When the liberal media comes after a liberal politician, things are really bad. From The Seattle Times:
Western State’s failure rests with Gov. Inslee
The reasons Washington state’s largest psychiatric facility just lost millions in federal funding should come as no surprise to state officials.
Federal inspectors have been citing myriad problems at Western State Hospital since 2015. They even gave the hospital a rare second chance to shape up.
Finally, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this week decided enough was enough. After the Lakewood hospital failed yet another inspection, the agency announced Western State would lose its federal certification and $53 million in funding starting July 1. That’s money the state now has to make up.
This latest blow highlights the ongoing failures of leadership, internal governance and quality control that have persisted at the hospital under Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s watch, despite the state Legislature continually throwing money at the problem since Inslee took office in 2013.
He is a bad leader - no two ways about it. What really gives me the chills is this little line at the end:
Last month, Inslee announced a five-year plan to start moving civilly committed patients out of Western State and into community treatment facilities.
Two things.
First - the idea of a Five-Year Plan is a direct cut+and+paste from this kind of government:
Five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union were a series of nationwide centralized economic plans in the Soviet Union. The plans were developed by a state planning committee based on the theory of productive forces that was part of the general guidelines of the Communist Party for economic development. Fulfilling the plan became the watchword of Soviet bureaucracy (see Overview of the Soviet economic planning process).
The same method of planning was also adopted by most other communist states, including the People's Republic of China. Nazi Germany emulated the practice in its four-year plan designed to bring Germany to war-readiness.
These plans generally failed as a massively centralized government is not an efficient government. Never has been. Never will be.
Second - the act of moving civilly committed patients into community treatment facilities was the genesis of the whole homeless problem. It was a failed attempt by the liberals to recognize the "individual rights" of the mentally ill and to allow them to make their own choices as to how to live their lives. I wrote about that here:
Starting around 1970, the progressives started lobbying against these psychiatric hospitals calling them inhumane. They started pushing for Deinstitutionalisation and for the social rights and justice for the mentally ill. These people were transfered from their safe environment and their care was shifted from in-house 24/7 care to walk-in centers where they had to take it upon themselves to visit and to show up for appointments for their treatment. President John F. Kennedy's Community Mental Health Act is the keystone of this program.
I wrote more about that here too.
Governor Inslee is hurting Washington State with his incompetent leadership. His "big idea" is couched in 1940's Communist rhetoric and it tries to do what was done already in the 1970s and failed.
There are some good people out there - they need to be voted into office. I am partial to this guy.
Leave a comment