Hello this is John Riolo and welcome to my Civil Discourse Blog. http://psychjourney_blogs.typepad.com/your_advocate_online/
Dear President Obama:
I am a retired member of the National Association of Social Workers among other professional groups. Professional organizations have urged me to write you on behalf of all our nation's children, and applaud your signing the S-CHIP bill which will benefit children and a a few vested interest groups. I do applauded your signing this particular bill. This bill will help children. However trade organizations be they social work or any other all vested interest groups and lobbies will never be satisfied with your signing any one bill. I am sure they are planning to lobby you to include all kinds of pork in the stimulus package that will not benefit the public but the narrow interests of its members. This makes them no better or worse than any other special interest group.
Please. I urge you to resist them. I also urge you to control your own left wing of congress. You won this election based on a claim of bipartisanship and willingness to rule from the center.
I believe you are sincere in that desire. I am concerned that the biggest threat to administration is not just the far right and the Rush Limbaughs but the an even bigger threat are the extremists on the far left. Please don’t worry about alienating the far left. They have no where else to go. Regretfully, too many of my colleagues fall into that category. So please take any mass letter writing campaign with letters faxes and emails from social workers that all read word for word and sound as if they were written by one or a few people with a grain of salt. I
did not vote for you but wish you the best. You are the President of all of us and we will all sink or swim together. I sincerely meant it when I say, what is good for you is good for the country at this time at least.
Sincerely,
John A. Riolo, PhD. (LICSW)
Former member of NASW (retired)
Former Chair, MA Chapter Managed Care HMO Committee
No, I’m not referring to CEOs, bankers or stock brokers but it seems psychotherapists and social workers of all people think they need to raise the fees they charge people who are stressed out by this terrible economy as well. I wish I were kidding. The professional organization that I was once a member NASW reports that it is working with other mental health groups to develop compelling evidence that the psychotherapy codes should be revalued and therefore more can be charged for services. Asking for more money! In this economy? Really?
To my colleagues let me paraphrase president Obama’s message to Wall Street bankers , “shameful” there will be time fro them to make profits. But this is not the time. It true for a Wall street banker or a social worker . This is not the time. Many psychotherapists report usual and customary fees of $100, $200 or more per hour. They may not always get that on every case but does anyone making that kind of money really need a increase while most of the people they serve are loosing jobs by the millions? In fairness often when social workers and other psychotherapists talk about increasing fees they are not just talking about the fees they charge their clients who pay out of pocket but rather they are referring to the rates that insurance companies will reimburse. These rates can be lower than the usual and customary fee they report. Nonetheless it is a good deal more than the average working stiff gets an hour. Make no mistake even if we are only talking about insurance rates an increase will be passed on to the subscribers and employers who are already struggling in this down economy.
The last thing a small business or a someone needing mental health services needs these days is to pay more for health insurance right now. So if you are seeing a therapist or thinking of seeing one and they tell you that they need to raise their fees, tell them that there is a time an place to ask for more money. BUT THIS IS NOT THE TIME.
Social workers of all people should know better. If you agree, let me know. If you don’t agree let me know also. You may also want to let organizations such as the National Association of Social Workers and the American psychological Association know as well.
Hello this is John Riolo and welcome to my Civil Discourse
Blog. http://psychjourney_blogs.typepad.com/your_advocate_online/
Picking one political turkey for this year is simply not
possible so here are may top 10 There
are not necessarily in any particular order so help me rate them or throw in a
couple of your own.
John Edwards earns a gobble twice one for the hair cut and
another for the affair.
Hillary Clinton for claiming that she was being shot at on
the tarmac in Kosovo when clearly that
was not the case.
Mike Huckabee gets
honorable mention nor making that TV commercial with that book shelf that kinds looked like a
cross. Now before any one gets upset
with me I have nothing against charities or crosses . But when ever I see anyone running for the
office of Pastor in Chief I am reminded of the fellow who said render unto
Caesar that which is Caesar and to God that which is God’s .
There’s prominent turkey mention to whoever stated the silly
season about lipstick on a pig brouhaha and claiming it was a slur against Sarah Palin
in particular and all women in general. .
Speaking of Sara Palin although I think she had bee given a
bad rap by liberals and the press I must
sat 150,000 wardrobe did not quite fit with your average Hockey mom Image.
Dick Morris earns a turkey for his transparent venomous
hatred of the Clintons Clintons
To John McCain and Sara Palin for making a perfectly good noun Maverick a
verb and they proceed to go off mavericking together.
John McCain for apparently picking Joe the plumber as his
economic advisor. Or at least that the way it looked by mentioning his
name in every sentence. Again I have
nothing against plumbers in general or Joe in particular . But in the economic
crisis I want a present who picks advisors who well … know economics.
Bill Clinton earns a big turkey for playing the race card .
it backfired big time.
And while I
can think of a few instanced where President-elect Obama acted turkeyish but
won’t go into that right now. Lets hope
in his administration there will be few
turkeys for us to talk about. We need him to do well.
That’s my list . What are your thoughts?
OK I have to admit I am
grasping at straws here. The economy is really bad and it might get worse. But
I need to find something so here it is.
My grandparents and parents
experienced the Great Depression. It was worse than what we have now or so I’m
told. However they learned what hardship was and knew the importance of
spending only what they could afford and saving a little no matter how poor
they were.
I can remember my grandfather
going ballistic if you left room without turning off the light. If he gave me a
quarter, I got a lecture on thrift and
had to save some of it. .
Well some of it did stick I
guess I tend to be on the frugal side. I do try to avoid debt. And I suppose as
tough as things are I am grateful to my parents and grandparents that I did not
take a mortgage I could not afford or get into major credit card debt. It’s a
small consolation.
But perhaps my children and
grandchildren’s generation were not so lucky. Since they grew up in good times
my generation did not teach them the importance of staying within their means.
In fact we did not want to deprive then of anything. Ironically in our effort
to give then everything they might desire we deprived them of the valuable
lessons of that past generations tried to pass on to us.
However given the economic
mess we are now in children growing up today will learn that sooner or later the bill becomes due and thrift, hard work and taking responsibility will once again become respected attributes.
Hay I said I was desperate to
find the bright side and this is the best I can do for now.
What are your thoughts?
I
I recently read
a story on Avatar or virtual sex.. Apparently in England
Now let me
be clear. I do not recommend so called online sex be it pornography websites or sex chat rooms etc. for a number of
reasons. On the internet nothing is truly private and as a mental health
professional I have seen too many marriages pulled apart by online behavior
that was thought to be private but later got discovered. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1085412/Revealed-The-woman-Second-Life-divorce--whos-engaged-web-cheat-shes-met.html
However the
concept of “Avatar Sex” or “Virtual Sex or a “Virtual Affair” is
fascinating. Can we actually say that having sex with an imaginary and not a
real person is actually an affair? Is it adultery and grounds for divorce?
And if one
can be sued for a virtual affair or virtual adultery what other virtual
transgression can one commit without ever having actually done
anything that, except for technology, people have done for eons only it was
called a day dream?
If one engages is a video game where one robs a
bank but no actual money is taken from
anyone are you a virtual bank robber? And is that the same as actually robbing
a bank?
What about
playing James Bond where we think we are
007 and crack up a few cars and kill some virtual bad guys. Is that virtual killing the same as actual
killing?
Where does
virtual end and reality begin? What is
the difference between our fantasies and our actions in this Brave New Online World?
I would
like to hear from others in civil discussion?
President-elect Obama faces
many challenges: two wars, dependence on foreign oil and the worst economic
crisis since the Great Depression.
However IMO the most serious
challenge will be his ability to stand up to the many special interest groups
that believe correctly or not that they got him elected. Most of them are on
the left and some the far left. They felt shut out completely during the Bush
Administration and believe that it's now their turn to get first place at the
Banquet table, pork barrel or however one chose to describe receiving taxpayer
money.
While I am not surprised I am
saddened nonetheless that some of the groups and associations I belong to are
jockeying for position to be among the first with their hand out and think they
can now call in IOUs real or imagined.
What these interest groups
refuse to realize is that this time there is not much of a banquet. The
cupboard is bare. We are in an economic mess with no easy solutions. The
Mccain/Palin fear that Obama will redistribute wealth seems unfounded. There is
a lot less wealth to spread around these days. The new mantra may have to be
"Redistribute the pain".
If we are going to come out of
this national economic crisis we all are going to have to make sacrifices. That
includes the Wall Street exec, the seniors on Social Security, the family on
welfare, plumbers named Joe or otherwise and mental health professionals such
as myself. What makes any of us so
special that while we expect everyone else to take a hit we should be the
exception. It’s all too easy to
rationalize that we are more important then the next group.
If President-elect Obama
effectively does that he and we will come out of this crisis stronger for it.
On the other hand if he caves into some or all of the many vested interest
groups that can't wait to lobby him for special treatment he will demonstrate
that he is not much different than his predecessor and the only change we have
is which special interest groups get favored status.
him for
special treatment he will demonstrate that he is not much different than his
predecessor and the only change we have is which special interest groups get
favored status.
This is John Riolo and welcome to my Civil Discourse blog http://psychjourney_blogs.typepad.com/your_advocate_online/
Earlier I posted my advice for president Elect Obama. So not let me in fairmess give my advice to my republican friends as well.
Less than a week after the election of Barack Obama as out 44th president my conservative and republican friends are blaming the RINOs ( Republican in name only) for their defeat. They are now calling for a purge of the party.
They can’t seem to realize that part of the reason why Obama won and McCain lost is they have already purged the republican party of any moderates and scarred the hell out of a lot of independents. Now the Republican Party consists mostly of neo-cons and the religious right.
Of course my liberal Democratic friends are not immune to digging themselves into a hole either. A number of the vested interest groups that supported Obama do expect they will be paid back by getting their far left agenda passes and directly benefit from the change.
The problem of course is that if they force Obama to move away from the center he may lose support of the majority of Americans.
Hopefully the change hi promises is more than merely changing the digging crew that is digging us all in a hole.
It’s time for all of us to stop digging and start working together.
Recently someone identified as Ken graciously commented on my Civil Discourse blog that Civil marriage is not a privilege, but rather it is a right.
To have a reasoned civil discussion on an issue such as this we need to at least have some understanding of how we are defining our terms. We may not agree on our definitions but we avoid unnecessary confusion if we at least know what the other person means.
While there are many references that could be used I find
the definitions of Ahimsa Dhamapada in his article Lawful Arrest/Search/Seizure
FAQ particularly useful to this
discussion. I paraphrase.
· “A right is something you are born with, and you will die with, granted to you by your "Creator" however you define creator.
· A privilege is granted by authority i.e. Church,
or the State, and may be revoked for a failure to meet specified conditions.
"Civil Rights" are by definition, conveyed by positive law, and thus
are more akin to privileges than to natural rights. So-called
· "Civil Liberties" are by definition
natural immunities to government interference.
· The right to travel or move about freely is one such right, exemplified by the "privilege" of the driver's license.
And I maintain so is a marriage license. The state sets conditions on who shall be granted this privilege. States set age requirements; degrees of sanguinity or how closely related by blood the parties may be and how many people may enter into the marriage contract. We seem to think it is always two but we don’t have to look far to find societies where polygamy is permissible.
So if the state has the right to impose all those conditions including that it can be only two people then it also has the right or authority to limit it to one man and one woman or two men or two women for that matter.
Now I do not have to agree with the states condition that it be one man and one woman any more than I need to agree on the age of granting a drivers license or who can prescribe medications. My individual agreement is not required.
Collectively if enough people don’t agree they have every right to change the law. Or, they can go to court and make a case that the state is being arbitrary and capricious in their conditions.
But that does not change the fact that the state can set conditions for the privilege.
Fortunately in our society no one has the absolutely right to do whatever we want and that includes the state.
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