One Flew Over Grand Junction's Cuckoo Nest

5 thoughts on “One Flew Over Grand Junction’s Cuckoo Nest”

1. This post above is funny but distressing. The Governor wont target the fat within the agencies because they are his friends. Instead he targets people with Mental retardation. Would it be harder to take a bed from someone with a serious brain injury or would it be easier to ask Ron Valarde to take a pay cut? Hmm..

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2. his complaints about the Regional Center cut would have more merit. But what’s truly sad about this whole situation is that the governor and his staff probably have no idea how vulnerable the people they are displacing are. If government exists to provide services to anyone, it is to these patients.

   And it is simply sad and pathetic that the Regional Center clients have become a political football. My criticism is leveled at both Ritter and Penry and all the other politicians who are screeching about the cut but are not explaining and pursuing specific alternatives.

   AngieS is absolutely right that there are plenty of “fat” programs in state government that could use some trimming in order to continue services to truly needy and vulnerable people. But the politicians won’t touch those programs — or a host of tax breaks — because those programs and tax breaks all benefit well-heeled political supporters and fund-raisers. Our state government is a grotesque spectacle.

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3. The patients will be well cared for in other facilities.  If you follow CCSU’s and Penry’s logic we should pay for premium care for some, no matter what the cost.  Would a nurse and doc sitting bedside 24/7 satisfy?  Seems that the people who whine most about government waste are the first to throw temper-tantrums when tough budget cutting decisions effect their own myopic world. Penry’s glaring hypocrisy is just more evidence of this flimflam man talking out of both sides of his mouth.  

   Angie’s cheap shot at comparing these patients to the fictional “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” should offend anyone with a family member involved in the facility. It is really not the patients Penry is concerned with here.  He is more worried about taking cheap political shots to satisfy his huge me-me-me ego than affordable health care for all.  The people of Colorado are fast figuring out what a self-serving, worst kind of politician, Penry is.  And now, shallow hypocrisy is what we all have come to expect from Josh Penry.

   “Is anyone else here tired of the flimflam, mealy-mouthed Republican?”  –Josh Penry

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   1. Even though I agree with your thoughts, especially that the post compares patient treatment to that of Nurse Ratched’s, Ritter should not be held harmless.

      There are other examples, even before the serious budget crisis hit CO, that prove Ritter is only playing lip service to solving the problems plaguing mental health services in this state.

      The problems are many and issues are difficult, but funding for mentally ill people in the state pays for itself over and over again. To continue ignoring state ‘fat’ results in the proverbial hole getting bigger and bigger.

      When we finally have a surplus again in this state it will take us another five years to bring the levels of funding back up to what they were pre-2002, let alone 2009.

      And if Penry is Governor, it will take longer than that.

      Depressing really. Feel like checking in to SHIP just to make it all go away! Oh, wait, they don’t have any beds…

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4. looks like a Ritter cabinet meeting.  Harris Sherman, Don Elliman and Jim Carpenter are all sitting on the bench waiting for Governor Ratched to arrive.

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