Monthly Archives: April 2011

Trump the Chump

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Everywhere I turn there’s Donald Trump, not simply making an ass of himself, but finding ever more dopier ways of doing it, and somewhere in  his small narcissistic mind which, by the way, matches his facial features that are way too small for his face. Hell,  his mouth must’ve stopped growing when he was five and, as we all know, he has the only hair any of us has ever seen that actually suffers with dyslexia, he seems determined to and has succeeded in appearing as non-presidential as possible.

 

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Like the spoiled brat that he is, Trump repeatedly called American leaders stupid (proves he writes his own speeches, I’ll give him that) in Las Vegas yesterday and made sure to drop the F bomb on more than one occasion.

As for his assertions that he is a financial whiz and financially responsible, that too is a joke; several times his companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy so he can reshuffle the deck and make his money. In a 2005 Chapter 11 filing Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts acknowledged they were $1.3 billion in debt and had only $1.5 million in assets. Yeah, great. That’s who I want at the head of my country.

Since Trump seems to like the F word, I’d like to share one of my favorite movie quotes with him. In the 1988 movie Midnight Run, Robert De Niro plays an ex cop turned bounty hunter who brings back a fugitive accountant who ripped of the mob played by Charles Grodin. At one point Grodin’s character infuriates De Niro’s. De Niro turns to Grodin and says, “I got two words for you. Shut the fuck up!”

Nuff’ said, Hey Donny?

 

NYS Department of Health: Keep’m in the dark

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Murphy scoops a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and nudges the sugar bowl in Wrench’s direction. “So how do you think the conversation goes?” he asks.

“What conversation?” Wrench puts the lid on the sugar bowl and smiles. Since his accident Murphy’s memory gives him a hard time and he still doesn’t remember Wrench doesn’t take sugar, with anything for that matter.

“The DOH table, they’re in a meeting and whattaya think they say? You’d think they’d want to at least make an effort in acting like they give a damn about us.”

Wrench laughs. “Hard to imagine how they think they’re successful there. I mean, so they sit back and say, Okay, first thing we do is make sure these TBI people, like that’s all we are, have as little chance as possible in the fair hearings and the we keep using that form, what they call it?”

Sarah lifts her head from the pad she’s been doodling on. “PRI. It’s called a PRI. Patient Review Instrument. That’s how they assess us to see if we’d be in nursing homes without the waiver.”

“PRI,” Murphy says, eyes closed, trying to make it a memory. “The thing doesn’t address cognitive stuff at all.”

Sarah again. “That’s the idea. People been after’m for years to come up with another assessment form that really applies to brain injury and they don’t.”

Murphy, “You think they’re that stupid?”

“Like a snake stupid, they are. Long as they can use a bullshit tool the doesn’t apply to brain injury the more they can deny help to survivors and the more people they can throw off the waiver.” Wrench sips his black coffee.

“And then this latest thing they’re pulling.” Sarah leans back in her wheelchair and looks out the window. It’s begun to rain. “Now they’re dumping the mailing list they used to have to keep people informed of the meetings of that brain injury council.”

“Not to mention minutes and agendas,” Murphy adds.

“Keep the public in the dark, that’s the DOH motto,” Wrench says.

Sarah finishes drawing a straw hat a young boy that looks remarkably like Huckleberry Finn. “Maybe what we do is find out where they live –”

“Shit, they know where we live.”

“We get a bunch of us together, show up at their houses, bring cameras and recorders and some megaphones, and ask’m what’s up.”

“They’ll call the cops.”

Sarah smiles. “Good. Then the press will do something and won’t that be nice.”

“One thing,” Wrench says. “If we do this, we send out an email to everybody we know’n we make sure DOH ain’t on the email list.”

“Keep’m in the dark.”

A Renegade NYS Agency

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There are, as you might guess,  state and private agencies who put great effort  into convincing the public at large that they truly care about the people they serve and are working very very hard to meet their needs. Peel back a  few layers of public-relations spin and you will oftentimes find nothing could be further than the truth. Too often the motive is to look rather than do good, and raise a little money while you’re at it.

A few people I work closely with are beginning to look deeper into the activities of a non-profit agency. As those of you who read this blog already know, the NYS Department of Health is a problem in nearly every sense of the word when it comes to the lives of brain injury survivors in the state. However, in fairness to the DOH, it does not fall into the category of an agency who tries to look good. It makes little to look good at all because it is hard to determine who is actually holding them accountable. They are an arrogant renegade state agency if their ever was one. The way they treated the TBISCC (Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council) earlier this month reeks of arrogance.

The TBISCC, to its credit, has asked the DOH to speak on the problems with Medicaid Fair Hearings being faced by brain injury survivors on the state’s TBIU Waiver because the DOH last year gave a verbal directive blocking their case managers from advocating for them at the hearings. The day before the TBISCC’s meeting on April 14, the DOH notified TBISCC Chair Michael Kaplen that no one would be available to discuss the matter.

Now, this writer and others wrote to the DOH’s  Cheryl Veith asking her to put us on a several years old email-list that tells the public when the TBISCC is having its public meetings and sends out agendas and minutes when they become available. Apparently the DOH has decided the mailing list was too friendly. Ms. Veith responded with “We have recently implemented a process whereby announcement of scheduled TBICC meetings, minutes of the last meeting, and a draft agenda for the next scheduled meeting will be posted for the public to view on the Department of Health website at: www.nyhealth.gov/events/meetings/index.htm.”

Some who live with brain injuries live with memory deficits, processing challenges, and more. Wading through a website can be tantamount to climbing Mt. Everest without oxygen.  This fact has been shared with Ms. Veith and other DOH officials like Deputy Commissioner Mark Kissinger, Mary Ann Anglin, Lydia Kosinski and Carla Williams, all of whom will do their level best to convince anyone who crosses their path that they really really really care about brain injury survivors. So far, a large number of survivors and their families and healthcare professionals who work hard to help us think that’s bunk.

Reinstating the email list is, to use a phrase right out of the ADA, a reasonable accommodation for those of us who live with brain injuries. I doubt they will reinstate it   because for some time now there are two words no one links to the NYS DOH: reasonable and accommodating.

No Bigotry in Addiction

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I was in a conversation about the insanity of the disease of addiction which, of course, includes alcoholism. The conversation was with a group of friends who, like me, are in recovery. One fellow said, “Oh yeah. I remember driving drunk one time and crashing into all these trees.  I immediately realized I needed to cut back on my driving.” We all laughed because we all recognized how severely the disease of addiction mangles our thinking. The same holds true for Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen and the far too many like them, including me. When we are using we are tenaciously insistent that the responsibility for the problems and tragedies in our lives are the fault of anyone and anything other than us. Not true.

The reality of addiction guarantees that unless someone gets sober, in other words, gets well, their story never ends with the words, and they lived happily ever after.

Recent reports say Lindsay Lohan feels she is being picked on (Note to Lindsay: Don’t steal necklaces and when you are wrong, promptly admit it) and Charlie Sheen’s life continues to disintegrate.

The truth is there is no bigotry in addiction. Addiction doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether you’re rich and famous, poor, employed or unemployed, tall, short, fat, skinny; it doesn’t give a rat’s ass what your skin color is or what religion you are or what country you’re from. It has only one goal, to kill everyone it sinks its teeth into and, while it’s doing the killing, destroy and mangle every component of the person’s life.

Lohan’s enemy is not the system and Sheen’s enemy is not CBS; their enemy is addiction and as long as addiction – too often helped by its enabler-elves – can keep them blaming everyone but addiction, their stories along with stories of far too many like them will not end and they lived happily ever after.

Surrounded by Friends

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Life gives you moments so glistening with magic and beauty you cannot avoid feeling the love and fairness of nature.

This morning the window open, the rich-throaty sounds of Mourning Doves, the caws of Crows, that loyal-to-each-other bird family,  the flute-like voices of the Robins and the jazz sounds of Redwing Blackbirds. In the field I watch a half dozen deer nibbling away, around the pound Yellow-rumped Warblers, like tiny dancers, flit about the budding branches, and all them around me, part of me, and I, part of them.

In this moment the ineffable joy of life fills my eyes with tears and I am, I know in my heart, surrounded by friends, all of us equal in life.

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Yellow-rumped Warbler