State mental health functions get as little money as the legislature can give them. Some state legislator will get stock ponds in his attic before any money will trickle down to the mental health workers. Oklahoma is the worst in the United States in providing care for the mentally ill. We send people out to die in the underpasses and beneath bridges in cardboard boxes rather than provide minimal care for them.
We have just closed down the only inpatient treatment unit for drug abusers, so they are no longer admitted into the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Something seem wrong with that sentence to you? Since we have not had any increase in personnel or hirings in ten years, while the number of people with mental health issues or substance abuse issues continue to increase, the number of staff decreases. That doesn't show much on the surface; we absorb the new patients somehow, but the quality of the services we provide decreases because there just isn't much to go around. The Center in which I work started with about 700 patients; now there are 2200, and there are NO additional staff.
It's not that the legislators don't recognize the problem. They probably do; it's that they don't care. The mentally ill are not frequent voters. They are more comfortably out of mind and sight and thought. They don't make a big noise. They don't have rallies of the mentally ill. I have this image of a lot of us showing up at the State Legislature with signs reading "Give the Mentally Ill some money or we'll come to your house to live!". How about "The Voices Said Give Us Money!" or "I vote for Mental Health ... and so do I!"
Better to joke than to cry.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Churches and Taxes
One of our founding fathers said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. While this is true, we all submit to taxing ourselves. Clearly it is not in the government's interest to destroy us, because we are the only source of revenue. In order to accomplish this, a large number of rules and regulations have been established, in a language only known to CPAs, which limit how taxes are applied. The same argument can be applied to churches.
Because churches are not taxed, many of them get bigger. A lot bigger. In my home town (or "here", as I like to refer to it) one or two churches are larger than the library or the public schools. Granted, more people go to church than to libraries, more's the pity. However, the rooms in the larger churches are mostly empty during the week, used for receptions or small group meetings, or mostly not at all.
I'm moving on toward a point. It was never contemplated that churches would become huge and profit-making enterprises. The intent of excluding them from taxes was so that local communities could have a place to worship indoors and be able to collect enough from weekly gifts to keep it open and functioning. There is nothing the matter with this idea, per se. On the other hand, as citizens, we don't owe churches the opportunity to make a profit, to pay pastors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to buy and sell real estate, to compete in the marketplace with those of us who do have to pay taxes.
Why could we not require churches to divest themselves of all properties not having an immediate religious function? Why could we not tax them on ANY income not used in the payment of reasonable salaries and reasonable maintenance? We could exclude taxing excess moneys (what a concept!) that might be given to the poor, sick and needy, and just tax the churches for moneys not used for religious purposes? The Catholic Church is the single richest organization in the world. Isn't that amazing? In Oklahoma the protestant churches are rich and everywhere, with buildings bigger than college campuses.
I'm not interested in being punitive for their greed and anti-religious behaviors. I am interested in their excess profits being taxed like the rest of us.
Because churches are not taxed, many of them get bigger. A lot bigger. In my home town (or "here", as I like to refer to it) one or two churches are larger than the library or the public schools. Granted, more people go to church than to libraries, more's the pity. However, the rooms in the larger churches are mostly empty during the week, used for receptions or small group meetings, or mostly not at all.
I'm moving on toward a point. It was never contemplated that churches would become huge and profit-making enterprises. The intent of excluding them from taxes was so that local communities could have a place to worship indoors and be able to collect enough from weekly gifts to keep it open and functioning. There is nothing the matter with this idea, per se. On the other hand, as citizens, we don't owe churches the opportunity to make a profit, to pay pastors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to buy and sell real estate, to compete in the marketplace with those of us who do have to pay taxes.
Why could we not require churches to divest themselves of all properties not having an immediate religious function? Why could we not tax them on ANY income not used in the payment of reasonable salaries and reasonable maintenance? We could exclude taxing excess moneys (what a concept!) that might be given to the poor, sick and needy, and just tax the churches for moneys not used for religious purposes? The Catholic Church is the single richest organization in the world. Isn't that amazing? In Oklahoma the protestant churches are rich and everywhere, with buildings bigger than college campuses.
I'm not interested in being punitive for their greed and anti-religious behaviors. I am interested in their excess profits being taxed like the rest of us.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Why God?
I may or may not publish this comment. I know there are people who will regard any negative comments about religion as a personal assault. I know that there is no arguing with religious convictions since they are not rational thoughts but rather irrational beliefs. Clearly you can't dispute a belief with a rational position. They occupy non-interacting worlds.
Religious believers tend to want to equalize the playing field by treating genuine rational theories by simply asserting their beliefs, as if it should be self-evident that their position has logical merit. In fact, there is simply no logical merit to any religious belief system, and there cannot be, since belief systems are not based on rational assumptions in the first place.
Secondly, theories, such as evolution or quantum theory, are not belief systems. We should not "believe" in a theory. By definition, a theory is a working set of logical hypotheses that can be tested in the real world, at least in principle. I was asked recently if I "believed in evolution", as if I were a member of an antagonistic religion. The question itself is a contradiction in terms and can't be answered as asked. That fact alone should tell you something about the nature of the thinking process that gave rise to it. When a religious person wants to debate "theories", they do not have a right to assert their religious belief as a theory.
Nothing about any religion allows it to be considered as if it were a theory. I can and will change my theories about anything when contradictory facts of sufficient validity appear. But what religious person changes their belief system when such facts occur? A theory is not a tentative belief. It is an ongoing testable set of hypotheses. What religion has such things?
Besides the absurdity of attempting to place religion on the same level as science, I find myself wondering, as I get older and less afraid, why people need religion at all? And here I am speaking of the mythos of religion, not the ethos. Many religions have very good prescriptions for behavior; some of them work better than others, of course, but as guidelines they are certainly useful to society and help hold it together. But the mythos of any religion is basically absurd. Do we need to posit the creation of the earth via supernatural means when we can readily account for it by natural ones? Do we have to believe in the supernatural before we can adhere to a moral/ethical position? Do we have to posit an afterlife that makes up for the manifold injustices in this world, or should we better try to improve the world we live in?
It seems to me that when people talk about or debate religion, they focus on the supernatural aspects of it, and ignore the only part of religion that has any possible utility: the prescriptions for behavior. Perhaps some people are comforted by their belief in the "afterlife", but not all of us need to believe in fantasies and supernatural events, and perhaps their irrational beliefs in magic interfere with their apprehension of the real world. Why should we need irrational comfort to deal with the world as it is? It is difficult for all of us. We all have pain and loss of all kinds to deal with; believing in a fantasy afterlife doesn't return the dead to us, and funerals, even with all the trappings of religion, are not happy places with smiling people.
I certainly don't believe that we are rewarded or punished for our behavior in this world. We have only to read the daily paper to be disillusioned about the fairness of the universe. So what do I need a Big Daddy In The Sky for? Even for the believers, it must be horribly obvious that he or she isn't doing much of anything.
Religious believers tend to want to equalize the playing field by treating genuine rational theories by simply asserting their beliefs, as if it should be self-evident that their position has logical merit. In fact, there is simply no logical merit to any religious belief system, and there cannot be, since belief systems are not based on rational assumptions in the first place.
Secondly, theories, such as evolution or quantum theory, are not belief systems. We should not "believe" in a theory. By definition, a theory is a working set of logical hypotheses that can be tested in the real world, at least in principle. I was asked recently if I "believed in evolution", as if I were a member of an antagonistic religion. The question itself is a contradiction in terms and can't be answered as asked. That fact alone should tell you something about the nature of the thinking process that gave rise to it. When a religious person wants to debate "theories", they do not have a right to assert their religious belief as a theory.
Nothing about any religion allows it to be considered as if it were a theory. I can and will change my theories about anything when contradictory facts of sufficient validity appear. But what religious person changes their belief system when such facts occur? A theory is not a tentative belief. It is an ongoing testable set of hypotheses. What religion has such things?
Besides the absurdity of attempting to place religion on the same level as science, I find myself wondering, as I get older and less afraid, why people need religion at all? And here I am speaking of the mythos of religion, not the ethos. Many religions have very good prescriptions for behavior; some of them work better than others, of course, but as guidelines they are certainly useful to society and help hold it together. But the mythos of any religion is basically absurd. Do we need to posit the creation of the earth via supernatural means when we can readily account for it by natural ones? Do we have to believe in the supernatural before we can adhere to a moral/ethical position? Do we have to posit an afterlife that makes up for the manifold injustices in this world, or should we better try to improve the world we live in?
It seems to me that when people talk about or debate religion, they focus on the supernatural aspects of it, and ignore the only part of religion that has any possible utility: the prescriptions for behavior. Perhaps some people are comforted by their belief in the "afterlife", but not all of us need to believe in fantasies and supernatural events, and perhaps their irrational beliefs in magic interfere with their apprehension of the real world. Why should we need irrational comfort to deal with the world as it is? It is difficult for all of us. We all have pain and loss of all kinds to deal with; believing in a fantasy afterlife doesn't return the dead to us, and funerals, even with all the trappings of religion, are not happy places with smiling people.
I certainly don't believe that we are rewarded or punished for our behavior in this world. We have only to read the daily paper to be disillusioned about the fairness of the universe. So what do I need a Big Daddy In The Sky for? Even for the believers, it must be horribly obvious that he or she isn't doing much of anything.
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