I believe somebody commented “the majority of old people voted for Bush. Do you still want to help them.”
1) I’m changing my URL not because I believe in Bush or any person associated with his administration. If one of them had taken twenty minutes to skim through Bernard Kerik’s memoir, he never would have been a serious candidate for Home Land Security.
While I didn’t like Rudy and thought that 9/11 saved him big time, I had thought he was intelligent. After reading Kerick’s memoir, I thought that they had about seven brain cells left between them.
(If I counted how Kerick had his memoir researched–I would have given them a minus brain cell count.)
2) The phrase “Home Land Security,” I can’t help it but it reminds me of something the Nazis and/or Fascists would have named a department.
3)Back to the comment that made me think of all this: The majority of “old people” live in Blue States or “Blue Counties.” I think many if not most voted for Kerry
4) That’s not even the point: I separate people from politics. I have never disliked people based on who they voted for, but on many other factors that I won’t go into here.
5) That isn’t even the real point. Older people (whoever they vote for) deserve help. Elder abuse and neglect is a real and growing problem. Protective Services (at least in New York City) was ineffectual for many reasons. Most are gone into in the Times article.
Elder abuse is at the point that partner abuse was at 20 years ago.
How can you know if it’s not seen or reported?
If the abused person refuses help what do you do?
What constitutes elder abuse? If a caretaker or relative forgets to buy food for a day is that neglect or just forgetfulness? That’s really simplistic, but our court system makes decisions based on capability and that can be separated into many areas.
Is a person capable of maintaining his own apartment?
If it’s a messy five floor walk-up and the person refuses to move or have it cleaned is he still capable of living in it alone?
The short answer to that is yes. I’m talking about New York law as that’s the only law I know. I guess many people will discount that as we’re Blue, and I’m so sick of the whole “Blue” “Red” thing.
As long as the person makes arrangements to get food, can get up and down the stairs when needed, the “mess” doesn’t go from floor to ceiling and there’s a clear path to the door, the person pays his bills each month and is generally oriented to what day of the week or time of the year it is, where he is, and who he is than he can live how he pleases.
6) What does disliking Bush and wanting to help people have to do with each other anyway? If you’re going to write me avarice comments and your Blogger account appears set up just so that you can write comments to anti-Bush URLs do it with a little more intelligence.