Chianelli and his ilk:
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker should fire John Chianelli immediately as part of the effort to eradicate problems at the county’s Mental Health Complex.
But Walker should not stop there. He should insist that any Mental Health Complex employees who knowingly falsified documents or otherwise failed to do their jobs be shown the door. Their failures allowed a known predator, Omowale Atkins, to viciously sexually assault patients and impregnate one of them.
Even though the Journal Sentinel Watchdog team has shown a pattern of neglect and mismanagement at the complex, it appears very little discipline has been meted out. Heads need to roll, and that should begin with Chianelli, administrator of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division. He is in charge of the Mental Health Complex.
Articles by Journal Sentinel reporters Meg Kissinger and Steve Schultze detailed a mind-boggling lack of accountability and the tragic results of that ineptitude. As a result, we have very little confidence that the complex can keep safe some of the county’s most vulnerable people.
Walker and other county officials have argued that Milwaukee County treats more than 20,000 people with mental illness every year and that most of these patients receive good care. They are right. They also are missing the point.
Atkins had a lengthy history of violence and sexual assault; he had been accused of assaulting patients and physically assaulting staff. And though he was supposed to be supervised, he was allowed to roam about Ward 43-D and have sex with patients….
It wasn’t until federal inspectors cited the facility for the most serious violations that the county put in place new training for staff along with increased surveillance to help monitor and ensure safety….
Atkins is being held at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison. If he is sent back to the Milwaukee County facility, he must be isolated from other patients. The complex also should establish single-gender wards to protect women from assault….
The county cannot pinch pennies when it comes to the safety of vulnerable patients. [County Executive] Walker must take bold steps to clean up the mess at the complex. If a change in culture is required, then change the culture. Patients and staff must be kept safe, and everyone who enters the complex for treatment must be properly treated. The county’s most vulnerable must be protected.
The housecleaning should begin with firing Chianelli and any other staff member who failed the patients.
In May, following revelation of Chianelli’s justification of coed wards as a supposed trade between male-on-male patient violence for male-on-female sexual assault, I felt that his firing was well-justified. For that policy and its defense alone, Chianelli showed himself to be unfit to serve, unworthy of a public post in a decent society. His immoral utilitarianism led to abuse, suffering, and sexual assault.
Since then, Wisconsin has seen still more evidence of his failed leadership — the actual suffering of vulnerable mental patients — in news account after news account.
Yet Chianelli still remains in office.
The politicians and bureaucrats who allow Chianelli, and his kind, to remain in office are blameworthy for each day he continues to serve.
This issue will only go away when those responsible have been disciplined or removed, and those who come after assure more humane treatment.
Not a moment sooner.
I’ve posted about Chianelli’s policy, and the tragedy that is conduct at the MHC, before. See, A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update: A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, Update 10, Update 11, Update 12, Update 13, Update 14, and Update 15
