National

It is pretty clear that E. Norman Veasey is on witch-hunt, and the News Journal's Maureen Milford is happy to play along. If you doubt that there are axes being ground, those doubts should be dispelled when you get to this....

The American government (Democrats & Republicans) basically decided that low prices were more important to the economy than jobs. This Edward McClellend piece in salon will walk you through the whole sick history.

When I was growing up, it was assumed that America’s shared prosperity was the natural endpoint of our economy’s development, that capitalism had produced the workers paradise to which Communism unsuccessfully aspired. Now, with the perspective of 40 years, it’s obvious that the nonstop economic expansion that lasted from the end of World War II to the Arab oil embargo of 1973 was a historical fluke, made possible by the fact that the United States was the only country to emerge from that war with its industrial capacity intact. Unfortunately, the middle class – especially the blue-collar middle class – is also starting to look like a fluke, an interlude between Gilded Ages that more closely reflects the way most societies structure themselves economically. For the majority of human history – and in the majority of countries today – there have been only two classes: aristocracy and peasantry. It’s an order in which the many toil for subsistence wages to provide luxuries for the few. Twentieth century America temporarily escaped this stratification, but now, as statistics on economic inequality demonstrate, we’re slipping back in that direction. Between 1970 and today, the share of the nation’s income that went to the middle class – households earning two-thirds to double the national median – fell from 62 percent to 45 percent. Last year, the wealthiest 1 percent took in 19 percent of America’s income – their highest share since 1928. It’s as though the New Deal and the modern labor movement never happened.

The security breaches are already being well covered in the public media on the tragic D.C. Navy Yard massacre. So is the absurd U.S. tolerance and obsession with violence. And, hopefully, the gun culture debate is firing up again. But what I’d like my readers to focus on is the total failure of our mental health system, if you can call it that. The dozen innocent victims of the shooter’s crazed act and their families can look to the numerous red flags apparent in his long history of schizophrenic behavior ignored or overlooked by mental health professionals and Aaron Alexis associates alike. And no, it was not within his capability to recognize the illness in his own behavior. The responsibility sits squarely with the so called professionals. They own it as do they own the stunning inadequacy of our country’s mental health care. Here’s what we must address as a society, holding these professionals accountable for joining we the people in fixing this travesty of a system.