What Better and Worse In the News?

What's Worse? The sheriff of Palm Beach, Florida has received a milllion dollar grant from the Florida legislature to send teams including police and social workers to people that other people report are a danger to self and others. Why a special program when all it takes now is a call to the police to report someone whom you think is a danger to self or others? The police will respond, and if he the policeman thinks  the person is a danger to others or himself, the policeman can attempt to have him Baker-acted which requires a judge. If Baker-acted, the person will spend 48 hours in involuntary psychiatric hospitalization to see if he is indeed a danger to others or himself. The sheriff explained to the legislature that he was interested in preventing lone wolf  mass killings.
However, a little knowledge will reveal that lone wolves don't go around talkilng about killling others and themselves. That is why they are lone wolves because they are highly introverted and don't have anything to do with others. The only people who may have any inkling of what they are doing are household members. The room for abuse by people who simply want to hurt other people by alerting the police-social work teams seems to be great. Are you allowed to sue people who maliciously report you? That won't do us, the people, much good as we would have to have an unaffordable lawyer but it would still be good to have that option open to us. Maybe the ACLU would help. I hope the sheriff has thought this out so this won't be just another hare-brained news item coming out of Florida. It looks like it is.
What's Better?
Excavation and analysis at Jamestown, Virginia has indicated that a child's corpse was eaten somewhat by the starving colonists. I classify this as better news rather than worse news because it is better to eat human corpses than to undergo the slow agony of starving to death. At first, the settlers of 1607 had a terrible time getting enough food primarily because they established a socialist system in which no one had ownership except the group. As many of the Englishmen considered themselves gentlemen and physical work beneath them, they refused to work. The people who did work did not want to work for the lazy "gentlemen" so they didn't work as hard as they could. After a year or so, this system was changed so that what you reaped in the field and killed in woods and river were yours and didn't have to be shared. After this change, the colony survived and began to thrive.
What's Better? The growing fury over what Obama allowed to happen to the men at Benghazi ( I saw this coming when I learned that as a State Senator, Obama was quite content to let newborn babies die if their mothers didn't want them) has moved the administration to do something. They released (seven months later) pictures of the suspected terrorists at the Benghazi massacre.  The American people are changing from lambs to lions on this issue, and I don't think some pictures are going to satisfy them. We need to be lions and demand that the people who survived the massacre are free to speak. Those people have asked, according to Federal procedure, that Holder give their lawyers a security clearance. Holder refuses to do that, because he knows that without lawyers these Benghazi survivors are weaker and less likely to tell us, the people, the truth about what happened at Benghazi. They fear Holder and Obama too much. Do you see what this country has become under Obama? He casually lets four men die including an ambassador and two Navy Seals and then threatens those who survived who want to tell the truth about what happened. I tell you, this man raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, does not have American values.
What's Worse?
  A survey has revealed that 42 per cent of Americans don't know that The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the law of the land
Can we, the people, have that many uninformed brothers and sisters?
Don't be judgemental about whether people are going to hell, but do be judgemental about how the people you might be able to influence spend their time. Encourage them to read newspapers, book, and watch the news on TV. We've got to be informed and rational or this administration is going to whipsaw us into submission.
  What's Better?
The Koch brothers are possibly buying the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps, this newspaper would then become a medium that respected the truth and the sanctity of the individual.
Peter Nickerson, Gainesville, Florida 352-359-0850