Free Thinker

2011-12-09T14:07:00.003-06:00

What's a carpetbagger? Who are the carpetbaggers that COME down on the South from the NORTH?

September 19, 2007

The Contented Fisherman by Father Anthony de Mello, SJ

The rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find the Southern fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
"Why aren't you out fishing?" said the industrialist.
"Because I have caught enough fish for the day," said the fisherman.
"Why don't you catch some more?"
"What would I do with it?"
"You could earn more money" was the reply. "With that you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish.
"Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets. These would bring you more fish and more money. Soon you would have enough money to own two boats . . . maybe even a fleet of boats. The you would be a rich man like me."
"What would I do then?"
"The you could really enjoy life."
"What do you think I am doing right now?"

Which would you rather have: a fortune or a capacity for enjoyment?

Where in the hell is your soul?

2011-12-09T13:51:00.001-06:00

Where in the hell is your soul or Seoul, Korea? I say it's in your gentle areas!!!

Have fun by feeling yourself up, get off and then relax. Don't you feel better?

My take on -- Healthcare is Broken - We have a Solutions and Need your Help

2011-12-06T11:40:00.007-06:00

Note: The following is an email to George Bickerstaff, Investor and Philanthropist, Chairman of The Global Leaders, http://www.linkedin.com/in/bickerstaff , gbickerstaff@tgleaders.com, www.tgleaders.com. The details of his health care conference follows, see below.

George,

If you need another speaker with a new and interesting idea on the medical industrial complex, "the death industry", for your health care conference in San Francisco, on January 10th, (see below) you might want to hire me on the cheap. The medical industrial complex, which is a large segment, but not necessary all of America's health care system, is what's breaking the health care system, the budgets of individuals, families, businesses, the government and this society, in general. The complex is made up of all products and services offered on the "free market" that intentionally or unintentionally maim and kill people, through Godlessness, arrogance, insanity triggering the need for unnecessary medical interventions that lead to wrong diagnoses, surgeries, treatments, to the heavy use of drugs and medications, bad insurance products, over-billing by hospitals and doctor's offices and to one's ultimate death.

Health care, in general, treats symptoms to the many of man's underlining spiritual and emotional problems (all the many taboo subjects and stigmatizing illnesses and diseases that society rejects in great shame) that go untreated manifesting themselves into mental health and/or physical health problems. Just name your favorite illness, injury or disease. "The doctors practice on their patients" and "if you stay in the hospital long enough they will kill you." That's what the wise repeatedly tell me.

Name any industry and it has it share of corporations profiting from their insane ideology of profits before lives, before people instead people before profits. Our government is heavy engaged in supporting this complex, along with their support of the military industrial complex. This insanity is what's driving our healthcare cost through the roof. This is the basic idea that I came away with after recently adding the Harvard Medical School, Penn Medical School and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to my audience.

The Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School have roughly two or three hundred business and law professors, respectively, but the Harvard Medical School has over 8,100 physicians, professors and researchers teaching and working at the university and at 22-affiliated hospitals in the Boston-area. They get a lot of research money to invent new medical problems or patient symptoms and devices that Medicare (and thus the health insurance industry) recognizes and pays for leading to expensive and often unnecessary medical interventions for "extending" life or for killing life "while they take you to the cleaners".

We need to identify these insane corporations and their dangerous products and undermine them or counter their efforts. We need to get this message out. We need wake people up including all those working at these companies and industries or, at least, have an general understanding of the true problem, sit back, do nothing and watch the insanity of our ancient society march onward. The wise know when to act, when to do their dance and when not to. Within every individual, family, institution and organization, government and society there is embedded, both, the good and the bad, the "Force" and the "Dark Side", heaven and hell. Which side are you on? Do you live in heaven or hell?

Many of us have all experienced the above to our determent, hopefully the journey has led us to the truth or, at least, the process is underway. We were all born free, but sold into slavery, out of great fear, by our well-meaning parents and family, our well-meaning religions, our well-meaning schools, our well-meaning governments, our well-meaning military, our well-meaning economic system, our well-meaning society and by America's not so "free and friendly markets".

So, is this human nature, I don't really know. Freedom, democracy and the efficient allocation of resources seems to work better in the animal kingdom where they operate on instinct rather than on hard data, logic and reasoning while man ignores his gut instincts. They see the truth and evolve with their changing environment while other species go extinct. They know life and death, we know neither. They know when and how much to eat, rest, sleep, mate and when to defend their turf. It's the bare essentials to living a full life, this is something that's been lost by most in our hectic society who are trying to get somewhere while forgetting their roots.

Let me know.

Ted

Enjoy,
Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.

Announcement from George Bickerstaff's Network
We have over 150 CEO and mega investors, who control over one TRILLION in revenue and resources, joining us on January 10th in San Francisco to help solve the healthcare crisis.

I would like you and your company to be a part of this because bad healthcare kills everyone always. We owe good, affordable healthcare to everyone, everywhere.

You can learn more by watching the attached video (http://videos.sorensonmedia.com/Corp+Shorts/TGL+Healthcare+Conf+2011_rev/1b947d6485eeac40cf089c7S978de79101a9), or going to our web site (www.tgleaders-healthcare.blogspot.com), or filling out a question for our CEOs, or nominating yourself or a high potential friend to be a TGL Fellow where you can get free entrance and become part of the CEO team at (http://www.tgleaders.blogspot.com/p/future-global-leaders-past-award.html).

You can register to attend the January 10th San Francisco at http://tglhealthcaresymposium.eventbrite.com/?ref=ecount

We are connecting the most powerful people in the world, with the most money in the world, with the best ideas in the world to first help fix the healthcare crisis, and then the rest.

Please join us.

Sincerely,

George Bickerstaff
Investor and Philanthropist
Chairman of The Global Leaders
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bickerstaff
gbickerstaff@tgleaders.com
www.tgleaders.com

Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address

2011-12-04T08:55:00.001-06:00

Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address

Enjoy!

Ted

Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech -- June 5 2008

2011-12-04T08:24:00.009-06:00

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech -- June 5 2008

Enjoy!

Ted

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech Part 1

J.K.Rowling speaking at Harvard Speech Part 2

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech Part 2

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech Part 3

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech Part 3

Denzel Washington: Commencement Address at Penn -- May 16, 2011

2011-12-04T08:18:00.005-06:00

Denzel Washington -- Commencement Address at the University of Pennsylvania -- May 16, 2011

Enjoy!

Ted

Denzel Washington -- Commencement Address at the University of Pennsylvania 2011

Netflix -- If you don't have an account, get one. Disregard all the bad press.

2011-12-04T07:09:00.023-06:00

For only $8/month, you can get unlimited access to most of Netflix's library on demand without the guilt of not using Netflix for a month or two. This is better than a gym membership, you get to use it from the comforts of your own home, 24-hours a day, while dressed or undressed, at the local coffeehouse, public library or anywhere you can find a hotspot.

Here's some of my favorite documentaries and films that I've enjoyed watching instantly on my computer and learning some new truths about what's really happening in America and around the world. Expand your mind, expand your world. Open your mind, open your heart to new ideas and people.

Make your world the size of our actual world (27,000 miles in circumference) with its seven billion inhabitants living on seven continents and swimming in our five oceans. Remember that our turning planet orbits the sun daily in our ever-expanding universe. Live life to the fullest, start living in the NOW!!

Here are of my personal favorites that I recommend you watching...

Enjoy!

Ted

1.) The Corporation

2.) A Man Named Pearl

3.) Philadelphia

4.) Panama Deception

5.) Blue Gold World Water Wars

6.) Fuel

7.) A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

8.) Collapse

9.) The Last Word

10.) Exit Through the Gift Shop

11.) Van Gogh: Brush with Genius

12.) For the Bible Tells Me So

13.) Everything's Cool

14.) 911: In Plane Site

15.) The Party's Over

16.) The War on Democracy

17.) No End in Sight

18.) Independent Intervention

19.) GasHole

20.) Fidel

21.) National Geographic Talibanistan

22.) American Beauty

23.) Forrest Gump

24.) Star Wars (There's truly a "Force" and a "Dark Side" that's weaved through all of life and the universe. This is true at all levels -- among individuals, families, institutions and organizations, governments and societies. Which side are you on?)

What is a Witness Tree?

2011-12-03T14:33:00.002-06:00

This is worth knowing...

What is a Witness Tree?

"Global Warming" by Artist Nall Hollis

2011-12-03T10:56:00.011-06:00

May this artist's take on Global Warming warm your heart and make you think positive thoughts.

Global Warming by Artist Nall Hollis

NOTE: After "CLICK"-ing on this above link, "click" on the image, or icon, to enjoy the full effect.

Enjoy!

Ted

© Copyright NALL 2005 - 2011

more about Nall, Nall Hollis' website

"Waiting On The World To Change" by John Mayer

2011-12-03T10:41:00.002-06:00

"Waiting On The World To Change" by John Mayer

Waiting On The World To Change by John Mayer

Enjoy!

Ted

"There is Love" (The Wedding Song) by Peter, Paul and Mary

2011-12-03T10:14:00.004-06:00

There is Love (The Wedding Song) by Peter, Paul and Mary

There is Love (The Wedding Song) by Peter, Paul and Mary

Enjoy!

Ted

"Left Behind" by Bryan Duncan

2011-12-03T09:31:00.002-06:00

Listen and think about the lyrics. "Left Behind" by Bryan Duncan

"Left Behind" by Bryan Duncan

Enjoy!

Ted

"Held" by Natalie Grant

2011-12-03T08:07:00.001-06:00

A beautiful song with a great message. Take a listen. "Held" by Natalie Grant

"Held" by Natalie Grant

Enjoy!

Ted

Dear Mr. Reggie Copeland, Mobile City Council -- your request has been denied.

2011-12-02T07:25:00.020-06:00

December 2, 2011

Mr. Copeland (Mobile City Council Member, District 5),

As a longtime resident of Mobile, AL and a current resident of Daphne, AL, which is a suburb of Mobile, I have a right to communicate, via email, with any and every city official in both cities. What happens in the city of Mobile is broadcasted daily over the airwaves through radio, TV, via the internet and in the Press-Register affecting the lives of citizens on both sides of the bay. Much of the what makes the news is scary stuff. Recently, I have raised allegations of political and law enforcement corruption against two former officials working in the Mobile District Attorney's office, which is located in downtown Mobile.

As a city council member, I would think you might want to know all about this unless you already know all about it. Is this old news to you? Your request to be taken off my contact list raises "red flags" with me. Maybe we should investigate your past and present dealings as a government official. You've been on the city council for way too long for my comfort. Get a life! I will give you two options for getting off my list, either, you can resign from your office, today, or you become a convicted politician whichever comes first and then I will gladly honor your request.

I am the son of a marine and I like to kick ass! Do you get my drift and I can bend steel with my teeth. I'm unbreakable and I am here for the long haul. I am the new sheriff in town. Change is happening. I've had enough of your form of city government and your way of doing business, it only works for the politicrooks. More emails are coming your way rest assured, but you can ignore them the same way you ignore the corruption occurring, daily, in your office and around Government Plaza.

Your request has been denied and to any other government official hoping for the same treatment well you too are out of luck. Don't even bother asking me. You're not Joe Citizen. You've lost that right as a public official.

In reviewing your biography (see below), I see where you've spent much of your time around sports and bringing sporting events and teams to Mobile. That's fine. However, sports has become a sugar coating on an otherwise bad tasting piece of candy -- be it at a cherished university or in a city. Mobile looks and taste like crap in its current form. This must change, it will.

You've ignored this longstanding reality. You've spent your entire corporate and political career doing the easy stuff instead of doing the heavy lifting of keeping our city government corrupt-free, solvent and working and it shows. The city's finances and security are a complete mess, why don't you explain to all of us why that's the case? Why the need to raise the sales tax, again? Everybody wants to know. What don't we know?

You start doing your job and I will do mine and we'll get along just fine.

Have a good day!

Source: Biography of Mr. George "Reggie" Copeland, Sr.

Enjoy,

Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.

From: George R Copeland Sr
To: "tebjr1@yahoo.com"
Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2011 9:25 PM
Subject: Contact

Please. Remove me from your list!!!

Sent from my iPad

Dear Ashley Rich, Mobile (AL) District Attorney's Office

2011-12-01T10:21:00.013-06:00

Ashley,

After reading in the Lagniappe, this morning, what I perceived as your sincere comments about Gordon Waller, I thought I would bring the following "hot potato" to your attention. You'll probably want to recues yourself and your office from any investigation involving former D.A. John Tyson and Asst. D.A. Steve Giardini and their handling of the local Catholic priest molestation unit which they established, in 2003, in response to the national priest scandal. That summer, I came toward and met with the two of them about a “possible” claim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest assigned to St. Ignatius, in 1980-82. I was 10 years old, at the time.

Following our meeting, where I gave them some details of a possible incident and the overall general conduct of this priest at our parish, I returned to my office where I "Googled" the priest's name “Norman Rogge” on my computer. To my surprise, the search pulled up a full length expose from 2002, on this same priest, in the Dallas Morning News describing how Rogge had left in his wake victims in FL, AL, LA and TX over a forty year period without ever facing prosecution while always denying any allegations of abuse. Trying to be helpful, I faxed over this piece of evidence, this "smoking gun" to Tyson's office. I am still waiting for a response from him or Steve.

The Penn State sex scandal got me all stirred up, once again. However, this time I took my complaint to Senator Jeff Sessions while copying dozens of prominent Mobilians including Press-Register President Ricky Matthews and Editorial Manager Frances Coleman, Sheriff Sam Cochran, Representative Jo Bonner and Alabama AG Luther Strange's office. Only Jeff Sessions responded to my cry for help. He stated in his letter that he had passed on my complaint to the Justice Department. I’ve yet to hear from them.

I would like for the possible cover up of my case and maybe others like it involving the state (the D.A's. office) and the Archdiocese of Mobile -- the Catholic Church to be fully investigated and made public. We all know what happened to Steve Giardini and only one clergy member, Brother Vic Bendillo at McGill-Toolen, in the entire Mobile Archdiocese faced prosecution for his crimes against children over the past 30 or 40 years. For being such a long standing Catholic community with a global epidemic, I now find this hard to believe.

My request to you is to find my file in your office and review it including the Dallas Morning News story before contacting Luther Strange's office. They appear uninterested in my new allegations of law enforcement and political corruption, in Mobile. What gives?

After putting this information out via e-mail, on my blog, http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/ and on Facebook, my initial reward from these various communities was an eerie silence. I got no reaction. As a political and social writer, I'm use to writing commentary on the corrupt and insane actions of Montgomery, Washington and the world. Now, I found myself in some new and scary territory after accusing local politicians of being just as corrupt based on my own personal experience. I was now making news. A paranoia set in that ultimately led to me being hospitalized in a psychiatric unit at Baptist Hospital, in Pensacola, FL (November 14-22, 2011). I was released on a judge’s order following my testimony in a commitment hearing. Upon my return home, in Daphne, I found Jeff Sessions' letter waiting for me in my mailbox.

He spoke up when everyone else wouldn't. I'm, now, fully recovered from this stress-induced mild manic/psychotic episode. I hope you'll take a hard look at my case and maybe others like from this same time period. Steve Giardini may, now, have something new to say about our meeting and any cases like mine. I hope you can get the AG's office and/or the local U.S. attorney's office involved. I believe that my civil rights were violated and I want my day in court with Mr. Tyson. I want him to explain his inaction.

At 40, I lived a pretty interesting life and sadly I’ve come to the conclusion that all our cherished institutions and systems are run by egomaniacs where everyone gets hurt to protect those few at the top. I want to throw the Catholic Church out of the United States, I want to bankrupt them and I want to stop their brainwashing ways on Americans, I want to stop their assault on humanity. They want your mind, body and soul to feed their evil, wicked and insane ways. I hope you’re not Catholic! The predatory behavior by religion, in general, must be stopped. Church and State are supposed to be separate, but they’re not. They’re colluding by protecting one another and their dishonest ways. This is a total violation of our constitution.

The state is protecting these churches by allowing them to literally strip Americans (innocent children who later become troubled “adults”) of their basic rights, of their personal power as spelled out in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Our birthright of life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are endowed to us by our Creator, by God, not by King George III, not by our President or by the Pope. The justice system and law enforcement, law schools, city hall, statehouses and our federal government have forgotten all of this and now look at the sad state of affairs.

Our country finds itself – bankrupt, in every imaginable way. Please, surprise me by doing all that you can with my complaint. Our society is watching and waiting for our real leaders to step up. We need strong men and women to rise up in a revolt to this ongoing injustice and insanity.

I am a bright man, dangerously bright. See my attached resume for proof.

See Word attachment -- tedburnettresume 11-11a.doc

Ted Burnett

Daphne, AL

Fr. Anthony de Mello, SJ -- Talks on Awareness

2011-11-28T13:43:00.004-06:00

Awareness pt.1 -- Awareness pt. 1

Awareness pt. 2 -- Awareness pt. 2

Awareness pt. 3 and 4 -- Awareness pt. 3 and 4

Awareness pt. 5 -- Awareness pt. 5

Awareness pt. 6 and 7 -- Awareness pt. 6 and 7

Awareness pt. 8a -- Awareness pt. 8a

Awareness pt. 8b -- Awareness pt. 8b

Awareness pt. 9 -- Awareness pt. 9

Awareness pt. 10 -- Awareness pt. 10

To be continued...

New Mobile (Alabama) Foundation

2011-11-28T09:11:00.004-06:00

Note: See original email to Rich Sullivan at Red Square Agency, in Mobile, to understand the following series of email exchanges with Mobile City councilman Fred Richardson.

Enjoy!
Ted

November 28, 2011

Fred,

Thanks for writing back, taking a hard look at Mobile's crisis or opportunities must take place first before any short and long-term solutions can be offered up. What's the missing world-class venue, I don't know yet at this stage of our discovery. However, I believe it should natural and authentic to Mobile. It has to be something that can only be experienced in our port city. It has to be our own original idea and not someone else's, such as, a traveling exhibit.

It can be anything from a graduate school in the arts and literature, such as, Savannah's SCAD (Savannah's College of Art and Design) with campus in Atlanta, Hong Kong, LaCoste, France, a theatrical troupe like that of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF), a music school like Boston's Berklee College of Music. I've been told that Mobile has a rich blues history, but no home for its past, present and future talent to develop and thrive. All we're trying to do is play off our natural strengths, not turn Mobile and its residents into something it isn't nor wants to support. It must be something that sets the rest of the town on fire, that's the true measure of success. There's lots of kindling lying around Mobile, but no flames to instantly consume it. There's no smoke and I maybe the city’s only spark.

This group exceeds 225, in size, with over one hundred professors teaching at the University of Mobile, Spring Hill College and the University of South Alabama. The rest are individuals and professionals living and working in and around Mobile. Here's an initial list of names that received my two previous emails. Let the cross-pollination begin.

You may recognize the names of friends, family, neighbors and colleagues. If you've interested in seeing Mobile succeed on, both, a community and commercial level (tourism destination) then I encourage you to simultaneously reach out to one another and start your own conversations, in person or online, while copying me on your dialogue so that I can feed this energy to the group, as a whole. The city of Mobile has its work cut-out for itself.

Mobile has lots of voids in its quality of life. What we're trying to do is to see what's missing from our town and add it back, add bright colors. What's missing from Mobile that's occurring in other fun cities that you've lived in or traveled to? What niche, what level of commitment will you make to bring your part to the city's grand puzzle? What's missing from our social life and let's create it, let's invent it while seeing how this action changes all of us in the process. It requires work, but if there's passion then it can be a lot of fun. Let's make it all fun while building something that's sustainable, environmentally-friendly and something that we can all be proud of.

As a financially-challenged philosopher and writer with a world-class audience (12,600), that's world-wide, I've come to learn that much can be accomplished on very little money, as long as, there's lots of heart, talent and time. Mobile lacks nuts (or ovaries), guts, spine and backbone, heart, soul, nerve, the right touch and wisdom. All are a MUST for Mobile to regain its integrity, dignity, sanity and balance. Let's be the change that we want to see in our country, in our world. We're facing another great depression, what other choice do we have as college football will soon be over for another year. Let's put that same money, power, time and energy planning, cheering, partying and pour it into our own game as we come together to field a team of hundreds or even thousands of resident as we must now march 99 yards across the field to break the goal line and score a touchdown. We all know the game and its rules.

It may take a year, 5, 10 or 20 years to accomplish this goal, but what better things can we be doing with our life, for ourselves and for generations to come. Let's recruit executives to town, with money and influence, to live and not just their laborers; its poor thinking that’s quite egotistical of the Chamber and old Mobile. Stop using everyone while lining your own pockets.

I am reminded of another family member, a former investment banker from Montgomery, AL. While alive, he hung the moon in our family and in the state’s capitol. Philip A. Sellers, was a Washington and Lee graduate while serving in World War II, as a colonel. He got married and they had four children and many grandchildren. A former president of the Montgomery Chamber of Commerce, he was a long-time member of the boards of ASF, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and the Montgomery Symphony. This tireless volunteer has worked with the YMCA, the Montgomery Area United Way, Jackson and Baptist Hospitals, the Montgomery Area Council on Aging, Huntingdon College, Sweet Briar College and the Davis Theatre for the Performing Arts. He was appointed by the governor to Alabama's Commission of Higher Education. While receiving an award as the Montgomery Advertiser’s Man of the Year, he said the following.

“We’re not put here to test the waters, but to make waves. Each generation hopes for a better world for the next, but hoping alone won’t do it. It takes a little work, a little effort, but the rewards are invaluable.”

He comments on the impact of the ASF to Montgomery...

"When the Alabama Shakespeare Festival came to Montgomery, Philip Sellers was made chairman of the board. He has said, in typical style, "It was a wonderful experience. I think I got much more out of it than I put into it." Never short on vision, even Sellers admits that he couldn't foresee the immensity of the change in the arts in Montgomery when he returned here after serving in the Pacific theatre in World War II. Seemingly tireless, he is dropping off of some of the committees he has long served on. However, he does so realizing the huge impact they have had on the Montgomery area. "I don't think we were smart enough to think of the arts in business terms, what it might mean as far as attracting industry to the community," he said. "We looked at it more in terms of what it meant to children, and to the generations who would come long after them."" (Source: The Council on Arts)

We need to get rid of the unnecessary, the caked on false belief systems, the suits of armor that divide us and get down to the bare essentials. Inventory the city's and the residents' assets and liabilities, our strengths and weaknesses, our needs and wants. Develop the strengths while working on the long-term solutions to address our weaknesses. Personally, I just solved a 22-year-old crisis in my life that existed for much longer than this, but denial and no easy solution kept me from confronting it and my many other problems that I've freely written about.

Mobile, its leaders and its public officials are in deep denial. The reminiscence of Occupy Mobile! is proof enough. We’re facing a crisis of epic portion. Is it Washington’s to solve, is it Montgomery’s or is it ours? We got ourselves into this mess and it didn’t happen over tonight nor will real solutions simply appear. Work is required, are we willing to do the necessary so that the rising tide will lift all boats, creating positive attitudes? Is being “a city of potential” what we want or do we want to flip the switch and start enjoying the free-flowing kinetic energy?

(Here are the professors, see cc: for the list of names of individuals and professionals.)

alchow@usouthaledu, asharland@usouthal.edu, awilliams@usouthal.edu, ccmoore@usouthal.edu, cfreed@usouthal.edu, ckhudson@usouth.al.edu, cking@usouthal.edu, cschulze@usouthal.edu, davidmitchell@usouthal.edu, dcmosley@usouthal.edu, depley@usouthal.edu, dgartman@usouthal.edu, dlarson@usouthal.edu, dspake@usouthal.edu, eharriso@usouthal.edu, emadden@usouthal.edu, furbancic@usouthal.edu, gillis@usouthal.edu, gpennywell@usouthal.edu, gprescot@usouthal.edu, hmckiven@usouthal.edu, ikhan@usouthal.edu, jcoker@usouthal.edu, jexline@usouthal.edu, jgamble@usouthal.edu, jmaes@usouthal.edu, jsneath@usouthal.edu, jswoffor@usouthal.edu, khsu@usouthal.edu, khunsader@usouthal.edu, knicholls@usouthal.edu, kpettway@usouthal.edu, kwoodford@usouthal.edu, lhaas@usouthal.edu, lsuberly@usouthal.edu, markweaver@usouthal.edu, mbranch@usouthal.edu, mdaley@usouthal.edu, mfoster@usouthal.edu, micenogle@usouthal.edu, michaelhorton@usouthal.edu, mmenon@usouthal.edu, msegal@usouthal.edu, msumerlin@usouthal.edu, nentessar@usouthal.edu, nlambe@usouthal.edu, pforbus@usouthal.edu, ppietri@usouthal.edu, rdickens@usouthal.edu, retzlaff@usouthal.edu, rhanks@usouthal.edu, rhardin@usouthal.edu, rnelson@usouthal.edu, schang@usouthal.edu, spicou@usouthal.edu, tgillespie@usouthal.edu, tnoland@usouthal.edu, tshaw@usouthal.edu, ttucker@usouthal.edu, turnipseed@usouthal.edu, tweldy@usouthal.edu, vbryan@usouthal.edu, vjavine@usouthal.edu, zfinney@usouthal.edu, ataylor@umobile.edu, bhinson@umobile.edu, ctaylor@umobile.edu, dwilson@umobile.edu, dyounce@umobile.edu, jbiskner@umobile.edu, jbyrd@umobile.edu, jeffreyq@umobile.edu, jfinley@umobile.edu, jgwin@umobile.edu, jminton@umobile.edu, jrobertson@umobile.edu, jtalmage@umobile.edu, kdunning@umobile.edu, ldenton@umobile.edu, ncillo@umobile.edu, ngautier@umobile.edu, randalld@umobile.edu, rolsen@umobile.edu, rroberts@umobile.edu, svest@umobile.edu, tbevill@umobile.edu, tmashburn@umobile.edu, ALachaussee@shc.edu, alandi@shc.edu, bholbert@shc.edu, borbridge@shc.edu, cdodsworth@shc.edu, gpartridge@shc.edu, harrison@shc.edu, hsalazar@shc.edu, jeads@shc.edu, jforstrom@shc.edu, jfrancozamudio@shc.edu, jlarriviere@shc.edu, jswitzer@shc.edu, korange@shc.edu, lburnett@shc.edu, mbrandon@shc.edu, mferry@shc.edu, mkenny@shc.edu, nhamilton@shc.edu, nlarriviere@shc.edu, rbracken@shc.edu, rharding@shc.edu, rlucas@shc.edu, rsimpson@shc.edu, sandler@shc.edu, sbushardt@shc.edu, scastello@shc.edu, sduncan@shc.edu, sharpa@shc.edu, starr@shc.edu, swilson@shc.edu, thoffman@shc.edu, tward@shc.edu, hrowan@shc.edu,

Enjoy,
Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.
From: Ted Burnett
To: Rich Sullivan
Cc: Bob Burnett ; Bess Rich ; A. Jay Cooper ; Sam Jones Mayor of Mobile ; Beth Morrissette ; Fred Richardson City Council ; Gina Gregory ; Jermaine Burrell ; John Williams City Council ; Reggie Copeland City Council ; William Carroll City Council ; Sheriff Sam Cochran ; Mike Dow ; Christopher Jones ; Alicia C. Mosley ; Amanda Hecker ; Amanda Outlaw ; Andy Crane ; Ann Davis ; Anne Oswalt ; Asst. Warden David Turner ; Clyde Anderson CEO Books A Million ; Dee Dowling ; Lisa Burnett ; Bill Porter ; Mary Burnett ; Mike Pool ; Michael Muscat ; Matthew Brennan ; Marc Whitehead ; Jimmy Burnett ; Will Brown ; Bill Barnhill ; Ben Brooks ; Congressman Jo Bonner ; Dr. David G. Bronner ; Joe Bullard ; Banks C. Ladd attorney ; Barney March ; Becky and Trip Wallace ; Bill Seifert ; Brannon McPherson ; Brent Pope (Lewis Communications) ; Brian (CBMC) Campbell ; Bridget Williams ; Frances Coleman ; Cam Marston ; Carol Zimmerman - FPL Rd table ; Catherine Moore ; Chris Bowen ; Cathy Saucier ; Cathy Milstead ; Chris Golemon ; Christine Bogar ; Clifton Inge ; Doug Ray (Bayer) ; Daniel Massi ; Dan Coxchief ; Danny Harlin ; Danny Patterson ; David Smithweck ; Debbie Murphy ; Dick Lightfoot ; Don Davis ; Dr. Alexander Landi (Chair) ; Judge Don Davis ; Ed Travis ; Elizabeth Harwood ; Ellen Wingard ; Vivian Davis Figures ; Dr. Charlie Guest ; Dr. Irene McIntosh ; President Gordon Moulton ; Greg Jones ; Melissa Inge ; Thad Inge ; Jason Jones ; Jeff Lowther ; J. Tyler Turner ; Christopher Jones ; Bill - Daria Lightfoot ; Dr. Richard Hayes ; Ricky Mathews President ; Tad Denson ; John Strope ; Tyrone Williams Police Chief ; Joanne Watson (Chief's Assistant ; Billy McLeod ; Dr. John Runda (UMobile) ; Robin Steele ; Gordon Stimpson ; Jim Bingaman ; Jean-Marie McDonnell ; Nall Hollis ; Tony Oglesby ; Mark Davidson ; Louise Oyen
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: New Mobile Foundation

Fred,

Thanks for writing back and staking out your position as a city council member. Mobile is a dead city. It lacks tourism because it lacks a world-class venue or two. I am convinced that Mobile is covered up in much talent, but the residents have all been straightjacketed to old traditions that serve the wretched few at the expense of the city's budget and all its residents. Mardi Gras comes to mind.

As a fourth-generation Mobilian, my great-grandfather boarded a ship, in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the turn of the 20th century that landed him in Mobile. For ten years, John J. McMahon served as a city clerk before starting his own printing business, Powers Printing Co. on Michael Street?. McMahon married a Mobile girl, Katy. They lived in the fine neighborhood of Flo Claire and they had two daughters, both, attended Catholic schools, college and they made their debuts during Mardi Gras. Quiet a feat, for any immigrant coming to Mobile even for today.

John J. McMahon served as president of the Country Club of Mobile, Mobile Community Chest and he still holds the record as the long-serving president of the Mobile Public Library (Main) at seventeen years, in the 1930-40's. He was a member of Rotary and the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. Upon his death, in 1948, his obituary made front page news of the Mobile Press-Register describing him as "a businessman and civic leader". When he wasn't socializing on Flo Claire, at the country club, he could be found spending his summers at his bay house sitting on the bluffs of Daphne overlooking Mobile Bay. While not a rich man at his death, he was very accomplished. His widow lived out the remainder of her life in a penthouse at St. Matthews?? towering over Government Street, in the Oakleigh Garden District. That's part of my history... the fame, the fortune and the power would be spent recklessly by the next generations. So, we know boom and bust and a lot more bust.

Your vision and mine for this city of potential vary greatly. In your mind, we've already arrived just drop the Moon Pie on New Year's Eve and let's celebrate. Celebrate what -- the city's debt, the city's and the taxpayer's expensive maritime museum which lacks vision, direction and revenue and it has the city on the hook. Celebrate what -- the city's now vacant cruise terminal, celebrate the city's crime problem or its perception.

From the Eastern Shore, we laugh at you Mobilians and we think you live a crappy life with no sunrises or sunsets, no boat riding, no crabbing, no fishing, no sailing... The city went west to the pines of Mississippi when it should have gone south along the bay and through, both, Dog and Fowl Rivers. No vision then and no vision now. You think Mobile has arrived where? All its venues are old from Bellingrath Gardens, the USS Alabama Battleship Park, the Exploreum and IMAX. Almost every mid-sized and large cities in the South have an IMAX, Pensacola has one, New Orleans has one, Atlanta has one, Birmingham probably has one. So, what's so special about our IMAX?

We have too many vacant buildings and empty parking lots in downtown. We have an empty Saenger Theater, an uninspired and segregated society. This must change and now, not tomorrow at the city's pace and on its terms. You lack real power, yours like most others is tied to an office, to an job title and not much else. You don't know anything about leading.

Screw old Mobile and screw old black Mobile, screw Mardi Gras, screw the country club, screw all traditions that no longer serve the interest of the entire city and only divide us. The times and a bankrupt city and nation demand new and different thinking to tackle the host of problems infecting this community -- our inner-city neighborhoods, crappy public schools and elitist private schools, segregated neighborhoods, the Catholic Church with its two gold-leafed domes reminding all, both, the residents and visitors alike of its real core values.

I don't recall Jesus wearing gold robes, gold teeth, gold shoes or living in a gold domed cathedral. I seen enough incompetence and injustice in this town. It's time for the career-politicians, judges, police chief and sheriff to go to jail like everyone else. Time for all of you to get a taste of your own medicine, its time to suck dick or get spanked by the good judge. Take your pick.

Mobile is a year around circus with fools running all the courts, Mardi Gras included, and government plaza. I am not being very nice to you and our city's "leaders", tough!

Feedback...

Ted, thanks for including me. I am of the opinion that the way to re-launch a "dead" city is NOT to design it from the top but to lower the tax burden on everyone within the city's environs so THEY can do what needs to be done. Much of what a person might consider "dead" in Mobile would quickly come to life if the City did not think of businesses as the golden goose that pays their bills!

Let's have a public forum and discuss this!

~John
John B. Switzer, PhD
Assistant Professor of Theology
Director of Graduate Programs in Theology & Ministry
Spring Hill College
4000 Dauphin Street
Mobile, AL 36608
(251) 380-4669
www.johnswitzer.com

Certainly an idea worth exploring! -- Kathy Dunning
From: Ted Burnett [tebjr11@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 1:36 PM
To: Kathy Dunning;
Subject: New Mobile Foundation

From the desk of Mobile City Council Vice President Fred Richardson...

We already hold neighborhood beat meeting where key city department heads, police officials, and neighborhood and business leaders join elected official inside of neighborhoods just to hear from them and share with them pertinent information. At this meeting, most issues are addressed on the spot. The only interest at these are those of people living in the neighborhood. A report is given at the next meeting on all issues raised at the previous meeting.

Your think tank consist of selected individuals coming up with ideals that may help others. However, I am convinced that taking it to the people is always best. No thanks.

Fred Richardson

Fredrick D. Richardson, Jr.
Mobile City Council Vice President Representing District 1
P.O. Box 1827
Mobile, AL 36633
Email: richardson@cityofmobile.org
Office: 251 208 7441
Fax 251.208.7482
Web: cityofmobile.org

Enjoy,
Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.
From: Ted Burnett
To: Rich Sullivan
Cc: Bob Burnett ; Bess Rich ; A. Jay Cooper ; Sam Jones Mayor of Mobile ; Beth Morrissette ; Fred Richardson City Council ; Gina Gregory ; Jermaine Burrell ; John Williams City Council ; Reggie Copeland City Council ; William Carroll City Council ; Sheriff Sam Cochran ; Mike Dow ; Christopher Jones ; Alicia C. Mosley ; Amanda Hecker ; Amanda Outlaw ; Andy Crane ; Ann Davis ; Anne Oswalt ; Asst. Warden David Turner ; Clyde Anderson CEO Books A Million ; Dee Dowling ; Lisa Burnett ; Bill Porter ; Mary Burnett ; Mike Pool ; Michael Muscat ; Matthew Brennan ; Marc Whitehead ; Jimmy Burnett ; Will Brown ; Bill Barnhill ; Ben Brooks ; Congressman Jo Bonner ; Dr. David G. Bronner ; Joe Bullard ; Banks C. Ladd attorney ; Barney March ; Becky and Trip Wallace ; Bill Seifert ; Brannon McPherson ; Brent Pope (Lewis Communications) ; Brian (CBMC) Campbell ; Bridget Williams ; Frances Coleman ; Cam Marston ; Carol Zimmerman - FPL Rd table ; Catherine Moore ; Chris Bowen ; Cathy Saucier ; Cathy Milstead ; Chris Golemon ; Christine Bogar ; Clifton Inge ; Bill Porter ; Doug Ray (Bayer) ; Daniel Massi ; Ann Davis ; Dan Coxchief ; Danny Harlin ; Danny Patterson ; David Smithweck ; Debbie Murphy ; Dick Lightfoot ; Don Davis ; Dr. Alexander Landi (Chair) ; Judge Don Davis ; Ed Travis ; Elizabeth Harwood ; Ellen Wingard ; Vivian Davis Figures ; Dr. Charlie Guest ; Chris Golemon ; Clifton Inge ; Dr. Irene McIntosh ; President Gordon Moulton ; Greg Jones ; Melissa Inge ; Thad Inge ; Jason Jones ; Jeff Lowther ; J. Tyler Turner ; Cathy Milstead ; Christopher Jones ; Bill - Daria Lightfoot ; Dr. Richard Hayes ; Ricky Mathews President ; Tad Denson ; John Strope ; Tyrone Williams Police Chief ; Asst. Warden David Turner ; Will Brown ; Marc Whitehead ; Joanne Watson (Chief's Assistant ; Becky and Trip Wallace ; Billy McLeod ; Bridget Williams ; Dr. John Runda (UMobile) ; Robin Steele ; Sheriff Sam Cochran ; Gordon Stimpson ; Jim Bingaman ; Jean-Marie McDonnell ; Nall Hollis ; Amanda Outlaw ; Tony Oglesby ; Mark Davidson ; Louise Oyen Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 1:35 PMSubject: New Mobile FoundationRich,The following idea just came to me and I thought of you to share it with among others. I am wondering if you and other young talent would like to form a think tank specifically for Mobile with the idea of designing the town in a way that best serves the greatest number and not just a few (old) special interests. The idea is to breakout a fresh piece of white canvas and let residents put their colors on it to develop a vibrant city that we can all be proud of and not have to wish we're living in Charleston, SC, San Francisco, Austin, Nashville, NYC, London or Paris. The focus is to take an inventory of Mobile's existing assets and look at the city's liabilities or what's missing and put it all to good use, to maximize the assets value while cross-pollinating one another and the venues. With a dead society, a dead city, its time to launch a rebirth of Mobile and America. It's time to turn Mobile, "the city of potential" into the city of kinetic energy.The group is open to any resident and anyone with an interest in the city of Mobile.Membership is free or to be kept at a nominal expense. Ted Enjoy,Ted Burnett500 Lincoln St. B-105Daphne, AL 36526 USAC: 251-709-3726Email: tebjr1@yahoo.comMy blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.comMy bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.comQuestion everything.

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions' response to my allegations of Catholic priest molestation cover-up by the D.A.'s office

2011-11-26T06:56:00.003-06:00

United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510-0104

November 18, 2011

Mr. Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln Street, Apartment B105
Daphne, AL 36526

Dear Mr. Burnett:

Thank you for your letter concerning your allegations of abuse by a Catholic priest. As a United States Senator, I have no jurisdiction nor authority in court matters. In an effort to be of assistance to you, I am forwarding your correspondence to the [U.S.] Attorney General’s [Eric Holder] office for response. If you have any legal questions, please contact the Alabama State Bar Association at 800.392.5660.

Please feel free to contact my office in the future if I can be of assistance with another matter.

Very truly yours,

Jeff Sessions
United States Senator

Law enforcement and political corruption (Mobile, AL) in the 2003 cover up of a notorious child molester, Fr. Norman Rogge.

2011-11-12T18:38:00.003-06:00

[November 11, 2011]

To: Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange (The Agent of Record)

Subject: Cover up of Catholic priest sex crimes by Mobile District Attorney John Tyson, Asst. DA Steve Giranidi (2003) Civil rights violations by the Mobile Police Department, then Police Chief Sam Cochran, City of Mobile, Mobile County Sheriff Department, now Sheriff Sam Cochran.

I also have some information on former Mobile County Commissioner Steve Nodine that [State] Special Prosecutor David Whetstone might be interested in hearing about a one-time encounter that revealed his "insane" character in a downtown restaurant in Mobile (2008?). http://blog.al.com/live/2011/11/stephen_nodine_case_prosecutio.html

From:
Ted Burnett
Philosopher and writer

The following is a brief bio on me, I am a world-class philosopher and writer with an global audience to prove it, living in Daphne, AL. Five of eight Ivy schools know me well -- Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Princeton, plus Stanford, Berkeley, Cambridge, Oxford (38 universities, in 10 countries). Harvard Business, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School and now Harvard Medical School (1,600 physicians and professors, President Drew G. Faust, Elizabeth Warren, David Gergen...) Yale Law, Penn Law, NYU Law, Columbia Law, Chicago Law, Virginia Law, Stanford Law, UC Berkeley Law, UCLA Law, USC Law, Cambridge Law, Oxford Law, Amsterdam Law -- thousands of law professors have heard my story through my monthly essays over the past four years. Currently, I am on Social Security Disability which allows me to think exceptional thoughts and to write creatively. My retention rate with 12,600 contacts is near perfect at 99.8% (for the past two years). That's an "A". I made all C's in school including while at Auburn due to dyslexia (Charles Schwab, Ted Turner, have it and both are in my audience).

See my bio -- www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

Followed by is an email to Senator Jeff Sessions complaining about the political and law enforcement corruption and crisis in Mobile, AL involving me and my civil rights related to having a mental illness (bipolar disorder), as well as, a "possible" sex crimes complaint against Father Norman Rogge while St. Ignatius Parish (1980-01) where I was a student and parishioner. I came into contact with him, my parents had him over to our house for dinner and to view a crazy Catholic slide presentation on Jesus.

(2003) In a meeting with District Attorney John Tyson and Ass. DA Steve Giranidi, I described the details of the "event" inside the school's rectory. My memory could still be suppressed at this point. Following our meeting, I returned to my office where I Googled "Norman Rogge" and found a full-length expose, to my surprise, in the Dallas Morning News (DMN), from 2002, which reported on his forty? year march across the South as a notorious child molester who left victims behind in FL, AL, LA and TX.

The Church kept moving him from parish to parish when there was "a little problem". To help the prosecutors, I faxed over this DMN piece to the DA's office and I am still waiting on them "to get back with me." I think I was one of many victims who came forward and our cases were suppress by the State of Alabama (DA's office) for the sake of the Archdiocese of Mobile, St. Ignatius, The Roman Catholic Church, the City of Mobile and Old Mobile, all their Mardi Gras friends. It's a (segregated) society thing. Only the case of Brother Vic Benitino? at McGill-Toolen High School involving a male student was prosecuted for all of the church's sins. He had to die on the cross, just like Jesus. He probably has a few things to say about the church and his prosecution.

St. Ignatius is the diocese flagship elementary school located in Spring Hill on Springhill Ave. My mother and younger brother went there so did singer, songwriter, musician, businessman Jimmy Buffett. He probably has something to say about his time at St. Ignatius and McGill Institute. He's not fond of Mobile and does no business here. As I say there are "no famous people living in Mobile" considering that 5 MLB Hall of Famers -- Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Satchel Page, Ozzie Smith, were born and raised here. Mobile killed baseball and its hertiage. Now, with nothing to do the kids commit black on black crime and black on white crime. After watching the nightly news, you better lock your doors before you go to bed."

Old Mobile has a lot to lose with my story coming out, it will likely bring on another round of scandals.

(In 2010, Steve Girandi was arrested and prosecuted for soliciting sex over the internet with a minor (an undercover FBI agent. He's now in prison.).

Truth is ALWAYS stranger than fiction. By the way, my IQ is in the 140's (2002).

I'm not very popular in Mobile these days when I confronted the Mobile Police Chief Tyrone Williams in Spanish Plaza, on Tuesday - 11/8/11, where a small group of unhappy Americans assembled, camped out as "Occupy Mobile!, on Government St., while they were being forced out by the Police Brass." Read my blog for my two follow-up emails to Chief Williams which was also blasted to the Mayor Sam Jones, to the entire city council and some one hundred others both Cc: and Bcc: for my protection across the country.

It's a mess, just like gumbo. I'm putting my story in your hands, "handle with care".

Ted Burnett

Summary: An American thought leader, a trailblazer on the subjects of human, organizational and societal development and health, the role that integrity, dignity, sanity plays, spirituality, faith, freedom, happiness, problem solving and risk taking.

Currently, the audience has over twelve thousand contacts in ten countries -- the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The group includes eleven thousand M.D.'s and PhD's teaching at over seventy colleges and universities of which thirty-eight are world-class – Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Emory, UNC, Duke, Virginia, Chicago, MIT, NYU, Oxford, Cambridge, TC-Dublin, ENS-Paris, Amsterdam, ETH Zurich, FU Berlin, Toronto, McGill, British Columbia, ANU, Sydney... The balance is made up of foundations – John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Pew Charitable Trust, Charles and Helen Schwab and the Turner Foundation, federal judges and lawmakers and Washington policy institutes. In 2010, ten heads of state, their foreign ministers and ambassadors to the U.S. were added. More than fifty provocative essays have been written on state, national and global matters. This writer lives on the Alabama Gulf Coast (USA).

My blog: (70 essays) www.toxicnation.blogspot.com. Check it all.

Friday, November 11, 2011

To: Senator Jeff Sessions

During the nation's recent Catholic priest scandal and the incident with Brother Vic Bendicto? and a male student at McGill came to light, in 2003, I came forward at the same time with allegations against Fr. Norman Rogge. I provided details of my story, in a meeting with, D.A. John Tyson and Asst. D.A. Steven Giardini, who is now serving time in prison for soliciting sex from a child (in sting/undercover FBI agent.

Following our meeting and trying to be helpful to these prosecutors (on the same day), I Googled the priest's name, at my office, where I found this story out of Dallas Morning News about Rogge, who turned out to be a notorious Catholic priest who molested children in FL, LA, TX for over 40 years and was never prosecuted because the Catholic church kept moving him from parish to parish. In 1981-'82?, Fr. Norman Rogge was residing at St. Ignatius where I was a student and came into contact with him. My parents even had this "charming man" over to our house one night for dinner. "We all loved him." In hindsight, "He was very good at seducing the sensitive ones." That's what I told Tyson and Giardini. There's more to this story. After sending the faxed story, I never heard from the D.A., again. I believe they sat on my story and many others who came forward with their tale. Only Bro. Vic. took the fall living in Montgomery.

This is highly sensitive and potentially very explosive charges that could rock Mobile. I want this investigated and I want my day in court.

Priest kept working after abuse cases

Dallas Morning News

5-4-2002

In the annals of clergy sexual abuse, the Rev. Norman Rogge is a
familiar character. He has been accused of groping a young teen at a
movie, of fondling others during swimming lessons, of exposing himself
to an 11-year-old boy on a weekend trip and soliciting oral sex.

What makes the 77-year-old former Dallas priest unusual is that he has
been criminally prosecuted twice for child molestation. He pleaded
guilty the first time and no contest the second.

And - as some Catholic leaders are calling for a "one-strike" abuse
policy and priests are being removed from ministry almost daily -
Father Rogge remains in good standing, working at a Jesuit retirement
home in New Orleans.

All the charges against him were "incorrect," he said Friday,
declining to elaborate.

Dallas lawyer Sylvia Demarest, who has represented victims of priests
and has cataloged an estimated 1,000 clergymen who've been publicly
accused of sexual abuse, said she knows of a few who've kept working
after one criminal case. Father Rogge may well be alone in surviving
two, she said.

"I've never heard anything like that before," said the Rev. Thomas
Doyle, who once served in the Vatican Embassy in Washington and has
helped hundreds of priests' victims press claims against the church.
"That's the ultimate. To lay yourselves open to that kind of liability
is incredible."

Dallas Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Galante, spokesman for the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee on sexual abuse, sighed
Friday when told about the situation. He said that when the bishops
gather here next month for a historic session on this subject, he'll
advocate a national policy banning public ministry by any priest
credibly accused of abuse.

"I believe very strongly in one strike and you're out," Bishop Galante
said. "The focus has to be on the victims."

Ms. Demarest, part of the legal team that won a record judgment in
1997 against the Dallas diocese for covering up abuse by the Rev. Rudy
Kos, says Father Rogge is "an example of why the system will not
change."

If the priest is unique in terms of his criminal record, he is hardly
the only one still being allowed to function after allegations of
abuse. One example with local ties is Brother Claude Ory, who was
fired from Jesuit College Preparatory School in 1994 after repeated
accusations of sexual misconduct and is now minister of a residence
hall at a Baltimore college...

...The Dallas Diocese never supervised Brother Ory or Father Rogge, who
report to superiors in the Jesuit order. They are among at least five
priests or brothers accused of sexual abuse who have worked for Jesuit
Prep; at least nine more diocesan priests have been accused over the
last half-century, out of hundreds who've served

Until a reporter started asking questions earlier this spring, Father
Rogge worked at a church in southern Louisiana and at St. Charles
College, a spirituality center for novices in the Jesuit order.
Officials of the Lafayette Diocese forced him out, saying that the
Jesuits had not disclosed his record or even his presence in the area.

The Rev. Tom Stahel, a regional spokesman for the religious order,
would not respond to this statement or most questions The Dallas
Morning News asked about Father Rogge. He did say that the Jesuits had
received no allegations of sexual misconduct against the priest since
he started work at the rural church in the late 1980s.

Robert Swart, who says Father Rogge molested him in the early 1960s,
criticized both the Jesuits and the Lafayette diocese. He recently
e-mailed Lafayette Bishop Edward O'Donnell to ask why the priest had
been allowed to have a church there and got this response: "As a
matter of fact, he has never had one."

But Father Stahel confirmed that Father Rogge had long served
part-time at Christ the King Church near Opelousas. He said the
initial plan had been for him to do household work full-time at nearby
St. Charles College, but then the realities of the priest shortage hit
- "the need to serve the people," as Father Stahel put it in a
one-paragraph statement.

"Every time they lie and throw this crap around again, it feels like
abuse all over again," Mr. Swart said in an interview. He signed his
missive to Bishop O'Donnell "a recovering Catholic."

Father Rogge said he worked at Jesuit Prep in Dallas for two years
around 1959 and did not get in trouble before leaving. His short stint
here was one of the first in a 46-year career as a priest that has
taken him across the United States - from Kansas, Connecticut and
Texas to Florida, Alabama, California and finally Louisiana.

Father Stahel would not say why Father Rogge left the elite boys
school, whose yearbooks describe him as secretary-treasurer.

By the early 1960s, Father Rogge was assistant pastor of Sacred Heart
parish in Tampa, Fla., chaplain at a Catholic high school and
counselor at the local juvenile-detention home. Mr. Swart, who has
received therapy funded by a Jesuit religious and literary education
society, says the priest fondled him repeatedly in 1963 under the
guise of having his genitals checked for signs of "damage." No
complaint was made to police.

In 1967, Father Rogge pleaded guilty to contributing to the
delinquency of a minor for groping a 14-year-old from the juvenile
home at a Tarzan movie. Other residents of the home told investigators
of inappropriate touching during nude swimming lessons near a lake
cottage that the priest had.

No further charges were filed, however, and Father Rogge was sentenced
to three years of probation and ordered to get psychiatric treatment.
A Tampa police report says Father Rogge admitted to the one charge,
blaming a "momentary compulsive action." He also admitted soliciting
oral sex from a boy, according to the report.

...Father Rogge stayed at the Tampa church until about 1980, when he was
reassigned to Mobile, Ala. In 1982, according to The Official Catholic
Directory, he was at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.
By the mid-1980s, he was at a church in the northwestern Louisiana
town of Montgomery.

In the summer of 1984, Father Rogge returned to Tampa for a visit and
drove to a country cabin with two adult friends. A Citrus County
sheriff's report says the three men, all associated with an
organization formed to search for missing children, took along the
11-year-old son of one of the group's founders.

The three men spent the next two days nude, masturbated in front of
the boy and gave him beer, the report said. Father Rogge ultimately
pleaded no contest in 1985 to a single lewdness charge.

He said Friday that he did not know then what his plea meant, but a
1985 Tampa Tribune story says a judge asked him "a variety of
questions ... to assure that Rogge understood the ramifications."

The judge sentenced him to probation and confinement for several
months at a Catholic treatment facility in New Mexico. In this case
and in the one from 1967, he received deferred adjudication, meaning
that he had no criminal record after his probation.

Before his 1985 plea, Father Rogge had told a Tribune reporter that
the men were nude at the cabin "because it was so hot" and that
"nothing of any immorality took place." Yet one of the priest's
friends, a previously convicted child molester named Michael
Betancourt, also pleaded no contest to threatening the boy's life...

According to the sheriff's report, Mr. Betancourt "got a pruning saw
out of his truck and placed it against his neck. He then told the
victim if he told anyone, he would kill him."

There is no indication that Father Rogge worked as a priest again
until the late 1980s, when he began work in southern Louisiana at the
college and the parish.

Father Rogge "has left a trail of tears for 40 years," Mr. Swart's
recent e-mail to Lafayette's Bishop O'Donnell declared. "Enough is
enough."

1985/Tampa Tribune
In 1985, Norman Rogge pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious
conduct in the presence of a child.

Senator, Please to me why your website limits my free speech? Is this muzzle placed equally on your favorite donors, corporations, lobbyist and special interests? If I can't take your office to federal court for a violation of my free speech, what court do I go to -- The United Nations in NYC, The Hague?

In the end, you're no better than all those that I accuse of molesting me, tazering me, and beating the hell out of me in Mobile Metro County Jail. If I don't here from YOU personally or from staffer calling to set up a phone call with you then I have no choice, but to consider taking my story to the media, to my global audience including the faculty teaching at government and law schools around Washington.

This is unacceptable having to submit three separate emails to communicate a serious problem that I am having in Mobile because nobody here, in law enforcement, will do they job.

Please explain why your website user form limits me (at all) to just 4,000 character, not even words. It's unconstitutional and a complete violation of the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. You're out of control Senator Sessions; your behavior in the end is no different than that of King George III, Fr. Norman Rogge, the Archdiocese of Mobile, the Catholic Church, the City of Mobile, DA John Tyson, the State of Alabama. Abuse of power is abuse of power. How funny! How tragic!

Sources:

http://www.remnantofgod.org/molest93.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/04/priest-settle.htm
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=20020505&id=bF8dAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-VoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2447,1007516

To a free internet without tolls!!!

3/3

Enjoy,
Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.

Emails to Mobile Police Chief about Occupy Mobile! (Alabama)

2011-11-10T06:20:00.006-06:00

Note: The following are two emails sent to Mobile Police Chief Tyrone Williams in response to Occupy Mobile! and our impromptu meeting on Tuesday, at Spanish Plaza on Government St. (Mobile, AL). The original email is under my follow up (at the top). For better context, I suggest reading the original one, first. Have a great day, wherever you live. Change is slowly happening.

Enjoy!

Ted

[November 9, 2011]

Chief Williams,

See the following Youtube video of last night's assault by the Mobile Police Department on Occupy Mobile! that was emailed to me, this afternoon. So, are you just another Bull Conner, Chief? Why are you protecting the old WHITE way? Mobile is a joke. Maybe the Justice Department, the Obama Administration needs to see this video and get involved with you -- "a brother talking to another brother." Shame of you and the city of Mobile. It's absurd and unnecessary.

Know that my original email from last night was sent out to 100 contacts in my audience, most were blind copied (Bcc:) for everyone's protection. Many live here and many don't.

Please explain the city's actions, someone from this local government has to stop this nonsense. I have 12,600 contacts that can have this video in their inbox, quickly. It would be my holiday present to them from you including thousands of top lawyers, judges and the national media. I'm sure the Mobile Chamber of Commerce wouldn't like this getting out during the Season of Greetings, its bad for business. Everyone has a voice at the table, not just the old white guys at the Country Club of Mobile. I probably know my share of them. One Mobile politician was already gone on trial for murder, how many more will it be?

Occupy Mobile! protesters arrested on 11/08/11

Enjoy,
Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.

From: Ted Burnett
To: "Tyrone.williams@cityofmobile.org" ; "joanne.watson@cityofmobile.org" ; "mayor@cityofmobile.org" ; Ted Burnett ; "council5@cityofmobile.org" ; "council1@cityofmobile.org" ; "council2@cityofmobile.org" ; Bess Rich ; "council3@cityofmobile.org" ; "council4@cityofmobile.org" ; "council7@cityofmobile.org"
Cc: Ben Brooks ; Mike Dow ; Frances Coleman ; Ricky Mathews President ; "jeffreypoor@yahoo.com" ; Congressman Jo Bonner ; Senator Richard Shelby ; A. Jay Cooper ; Sheriff Sam Cochran ; Vivian Davis Figures ; Dr. Julian Bond ; Dr. David G. Bronner
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 7:50 PM

Subject: Occupy Mobile! meeting (Essay -- Courage to Change)

[November 8, 2011]

Chief Williams,

This email is a follow up to our spontaneous meeting at Occupy Mobile! in Spanish Plaza, this morning. After first driving around the city park and noticing three mounted police officers positioned on Church Street, I found parking across Government Street by the Archbishop's house. I was quite surprised to see you and your lieutenants standing at the epicenter of what is and will be the next chapter in America's evolution towards greatness. I first asked you if "the cavalry" was there to protect the "disbanding" thirty or so protestors or if the cavalry was there to protect the city of Mobile from the protestors.

This comment seemed to get your immediate attention, as you quickly ushered me away from your group for an our own impromptu and cordial meeting. Your defended the city's policy of permitting and other ordinances as to the reasons why the group had to go. You reiterated the need to follow the law. That's when I dropped Martin Luther King, Jr's name and his deadly role in the civil rights march. I asked, how many laws did he break to achieve his goal that you've personally benefited from? Apple's Steve Jobs' spoke of "the rebels", of "the troublemakers" in his famous commercial "Think Different". None of them followed the rules and their lives changed the world. The commercial showed a brief clip of MLK giving his famous "I Have A Dream" speech. I'm one of the "Crazy Ones" that Jobs spoken of, but we never had a chance to meet. You might even agree with me, or you may disagree, after reading the following introduction to my work and the attached essay.

If you'll take a moment to reread Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and that's what its all about, take note to the fact that it was written at a time when the 13 original colonies' economy was based heavily on African slave labor in the fields, in stores and on the waterfront. These slaves had no humanity, no rights under the system. The deadly Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation Act finally set African slaves free only to be denied their full civil rights for another one hundred years under the system. In that time, white women gained their rights.

During the 1950's and '60's, it was not the establishment that put itself in harms way for the nigger's cause, for your race's cause. It wasn't Harvard or Yale faculty that came down to the South and protested on your behalf or the U.S. Army, the FBI, Alabama State Troopers or Governor George Wallace, the Mobile Police Department... Birmingham Police Chief Bull Connor with his dogs and water cannons, on public display, wasn't all that interested in seeing a black man become a police chief in Alabama, an Alabama mayor, much less as, The President of the United States. That's the system for you -- its "deaf, dumb and blind" then and now. Without a spirit, its always out of touch with reality, with the truth.

So, who, in the South, had to do the hard work, the heavy lifting of allowing blacks to sit wherever they damn well pleased on a Montgomery city bus in spite of the law or at the lunch counter of a Greensboro, NC restaurant or to freely travel by commercial bus across the South while sitting next to a white woman. It took courage, guts and even the crazy acts of many who felt like they had no voice at the table or in the system and with their backs to the wall they protested in the streets of Birmingham, across Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge... Do you remember that moment?

It was a black preacher from Atlanta, GA who put the sentiment of anger, humiliation, frustration into unforgettable words that galvanized a race across the South and America while inspiring many whites and the world in the process. In Memphis, he took the bullet that no one representing the system would, even when no one would call off the dogs after witnessing this minority group's resolve.

Both, Biblical and world history are about one thing -- the cycle of freedom and slavery. The slaves have long deserted the plantations for the factories, mills, plants, office buildings, fleets of cars, trucks, planes, ships, while constantly checking their computers and blackberries for new company email. The city of Mobile, the state of Alabama and the United States are all bankrupt, in every conceivable way. In order to grow our way out of this reality, we must move forward, we must fulfill Jefferson's original ideals. We must take what were just his ideas for individual freedom and democracy and turn them into a daily reality. Today, we're nowhere close to this goal. Do I have your attention, yet?

You're now part of that system, but hopefully you're no Bull Connor. MLK, Jr. didn't rise and fall so you and all those sitting on the city council could play police chief and council members, only for self's sake. Do you get what I'm saying? Whatever comes of Occupy Mobile! know that it wasn't a lost cause and that we need everyone's help going forward. The city of Mobile values are quite shaky when Mardi Gras parades for three weeks out of the year, but we have to put up with it's stench year around.

The exact same sentiment of the civil rights movement is playing out, once again, around the United States and in the Arab world. Mobile has much in common with this Wall Street movement than with Mardi Gras and the past, seize the opportunity by at least recognizing its legitimacy and providing a space at Spanish Plaza for a group to be visible to passing Mobilians to say that all is not right here in our city, county, state or in this nation. This is the truth, this is reality. This city recognizes the July of 4th, show me where are the free people, the free citizens that work, live and play in this dead city?

This moment requires us to grow the box that this society is so cramped in or destroy it -- either, in a revolution or in this empire's collapse like all those that came before ours. What will you tell your grandchildren about your role in this critical moment? Will it be a story of courage or cowardice? Does the system own you or does God? Who's your higher authority -- our black mayor, Sam Jones? Are you a slave or a free man? As I see it, you, the mayor and the city council have no choice, but to join our honest cause in mind, body and spirit. Freedom, democracy are beautiful things to free people. Sadly, we've never known it before, in Mobile or in America. At stake, is everyone's life or death, a society's life or death.

Here’s my story…I am an American thought leader, a trailblazer on the subjects of human, organizational and societal development and health, the role that integrity, dignity, sanity plays, spirituality, faith, freedom, happiness, problem solving and risk taking. Much of what I write about is personal in nature and draws off of my own experience, insights and wisdom. I freely share my best work with you. The following is my standard solicitation letter (and biography) that I share with my prospects. Feel free to "opt-out" at any time. Enjoy!

Since February 2007, I have been living life as a philosopher and writer. Each month, I produce a commentary on business, health care, political, social and spiritual matters. My following has grown to over ten thousand contacts including heads of state, their foreign ministers and their ambassadors to the U.S., attorneys, business executives, clergy, major foundations (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations Network, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, Charles and Helen Schwab and the Turner Foundation), state and federal judges and lawmakers, media and Washington DC policy institutes of which nine thousand are PhDs teaching at more than seventy colleges and universities, in ten countries -- the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Included are eleven nationally top-ranked university professors -- Emory University's Patrick N. Allitt, PhD (UC Berkeley), University of Toronto's Kenneth R. Bartlett, PhD (Toronto), University of Pennsylvania's Thomas Childers, PhD (Harvard), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Bart D. Ehrman, PhD (Princeton), University of Virginia's Gary W. Gallagher, PhD (U.Texas @Austin), Emory University's Luke Timothy Johnson, PhD (Yale), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Lloyd Kramer, PhD (Cornell), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Jodi Magness, PhD (Penn), Oxford University’s Daniel Robinson, PhD (CUNY), University of Pennsylvania's David B. Ruderman, PhD (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), University of Pennsylvania's Jonathan Steinberg, PhD (Cambridge).

Among the schools are thirty-eight world-class universities with over seven thousand physicians and professors at Harvard College, Harvard Business School, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School (over 1,600), Yale College, Yale Law School, Stanford, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Law School, UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley School of Law, Princeton, The Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia, Columbia Business School, Columbia Law School, Penn, The Wharton School (Penn), Penn Law School, Penn Medical School, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Chicago, Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago Law School, NYU’s Stern School of Business, NYU School of Law, Emory, Duke, UNC, Virginia (UVa), UVa Darden School of Business, UVa School of Law, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, UCLA Anderson School of Management, UCLA School of Law, USC Marshall School of Business, USC School of Law, Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service, Tufts' The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Cambridge, Cambridge Faculty of Law, Oxford, Oxford Faculty of Law, London Business School, London School of Economics, Trinity College Dublin, École Normale Supérieure-Paris (ENS-Paris), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Amsterdam Faculty of Law, Leiden, ETH Zurich, Freie Universität Berlin, Toronto, McGill, British Columbia, Australian National University, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. Among the eight thousand professors, my retention rate exceeds 99.8% (as of 10/11).

I have produced over fifty thought provoking essays on matters ranging from Alabama politics, gay rights, Middle East peace, freedom and slavery, our government’s treatment of our soldiers and veterans, Jesus' hijacked message, global warming, abortion, capital punishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, original sin, freedom, free will, free markets, America’s lost virtues – truth and freedom, crime and society’s role, self-governing, democracy, the current economic crisis, success, the genius of Forrest Gump, corporate consciousness, health care reform, an email to Alabama's Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb on the state's overcrowded prisons, the 1915 Armenian massacres, Ashoka.org, the tools for living, Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship proposal, taxes, tax policy and our attitudes towards them and my own spiritual journey for the past twenty years.

I have consistently received high marks for the quality of my writing, as well as, for the insightful content. In 2009, three of my essays ("Business as Usual?", "Corporate consciousness" and "An invitation to David M. Walker the President and CEO of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation") were submitted to the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) by its Chair, Harvard Law Professor, Elizabeth Warren, a member of this audience. Each time, I received notification from her congressional committee.

In 2010, I began adding heads of state, their foreign ministers, (and their ambassadors to the United States). The names of the respective chancellors, presidents, prime ministers (PM) and foreign ministers (FM) are Australian PM Julia Gillard, FM Kevin Rudd (Hon. Kim Beazley), The Ambassador of Brazil to the U.S. Hon. Mauro Luiz Iecker Vieira, Canadian PM Stephen Harper, FM Lawrence Cannon (Hon. Michael Wilson), President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, The European Union Ambassador to the U.S. João Vale de Almeida, The French FM Alain Marie Juppé (Hon. Pierre Vimont), German Chancellor Angela Merkel, FM and Vice Chancellor Dr. Guido Westerwell (Hon. Klaus Scharioth), Taoiseach (PM) of Ireland Enda Kenny, Tánaiste and FM Eamon Gilmore (Hon. Michael Collins), The Italian FM Franco Frattini (Hon. Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata), The Netherlands PM Mark Rutte, FM Uriël Rosenthal (Hon. Renée Jones-Bos), New Zealand PM John Key, FM Murray McColly (Hon. Rt Hon Mike Moore), Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, PM Vladimir Putin, FM Sergey Lavrov (Hon. Sergey I. Kislyak), Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Hon. Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, the President of the Swiss Confederation Micheline Calmy-Rey (Hon. Urs Ziswiler), the United Kingdom PM David Cameron (Her Majesty's Hon. Nigel Sheinwald) and Venezuela President Hugo Chavez (Hon. Dr. Angelo Rivero Santos). All are members of the G-20 (the world's twenty largest economies). With the exception of Brazil, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, I have a strong faculty presence at their top-ranked universities.

I have steadily received accolades from the likes of business executive Joe Bullard, U.S. Representative Jo Bonner (AL-R), Capitol Hill's Roll Call newspaper, Jan Love, Dean and Professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and Norman Fischer, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Clark-Atlanta University, both, are located in Atlanta, GA, Alabama state senator and Mobile, AL attorney Ben Brooks, Fairhope, AL attorney Jay Cooper and from many friends. In response to my essays, I routinely receive correspondence from the office of U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (AL-R) in Washington.

Here is what some in my audience are saying about my work.

“Hello,
I was forwarded your recent commentary by a clinical staff member at Perelman School of Medicine. I am currently taking a graduate course on Faith and Reason. I would like permission to use some of your insights and comments in my final paper for the class. I am planning on discussing in the paper the relationship, or lack of, faith and reason with healthcare.”
-- Cindy Diogo, C.O.T.
Clinical Care Coordinator for Oculoplastics and Ocular Oncology
Scheie Eye Institute
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Philadelphia, PA
October 25, 2011 (an email response to my essay “To: The Bazelon Center’s Exec. Director Robert Bernstein, PhD and its Board of Trustees ”)

“Read your letter to Bazelon. Wow. Just wow. Powerful, elegant yet skull cracking insight and incinerating critique. Wow.”
--David Ruben, Senior Executive Producer/Director of Audio Task Force at Talk Radio Network
Medford, OR
October 7, 2011 (an email response to my essay “To: The Bazelon Center’s Exec. Director Robert Bernstein, PhD and its Board of Trustees ”)

"Dear Mr. Burnett, Thank you...for forwarding your piece to Professor [Michael E.] Porter...we found it interesting thinking and a good read."
--Stacie Rabinowitz, Research Associate
The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness
Harvard Business School
Cambridge, MA
June 21, 2011 (an email response to my essay -- “Re: How would you reinvent Capitalism? (Corporate consciousness)”)

"Ted, I admire your perseverance. Things tend to work out for those who keep plugging away. Your stuff is solid. Good luck and best..."
--Steve LeVine, Contributing Editor
Foreign Policy magazine
Washington, DC
April 5, 2011

"Hi Ted,
Thank you for contacting me. Wow…you have quite a story and I appreciate you taking the time to forward it to me."
-- Carole Bennett, MA
Family Recovery Solutions
Santa Barbara, CA
December 11, 2010 (an email response to my essay -- “Updated Post with 9-page introduction -- Dear Dr. Robert Shiller -- Financial Reform Laws Didn't Resolve Key Problems (Huffington Post)”)

"...you are -- of course -- correct..."
-- David Rosenbloom, Law Professor
New York University School of Law
New York, NY
October 3, 2010 (an email response to my essay -- “Dear Jay Ambrose (his op-ed opposing tax increases)”)

"Dear Mr. Burnett, Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with the Congressional Oversight Panel..."
-- Elizabeth Warren, Chair and Harvard Law Professor
Congressional Oversight Panel via the Harvard Law School
Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA
September 29, 2009 (a letter of acknowledgement for my essay, "Corporate consciousness", submitted to COP by Warren)

"Love your blog. Always thought provoking…" "Keep up the good work."
-- Norman Fisher, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA
January 29, 2009 (an email in response to my essays -- "Business as Usual?") and "Success!")

"…You obviously have a flair for writing as well as a keen perspective on the ever-changing Mobile and Alabama…"
-- U.S. Representative Jo Bonner, 1st Congressional District of Alabama
March 19, 2008 (an excerpt from Bonner’s hand-written note in response to my email to Mobile, AL Chamber of Commerce President Win Hallett -- From the desk of U.S. Congressman Jo Bonner...)

Other notables receiving my essays include the former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served in the Clinton Administration (1997-2000), and is currently a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, Ray Anderson -- Chairman and former CEO of Interface Global, Boston University's Dr. Andrew Bacevich, Tufts University President Lawrence S. Bacow, Neal D. Barnard, M.D. is founder of Physicians for Responsible Medicine, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, Retirement Systems of Alabama CEO Dr. David Bronner, economist and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Dr. Alan Blinder of Princeton University, Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute and Fox News contributor John Bolton, civil rights leader, social activist and professor at the University of Virginia - Dr. Julian Bond, Philip J. Burguières - Vice Chairman of the NFL's Houston Texans, College Board President Gaston Caperton, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and New America Foundation President Steve Coll, former three-term New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University President Drew G. Faust, WorldBlu’s Founder and CEO Traci Fenton, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Executive Director Michael J. Fitzpatrick, U.S. Presidential advisor and Harvard Professor David Gergen, University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, paleontologist and MacArthur 'Genius' grant recipient Jack Horner, Arianna Huffington -- co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) President and CEO Paula A. Kerger, Princeton economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman, Yale University President Richard C. Levin, University of Sydney's (Australia) Dr. Jake Lynch, New America Foundation Fellow and Fox News contributor James P. Pinkerton, Harvard ‘University’ Professor Michael E. Porter, Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, Clinton Administration Labor Secretary and UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, Republican campaign consultant/advisor and CNN Senior Political Correspondent Ed Rollins, Dr. Larry J. Sabato's Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro, Howard Schultz -- Chairman and CEO of Starbucks, investor Charles Schwab, Yale economist Robert J. Shiller, Tiffany Shlain - an American filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards, former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (PA), Newsweek and National Journal contributing editor Stuart Taylor, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Cynthia Tucker, R.E. "Ted" Turner III, founder and former Chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, philanthropist and Chairman of the Turner Foundation, former Special Advisor to President Barack Obama - Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, Ashoka President Diana Wells, Judy Woodruff -- Senior Correspondent at The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and the University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer.

"Courage to Change" is my latest commentary. This piece has been well received among the members of my audience. I believe in and respect one's right to exercise their freedom. If for any reason you would like to "unsubscribe", please write.

See attachment – Courage to Change

Enjoy,
Ted Burnett
500 Lincoln St. B-105
Daphne, AL 36526 USA
C: 251-709-3726
Email: tebjr1@yahoo.com
My blog: www.toxicnation.blogspot.com
My bio: www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Question everything.

Courage to Change

2011-11-02T19:49:00.007-05:00

Introduction (The essay begins on page 13.)

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
A 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist.

This quote could be applied to many different scenarios given the times, the United States’ heavy-handed response to 9/11 comes to mind, but that’s not exactly where I am going with it. However, I will try to adhere to these wise words while making some follow-up comments to my previous essay (or letter). If you read “To: the Bazelon’s Executive Director and its Board of Trustees” I expressed my experience and expertise on the subjects of active alcoholism, addiction and mental illness and my ongoing “recovery” from these diseases and this illness.

This set the stage to challenge The Bazelon Center’s Executive Director, Robert Bernstein’s, PhD. attempt to add, what I perceived as being, his “two cents” in an effort to make The Bazelon Center’s role germane to the debate, to the discussion over to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) definition of “recovery”. I stated to, both, Bazelon and to you that I found Dr. Bernstein’s version to be arbitrary, materialistic and irrelevant considering the current realities facing America. By his definition alone, I wouldn’t be considered in recovery much less an authority on these subjects.

I went on to offer up a candid assessment of this Washington, DC-based mental health law center’s faulty understanding of addiction and mental illness as they apply to, both, the individual and to our dysfunctional society, the organization’s ineffectiveness through its own misguided mission statement and its lack of collective wisdom, the inability to easily access its leadership team including the director, himself through their website. I concluded by questioning the quality of the communications being disseminated by Bazelon through its own mailing list, as an email recipient and observer for the past five years. As I mentioned six of the twenty-three active board members are in this audience, all serve as law professors at their respective universities.

It’s been over five weeks and I haven’t received a response from anyone affiliated with Bazelon and, at this point, I suppose I won’t nor does it appear that any of my critiques have been taken seriously including how they operate and how they use their technology (their website) doesn’t appear to have been addressed. With twenty-two years of experience, I also claim to be an expert in living in reality and it’s from this vantage point that I try to write all my commentaries from – where all four tires touch the blacktop and not from some theory way up in the sky. The term that comes to mind regarding Bazelon silence is being out of touch, as in being out of touch with reality. Our basic differences isn’t over an opinion in policy or a viewpoint regarding mental illness and the best treatment, but instead over a deeper state of mind, body and spirit, of having awareness for self, for all others and for one’s environment.

To live in the moment, to live in the NOW requires oneself to shed all filters, the insulation, the buffers, the suits of armor that separate self from feeling, from sensing – from tasting and touching – the real world, that what separates self from his fellow man, that which keeps oneself from feeling his or her emotions – glad, mad, sad, happy... It’s to remain inappropriately and comfortably numb to any and all pain and suffering, to remain unresponsive to almost all stimuli, to all threats including that of honest criticism even when coming at the expense of one’s own survival. It’s to hide behind a large tree for safety, but never realizing that one’s derriere is exposed, that it’s sticking out until it’s too late when an arrow has pierced it and the body is immediately racked with pain, as in the case of 9/11. We felt safe and secure until we realized how vulnerable we really were and always have been. On that day, we were out of touch with reality, not the terrorists.

Denial is one of man’s best elixirs, but it’s not something we were born with instead it’s a learned behavior, a reaction that comes about from having an inability to naturally work through a problem, to its final resolution, that’s causing us discomfort, that’s causing us pain – be it emotional, spiritual, mental, physical, sexual or financial. It’s our repeated exposure to a negative stimulus caused by the conduct of others in our life (and later by our own self-destructive ways) that are already living in deep denial, in dysfunction and whose violent actions they can no longer see or control due to their blinders, due to their insanity. To cope, we learn to tune out the present by reliving, replaying the past while fearing all future events. We pick up a drug or two stunting our own emotional, spiritual and mental development while our bodies and mind continues to grow. We cease to live, but we continue having more birthdays.

Our spirit, our instincts necessary for navigating us, and all animals, through life, the source of God, of all things good including our talents, our purpose for living and for reaching our destiny is crushed leaving us in total confusion. We quickly go off course instead of living to fulfill one’s inner and natural desires we begin living for others, for their desires and dreams at our own expense, at our own happiness. We don’t know what we want to be when we grow up and we’re already 25, 35, 45, 55 years old or older. What a loss to one’s self and to this society, at large. It’s very costly to everyone, factor this into the economy. All happiness becomes fleeting, cheap thrills and tricks serve as a substitute to enjoying a state of contentment, a state of satisfaction on a daily basis.

The ego designed to keep man alive, to keep man from walking out into traffic and from self-destruction now grows and fills the void of man’s spirit creating an inflated ego beginning in our childhood growing throughout our adolescences and well into adulthood. It provides a veneer, a thin layer of insulation falsely protecting our being, serving as a mask for our insecurities and weaknesses, but it’s easily pierced with words leaving behind untreated wounds that grow tumors. The quest to grow up and to be old, like our “mature” parents, is on while our innocence, our youth is lost in the process. An imbalance is created within man causing him or her to veer to the “left” or veer to the “right”, but never again moving straight-forward until his or her ultimate death and resurrection. For a lucky few, it’s the one that occurs before we’re all put in a pine box and buried six feet under.

Feelings of health, sanity, security, strength, wholeness, consciousness, beauty, happiness, humility – being “an equal” to all six billion plus – is lost and replaced with feelings of dissatisfaction, emptiness, loneliness, humiliation, nakedness, a superiority complex, weakness… which causes an insane quest for artificial perfection in beauty and behavior, a harsh judgment of self while this civilization creates class, order, rank and a never-ending desire to climb up the social ladder. Public denial of any and all weaknesses or the committing of sins is a symptom of his, of an organization’s or society’s insanity and a lack of character. It’s an unwillingness to get honest, to face the truth about oneself and to change, to evolve for survival’s sake at the same constant rate as our turning world and our ever-expanding universe.

It’s to constantly fight someone or a situation tethered to us by chains rather than to accept it, to let go and move on with life. Both, society’s new and old political, spiritual and social problems have formed a plaque on man’s, an organization’s, this society’s arteries slowly cutting off blood flow necessary to feed the body, to feed all of its organs with oxygen. It begins to die, either, slowly or abruptly. How can this be happening to a nation with the most sophisticated and most redundant health care system in the world? Where are the doctors, the specialists? Where’s a good surgeon when you need one as this sick patient lies dying before our eyes? Denial is thick and sometimes it’s even thicker than blood and even thicker than a blood clot.

The national bird for the United States from its genesis has been the eagle, specifically the Bald Eagle. A symbol of American pride for its beauty, integrity, dignity and strength as a bird of prey, its image can be found on almost every piece of paper currency and coin and on the seals of almost every federal department and agency including on the Seal of the President. However, our idyllic reverence for this magnificent bird hasn’t always married up with reality as they’ve been hunted and poisoned to near extinction before receiving federal protection status, in 1940. This creature of instinct which embodied “The Spirit of 76” no longer reflects America’s corrupt values. It must to be replaced. Our selfish, self-centered and destructive ways as individuals, as families, as institutions, as a society and as a government have violated the basic laws of nature. Authenticity, originality, truth have given way to imitation, insincerity and phoniness.

The artificial self, the corrupt self has lost its spirit and has given way to “logic, intelligence and the smart ways” of the inflated ego. The head has been severed from the rest of the body. The truth has been lost. I don’t know of any reports where eagles have attacked and harmed man, but I do know of and have witnessed countless times of where the ego has attacked and harmed man. In many cases, our personal conduct, our government’s domestic and foreign policies have done just that – recklessly destroying humanity.

It’s only fitting that this unaccountable, this unconscious predator of mankind, of his environment should now serve this society, this nation and take its rightful place as American’s new national symbol and replace the eagle on all of our currency and seals. To be so unresponsive, to be so unaccountable to me and to the rest of the world as I’ve come to witness in the conduct of my fellow Americans and America, in general, is the moral bankruptcy, it’s the insanity that I repeatedly speak of in these essays. Does this nation and those in a position of leadership have no shame? When will America, Bazelon and this federal government wake up?

This is not the first time that I have been ignored as a human for being true to myself by speaking up, for exercising my freedom of speech, by those passing me on the street or as a writer by members of this very audience while seeking some assistance, while asking for some charity. After getting over being offended by the repeated silence and the lack of any response, it’s helped me to get a clearer picture of the depths of America’s woes. I’m not the problem, you are. We, as a society, haven’t simply taken one wrong turn or two off the main highway we continued to take many wrong turns out of arrogance, righteousness and stubbornness.

We have wound up on the wrong side of town, without a map, only to find us ourselves lost in a pretty dangerous and unfamiliar neighborhood. The kind that most affluent white people only hear and read about, but have never personally experienced. Ego and pride keep us from stopping our new car, from rolling down the window and asking a “brother” standing on the corner for directions to get us out of this hellhole before sundown. We would rather continue riding aimlessly or die than stop and ask for help, to show some vulnerability while hoping for some mercy. Even the nudges from our front-seat passenger, our concerned spouse, isn’t enough to make us want to pull over.

At the same time that I’ve been ignored by members of my community and this audience, I must say in all fairness that I’ve been pretty surprised by the unanticipated letters and emails of support from total strangers who have taken the time to write me after reading some of my essays. Their quotes have been a type of currency that money can never be – it remains intact and unspent. I’ve been able to put their kind words to use, over and over again, for years in promoting this project and soliciting new audiences.

Some that come to mind include my very own congressman who I’ve never met. U.S. Representative Jo Bonner (AL-R) took time out of his busy schedule, while working in Washington, to write me an encouraging note during my first year (2008). It was a real coup, “a feather in my cap” so I thought and more have followed from local business executives and professionals, faculty at Harvard, NYU, Emory, Sydney… friends and writers from traditional print media. I continue to add individuals through the social networking site, Linkedin, here’s what one new contact had to say in response to reading my Bazelon letter…

“Read your letter to Bazelon. Wow. Just wow. Powerful, elegant yet skull cracking insight and incinerating critique. Wow.”
– “John”, Senior Executive Producer in media
Oregon

John’s words validate me, my work and echoes the earlier praise uttered by others; it makes up for Bazelon’s silence. Our subsequent email exchanges further convinced me of, both, his sincerity and his solid understanding of my life experiences from which this essay is drawn from. So, is a response warranted by Bazelon? I know if someone said those things about me and my work, if someone said to me what I said about them, I would have to respond, at least, to set the record straight. I would like to believe that I could own up to what is honest and fair criticism while challenging them on what I thought they had gotten completely wrong. I certainly couldn’t and wouldn’t remain silent.

Ultimately, one’s humanity calls for an acknowledgement, for a response. We’re all accountable to one another. The hollowness of Bazelon, I’ve come find is equally matched, to a greater degree, by most of our cherished institutions – academia, capitalism, local, state and federal governments, Hollywood, law enforcement, the legal and penal systems, the military, religion... When you think you’re leaning up against one of their strong brick, granite or marble walls for support, it often turns out to be just another illusion. When a problem or crisis arises finding good help or someone “in charge” can become an impossible task.

Osama bin Laden and all those out of power and without a voice “at the table” in the Arab world couldn’t get a high level U.S. government official – a diplomat, the Secretary of State or the president – to hear their complaints before and after the attacks on two U.S. embassies, the U.S.S. Cole and prior to the attacks on 9/11. What does a mad genius, a mastermind have to do to get someone’s attention around here? What do I have to do to get Bazelon’s attention, to get them to respond?

Like Osama bin Laden and 9/11, I studied my subject’s strengths and weaknesses before attacking them head-on and from behind while hitting their flanks, simultaneously. It was a brutal assault as my new friend’s quote suggests, but so is their ongoing misconduct, their acts of insanity in presenting the case of the mentally ill to the American people, to Congress and the Executive Branch and in our courts. Apparently, I never had a voice at Bazelon’s table before and I still don’t.

Is anyone, in Washington, going to investigate my allegations – of course not? It’s home to too many big egos including all those sitting on the board that have great influence and can offer some protection for Bazelon’s insane actions. However, if pressed with litigation Bazelon’s united front and its silence would crumble like a cheap suit. It’s made up of too many Baby-boomers, who truly stand for nothing. It’s the same group that’s run this country into the ground. See it for what it is.

This artificial existence leads to us creating walls causing us to lose our central nervous system and our ability to react quickly to new problems, to new stimuli. Our insulated walls, like that of the president’s notorious bubble have become barriers to doing business in America, to serving our nation while responding appropriately in times of crisis. It’s another unrecognized negative, a hidden cost of doing business and living in America.

Look at Washington’s response time to the 2008 financial crisis on Wall Street with its $700b taxpayer bailout and look at this same government’s inept response to struggling homeowners caught up in the same real estate bust. Why the two different reactions by the same government officials, was it out of ego, was it out of pride? Is this further proof of their lack of humanity? Save the cherished institutions, not the cherished individuals or the American families. They’ve got it so backwards. The potential collapse of the America’s banking system was more than just about saving rich bankers from themselves, more importantly it was a reflection of America’s ability or inability to project power, wealth to the world, as well as, a blatant statement on our value system. Its 2011, has Wall Street or Washington changed its ways?

I’ve repeatedly heard unsympathetic Americans blame their neighbors for buying homes that they simply couldn’t afford while U.S. and global banks, AIG and the Detroit automakers did the exact same thing, but they were rescued when they all deserved to drown in their own red ink. Why the double standard, why the hypocrisy? Why have any laws, why have any policies when you’re going to apply them differently across our society? That’s a sure sign of corruption, of insanity.

During the first eighteen years, I grew up in a self-made “fort” behind its thick stone walls, heavy wooden doors, a drawbridge that I could raise and lower on command, all this was circled by a water-filled, an alligator-filled mote for my safety and security. (Many of you still live in one.) My world was a scary place to live in, I bet yours is too. Slits in the outer walls allowed me to barely peak out with one eye to get a partial glimpse of the world and its inhabitants passing by and playing with one another. I felt alone and I had a desire to play with them, but I was so cut off from myself and thus from the world. I lived in total fear except for some brief moments with the familiar. Otherwise, I pretty much suffered in isolation. I wanted to connect with strangers, I wanted to connect with the world, but I simply forgot how.

When there’s no response from anyone affiliated with Bazelon to my harsh comments and critiques it comes across to me as being a lot of pride, a lot of ego with many “highly educated” people cut off from reality. What have you accomplished that’s so excellent, what have you achieved in life on behalf of society to become so unresponsive to the honest words of someone who you claim to represent and serve, to someone in recovery from alcoholism and mental illness?

Who are you fooling with your arrogance? I reminded of the bold words of President Ronald Reagan, while giving a public speech at West Germany’s Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall, on June 12, 1987, when he challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” It was a brilliant and thunderous order and anything less would have been a forgotten mouse’s whisper. His call to action was courageous, it seemed crazy, but it worked. In the next two years, due to a radical series of political changes in the Soviet Union and East Germany, the 28-year old wall began coming down, in 1989.

All those affiliated with The Bazelon Center need to tear down their walls, the members of this audience need to tear down your walls, American needs to tear down its walls, not build more! On what grounds, are you so wonderful that you can’t acknowledge another human being’s presence or request? This isn’t living; you merely exist in a catatonic state ‘til taking your last breath. Until then we’re just keeping you warm and on life support. You don’t need this, you need to wake up!

What head of state lives with around-the-clock protection with a wroth-iron fence surrounding his palace and rides everywhere in an armored limousine called “The Beast”, yet he doesn’t fear his constituents? How could he not have a distorted view of American and the world? You call this freedom for the leader of the free world? What university with its thousands of professors can live in isolation from the real world and there be no consequences to its mission, to this society?

What value is there in studying the classics, world history, law, medicine, politics, theology…if there’s no connection between the collapsed mighty empires of the past, their great wars and that of the last great superpower of the present? History repeats itself and boy is it ever! Biblical and world history is simply a repeating cycle of freedom and slavery – teach this truth. How well have you done your job when newly-minted graduates are neck deep in student loan-debt and they’re unable to land their first real job much less chase a dream? What does the future hold for America? Where’s the truth in any of this nonsense?

Where’s the emergency on campus, in society when everyone spends another lazy Saturday, in the fall, tailgating before the big game? Show me a corporate CEO whose works are greater than that of God’s, show me a Wall Street banker’s grand gesture to society after getting bailed out, show me how its possible for no American politician living and working in the nation’s most corrupt capitol, Washington, DC, and not one of them has gone to jail or prison on corruption charges. Tear down your walls!

Years ago, while watching a broadcast of a 60 Minutes story on the Israeli’s Air Force, it was mention that no one from the fighter pilots all the way up to the top brass salutes or addresses anyone formally. Given the dangerous geopolitical situation that Israel constantly finds itself in with its hostile Arab/Islamic neighbors on all sides, the Air Force need for candor, for a quick and a direct response to any threat trumps its desire for standard protocol. Today, the United States is all hung up on rank, on protocol while our plane plows head first into oblivion, into a mountain.

We just marked and mourned the 10th anniversary of September 11, where’s the memorial for the death of America, for its founding principles, for its three hundred million citizens who have been lied to repeatedly for decades, for centuries? The events that occurred on 9/11/01 are peanuts to the current state of America, to its own death from its own two hands. We don’t lack smarts, we lack honesty and that makes us look pretty dumb. A requirement of every business is an inventory of, both, its assets and its liabilities; the United States is long overdue for one. There’s too much rot in our shiny red apple.

Since I last wrote to you two terms have entered into my consciousness regarding America’s current situation. The first is “free fall” as in a free falling economy. Ever seen one – well you have now? That’s what we’re experiencing. All the economic indicators point to the fact that we’ve yet to hit a bottom, as in rock bottom. Drawing from my own life and my own two emotional, mental and spiritual bottoms, I see no evidence to suggest that we have reached one nor is there a healthy recovery under way. It’s simple physics. No bottom, no recovery. I have several distinguished audience members who teach at top universities while writing regular commentaries for major media outlets.

All write about us having an economy problem, a jobs problem, but they’ve got it all wrong. This crisis has tentacles that run deep. I’ve long argued that the problems are spiritual in nature, as in “the Spirit of ’76”. These scholars and many others including the president believe it’s simply about jobs. In order, for me to be right, many of you have to be dead wrong. The gap between where I stand and where you stand is a gulf. I made the treacherous voyage across, but you haven’t, not yet.

The second term that comes to mind is the “dark ages”. As a student, I heard about this period in time, but I didn’t know what it really meant and I never bothered to look it up in a dictionary or an encyclopedia. By then I wasn’t interested in learning, I was already turned off. When the notion recently entered my mind, I knew exactly what it meant as it applies to the present. Every analyst, banker, CEO, economist, politician and pundit wants to believe that this economy is going to turn around in another quarter, in the next six months, by 2012 or 2013, but they’re all wrong.

If this really is another period like the “Dark Ages” we may be idling for decades, if not longer. It’s a scary assessment, but I base it on the degree of dishonesty that I have witnessed over the years and continue to see and hear throughout our society, in spite of this unending crisis. The foundation of our house has been washed out from underneath us, the walls have buckled and the roof has been blown away. Many, in Washington, continue to deny this reality, to deny this truth and so we all suffer for it.

The fear that motivated this nation during the Cold War of the 1950, ’60, ’70, ‘80’s to go to church, school and work isn’t working this time around with “the War on Terrorism” and this “recession” or depression. The reckless freedom, the insanity, the cheap thrill on the amusement ride that we all enjoyed in the 1990’s and 2000’s has turned into a bomb greater than any dirty one that a terrorist could get their hands on and drop over New York City, LA, San Francisco or Miami.

This, made in America, bomb has already gone off and has blasted shrapnel across the nation and into the homes and lives of every single American shredding their skin, the tissue all the way down to the bone, through their finances, through their hopes and dreams for a good life and retirement. Can you feel your pain and suffering? Can you see the suffering all around you or are you so cut off from your feelings? Tear down your walls! America and the world have geared up for the fight over global terrorism while the next threat has already arrived and has quietly covered us up in plastic body bags.

Wikipedia defines the “Dark Ages” as the concept of a period of intellectual darkness that occurred in Europe following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. I have concluded that our entire political class is already bankrupt – note Congress’ inaction, the current Republican presidential field and the president’s leadership, now I’ve come to believe that it’s also true of our intellectual class (all our colleges and universities, major foundations, the mainstream media and Washington’s policy institutes). As I have already stated there is a gulf behind where I stand and where most of you stand, today. One of us is completely wrong – conventional wisdom says you’re right, I say conventional wisdom is all wrong.

I’m not just talking about you being wrong about your political views, about your religious views, about your worldview, but wrong about almost everything that you think you know to be true including all the choices that you’ve made in your life. You have been wrong about everything that your inflated ego has ever over or understated because you’ve repeatedly lacked the courage to admit the truth – be it to your parents, to your spouse, to your children, to your friends, to your colleagues and manager and to your enemies. I stand for freedom; conventional wisdom represents a history of lies and slavery. Choose your medicine or choose your poison.

In my adult life, I’ve become a collector of inspiring quotes by famous or successful people. You can’t round out an Alabama education, in elementary school, without taking a year of state history. One historic figure whose life I’ve come to appreciate and take an interest in after reading some of her quotes is Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968). Helen Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.

A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Wobblies, she campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes (Source: Wikipedia). Helen’s life and mine share some parallels, we both grew up “blind”, maybe I was even “deaf, dumb and blind”. We each experienced watershed moments, personal breakthroughs that led to us both seeing and speaking of the injustice in the world. She traveled across the United State and to 39 countries around the world by airplane, train, ship and automobile spreading her message while raising money for her cause. Today, I travel the world via the Internet sharing mine.

In 1989, and at the age of eighteen, I made a conscious decision to leave the safety of my “fort” to face the real world, to face my life and the many problems that I had long denied. I traded the comforts of the fort for the dangers of the forest and I never returned. Sometime in the past decade and while on my journey, I came across one of Helen’s wise quotes…

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Her words affirmed my decision at eighteen. Today, a paralyzing fear of life has been replaced with a working faith. I am the risk taker that I never thought I could ever be. I know in order to enjoy and “sustain” this life, I must continue to grow. I must continue to consciously step outside of my comfortable zone – to do and say the unexpected. I must investigate every new opportunity that comes my way before deciding if it’s for me or not. I must try new things and accept the consequences of success or failure. Here’s my latest adventure…

I continue to grow my audience having just eclipsed the ten thousand mark. If I haven’t left my mark on Harvard, yet it wasn’t for a lack of trying. With faculty from Harvard College, Harvard Business School, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Law School already in my audience, I’ve now added some eight hundred physicians and researchers (10%) from the Harvard Medical School. My contacts at Harvard now exceed 1,600. Traversing new ground and trying to strike the right tone with these doctors, here’s what I said to them, in my abbreviated introduction…

“…This is my sixth virtual visit to your university, in the past three years. In 2008, my first solicitation email was addressed to professors teaching in five different programs at Harvard College. I followed this successful introduction with an invite to the faculties at the Harvard Kennedy School (2008), the Harvard Law School (2009) followed by the Harvard Business School (2010). Last spring, I added the balance of faculty from those five undergraduate programs – Harvard Divinity School, History, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology. Among the eight hundred professors receiving my work is President Drew G. Faust.

I am an American thought leader on the subjects of human, organizational and societal development and health, the role that integrity, dignity, sanity plays, spirituality, faith, freedom, happiness, problem solving and risk taking. Much of what I write about is personal in nature and comes from my own experience, insights and wisdom. Many of your colleagues can attest to the quality of my work including Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and ‘University’ Professor Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School. I freely share with you my best work.

My latest essay, “To: The Bazelon’s Exec. Director and its Board of Directors” has finally provided me with a bridge to reach out to this medical school and others like it. In my letter to The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, I confronted the troubling realities facing, both, the mental health field and the health care system based on my personal experience and from what I’ve repeatedly heard others express. As an adult, I’ve had two significant relationships with physicians, the first being with my former father-in-law, a graduate of Yale and the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia and the second being with my first psychiatrist, who holds a double major in medicine and pharmacology from Duke.

Both are fine people and doctors in the public’s eye, but on matters of God and spirituality neither one is a believer. This had a major impact on my relationship with my in-laws and later in the medical treatment provided by my psychiatrist. Yielding to no higher authority, my future father-in-law, with his wife and daughter present, told me that I wasn’t good enough to marry into his family. This smart doctor’s mindset denied, both, the gravity and reality of life. My spiritual beliefs drawn from my life and that of my non-believing psychiatrist would eventually collide, in her office, resulting in a difference of opinion thus hindering my chances at a speedy recovery. She always saw me as being mentally ill with no concept of me ever being restored to full health, to sanity. In her mind, the pill was my only hope, not God. As you will soon read in my attached essay both of them got it all wrong, but they’re not alone in their attitudes towards God, towards spirituality. This common viewpoint in health care must change.

To ignore the existence of the human spirit or the crying soul is like medicine or a medical school ignoring the role of the heart in the body. Is it merely a pump or is it something more? Medicine in an attempt to “heal the patient” and in its pursuit of the almighty dollar has conveniently stripped man of his humanity including the physicians, nurses, staff, administrators, big pharma and the health insurers thus rendering the patient powerless over one’s own care and treatment. It’s bad medicine and the system’s arrogance has led to countless lawsuits due to deaths, injuries and/or to perceived injuries.

Too many doctors have a god-complex as though their efforts alone led to the healing of a child’s broken bone while science has tried to eliminate mystery, altogether. Avoiding death by extending life for a few more days, weeks, months or even years through constant interventions is both, expensive and it shows a lack of maturity, wisdom and a respect for life. Death, like birth is simply part of the life cycle. It always has been and it always will be. Medicine and our society must accept this truth and get on with the business of living. America’s health care system and its bombardment of conventional, and often contradictory, “wisdom” over the airwaves, in print media, in consultations in the doctor’s examining rooms and in the patient’s hospital rooms is often foolish.

Health care has become a sick business, where the sick, where the insane are “running the asylum”. If you want to know where the front door to your doctor’s office is or the hospital is, just look for where the doctors and nurses are huddled together outside the building smoking their cigarettes. How can the most educated, most highly-trained medical staff in the world not take its own medicine? By this evidence alone the system must be doing something wrong. Health care is big business, it’s become artificially-inflated and with 30 million uninsured Americans it’s morally bankrupt. The system is broken and medical schools have to change their way of recruiting students and teaching by reminding everyone that humanity is the body’s core building block, not DNA.

Few physicians and researchers complain about the lifestyle you’re presently enjoying do to the current levels of federal dollars being injected into research and into the health care system, but too many of you oppose a single payer program run by this same government. How quick would the Harvard Medical School shrink if the money for research dried up, overnight? What would your medical school’s actual size be in terms of affiliated-hospitals, physicians, researchers, staff and students? I write about reality and its time to return medicine back to its humble place as society’s servant not as its master…”

I hope these arguments start to challenge health care’s unquestionable place in society. I did receive a reply from one Harvard researcher who called me “a pompous ass” while asking to “unsubscribe”. I told him in my response that “I had been called much worse.” Clearly, when being offensive no one can say that I discriminate. It’s easy to take a swipe at the little guy on the playground, it’s much harder to go up and punch the bully in the nose. I’ve had a long history of doing just that. It’s always scary, it takes courage, but it’s also rewarding when you hit the bull’s eye and live to tell about it. In this society, we punish the nonconformists, the whistleblowers, we penalize all those who stand up and tell the truth when this society and its most revered institutions refuse to. Penn Medical School also got this same friendly welcome to my work while I took a softer approach with a new recruit, The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine and JHU’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), in Washington, DC.

N > 12,680

Note: This could be my last essay of the year. Regardless, enjoy the holidays and your time off. See you after the 1st.

Enjoy!

Ted

Occupy Wall Street!!!

See attachment – Change (starts on page 13)

Source:

Berlin Wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

Keller, Helen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_keller

Nietzsche, Friedrich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Tear down this wall! (Ronald Reagan) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_down_this_wall

October 23, 2011

Courage to Change

By

Ted Burnett

Sometimes we must accept ourselves, defects and all, before those defects are removed.
– …In All Our Affairs

As I alluded to in my introduction and have stated on many prior occasions, I walked into my first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting, in 1989. The euphoric effects of alcohol had long worn off, after four years of heavy consumption as a teenager, and the depressant that ethanol alcohol truly is had set in like a morning fog that wouldn’t go away. Months of counseling and continued drinking on Friday and Saturday nights served as, both, a period of research and soul searching, I was seventeen at the time. The thought of giving up this drug, this coping mechanism, this “problem solver” was no easy decision.

However, I had reached a recognized point, within the rooms of recovery, where I had become “sick and tired of being sick and tired”. I wanted a different way of life or my thoughts of suicide just might go from a state of mental masturbation or fantasy to a plan of action. In truth, some part of myself, be it my ego or spirit, just couldn’t or wouldn’t do what I’ve come to see others successfully carry out. I don’t know what it takes for man to cross that threshold of insanity, to abruptly end one’s suffering with a single gunshot, using a heavy rope, driving one’s car at a high rate of speed off the road and head-on into a large oak tree or while passed out, breathing in the exhaust of a running automobile parked in one’s garage. Sadly, I know suicide to run (multiple incidents) in, at least, four white, middle class and prominent families residing in my community.

Most alcoholics and drug addicts truly lack the courage required to exercise this kind of willpower and so they take the easier way out by continuing to drink and drug until their death, insanity or recovery. As an older friend liked to say in meetings, “Alcoholism is suicide on the installment plan”. Well put. If you drink long enough it will do for you, what you won’t do for yourself. I painfully watched this happen to my father, who died, alone, broke and demoralized by his demons and from chronic alcoholism, at the young age of 53.

Putting down the drink and asking for help would be the first of many steps in this twenty-two year journey. This first change required me to step outside of the known – me, outside my small white, middle class world and beyond my limited abilities. It required me to grow up, just a little bit. This seemed like scary stuff, to go up to and beyond the ego’s comfort zone and one’s perceived limitations. It’s the boundary line between that which is known and that which is new and unimaginable; it’s where life’s mystery begins. This act requires a belief in something far greater than oneself.

No one is alone if they’ve come to believe in a Power greater than themselves.
– Sponsorship—What It’s All About

If there was any evidence that I was smarter than the tests in school had ever revealed or that I had the capacity to get more honest than I had ever been while sitting in a confessional, it was demonstrated to me early on in my recovery. While I had a drinking problem, it was just “a symptom”, it was masking other personal problems and I, now, knew it. Coming clean about the drink was just the beginning, it was the opening of the floodgates and it allowed me to slowly open up about other issues and secrets in my life. I was able to acknowledge many things to myself and some of those things to others relieving me of pent-up guilt and shame. I, instantly, felt better about myself when hearing the story’s of others, in AA. By voicing the truth, I began creating a new and more harmonious reality.

At the age of seven, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and I spent the most of my school years from that point on including my time in college needing a tutor’s help to pass my courses. Early on, I attended summer school for two or three consecutive years and I even got tutoring year around, in the fourth and fifth grade. In lieu of PE (physical education) once or twice a week, I went to a small building that held learning disabilities classes in small groups to receive more hands-on attention. I’m not sure if it really helped. With my fifth grade teachers’ encouragement, my parents reluctantly held me back.

This one event, in and of itself, was a crushing blow to my spirit and ego; I still remember the very first day lining up outside the classroom with my new peers, as my old classmates passed right by me on their way to the sixth grade. There was nowhere to run and hide and there was no explanation that seemed reasonable. I wanted to die rather than confront this reality; this was a common feeling that I had regarding my participation in school, over the years. The daily reminders of being a poor student had put me in a deep state of denial. I didn’t understand the nature of this learning disability and with no tools to address it I was unable to compensate for it, for the first thirty-two years. I was left feeling naked and out of my element to the demands of this artificial learning environment and later in the business world. It was never a fair fight.

(No coach expects a 3 ft. tall child on Monday to be 6 ft. tall and ready to play in Friday’s big game. However, this expectation is put on the backs of every child in the classroom, everyday and its outright abuse. Animals and humans don’t naturally evolve this way or at the same rate. Let’s admit this failure in thinking and change it. The output in American education is junk. School administrators and teachers practice child abuse everyday, its criminal. How ironic. Why all the dropouts because kids hate school?

Every person sitting in jail, prison or a mental institution at one time was a student in school, think about it. Teachers are sheep who will inflict emotional, spiritual, mental and sometimes physical pain on their students rather than stand up and revolt to the insanity of a nameless, faceless, bureaucratic, egotistical, political system and thus the abuse continues unimpeded. The largest source of child abuse isn't deadbeat parents, but educators (the so-called “experts”). What’s needed is to make school a warm and safe place for children to grow and thrive at their own pace, to develop from the inside-out, not merely on the outside for the system’s approval, as well as, to develop in an ecosystem that’s free of a principal’s, a superintendent’s and/or Washington's agenda.

Make school more enjoyable than the home life and no student would ever skip class, again. No more grading. I don't grade your progress thus you should stop grading theirs. Simply tell the truth and the kids will start to soak up what interests them. Get out of their way. This new way of teaching requires a trust, a faith, a real expertise, insight and wisdom. Public and private education has none of this to give, to offer to sensitive children and it shows. It’s time to go in a completely different way!)

Getting held back forced me “out of the closet” and it finally revealed the truth about my performance as a student. This secret, this illusion, this aspect of my psychology was purged in a most nightmarish and in a very public way. This particular lie for my parents and for me was now over and the struggle in school did diminish somewhat, but its impact to my already low self-esteem or my fragile psyche would later serve as gallons of fuel for my drinking, as an eighth grader. I couldn’t get enough, I couldn’t quench my thirst. With a family history and this learning disability, I was a sitting duck for alcoholism, for addiction.

The humiliation and pain of that one event and my school experience, in general, shut me down and kept me from wanting to spend another minute working on the source of so much frustration – my homework – assignments, book reports and preparing for tests. I learned not to ask for help at home. My first attempt on homework soon became my final effort, mistakes and all. It was for my teacher’s eyes only and her red pen. Asking my mother to look over my “completed” work just resulted in her handing it back to me and having to spend more time searching for and correcting my errors. This took me away from my one nightly escape, another drug of mine – watching prime-time television before bedtime.

As I entered the sixth, seventh and eighth grades, I would meet new students who transferred from the city’s other private schools because of their poor grades and getting held back. No one ever stated their reasons for leaving their old school for mine, but I already knew and their early birthdays gave it away. Repeating the fifth grade was the first time that I was forced to get honest with myself and others. It was simply something that you couldn’t lie about because everyone knew. In all those years, I was the only person that I knew of who repeated a grade and stayed at that same school. I often wondered what reasons or stories these kids and their parents conjured up for their old schoolmates, family and friends for their move.

I gave though to my own situation, what would have happened if I had been transferred to another school? What would I have told everyone – the truth or a lie? I became good friends with most of them through high school, college and even into adulthood. Today, all are married with kids, one has done well for himself, as a business owner, in the financial services industry, but the others have struggled with their careers. All were affected by alcoholism in their families of origin, as well. I rarely see any of them since my illness, but I do get occasional reports on their status.

As soon as I accepted my alcoholism at 18, I began taking responsibility for my dyslexia which I had long turned a blind eye to. For the first time, I began to face this reality and I began trying to compensate for it. I made a conscious effort to get extra help in high school from fellow classmates at night and later in college on a host of subjects with tutors and from my graduate teaching assistants. This experience continued to humble me, to “right size” my ego. My family finances were a mess, due to a failed business and my father’s decision to return to drinking.

One spring day during my senior year of high school, I overheard several classmates talking about getting a college scholarship through the State of Alabama’s Department of Vocational Rehabilitation Services (Voc. Rehab.). Knowing certain information about our family’s financial situation, I mentioned this conversation to my mother and she made an appointment for us. These students were in the school’s learning disabilities program, which was something that I was dead set on not being apart of along with its stigma. My one primary academic goal in high school wasn’t making all A’s or even A’s and B’s, but instead avoiding summer school and the shame that when with it. In this one respect, I was successful. I finished out with a 2.3 GPA, in 1990.

With a documented history, I was quickly accepted by my case manager at Voc. Rehab. My actual reward for being “dumb”, for having a learning disability and for being a “C” student was getting a full-ride to the state university of my choice. Tuition, all fees, books, tutors and books on tape were paid for, based on me maintaining a 2.0 GPA or better. I was one of several kids in my senior class that received this assistance. Like cattle, we were corralled and encouraged to attend Auburn University in Montgomery (AUM), which had put an emphasis on recruiting high school seniors like us and they could provide us with the individual attention needed. I knew I had a good thing going when I graduated, at Auburn’s main campus, debt-free, in 1995. This was one of the early benefits of getting sober, facing reality, changing direction, keeping one’s eyes open and an ear to the ground, having a willingness to ask for help to solve a big problem.

I later came to the conclusion that I got a better deal than most of my high school classmates who worked hard for their straight “A’s”, who were always on the honor roll and were members of the National Honor Society. However, my high school didn’t recognize my scholarship, from the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation Services, like they did with all those who received full and partial academic and athletic scholarships from the nation’s colleges and universities, but there’s quite an irony to all this as I am writing to you and they aren’t. Don’t all the smart kids get the scholarships, well then? Didn’t you? Who knew, maybe God did all along?

As Pearl Fryar, an African-American topiary artist from Bishopville, South Carolina and the subject of a documentary, A Man Named Pearl, once told an art class at the local college, “[Testing] does not test the entire individual”, but they sure do define you by the system and by our impatient society. I wish academia would admit this truth and “slow down” while reminding every parent and struggling student of this message.

In getting honest about my alcoholism and my dyslexia, I also began looking at my conduct in the classroom. My academic performance already had me on my teacher’s radar screen. As an introvert, I didn’t like drawing anymore attention to myself than was necessary. However, I could and did act out; I could be a terror in class. In most cases, I was interruption for the teacher, sometimes a real thorn in their side.

My comments to them could be outright cruel and my actions towards my schoolmates could come in the form of bursts of violence while drinking on Friday nights. As my drinking progressed, it turned me into a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Confined to society’s straightjacket, as a former alter boy while wearing a school uniform for years, the assault to my humanity, to my individuality had been a long one, I had been roughed up and I was very angry about it.

Beyond engaging in underage drinking and driving under the influence to and from parties, I avoided breaking any other laws and the negative attention that it might bring to me. Ironically, some of my peers from privileged families would break in and steal from their neighbors’ cars and from out of their garages collecting car electronics, music CDs, fishing gear... Some got caught while others didn’t. They were all rebelling in their own way, I wanted none of that. All things considered, the expectations I had for this “false self” and the social pressures put on me by my community resulted in me being a pretty good kid, but this would change for the better.

Now sober and sporting a new attitude, I immediately began inventorying my past and present actions. I made a mental list of folks that I needed to go see and make amends to. I began apologizing to my current and past teachers for my behavior and to some of my schoolmates. My apology wasn’t simply a response to getting in more trouble, but instead I approached them under no duress. I told them what was going on in my life and my decision to change my ways, to grow up. All the teachers were very receptive and supportive to what I had to say. In high school, I had gotten into three fist fights at parties, all were unforeseen, but not necessary unprovoked; I was victorious each time. I wasn’t always “the biggest fighter in the fight”, but I guess I had the bigger fight in the fighter. My adrenaline just would turn on and flow. I could tap into this source of strength when I found myself on my back with someone on top of me. Taking new action leads to new thinking and not the other way around.

With turning eighteen and becoming an adult, I knew that my juvenile status was ending and that the laws and penalties were becoming stiffer. I made another conscious decision to swear off fighting as a tool for starting and/or resolving inner conflict. Getting sober drastically improved my chances of living up to my new oath by keeping me from running my mouth at the next party. In college, there were two or three close calls at fraternity parties involving members of their respective fraternities and fortunately nothing came of any of these incidences.

As an adult, I’ve been successful in keeping this resolution. (If an eighteen year old can make a grown up decision to stop fighting, why can’t our government leaders do the same?) Thankfully, I’ve never seriously harmed anyone much less killed someone and that’s one less demon that I’ve had to face in my recovery. My father, a Vietnam Veteran, could not make the same claim nor could he find any relief from his 30-year torment. I’m very grateful for how my situation played out, but it could have easily gone the other way during my drinking days or later during my manic/psychotic episodes. The opportunity for disaster was always there, I got lucky. Somebody was looking out for me, when I wasn’t.

Another personal defect driving my drinking was the distorted life that I had lived in for the first eighteen years of my life coping in a dysfunctional family and what I’ve now come to see as a crazy world. Lying became a necessary evil, a tool for growing up in twisted world – be it at home, church, school or in one’s community. For all the lectures and sermons given on this subject in the above arenas, there’s very little sincerity behind all the rhetoric. Like lying, telling the truth has its own consequences. No one ever states it, but in order to survive in this violent world, as a child and later as an adult, one must figure this out. So, I watched my parents lie to themselves and to each other, I lied to myself, at the same time that I was lying to them, to my teachers, to my classmates, to the neighborhood kids and to the world. Taking new action leads to new thinking.

As a child, I felt terrible about myself and I had a poor self-image, so much so, that I didn’t like, either, my appearance or my own name, as early as age four or five. Somehow I was picking up a lot negative energy in my environment and I was internalizing it. As a cotton head, I though if I just looked like my handsome father with his jet black hair that somehow this would make me feel better about myself. My dyslexia affected my ability to speak and write well. Telling a story, any story the exact same way was a difficult task. It still is. When telling a lie about a situation while having a degree of consciousness felt uncomfortable as I was saying one thing while knowing the truth to be something else, it was an impossible way to live. Saving face, saving my reputation at the expense of another’s was proof that my ego was large and in charge.

In early sobriety, I met a girl and we had a so-called “one night stand” or so that was my fear-driven story to my friends. With no foresight for where my version of events would go, it was quickly relayed back to her within hours or by the next day and back to me soon after. Quickly, my story was being challenged by her through my friends. It was a “he said, she said” moment. Sadly, my ego won out and not my character. Shamelessly, I stuck to my version, but the embarrassing experience which I didn’t drink over left me reeling and saying to myself that wouldn’t ever happen again. Taking new action leads to new thinking.

Dyslexia made lying difficult and thus I made another consciousness decision to live an honest life to the best of my ability. (For the longest time, I thought a lot of people tried to be honest, but that opinion based on personal experience has since changed. Most individuals, organizations and governments tell a version that always puts them in the best light even when it’s not true.) I continue to adhere to my decision to live honestly and it’s ultimately paid off with dividends in this new life. Secrets from my young life – from dark emotions to my insane behavior – slowly came to the surface over the ensuing years as I faced my fears and as I shared each incident’s details with trusted friends (a must).

For the thirteen years leading up to my wedding day and my nervous breakdown (ages: 18-32), I became pretty obsessed with doing the right thing, with keeping my commitments, with being “perfect” and making amends to my fellow man when I was either confronted or when feeling a disturbance within me. Facing life honestly and without drugs resulted in me feeling the growing pains that come with maturation. While everyone else was drinking, drugging and partying, I was there partying sober. During my teens and twenties, I was on the receiving end of several amends from my mother, who was working her own recovery program, she repeatedly admitted her less than perfect job as a young mother. This kind of dialogue goes along way in changing the dynamics of a parent – child relationship.

By admitting her own fallibility, it resulted in her giving me (and even herself) some breathing room (or latitude) to grow up, allowing me to make my own mistakes and not to judge me as she may have experienced with her own mother. I doubt few individuals in this audience have ever received this type of unconditional love from one of your parents, from your spouse or from a sibling. I know my ex-wife, with her controlling mother, never has. The fearful ego, without its humanity, just won’t allow it. It’s another gift of spirituality. Making amends can melt away old tensions between family members and start an honest relationship that’s never existed before. Judging one another is replaced with love, compassion and empathy, which is what the family has long been craving; it’s what everyone needs in order to properly develop. A natural and true bond can finally form and a heavy reliance on the family’s dog for their love and affection diminishes. Taking new action leads to new thinking.

This is a spiritual experience, it’s the language of the heart and it requires all parties to do their part in growing up, in facing their reality on a daily basis while sharing a familiar worldview. A trust is formed as respect and understanding of one another develops. I openly talked to my mother about my struggles with school, my father’s sad life and sudden death, my floundering career, to standing up to my soon-to-be in-laws. I often sought her counsel and really respected her wisdom. I’m not alone in this opinion. I’ve heard many adults, and her friends, in our recovery community express these same words. Just recently, I heard similar comments by “John”, a retired teacher from New Jersey, who now lives here, in south Alabama. Without her courage to change, to move closer to reality by confronting my father’s drinking, beginning in 1979, I wouldn’t have sobered up, in ’89, and made the necessary changes to my life. Her guidance was so critical during my infancy, it was life-saving. It’s said that, “Change attitudes aid in recovery.” True.

Unfortunately, I have to report that this relationship has come undone due impart to a new relationship and her marriage to someone I totally disrespect due to a number of comments he’s made to me and others, over the years, that I’ve found to be inappropriate, to be completely out of line and he has interfered with my relationship with my mother. Now on his fourth marriage, he’s another insane, licensed social worker. Those working in his same field have affirmed my take on him.

He’s a master manipulator and lives in a very small world. (He’s personality is completely opposite of my father’s, who the old neighbor kids still tell me how much they enjoyed this fun, loving man.) This new man is troubled. I suspect he’s used certain issues against me including my mental illness to create a wedge in my, tight nit, relationship with my mother. If I could kill the bastard and get away with it, I probably would. I bet you didn’t expect me to say that, did you? What do you expect? After all, I’ve been labeled crazy, so says the doctors and a judge. The truth always sounds crazy when first expressed, but it’s also very refreshing to say it. It’s one less secret that I have to carry around, as well as, keep from this group. The more you know about me, the more you might empathize with me and vice versa. All the world’s fighting would stop.

Since 2007, I’ve removed myself from this situation in order to put all my (+) energy, time and money into my new life and in this writing project. I refused to fight a losing battle, to be the focus of their marriage, two against one or to be apart of some triangle. Having already mourned my father’s death and my marriage surprisingly her “death” was a lot easier to digest. I’ve gotten no indication that’s she read the first essay of mine. She lives only ten minutes away and on occasion we cross paths in public places. For someone who saw me struggle in school for decades, who paid for my tuition to Catholic schools and for private tutors, this is a huge change in her behavior. It’s a complete 180 degree change since she first met the Greek, in 2000.

Whatever unhealthy bonds there may have been between the two of us, they’ve been severed, now. As a result, I feel like a free man. Any future relationship will be re-established on new terms; hopefully my personal and professional success will force a change in her mindset about me. I’m no longer 5, 10 or 15 years old. The situation is hard to explain, it’s actually mindboggling and its further proof that little in life is logical. I never saw this coming, but from what I know about her situation, her life, her career and finances, I understand her aging dilemma. So, do I judge her for it, not really?

I know she didn’t foresee this rift happening, either. Nor did she expect me to react the way I did. I expressed my displeasure to her while establishing my right to live as I see fit. She was slow to come around to my position, but she has finally found some acceptance of it. She made choices in the past that put her on this course to meet him. At the same time, I made choices in my past that put me on a different trajectory, to see the world differently. It’s not all that uncommon within families from different generations. She married him, not me. I don’t have to live with him, much less like him.

The term “family feud” could best describe the dynamic, ever heard of it? Can you relate, think? I know from friends that I am not alone with my situation. It’s bigger than me and I’ve had to just give this relationship to God while I continue to live and write. Who knows what the future holds for us, but I refuse to enable something I don’t support, it doesn’t feel right. It takes courage to stand up and protest; most kids of all ages usually go along just “to keep the peace”. They’re being loyal to the family in a dishonest way and it usually comes at the expense of one’s own integrity, dignity, sanity and their happiness. I know my absence, in her life, is being felt and I want it to create some tension in her marriage. I credit my recovery for my conscious actions in this situation. Protecting my mental health by living in reality is paramount to my well-being, first and foremost. You can also call it an act of “tough love”. Sometimes life can be really messy, this is one of them.

As one of her friends once said to me on this subject, “[Your mother] has the right to do what she wants with her life”. My response was, “Fine, then I‘ve got the right to do what I want with mine.” That’s very liberating to say and to act on. The truth has its own consequences. Today, I make no apologies for my choices and I accept the consequences. If you think I play hard ball with you or others through these emails know that I behave no different with my own family, relatives and close friends when there’s a clash in principles, in values. I know what’s at stake (life and death) and thus I refuse to back down to anyone.

After twenty-two years, I am a changed man. In many ways, I see myself as a real-life Forrest Gump. With his mother’s encouragement and wisdom, Forrest operated on faith and he accepted every opportunity that came his way from playing football at Alabama, to joining the Army and going to Vietnam, to meeting two American presidents and playing Ping-Pong in China as “an ambassador of goodwill”, to buying a shrimp boat and running across America and back. Life is lived, but one of two ways on faith or by fear. I lived my entire childhood on fear and I didn’t have a whole lot to show for it.

My journey in recovery started out really slow, painstakingly slow, but I built a solid foundation of honesty, a willingness to face reality and change. I crawled for a long time, for eighteen years before I landed on my two feet, for the first time ever at the age of 36, following my separation and divorce, in 2007. Through writing, a new life was begun and I started walking upright. With a growing audience and confidence, I picked up the pace and for the past two years, I’ve been running, like Forrest. I’m having a lot of fun and I’ve come to understand that “--it happens”.

Today, I know that a journey of faith takes you down a different set of roads with a different ending than a life of fear. I’m not sure one goes very far as a slave to his fears. Maybe it’s in the pattern of a circle, or an oval track, like that of our calendar with no beginning and no end. You live through another New Year’s Eve with more unkept resolutions, Easter, Memorial Day weekend, the fourth of July, throw in a birthday somewhere, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas with fifty-two weeks of work, fifty-two Saturdays and Sundays, it’s one year of life times however many years you spend feeling your age, suffering in pain and never growing while on this planet. Spirituality breaks away from living life by the calendar year. It’s more linear, but definitely not a straight line. It has a lot of zigs and zags, twists and turns with periods of darkness followed by light, cycles of joy and pain, joy and pain…

Spirituality has a beginning and an end with growing pains and the development of wisdom. Our marked (commercialized) holidays are in truth just another day, they’re no longer a big deal. See through them. There’s no reason to experience another depression or have a nervous breakdown during the holidays. Everyday can be a Saturday, a Friday or a Sunday or however you chose to live it. Forty or fifty hour workweeks can be replaced with ten or twenty hours by living a more sane and simple life. Talents and pursing one’s passion turns work into a creative outlet while serving society, at the same time. It no longer feels like work, as you grow. Your downtime becomes a way of life that you love, it all becomes a way of life that you love and there’s no going back to the rat race, to the system. Going to bed and waking up becomes a joyful experience with a fresh start. By regaining one’s humanity, one’s power you’ll never let another person treat you like a rat, ever again, because you’re human, in God’s likeness and image.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
– Lao-tse

I’ve shared with you some of my journey and what it means to me to have the Courage to Change. I hope something that you’ve just read has touched you and encourages you to step outside your comfortable zone and try something new, anything. Ask God for help in getting started; invite Him or Her into your life. Renew your spirit, save your soul. Break an old habit with something new; break all your old habits with new, healthy and positive activities. Replace the eight hours of daily misery with joy. Listen to an unfamiliar artist or music or go see a new play or film, watch a sunrise or sunset, try new cuisine, travel to a new destination, make a new friend outside your social circle, go play, look within or tell your story like I just did with you.

Take a risk, go make an overdue amends to a family member or to an old friend, forgive them and yourself, try your hand at painting or writing, it can be anything that leads to your emotional and spiritual development. Be creative; start feeding that side of you that’s crying out. Just expand your world a little bit, expand it a little bit more until your world matches the true size of our world with its “7b” inhabitants, which is surrounded by the heavens – its planets, its moons and its stars. Become conscious, awake up! You’ll wonder why you didn’t do this sooner. Taking new action leads to new thinking.

I grew up in the Deep South (U.S.), my hometown of Mobile hasn’t changed in decades, but I have. My home state, Alabama, “the Heart of Dixie” hasn’t changed, but I have. The Confederacy hasn’t changed, but I have. America hasn’t changed, but I have. I am no longer the man that I was at twenty-one, at thirty or at thirty-five, I continue to evolve by living “one day at a time” and by following my own intuition. I’ve become “the change” that I wanted to see in the world and there’s no more fear. I’m filling a void that I see in the world by sharing my writings with you. No one else is capable of doing what is my rightful duty, what is my purpose. I changed my world while the world continues fighting, struggling and suffering because it refuses to grow up.

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “Courage to Change" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

To: The Bazelon Center’s Exec. Director Robert Bernstein, PhD and its Board of Trustees

2011-09-13T06:57:00.007-05:00

Introduction

In August, after completing my last email blast of “Dear Senator Nelson (The day our democracy died.), I began adding more faculty due impart to this particular piece. While I didn’t get a lot of feedback from this audience, I did get a few positive comments from friends. More importantly, I really liked this “time-sensitive” essay and I decided to use it along with my other essay, “Corporate consciousness v 2011”, to serve as an introduction to my work.

I added faculty teaching at the following top schools – the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, the University of Chicago School of Law, Columbia Business School, New York University Stern School of Business, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

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The following essay is my reply to an email that I received from The Bazelon Center’s (for Mental Health Law) Executive Director Dr. Robert Bernstein. Based in Washington, DC, this non-profit organization advocates on behalf of the mentally ill by lobbying Congress and through the use of litigation throughout the nation’s court system. In late August, they sent out an email to all those on their mailing list asking for us to comment and vote on a proposed definition for “Recovery” from mental health and substance abuse disorders.

After reading the executive director’s definition and disagreeing with it, I wrote to him and to the Board of Trustees. Rather than simply leave it at “I’m right and he’s wrong”, I felt the need to and took the liberty of providing several pages worth of personal background, in order, to convey my experience and expertise on these two subjects. I hope my personal experience and insights come through to you. It was not my original intent to write a long essay, but it just unfolded this way. The email (or letter) is a lengthy eighteen pages long. I ask for your time and patience, as you read it. Surely, I must have broken the entire list of do’s and don’ts when writing business correspondence from etiquette to length, but don’t the greats always do this?

Disclosure – My comments on the following subject are long overdue and I apologize for not addressing this sooner. In the course of writing this commentary, it triggered this thought and my desire to express it to you, now. Seeing that spirituality is an integral part of my life, how I choose to live on a daily basis and my message to you, please know that whenever I mention “God”, “our Creator”, “my Higher Power”… know that I am speaking only for myself and not for anyone else in this group. I assume nothing.

I have a still developing concept of Him/Her and I respect your right to have your own notion. To me, there’s no better example of freedom than to allow oneself and all others the right to define God as each one of us sees fit and to live one’s life, accordingly. Unfortunately, I don’t think most individuals born into this world are given this critical birthright. With a global audience from many different countries, cultures, languages and religions, I could never speak for anyone else. So, I won’t even try to. If what I write resonates with you, that’s great.

Enjoy!

Ted

See attachment – The Bazelon Center’s President and CEO and its Board of Trustees (begins on page 3)

To: The Bazelon Center’s Exec. Director Robert Bernstein, PhD and its Board of Trustees,

On Thursday (August 25, 2011), I received the latest mass email put out by your organization. I've been on Bazelon’s mailing list, since December 2006. My interest in your cause stems from having a mental illness. In 2002, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder on the heels of my wedding and honeymoon, that’s no joke! One year later, after enduring several trips to jail followed by stays in mental institutions, I finally got “with the program” and I began complying with the doctor’s orders. To date, I’ve had only one more episode and hospitalization since when my marriage fell apart, four years later.

In 2007, now separated and on my way to being divorced, I sat down and wrote out a 50k-word rough draft of my five-year odyssey of mania, marriage, death and rebirth before putting it down. At the time, I was thirty-six years old, unemployed, but feeling happy and free. I soon turned my attention to producing commentaries on political, social and spiritual matters, an innate interest of mine. Over the past 4-½ years, I've written extensively about my life and, specifically, on my mental illness experience – the series of events leading up to and following each of my manic and psychotic episode, as well as, the employment, financial and social fallout that I continue to feel to this very day.

My breakdown wasn’t simply a case of family history or genetics finally kicking in, but instead it was about having a corrupt belief system built on a diagnosed learning disability, as a child, where the playing field was anything, but level. I was reminded of this daily in my performance, first in school and later at work, for over thirty years. I was outclassed and outshined by many. With no relief, it became too much to bare. The institutions of family, religion, school and our society had long defined who I was while coloring the world that I was living in. My compass was unknowingly broken and it was sending me careening off course. With boredom, failure, frustration and procrastination as companions, making any real progress in life was unnoticeable thus an inner storm was brewing. It would make landfall, of all times, during the week of my wedding when numerous pressures and stressors of the event and my changing life converged swamping my boat.

Over the course of my young life, my dyslexia has caused me untold amounts of embarrassment, frustration, grief, self-hate and much suffering. As the saying goes about dyslexia, “Easy tasks are hard and hard tasks are easy.” This neurological development issue combined with the required learning of “the printed word” in an artificial environment, with its fixed timetables for learning, known as Catholic schools quickly instilled great fear within me from head to toe. Much needed self-esteem and confidence, a requirement for personal and professional success, were literally stripped from me before I had even finished elementary school. I’m not alone in this experience, it’s quite pervasive. Public speaking and writing proved extremely difficult to conquer and produced ongoing terror including nightmares.

As a fearful teenager, I tried to drown my pain and suffering with cold cans of beer, at high school parties, before my mind eventually gave way to thoughts of suicide. It was no way to start one’s adult life, but that’s exactly how I was entering this new world. While the handicap was real, the conclusions drawn by me and by many others about my abilities and my future success turned out to be all wrong. My parents believed in me in spite of, both, the obvious academic evidence and then my faulting career, I guess that’s blind love for you or something like that.

At the same time that my breakdown occurred, at the age of 32, I also experienced an unexpected breakthrough that briefly revealed itself in the form of exceptional thinking and creative writing while manic, in 2002 and again in ‘03. I began writing for the first time, ever, on some rather historic events. Sensing a change in brain function, I took an online IQ test that resulted in a score of 142. An earlier administered test taken during my teens measured my IQ at or near a more modest 100. The intellectual playing field that had long been to my disadvantage (which I never understood why) now swung wildly in my favor, for all to see.

However, nobody believed in my new talents including my new bride. My insistence that this change was real only confirmed everyone’s belief in my insanity; it was a real Catch-22. Regardless of what they thought, for the first time in my life, in my career this writing “thing” just felt right when everything else never did. I never forgot or dismissed these feelings or this experience as a crazy thought. It would prove crucial, later on. As Mahatma Gandhi said, "Don't listen to friends when the Friend inside you says 'Do this!'"

All interest in selling commercial insurance went straight “out the window”. I took a leave of absence from my job to try my hand at writing. However, without anyone’s affirmation, direction or help in getting me started, it soon became a losing cause. As fast as the talent appeared, it quickly vanished. Transiting from “a lost” corporate soul to a full-time writer took several more years of living to figure out. This included experiencing this false start before crawling back to the corporate world and begging for my job back. Finally, out of desperation, I took a dreaded trip through graduate school (2005-06) which came to an abrupt halt following my last manic episode. With that door slammed shut, I moved on and I began this new life (2007). With nothing left to lose, I tried my hand at writing, once more.

What I’ve learned from my dyslexia, in terms of thinking and writing, is that it got fowled up at very early age by, either, my slower development or by a combination of man’s artificial and godless institutions that literally crush the individual spirit. The flow of ideas and the ability to easily express them encountered a logjam, a dam which turned a natural stream (of consciousness) into a backed up lake for over thirty years. I was a mute taking in the world, but never getting to express it. What should have been the process of potential energy (ideas) being easily transferred into kinetic (works of art, literature…) instead it had broken down. Clarity, vision, productivity was exchanged for confusion, frustration, procrastination, self-hate, self-destruction, destruction and boredom.

Beyond the diagnosis, I never understood the depths of the problem, its strengths and weaknesses and how to compensate for it. Nobody at home, at school or at work imparted any insight or wisdom to me during my struggle because they didn’t understand it, either. So, I just suffered while trudging toward through life until my breakthrough. In hindsight, mental illness expressed through negative thoughts and behavior had already manifested itself in my childhood, the inability to identify my talents and skills and apply them to excel or just survive created instability – in my performance at school, in my attitude and behavior, in my career, my finances and how I related to and was perceived by family, friends and by society. I wouldn’t wish this plague on anyone.

One, either, gets tough, dies or can plan on spending the rest of their life in and out of jails, prisons or mental institutions. Life is full of cues and one has to learn to start reading them in order to successfully navigate through life, through problems and out of crises. They can be verbal cues, non-verbal and/or visual, one’s own feelings and intuition or through using one’s senses. Dyslexics learn to survive by reading people and things other than just text, alone.

Facing this learning disability, this reality, this daily gantlet while in school was impossible for my ego and spirit to endure; it demanded a constant state of escape, like, daydreaming or taking a “drug” to cope. The seriousness of these emotional and spiritual issues must be expressed in a healthy way, they must be released, immediately, or they will surely come out in an inappropriate form of sickness – criminal/sexual/psychological/mental and/or a physical disease, illness or injury.

These events play out everyday and all daylong in hospital emergency rooms, in the waiting rooms at doctor’s offices, in the principal’s office, in psychiatric facilities and in our jails, but the symptoms are frequently labeled as the problem when they’re really not. We continue to outlaw (legislate) many of these symptoms while medicine obsesses with curing them, education grades them, religion condemns them and the judicial system punishes them while the root cause is completely ignored. So, for all the time, money and energy that have been spent nothing has truly changed except on the surface. The warts are gone.

Now, well into my thirties with talents, I found myself playing catch up as my community and the world had already dismissed me. My career never got started, was it already over? I recalled the good feelings that I had towards writing. What started out as my second attempt to a small audience of family and friends that were getting my monthly essays via email, now, exceeds 9,000 contacts including over 8,000 university presidents and professors teaching at some seventy colleges and universities, in ten countries.

To my pleasant surprise while preparing this email I reviewed your, The Bazelon Center’s, website and the names of your twenty-three active Board of Trustees, I discovered that six are members of my audience. Their names are – Penn Law Professor Anita L. Allen (new), Yale Law Professor Robert A. Burt, Mr. Kenneth R. Feinberg (Adjunct Professor with Columbia Law School), Harvard Law Dean and Professor Martha L. Minow, Penn Law Professor Stephen Morse (new) and USC Law Professor Elyn R. Saks.

The older audience members can attest to the quality of my work as an American thought leader on the subjects of individual, organizational and societal development and health and the role that integrity, dignity and sanity plays as it relates to reality, as it relates to spirituality. Born out of necessity, I have twenty-two years of experience doing pioneering research as my own “lab rat” trying to live an honest life by facing and embracing reality while slowly and, at times, suddenly and unexpectedly having my belief system smashed by this crazy and fearful world of ours. Of course, I’m not the only lab rat that’s been under my watchful eye and living in my world-sized laboratory. Today, I have well over 9,000 that I keep tabs on including all of you. Some are under a microscope while I watch most from afar.

My first original thought occurred during my first year of writing (2007) and I’ve never taken the time to explain it to anyone nor have I written about it until now. My experience with getting sober, at the age of 18 (1989), was life-altering and life-saving. It will go down as the best decision that I’ve ever made in my life. All the good things that have followed came from having the courage to quit drinking and to live a more spiritual life. My first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting named “Young Adults”, which met on Tuesday and Friday nights, was made up of teenagers and twenty-somethings (college students, etc.). The group met in the back of a Presbyterian church in my hometown’s (Mobile, AL) prominent community.

Walking through the set of double doors of the activity center, with my ride and a classmate, was frightening, as most anyone attending their first AA meeting will tell you. Confronting the unknown or giving up the known, your drug of choice and the lifestyle produces sheer terror. Many in desperation who show up for their first meeting can’t muster the courage to step out of their car and walk inside. They soon get “cold feet” and drive off with the intention of returning another day. Do they? Some do.

To my surprise I found those in attendance, my peers, not to be cold and hostile, but instead to be warm and welcoming. I saw a lot of smiles and I heard a lot of laughter. It was refreshing. I quickly recognized several faces in attendance, from years past. I, immediately, knew that I was in the right place. I was at home. I hadn’t laughed in a long time. In the previous year, I found myself so angry and unhappy, but until I reached the point of desperation, the point of “being sick and tired of being sick and tired” I simply wouldn’t ask for this free help. That’s the inflated ego for you. Sometimes you have to reach the point where you wake up and find yourself hanging on the side of a cliff before you learn to trust and “let go”. It’s scary because it requires real faith. That’s often how a new life, a rebirth begins.

I would spend the next twenty-one years attending AA meetings, with few interruptions, while living throughout the southeast U.S., in my hometown, while off at college in Montgomery, AL and Auburn, AL before working briefly in Tampa, FL, Washington, DC, Atlanta, GA before returning home to Mobile (1999) until recently while living and writing on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, for the past four years. I’ve met a lot of people in that time. What’s struck me over the years, having had such a positive experience, is how many suffering alcoholics and addicts walk into the “rooms of recovery” only to walk right back out into the waiting hell that they’ve been living in. It’s, both, mindboggling and tragic. Some come back, many bounce in and out of AA for years while others never return.

Alcoholics Anonymous is an anonymous fellowship of men and women made up of every segment of the U.S. population, and probably the entire world’s. No one is excluded. I see it as the closest thing to humanity’s natural world with all the recovery and insanity, with all the health and sickness occurring simultaneously in different degrees while being expressed in many different forms. It’s not the kind of social club that you want to be a member of, if you’re looking to hang out with only “your kind”.

Stay around long enough and you’re going to meet every type of person that you can think of. It’s a microcosm of our world, because alcoholism a worldwide problem. Because of AA’s anonymous nature few records are kept except at the meeting level where names, phone numbers and/or sobriety dates might be kept for the meeting’s sake – to function.

During the mid-1990’s, AA World Services did an informal survey of its meetings to gather some basic information regarding group size, the gender, age, length of sobriety…of its members. The “average” length of sobriety was five years while the longest period of continual sobriety exceeded forty years. The two most troubling statistics to come out of this survey pertained to the success rate of AA or of its members. AA’s critics crowed about it. The first stat stated that after just one year in AA those still attending meetings and in sobriety was only 5% and after five years it was estimated to be only 1%. Both, the five and one percents are large numbers in terms of overall membership in the U.S. (1m) and the around world (1m), but AA sounded horrible in terms being the cure for, both, alcoholism and drug addiction.

During the 1980’s, drug and alcohol treatment centers sprung up everywhere fueled by health insurance industry covering the cost of rehab. These facilities became mills churning out every troubled kid and adult, alike, before sending them off to AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous)...meetings. Our group, “Young Adults”, with 30 or more kids was clearly benefitting from this effect. If the first rehab stint didn’t work well then send them off to another one was the conventional wisdom and insurance kept paying until they saw their own statistics on the high cost of treatment and the low success rates. Overnight, insurance coverage for alcoholism and drug addiction dried up.

As a result, many rehabs went bust, during the late 80’s, and so did groups like “Young Adults” sometime later. The thinking among most advocates of recovery and treatment centers has been ever since that treatment works and that we simply need insurance to continue paying until some tipping point is reached within the recovery community and at this point the recovery statistics would drastically improve, so the thinking went. For eighteen years, I subscribed to this line, but in all that time the policy of health insurers had never once changed. Nor has AA performance. Everyone involved failed to understand the problem in its true perspective until one day when it dawned on me.

One of my early audience members, and not necessarily by his choice, was “Joe W.” a longtime member of AA (1970’s), a strong advocate of treatment and one of our community’s wealthier individuals. I’ve known him for thirty years. My father first met him in AA, if not before while they were both held up in the same bars drinking. Now sober, Joe would later back my father in what would become a failed construction business that ruined their friendship. Over the years, Joe has sat on, both, local and national boards advocating awareness, education and treatment while lobbying Washington to pass a law requiring health insurers to cover treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction. It never happened.

In 1996, Joe and second wife hosted and what would become an annual luncheon to “celebrate recovery” where “celebrities in recovery” are flown into Mobile to tell their story of addiction and recovery to some 800 community leaders and all those enjoying the benefits of recovery. In its fifteen year history, some of the past speakers include composer, musician and songwriter Paul Williams, singer Judy Collins, Three Dog Night’s front man Chuck Negron, Steve Ford, Susan Ford Bales, (the son and daughter of President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford), Christopher Kennedy Lawford (son of Peter Lawford and nephew of JFK), actor Louis Gossett, Jr., actor John Larroquette, singer Larry Gatlin, singer and songwriter Mac Davis just to name a few.

It’s a moving experience and it wouldn’t have materialized without Joe’s strong leadership and his position in our community. Joe, his wife, their many volunteers and sponsors have taken steps to bring attention to recovery while reducing the personal suffering, the public stigma and taboo nature of alcoholism and drug addiction, in our community.

I’ve maintained a relationship, off and on, with Joe, who’s now in his 70’s, even after my father’s bankrupted construction company lighted his pockets quite a bit, he filed a lawsuit to recover his losses and my father relapsed. During the 1990’s and while I was in college, Joe’s friendship was an important relationship for me and I paid him numerous visits to his office when home from school.

When my father died in 1998, from chronic alcoholism, Joe and his wife arrived at the funeral home even before my family did to pay their respects. This was quite a surprise and speaks to the bonds formed in AA and Ala-non (a support group for family and friends of alcoholics). They weren’t the only old friends to turn out for the wake and the funeral from their old AA meeting, “Happy Hour”. Originally, the group was made up of the city’s blue bloods and all those wanting to be one. Most had not seen or spoken to my father in eight or nine years. Their presence meant a lot to, both, my mother and me.

In 2007, Joe was on my short list of influential Mobilians that I began hand delivering my first essays to. Upon emailing the piece, I would drive over to his office, unannounced, toting a signed copy. Sometimes, he would see me and other times he didn’t. I soon began to feel some uneasiness in stopping by maybe because of what I was, either, writing about (my new politics) or because of my mental illness diagnosis. I didn’t really know. I just began to pick up on a cool vibe. In the AA community, news about the welfare of its members travels fast. I’m sure that he had heard stories regarding my mania over the years.

At the time, he was one of the big dogs in my small audience long before I had any faculty at Harvard to point to. Any fear that I might have felt crawling up in my neck on the ride over was just pushed downward before walking through the front door of his office. On what would turn out to be my last visit to his office, I handed over the essay before he abruptly announced that he was headed out for a meeting. His attitude towards recovery and the role that insurance should play had not changed, in 30 years. Mine was about to.

I left his office thinking about our life-changing experiences with AA, its dismal statistics before finally considering the health insurers and seeing health care in a broader sense as it related to the success rates of other diseases, illnesses and injuries. I began to ask, were treatment centers and AA the complete formula in getting drunks sober? Well, it had worked for me, Joe and many others. Was something missing from our argument? A broken bone came to mind and health care’s success rate in resetting a bone so that it can heal properly; I figured it must be at or near 100%. How about other injuries, illnesses that have high cure rates, what about cancers with 60, 70% or higher rates of remission? Now, recovery from alcoholism and addiction looked pathetic in this new light.

For the first time, I saw the insurers’ point of view on this issue. Why is addiction’s recovery rate so low? How does society look at a broken arm or leg versus alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness? Is there a stigma with limping around in a cast or having an arm in a sling – probably not because most people can relate to this experience, in some way, and we often feel empathy for them. We may offer to assist by holding the door open or by carry something for them. It’s usually viewed as a temporary disability. Even a cancer diagnosis and its treatment are now seen by medicine and society as acceptable and mainstream.

These are physical injuries and diseases unlike alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness which are injuries of the mind, heart and soul. It’s a much harder and more complex problem to cure because no two patients have the same set of troubles. Made worse is the poor understanding among even the experts in the mental health field, health care and the public, in general. This society which sticks mostly to talking about the addictive subjects of politics, religion and the weather rarely displays a deeper well. Until this is confronted, mental illness at all levels of our society will remain pervasive and recovery rates for these illnesses will remain in the cellar.

Individuals with broken bones are typically not judged in the same light as someone with a drinking problem, as a Crystal meth addict or a mother who’s locked up in her bedroom suffering from major depression. So, if society is just as sick, where’s an alcoholic, an addict or the mentally ill to go to get better – to have their emotional and spiritual health restored to wholeness – do they return home to live with their dysfunctional family, do they hangout with their drinking buddies, do they go to church, do they move to Alaska’s wilderness or live alone in the desert? Sickness is everywhere – it’s everywhere that people deny their personal truth, where they live a lie and keep lots of secrets. Maturation stagnates across the board while the alcoholic, the addict and the mentally ill are labeled and serve as society’s scapegoat. This produces a hell in the form of bondage, insanity and unhappiness for all while this society speaks in unison of “freedom” and “democracy”. So, whose crazy – everyone? If the animal kingdom lived the same way that corrupt humans do, they would all be extinct by now.

Recovery requires truth and transparency to live a free, happy and sane life. These personal and social cancers must be recognized before it can be addressed. The problem is so enormous that we’re facing a crisis. The economy, homelessness, joblessness, political instability, the deficit and the national debt are merely symptoms. We’re trying to cure these political and social symptoms and not the problematic cause. Uprooting the tumor just might kill some of us. We have way too many inflated egos, in high places, with little heart or soul for themselves much less for the rest of us. “Pride comes before a fall.”

We lack the necessary understanding to solve our problems or to admit what we’ve been doing as a government and as a society is all wrong. I would like to shake hand of the President of the United States who first utters those words. It would take a great man or woman to finally see and speak what has become so painfully obvious to me. Our way of life has cost us our humanity, our relationship with God and it shows. Washington doesn’t get it, they don’t want to and thus they never will. This is what I know to be true.

My original reply to The Bazelon Center

What triggered my reply to your email, The Bazelon Center, was your request for me to take some action. Bazelon was seeking support for your definition of the term "Recovery" over The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) own version by commenting and voting on-line. SAMHSA was seeking input on a proposed definition of "recovery" from mental health and substance abuse disorders. What caught my immediate attention was reading the word “Recovery” in the email’s subject line, I first thought of its application in context to my own twenty-two years of recovery from alcoholism, not so much in terms of mental illness.

With over two decades of recovery from alcoholism, I know what recovery is and isn’t. I’ve been around a lot of alcoholics and addicts, in all these years, many are still in recovery while others are actively using. Some have died clean and sober while a few are dead from acts of homicide and suicide. The names and faces of many quickly come to mind while the names of most others have long been forgotten. I know my story and I’ve heard theirs. I have a family history of alcoholism on both sides of my family going back, at least, three generations.

As an only child, I watched the slow death of my beloved father who was very bright man, but a troubled Vietnam Veteran, who in confusion and great frustration gave up on life at the age of 43 (1988), however he didn’t die until age 53, from this demoralizing disease. In the same breath, recovery was happening in my family, in my home among two different generations – first, my mother, as an adult child of an alcoholic and as a spouse, and then me, as an adult child…and as an alcoholic. I know that this form of recovery (spirituality) can and does work. I’m living proof of it, as well as, I’m a witness to, both, the world’s sanity and insanity.

After nine years of learning to live successfully with bipolar disorder, my understanding of recovery has only broadened on a personal, family, organizational and societal level. My quest to find and associate with healthier individuals (authentic and sane), their families and workplaces, during my twenties and thirties, who were not necessary affiliated with “the rooms of recovery” (AA, Ala-non, etc.) or engaged in some type of spiritual practice, to my amazement, I found that they simply don’t exist. I, now, understand why. In America, dysfunction and insanity are the norm and the society’s insanity extends well beyond the tightly-defined definitions for alcoholism, addiction and mental illness.

Everyone who grows up in America has their own concept of God, all things good, faith, freedom, happiness, health, humanity, life and spirit stripped out of them by our very secular institutions of family, church, school, government (our so-called democracy) and this society’s slowly disintegrating values. To survive, we all became egomaniacs in our own controlling and manipulating ways. We’re always asking, “What’s in it for me?” We grow up as emotional and spiritual cripples, which manifests itself in mental health and physical health problems – the symptoms of which present themselves in the many different forms of insanity and addiction.

It’s at the heart of America’s health care crisis that’s playing itself out in the current health care reform act, otherwise known as, Obamacare and the many lawsuits challenging it’s legitimacy in federal court. Our out-of-control health care costs, limited coverage and access are merely symptoms of this much deeper emotional and spiritual problem. Cost, coverage and access are not the root cause of this crisis, but who’s listening to me?

From 1999-2002, I sat on the board of directors of a small non-profit drug and alcohol treatment center in my community. If there was only one thing that I took away from this experience it was how this facility came into being. The Shoulder’s Founder, and Emeritus Director, is a local orthopedic surgeon and a Christian man. Once a week, Dr. Fellers met with a group of men in prayer, at his office, before the start of the workday. On one occasion, he brought to the group a problem he was struggling with at work. Some of his patients came to him with more than just broken bones; they also came to him with broken minds.

The good doctor told his prayer group that he could fix their bones, but he couldn’t do anything about their psyches. For the doctor, re-setting the bones was the easy part, but he felt helpless over what to do about their addictions, about their insanity, how best to heal their minds and hearts or how to re-ignite their spirits. He’s not alone in this struggle. So is our society, so are our leaders. With no clear understanding of the problem and a forty-year failed drug war to show for it, we’ve learned to just ignore it by wearing our blinders, we ignore the addicts and their families and thus we ignore the pain and suffering of everyone. This “educated” society has turned sickness into criminal behavior and we just chosen to incarcerate them. Is this strategy working – no? Do we care – no, because it’s not one of us or a family member suffering in these soulless correctional facilities?

Ultimately, the group’s prayers gave birth to The Shoulder, which opened its doors, in 1988. The treatment center has always struggled to keep its doors open not out of lack of a demand, but out of the health care system’s (insurance) desire to no longer pay. When people get clean and sober, personal and social violence drops and it’s bad for our economy – it’s bad for law enforcement and emergency medical technicians jobs, it’s bad for the wallets of doctors, hospitals, big insurance, big pharma, it’s bad for the legal profession, for the judicial and penal systems, for mortuary industry that are all feeding off this insanity. It’s become big business.

If you want the largest economy in the world, the largest fighting force in the world and plenty of domestic (family, political and social violence) then you need lots of insanity to fuel it. You need a disturbed society that knows only emptiness, loneliness and unhappiness. America has this in spades and our advertisers and marketers (on NYC’s Madison Ave. – our “drug” pushers) know it! Cure this insanity and our economy drastically shrinks, buying contracts in a healthy and natural way. We will strike a balance and America’s role, in the world, will change for the better.

We’re putting all our time, energy and money in maintaining beauty and repairing broken bones (the easy stuff, but it’s also the expensive stuff) while little is ever spent in eradicating the insanity by encouraging the development of personal relationships with God, as you understood Him/Her, expressing one’s personal truth or seeing the value of being in touch with and expressing one’s own emotions. We’ve anesthetized ourselves to the point that we no longer feel pain while we all suffer. This country is in a crisis, it’s drowning in its own waste, but does anyone see this, does anyone feel its pain or hear its cries – no? Our health care crisis is merely a symptom of society’s emotional and spiritual void. Address these pent up feelings of anger, emptiness, fear, hurt, loneliness, God’s absence and the heavy demands put on the health care system will begin to diminish. Here’s how the late Father Anthony de Mello, SJ describes “waking up”,

“…when you're on the verge of going insane, raving mad, you're about to become either a psychotic or a mystic. That's what the mystic is, the opposite of the lunatic. Do you know one sign that you've woken up? It's when you are asking yourself, "Am I crazy, or are all of them crazy"? It really is.

Because we are crazy. The whole world is crazy. Certifiable lunatics! The only reason we're not locked up in an institution is that there are so many of us. So we're crazy. We're living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything. We're crazy to the point, I've come to believe, that if everybody agrees on something, you can be sure it's wrong! Every new idea, every great idea, when it first began was in a minority of one…

Following my last manic and psychotic episode, in the fall of 2006, I was facing a divorce, I had just endured my third arrest, where I was kindly assaulted in jail by a corrections officer who broke my two front teeth and busted open my chin, followed by another hospitalization. I was soon kicked out of graduate school, my old classmates and friends had long stopped calling me and the neighbors hated me. I had no career, no job and no income. While searching for answers, I picked up my mother’s copy of Fr. Anthony de Mello’s book, Awareness – The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, for some unknown reason, and I took it home with me to read.

de Mello’s above passage and many others validated my life and my bipolar disorder experience unlike anything that was ever said to me by any of the mental health professionals that I had came into contact with. This man-made system is hopeless because it’s dead. They’ll offer you all the drugs you want, but no one ever mentions God. No pill, no “drug” will ever supplant our Creator, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. Don’t we worship money, but it’s no substitute? We’ve marginalized God with these secular institutions and we wonder why things no longer work in America and in many parts of the world.

Not one of my licensed psychiatrists, nurses or counselors ever expressed to me, during any of my hospitalizations or office visits, which included a four-year depression while frequently entertaining suicidal thoughts, that “I was on the right road and that one day I would look back on this experience with much gratitude”. No one addressed the following question that now confronted me, “Am I crazy, or are all of them crazy (this society)”? Tony de Mello had already answered it for me.

All of my prior life experiences, both, the good ones and the bad had prepared me – as the student – to be open and ready to hear my new teacher and sage (de Mello) speak. He said what no one else could because he too had already woken up to this crazy world, to reality. He speaks the truth (or, at least, de Mello points out what some of the obstacles are to seeing the truth). Now, I was waking up. I saw myself as, both, the mystic and the lunatic, but now I understood why.

This would turn out to be the most transforming experience of my life. No longer was I a mistake, a freak or a victim. No longer was I holding on for dear life to society’s bottom hung while looking up and seeking its approval. A weakness instantly became a great strength. I was no longer standing at the bottom of the ladder, but instead I stood at the top. Finally, I had a complete story to tell, I had a message to share. At times, I’ve asked for my audience’s help, I’ve sought their understanding while explaining to them how the world works. On that day, I recovered from, both, alcoholism and mental illness. However, in the material sense, I was no closer to meeting your definition of “Recovery”, but does it even matter? While the remainder of my journey is unscripted and untold that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to stand on a mountaintop and shout out to the world, “Checkmate!”

Like a nine lb. iron ball, I was shot out of a canon and into a new dimension. Due to the ball and chains carried righteously by so many, few will ever arrive at this heaven on earth – where “all is well”, in spite of the world being a complete mess. Anthony de Mello calls it a strange paradox. It’s to have an awareness of the state of the world, but to no longer sweat over it. I can talk about it, I can write about it, but I can also divorce myself from it and go have a long lunch, take a nap or go watch the setting sun with friends, every evening, sitting on the city’s pier. As de Mello puts it, “When you awaken, when you understand, when you see, the world becomes right.”

How I see mental illness has changed as I’ve matured, both, emotionally and spiritually, over the past two decades. I no longer see it as being just a diagnosis of the wretched few, as many in the mental health profession and in society would love to believe, but instead it touches the lives of every American including our many leaders. No one is excluded!

I read Bazelon’s Executive Director Dr. Robert Bernstein’s arbitrary and very materialistic comments on his proposed definition of “recovery” and I couldn’t disagree with it more. It conveniently excludes or carves out the masses and their insane lifestyle, this organization and its board from the definition by making it the measuring stick of recovery. It reads…

“The definition of recovery must include concrete system changes needed to make recovery possible.
What appears to be missing from the proposed definition is a statement that "recovery" (as opposed to the process of recovery) means “living like people without a mental illness live, the core elements of which are having your own place to live, a job, and a partner and/or family”.

In many cases, this may be an unattainable, and more importantly, it maybe an irrelevant goal that your organization is pushing when it fails to see the problem in its true perspective. You’re arguing that anyone with a mental illness who lives below this threshold isn’t “recovered”. What if that definition or its underlying belief is all wrong? Have you ever thought of that? What if you’re wrong about your understanding of mental illness, its root cause and the difference between the actual problem and what’s merely a symptom of the problem? Can this organization even distinguish between the two?

What if your position isn’t offering up an honest solution, but instead you’re perpetuating the problem of social intolerance, out of convenience, dishonesty and/or ignorance? The Bazelon Center is supposed to be a leader in advocacy for the mentally ill, but what if your organization is actually committing malpractice or at the very least, hypocrisy? Your questionable mission states…

“For over three decades, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law has fought for the rights and dignity of people with mental disabilities. We work to fully integrate people with mental disabilities into our society, by protecting their right to self-determination and securing their access to needed services. We pursue our goals though policy advocacy, litigation, and public education.”

With the collective wisdom of its name sake, its thirty (+) year history, its current staff and the board of trustees that includes numerous physicians and professors of psychiatry and law, you’ve failed to figure out what I’ve concluded in my twenty-two year journey. You’ve failed to see that our entire society is insane. Look no further than the current economic, employment, housing (nationwide foreclosures), homelessness, military (two winless wars), political, social and the spiritual crisis facing our bankrupt nation, from sea to shining sea. Your theoretical definition of “recovery” fails to reflect the reality facing America, today. Your definition might as well be thrown in the back of someone’s desk drawer, as written. It’s useless, for now.

Unbeknownst to you, you’re actually contributing to mental illnesses’ stigma and taboo nature in our artificial and very dysfunctional society. Your inability to recognize the truth, to recognize this reality is proof of your own insanity. With this approach, The Bazelon Center never has to worry about “going out-of-business” because the real cure, social acceptance, will never arrive, at this rate. Reaching your goal will always be just around the corner, if you can only raise a few more dollars. Crossing this finish line will never happen.

This is criminal, but it’s typical of how most charities and non-profits operate. “Saving the bureaucracy” at all cost – by never living in reality, by never pursuing the truth and thus by never eradicating the root cause. Everyone suffers for the sake of the agency and nothing is ever learned. Your mission is in direct conflict with the basic acceptance of everyone regardless of one’s current disabilities or labels while rejecting humanity as it was created and orchestrated by God.

Should the definition for crippled people be “living like” people without impairments? Should the definition for African-Americans be “living like” people without colored skin? That’s ridiculous, but that’s exactly what you’re saying. Maybe the mentally ill ought to develop a definition that “we” can live with today, right now, and not have some foolish organization define it for us to satisfy their egos and this crazy world. Your email has made me mad. I intend to share this email with my entire audience. I hope it brings attention and honest change to The Bazelon Center, to its leadership and to the board of trustees. Some self-reflection by this organization is warranted. How can your organization be above the humiliation felt by all those with this illness?

I didn’t earn it, I didn’t deserve it, but I think you have. The mentally ill know all about its stigma, the stinging rejection felt and the misunderstanding at the hands of the mental health profession, this society and by organizations, like yours, claiming to represent us and our interests at Washington’s finest cocktail parties and fundraisers. You’re just another leech in the field of mental illness and in our society.

What’s needed is a paradigm shift in thinking about mental illness, the mentally ill and our society, but it will only come about from looking at the problem differently with great courage and honesty. The Bazelon Center’s worldview is obsolete. It’s time for a sea change. By easily reframing the debate, the mentally ill don’t have to achieve any of your measurements to become “whole” when our entire society can easily be defined as mentally ill, based on its own reported actions.

It puts everyone on the same humble plane because we’re all crazy. Argue this point, this truth and then everyone you know can be slapped with this same label and we can all begin to be a part of the solution. I bet you don’t like being called crazy, but you really are. You care about what other Washingtonians and your colleagues think of you, you care about your reputation and that dictates what you tell the world – something less than the inconvenient truth. This is a symptom of neurosis and a sure sign that you’re well on your way to going “nuts”. I can prove all the above.

Continuing…

The proposed definition should be revised to make clear that people will be able to achieve "recovery" in this sense, which is readily feasible with current technologies promoted by SAMHSA, including scattered site supported housing, supported employment, assertive community treatment (ACT) and peer support. In addition, the proposed definition must include the explicit expectation that service systems will be re-oriented to enable individuals to live in their own place, have a job, and have a partner and/or family.

These elements are critical to make recovery a meaningful concept rooted in concrete expectations about what is needed to afford individuals with mental illnesses the opportunity to live full lives as members of their communities, consistent with the ADA's integration mandate and the Olmstead decision. Without these elements, the proposed definition of recovery would enable service systems to continue treating individuals with mental illnesses living much as they have in the past, without providing the chance to live the same way that the rest of us do. The definition of recovery cannot be one that permits these individuals to remain dependent while "working on" a recovery that public service systems can and should put in their reach. Recovery must encompass more than a set of slogans about hope, respect, relationships and purpose. It must include the specific expectations above that are necessary to make these concepts meaningful.”

The above is a definition written about individuals who’ve fallen out of society, who’ve fallen through the cracks and they’ll never return to this fabricated world. If given the truth about the insanity of our culture, they have a chance to break free and go in a different direction by marching to the beat of their own drum, in freedom and happiness. They have a chance to discover their talents and to find purpose while a dumbfounded world sits back and looks on. That can really happen because it happened to me. What was once the worst thing that ever happened to me became the best thing that ever happened to me? It’s a reminder that we really don’t know what’s good for us.

History is full of crazy people with genius talents who lived in way that validated their own authenticity and values, their talents while the masses compromise themselves by banging on the community drum like programmed robots and zombies. That’s what’s going on in America, today. All these “sane” people are sweating over their job security, their home values, their marriages, their retirement plans and Wall Street, the politics in Washington. I’ve been “committed” by judges and diagnosed by doctors. Today, I could care less about what the masses are so worry about. What’s crazy is American politics, capitalism, Christianity, democracy, Judaism, Islam, the legal system, public education, Wall Street, war…

I live free while all of you live in fear, in bondage. Now, who’s the sane one here? Dr. Bernstein is troubled with mental illness because he doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t understand himself. Ever spent a night locked up in jail or a week in a psych ward? Have you ever loss your job, your marriage, your reputation or all your friends due to an illness that was beyond your control? You never will understand it until you spot your own cancer, your own insanity. This society is every bit as crazy as the nuts seeing their psychiatrists, those picking up their medications at the pharmacy, who live in group homes or alone in an apartment, who sit in jails or sleep in mental institutions.

The only difference is we take our medication while the rest of you need to! You’re in deep denial. The mentally ill are always the last to know. Accept yourself and you’ll naturally come accept us. Keep rejecting yourself and you’ll never accept us. Isn’t that the basic problem? The problem of mental illness resides within you and not within me. It never has. If you want me to change to fit your concept of recovery, I say you change first and then we’ll talk. You be the example you want the rest of us to follow, otherwise your talk is cheap.

Robert Bernstein, PhD
President and CEO
Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
www.bazelon.org

"The Bazelon Center envisions an America where people who have mental disabilities exercise their own life choices.”

VOTE for Bazelon Center's Comments on "Recovery" - DEADLINE FRIDAY (Midnight EST)

UPDATED Alert -- August 25, 2011 --The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) seeks comments on a proposed definition of "recovery" from mental health and substance abuse disorders. The comment period was extremely short and ends at midnight eastern time THIS FRIDAY, AUGUST 26th. Now we need your support!
Please VOTE for Bazelon's Comments Here: http://bit.ly/BazelonRecoveryDef

Tell SAMHSA the definition of recovery must include concrete steps toward service system changes that are necessary to make recovery possible.

Comments Submitted by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law:

The definition of recovery must include concrete system changes needed to make recovery possible.

What appears to be missing from the proposed definition is a statement that "recovery" (as opposed to the process of recovery) means living like people without a mental illness live, the core elements of which are having your own place to live, a job, and a partner and/or family. The proposed definition should be revised to make clear that people will be able to achieve "recovery" in this sense, which is readily feasible with current technologies promoted by SAMHSA, including scattered site supported housing, supported employment, assertive community treatment (ACT) and peer support. In addition, the proposed definition must include the explicit expectation that service systems will be re-oriented to enable individuals to live in their own place, have a job, and have a partner and/or family.

These elements are critical to make recovery a meaningful concept rooted in concrete expectations about what is needed to afford individuals with mental illnesses the opportunity to live full lives as members of their communities, consistent with the ADA's integration mandate and the Olmstead decision. Without these elements, the proposed definition of recovery would enable service systems to continue treating individuals with mental illnesses living much as they have in the past, without providing the chance to live the same way that the rest of us do. The definition of recovery cannot be one that permits these individuals to remain dependent while "working on" a recovery that public service systems can and should put in their reach. Recovery must encompass more than a set of slogans about hope, respect, relationships and purpose. It must include the specific expectations above that are necessary to make these concepts meaningful.

SAMHSA Proposed Definition:
http://blog.samhsa.gov/2011/08/12/recovery-defined-%E2%80%93-give-us-your-feedback

Recovery from mental health and substance abuse disorders is defined as "a process of change through which individuals work to improve their own health and wellbeing, live a self-directed life, and strive to achieve their full potential." SAMHSA also describes four dimensions of recovery (health, home, purpose, and community) and ten guiding principles that support recovery (recovery is person-driven; it occurs through many pathways; it is holistic; it is supported by peers and allies; it is supported through relationships and social networks; it is culturally-based and influenced; it is supported by addressing trauma; it involves individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility; it is based on respect; and it emerges from hope). More detail on these principles is available at the link above.

Support Bazelon's Comments Here: http://bit.ly/BazelonRecoveryDef

Thank you!

For the past four years, I’ve been receiving the mass emails from The (Judge David L.) Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. My impression of your organization based on these emails alone is a negative one. It’s mostly about asking me to take some sort of action like calling my representatives in Congress or to give money to this cause. More times then not I don’t even bother to stop and read these emails, anymore. They often lack substance. In preparing this email, I paid a visit to The Center’s website to collect the names and email address of the senior staff, as well as, the board of trustees.

I found that only two staffers even have their email addresses made public on their bios, Dominic Holt, the Communications Director, and Clay Braswell, the Development Director – the Spin Doctor and the Money Man. All communications to the Executive Director Robert Bernstein, PhD. and a rest of senior staffers must go through the center’s general mailbox. Whether your email actually gets into the intended hands is a mystery.

This configuration is revealing and it shows a true disconnect by the center’s leadership. The communication is one-way (outbound) and not two-way. There’s an appearance and maybe a reality of not wanting to be bothered by the little people that you’re suppose to be serving.

As a political and social writer, I’ve been sharing my commentaries for the past year with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev among other heads of state. It’s actually easier to communicate with President Medvedev by email and I can attach my essays on his official webpage, http://eng.letters.kremlin.ru/, than it is to write to The Bazelon Center’s executive director. Something is wrong with this picture given that it’s 2011 and that the technology isn’t the issue, it’s another mindset problem.

After reviewing the board of trustees, which includes many doctors and lawyers, only one person, Harvey Rosenthal, appears to have a diagnosis of mental illness and has been hospitalized for it, at the age of 19, among the twenty-three active trustees. He is “the executive director of the New York State Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services and chair of the state's Mental Health Action Network, he speaks out statewide and nationally for the rights of psychiatric disabilities...” Mr. Rosenthal is a twenty-year advocate of the cause.

Another, Jacki McKinney, M.S.W., is “a survivor of trauma, addiction, homelessness and the psychiatric and justice systems”. Ms. McKinney is “a family advocate specializing in issues affecting African women and their children”. The last trustee, Cynthia M. Stinger, is “a parent whose teenage son has multiple disabilities”.

The remaining twenty are highly educated, but lack any personal experience or connection with the illness. This board is out of balance. If anything the makeup of the board should reflect and/or exceed the definition that Dr. Bernstein seeks to have adopted by SAMSHA. Bazelon currently fails this test. There are plenty of high functioning professions from many different fields, with mental illness, that are more passionate, more understanding of the issues involved because it’s so damn personal to them and to me. We all have “some skin in the game”, its time for Bazelon’s leadership and its board to reflect this, as well.

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Note – The following Bazelon Trustees whose email addresses were not available at the time of this reply are – Dana Bazelon, Eileen A. Bazelon, Jacqueline Dryfoos, Terri Langston, Jacki McKinney, Rhonda Robinson-Beale, W. Allen Schaffer, David Schapiro, Cynthia M. Stinger, Martin Tolchin and Sally Zinman.

Source: The Bazelon Center – Board of Trustees
http://www.bazelon.org/Who-We-Are/Trustees.aspx
de Mello, SJ Anthony, Awareness – The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. Copyright © 1990

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “To: The Bazelon Center’s Exec. Director and its Board of Trustees" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

Dear Senator Nelson (The day our democracy died.)

2011-08-04T16:07:00.007-05:00

Introduction

“…We're crazy to the point, I've come to believe, that if everybody agrees on something, you can be sure it's wrong! Every new idea, every great idea, when it first began was in a minority of one…”
– Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J.

By the time you receive this commentary, the crisis that’s facing our elected officials, in Washington, and that’s gripping the nation may have been averted. If not, I’ve fled the country with my few precious bars of gold! Regardless, know that the real crisis is far from over. In fact, it’s only getting worse. Our government is unraveling right before our eyes under its own dead weight and not at the hands of our enemies – al-Qaeda and the Taliban – or our frenemies – China or anyone else we can think of to blame. This one is of our own ego’s making.

Our form of government known as “democracy” or a representative democracy, call it whatever you want, no longer works. It’s become too corrupt, insane and self-destructive to face reality, to govern in the interest of all, instead of in the interest of a few. It can’t see, what’s become so obvious to the world, how its own actions are inflicting pain and suffering on so many. The Washington establishment made up of elected officials, government bureaucrats, law firms, lobbying firms and the media are in deep denial. They’re too entrenched in supporting the status quo and they like it that way. Its behavior is no different than that of an alcoholic, drug or ‘sex’ addict who’s always deflecting blame for his/her inappropriate behavior by pointing the finger at someone else. It’s never their fault.

Our cozy media with their correspondents embedded in The White House, on Capitol Hill, in The Pentagon…are accomplices in treason against the American people, their broadcasting licenses, which are issued by this same corrupt government that they’re suppose to be reporting on, should be pulled. Under this present arrangement, no news would be better than what they’re feeding us each morning and night. While one dose maybe harmless, the long-term exposure of this radioactivity will kill you. It’s killing this society. CNN and the other news outlets have gone from being an American asset to becoming a liability. Their value to society has greatly diminished as has much of TV entertainment.

The U.S. government is no less secretive or transparent with its own citizens and taxpayers than our former Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, was with its citizens and us. Truth and freedom, if they’re indeed the cornerstone of a democracy they can’t exist, much less flourish with all our national secrets along with the departments and agencies established to protect them from whom – from us, from China, Russia or Israel? Secrets erect barriers between individuals, between free citizens and their representatives, between our representatives and the government bureaucrats and ultimately between societies. Secrets impede spiritual and emotional growth and intimacy. It undermines peace and security and not the other way around. It’s a growing cancer within man and in our society. No transparency = no freedom. No freedom = death. Thus, a grand American ideal must die in order for its people to finally move forward.

The late Fr. Anthony de Mello tells the following story of a Jesuit [priest] who once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him about the relative value of communism, socialism and capitalism. Father Arrupe gave him a lovely reply. He said, "A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it." People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully. How true. Capitalism has proven to be just as dishonest, deadly and unresponsive to its own people, as it has to the rest of the world.

Our great experiment, democracy, has been shown, repeatedly, to be no better and no worse than any other form of government. In the matter of human rights, this government loves to push its index finger into the eyes of our global neighbors while denying the problems caused by our domestic and foreign policies that have relegated human life to that of a sewer rat. Just ask our troops, our veterans and their families, just ask those living in crime-filled inner-city neighborhoods, just ask kids attending dangerous and dilapidated schools, just ask the addict, the homeless, the incarcerated (just ask Army Pvt. Bradley Manning and all those being held at Guantanamo Bay without due process), just ask the insane, the needy and the sick existing across America. This shame isn’t a sign of a nation’s greatness, but a sign of its mediocrity and a life of hell that’s endorsed by our out-of-touch politicians, in Washington. They’re actions are criminally insane and we’re constantly being asked to accept all this as the best they can do. If they want our society to be different then it would be.

What you or I might do, in a fit of rage, to our next door neighbor that would land us in prison for life, the United States has repeatedly done to its global neighbors with virtually no noticeable consequences. The laws that govern this land and its citizens should be the same ones that our own government lives by in its dealing with the world. Acts of violence have never produced long-term peace. Any romantic notions we might have about democracy has to be tempered with this stark reality. We have to wake up to this truth. For all the patriotic concerts, flag waving and fireworks on our national holidays too many problems are being papered over as we briefly come together, with our anxiety and fake smiles, to participate in yet another unearned celebration. We’re enjoying the desserts of “freedom” without first being required to finish our supper.

This government and much of our society have been idling for way too long. Greatness has given way to being second-rate. Problems in our society abound from Maine to Florida, from New York to California. Our streams and rivers are teeming with so many environmental, political, religious, social and spiritual troubles that their ripe for the picking. We only need a small scoop net to fill up our boat. Americans for all our material wealth we, as individuals, don’t know how to live nor do we know how to solve our basic problems – ourselves. We don’t know how to work successfully through a personal crisis or trial. We seem to only know how to deny everything and runaway. That’s the basic issue, at hand, and a major character flaw of this society.

Many of us have gotten, both, a religious and an academic education while being instilled to some degree in social etiquette, but not one minute was ever spent in the first twenty-one years, of our development, on how to solve everyday problems other than the artificial ones found on test day. What value is any of this if it takes an individual and society, as a whole, off course from True north, from finding one’s talents, one’s purpose in life and one’s joy for living? What if our best institutions are no more enlightened than a four year old? A free child can speak the truth; I don’t think the Church, our government or our universities can. Some of these cherished institutions may have to crumble, in order, for real change to occur. So be it.

Let me briefly continue with what my friend, Fr. Anthony de Mello, was saying (at the beginning of my introduction)…“Every new idea, every great idea, when it first began was in a minority of one. That man called Jesus Christ - minority of one. Everybody was saying something different from what he was saying. The Buddha - minority of one. Everybody was saying something different from what he was saying. I think it was Bertrand Russell who said, "Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy". That's well and accurately put. You're going to hear lots of blasphemies during these days. "He hath blasphemed!" Because people are crazy, they're lunatics, and the sooner you see this, the better for your mental and spiritual health…”

America is suffering from, both, a leadership and a spiritual crisis. Our next election is only fifteen months away and the slate of Republican hopefuls is dreadful. The current crisis has clearly highlighted President Obama’s failure to govern. He hasn’t lived up to his own campaign promises of “hope and change”. He’s bitten off more than he can chew. As President, he’s followed the conventional wisdom of Washington politics and it’s failed him, badly. It’s failed all of us. The president doesn’t deserve another term in the White House and America doesn’t need to be dragged through another four years of this. None of these candidates are fit to serve.

We stand at a crossroads. We need someone who transcends party politics, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic standing, nationality, culture. We need someone who has everyone’s interest at heart, even the world’s, so we can sail through this current storm, together. We need a unifier, not a divider. We need someone who can see through our man-made labels, who can see the similarities and not get all hung up on the superficial differences. There’s no outrunning this one or blindly throwing good money at it. We’re broke. It’s time to belly up to the bar and pay our tab. The country needs to go in a different direction. Maybe our nation’s capitol needs to be moved out of the District of Columbia. It’s morphed into something other than what it was intended to be. Beyond the national mall, which is lined with some world-class museums, there are a couple of whorehouses.

I’ve heard many times Americans say that the founding document of the United States is our constitution, but I disagree. I believe its Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. He laid out the grounds for declaring our independence, the purpose of the new country and our reasons for going to war with Great Britain. He wrote that “…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator [not by King George III, not by the Pope or by the president] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Fulfilling his vision has been a costly one, beginning first with the institution of slavery which was allowed to persist under the formation of this new nation. It’s been the United States’ greatest sin and the main source of hypocrisy. Eighty-four years later, a great war was fought over this issue and afterwards a visionary, The President of the United States and the commander-in-chief for the Union paid, for ending this sin, with his own life. Historians have long wondered what re-construction would have looked like under Abraham Lincoln. Instead, more pain and suffering was inflicted on all – free slaves, women while basic civil rights were denied to all minorities, the disabled and gays.

The consequences of slavery can still be felt today between the two primary races and our conflicting cultures. Am I right? In recent years, I’ve pondered whether our country is moving forward or backwards. Some days, it’s hard to tell. If our nation’s forgotten goals are to fulfill Jefferson’s ideals then we have a ways to go. We have our work cut out for us. A great tension confronts our nation on the issue of the economy – an artificial environment vs. a natural one, one that requires infinite growth operating on a planet with finite resources or one that ebbs and flows, like, the tides, like, the seasons.

One demands conformity, slavery of the mind and body resulting in lots of misery while the other seeks individual freedom and happiness. What does this society, of freedom and happiness, actually look like – well, we’ve never seen it in modern times maybe not since the beginning of civilization? This natural life has become foreign to us while the fabricated world, which seems so “natural” and comfortable, violates the laws of nature.

The current petroleum-based economy produces cheap, inorganic compounds that make tens of thousands of beneficial products “while the supply lasts”, but they don’t easily breakdown in the environment or in our bodies leaving our landfills full and pollution everywhere. A mature conversation is needed to address this issue and the environment, in general. Unfortunately, we lack that mature society. We have to get off the “drugs” first, so we can clear our minds and our bodies. We need to grow up. We must move away from the convenient, the familiar political and social positions, which have never settled a single issue and move courageously towards spiritual solutions that end the debates, once and for all. That’s actually possible.

Looking at our history and all the social movements that have taken place, I have to believe that we are progressing, ever so slowly, in spite of the many temporary setbacks and the Biblical anchors. We might expect America’s current financial and political scenario to be facing other countries like Greece, Ireland or Portugal, but not us. Yet, we’re in a mess and all attempts to rationalize it away or to minimize it by the governments and the media’s experts is extremely dangerous. Has the other shoe even dropped?

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. For all the resources spent by the United States in time, energy, money, manpower and equipment to solve our “terrorism problem”, we’ve grown weaker, not stronger, as a country. How can this be? How could all our pain and suffering be channeled into anger and violence result in us being no better off than the day of the attacks? Obviously, we focused on the wrong problem, we fingered the wrong culprit. Was this a case of dishonesty or laziness on our part? Where’s the presidential commission looking into this screw up? Do we want to know the truth? As a result, we’ve become a very fragile nation – economically, emotionally, militarily, physically, politically, socially and spiritually.

We’re facing a Gettysburg Address-moment where someone, with a vision, can explain to the rest of us why we’re here, how we got here and how we’re going to upright this ship. He or she needs to stand up, now. Is this leader already working in Washington? Is this leader serving as a governor? Are they working in a corporate boardroom or in the halls of academia? Or are they among the millions of unemployed and foreclosed on?

In June, I received an email from The Nation magazine asking me to submit my ideas for re-inventing capitalism, in four hundred words or less. Rather than produce a completely new essay, I decided I would submit a piece that I first wrote, in 2009, following the U.S. and global economic crisis. My essay, “Corporate consciousness”, was sent out to my audience that fall where it caught the attention of Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren.

Having seen no improvement in our economic and social situation, I though this piece was still relevant. Since two years have passed, I’ve added some new thoughts to the original version before emailing it to The Nation. Never one to share my work with just one set of eyes, I went on to distribute it to my faculty members teaching in business, government, law and public policy schools among others. Most of you have not seen the original piece or the revision. For going the extra mile, I received the following reply…

"Dear Mr. Burnett, Thank you...for forwarding your piece to Professor [Michael E.] Porter...we found it interesting thinking and a good read."
--Stacie Rabinowitz, Research Associate
The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness
Harvard Business School
Cambridge, MA
June 21, 2011

So, one essay shared over a two-year period generated a positive reaction from two distinguished Harvard professors. Not bad. “Corporate consciousness” (v 2011) is one of two essays attached for your viewing. The inspiration for this latest email is my commentary “Dear Senator Nelson (The day our democracy died.)” and it follows this introduction (It begins on page seven.). This essay was written in the days leading up to the federal debt ceiling limit deadline.

Since April, I’ve continued to grow my audience. I’ve added more top universities on the American West Coast and several schools in my hometown of Mobile, AL. I’ve also begun a campaign to grow my footprint in Mobile, as well as, in Washington, DC via the social networking site Linkedin. Already, I’ve picked up a number of notables including corporate CEOs, senior congressional staffers, political personalities in the media, senior fellows at several policy institutes and numerous public relations firms.

Finally, I recently invited Venezuela President Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S., Dr. Angelo Rivero Santos, to join this audience after watching two “pro-Chavez” documentaries on the “dictator”. Both films complimented one another while a third highlighted the U.S.’s deadly influence on the democratically-elected states of Latin America, during the 20th century. Together these films have opened my eyes while changing my opinion of Chavez and Venezuela. It’s also educated me on some of the good things happening, both, culturally and economically, throughout South America.

Sadly, my prior attitude of President Chavez was based solely on how the U.S. media has portrayed him along with the condemning statements made by the Bush Administration (For the record, I voted for W., twice. Regrettably.). Much of what President Bush said and did while in office has since been proven to be wrong, violent and costly for Americans and for many others. Little was accomplished. So, who’s really telling the truth? Who’s brainwashing whom and why? It’s a reminder to all of us, whose dogma are we marching to when we refuse to use our own senses and experiences?

Enjoy!

Ted

P > 8,400

See attachments (2) – Dear Senator Nelson (The day our democracy died.) See Page 7.
(Some minor edits have been made.)

– Corporate consciousness v 2011

References:

The Declaration of Independence – http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
de Mello, Fr. Anthony quotes – http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_de_Mello
de Mello, Fr. Anthony – Awareness – The Perils and Opportunities of Reality © 1990

About – Fr. Anthony de Mello, SJ (1931-1987) was a native of India, a Jesuit priest and an American-trained psychotherapist. de Mello gave talks at spiritual conferences around the world. He wrote several books on spirituality and meditation. An institute was named in his honor at Fordham, a Jesuit university, in New York, NY.

Note: The following is my reply to an email that I received from Senator Bill Nelson (FL-D) asking me to "weigh on the debt plans". I did, see below.

July 27, 2011

The day our democracy died.

By

Ted Burnett

Dear Senator Nelson,

Only a sane man could possibly understand the following comments therefore this excludes all members of Congress and the president. At one time, in American history, our new political system, called democracy or “a representative democracy” with its parties honestly disagreed over pieces of legislation, but they found a way to reach an agreement or a compromise. In the beginning, the system seemed to work well. Congress passed these bills and they moved on to the president's desk, for his signature.

Over time, these honest disagreements were replaced with alternative political realities (or ideologies) that each party started defending for the sake of keeping their voting base happy. Sometimes it was done on the grounds of principle, but other times it was done on the grounds of pure politics. These new political views were based less and less on the true belief and more out of convenience, many times it led to mutual back scratching “across the aisle”. As a result, the political system began to die.

Today, insanity rules, in the nation’s capitol, not honest disagreements between mature men and women. Washington, as a whole, is out of control and nobody wants to face this reality. Most seem incapable of working together to solve real problems, so instead they invent them. The current crisis that you're asking me to comment on is merely a symptom of an artificial political system that’s gone bankrupt. This political system lacks truth, which is the basic building block or foundation of all living matter including an open society, thus our government suffers from too much corruption. Does anyone working in Washington ever bother addressing this chronic issue during their press conferences – never? It’s a deadly infection, a malignant tumor that’s metastasized and is killing the patient – America.

The crisis and your plea is the latest evidence that 535 mental patients are now unable to work with each other in the interest of 310 million Americans and for all those dependent on this government for their paycheck, their Social Security and disability checks, their healthcare... Somehow none of this is enough motivation to get the members of Congress from, both, the Republican and Democrat parties to come together and solve this crisis that y'all have made for everyone else.

You’re being paid to perform a job on my behalf and many others, if you can't accomplish the task in a timely manner then I would suggest that you and your colleagues resign and head straight for the door. Please leave town and don't stop by K Street for a job interview. There are tens of millions of out of work Americans and surely some of them are capable of doing as good or even a better job than you and your colleagues are doing. Why should I suffer, for one minute, at the hands of your insanity, at the hands of your incompetence and recklessness? Why should anyone have to? I would be embarrassed to call myself a member of this Congress. Now, go wave your flag at that!

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “Dear Senator Nelson (The day our government died.)" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

My reply: The jury is still out

2011-08-01T09:37:00.009-05:00

In Sunday's edition, of the Press-Register, there was a story about the BCA's annual meeting held at the Grand Hotel, in Point Clear, AL. Saturday’s keynote speaker was General Stanley McCrystal. The P-R story follows: Gen. Stanley McChrystal: 'Jury is out' on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. This email is addressed to BCA President and CEO William J. Canary.

August 1, 2011

My reply: The jury is still out.

By

Ted Burnett

Mr. Canary,

Originally, my email was intended for the eyes of former Chairman of the Business Council of Alabama (BCA) Sandy Stimpson, but I'm unable to locate his email address. I'm well aware of his past involvement and strong support of the BCA. After reading the story, I thought I would write to him. Maybe you can forward my remarks. Appearing in today's Press-Register was a story on your annual meeting held at the Grand Hotel and it mentioned that retired 4-Star General Stanley McCrystal gave the keynote address.

His appearance seemed rather tasteless and it doesn't speak well of the BCA or its board. I'm referring to McCrystal's involvement in the cover up of Army Ranger Pat Tillman's death due to a friendly fire incident while in Afghanistan, in 2004 . McCrystal’s troubles didn’t stop there as he signed off on awarding a Silver Star for Pat’s “heroics” in fighting the “enemy” before getting killed.

According to Wikipedia, the Silver Star is the third highest military decoration that can be awarded to any member of the United States armed forces “for valor in the face of the enemy.” Pat’s death didn’t qualify him for this honor. McCrystal knew this, but he signed off on it anyway as part of the U.S. Army's fabricated story. This snapshot is a reflection in the character of, both, McCrystal and this military institution when a crisis arises. The truth always seems to be the first thing to get shot.

This event was widely reported in the media and hearings were held by Congress so I know your organization was well aware of McCrystal’s baggage before you even invited him to come speak. The decision shows a lack of character, consciousness and sensitivity by the dues-paying members of your organization and more troubling is how pervasive this same attitude is throughout the C-suite, in corporate America. If the problem interferes with profits or image then just sweep it under the rug.

For your board of directors to support his selection as the convention speaker is disturbing. You don't get it. The general’s comments, during his speech, on how unstable Afghanistan's government is and that the "jury is still out" on their future at the very moment our democracy is on the brink of collapse, in Washington, is laughable. Who's government was he talking about? This man is brainwashed after too many years of playing Army like so many business and government leaders in America. He’s convinced of his remarks, were you? McCrystal has been allowed to live in a world that simply doesn't exist and look at the consequences everytime he gets up before an audience and speaks. Did your members eat it up?

In 2008, capitalism stubbed its toe when it needed a $700b bailout and the economy has yet to recover. It won't. Now, our "democracy" is staring death in the face. The root cause, to the downfall of these two cherished institutions, is widespread corruption, but no one will admit it. Your actions indicate that 'all is well' and that "character doesn't matter". I'm a political writer with a global audience that exceeds 8,000 contacts including heads of state, foreign ministers, ambassadors, business executives (including two billionaires Charles Schwab and Ted Turner), federal judges and lawmakers, Washington think tanks and over seven thousand professors and university presidents, in ten countries. Over eight hundred teach at Harvard University alone, plus faculty at Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cambridge, Oxford...

The graduate schools include the top 5 U.S. business and law schools, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report (2009). My work has been recognized by U.S. Representative Jo Bonner (AL-R), Senator Jeff Sessions (AL-R), Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, 'University' Professor Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School, NYU Law Professor David Rosenbloom...joining them in my audience are many American notables from various fields. Since 2008, I've repeatedly said to my audience that our country is dead. Your actions only enforce this opinion. Everyone has gone AWOL.

biography -- www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

blog -- www.toxicnation.blogspot.com

Source:

Silver Star – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Star

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “My reply: The jury is still out." by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

My reply: Weigh in on the debt plans

2011-07-27T11:10:00.006-05:00

Note: The following is my reply to an email that I received from Senator Bill Nelson (FL-D) asking me to "weigh on the debt plans". I did, see below.

July 27, 2011

Dear Senator Nelson,

Only a sane man could possibly understand the following comments therefore this excludes all members of Congress and the president. At one time, in American history, our new political system, called democracy or “a representative democracy” with its parties honestly disagreed over pieces of legislation, but they found a way to reach an agreement or a compromise. In the beginning, the system seemed to work well. Congress passed these bills and they moved on to the president's desk, for his signature.

Over time, these honest disagreements were replaced with alternative political realities (or ideologies) that each party started defending for the sake of keeping their voting base happy sometimes on the grounds of principle, but other times it was on the grounds of pure politics. These new political views were based less and less on the true belief and more out of convenience, many times it led to mutual back scratching “across the aisle”. As a result, the political system began to die.

Today, insanity rules, in the nation’s capitol, not honest disagreements between mature men and women. Washington, as a whole, is out of control and nobody wants to face this reality. Most seem incapable of working together to solve real problems, so instead they invent them. The current crisis that you're asking me to comment on is merely a symptom of an artificial political system that’s gone bankrupt. This political system lacks truth, which is the basic building block or foundation of all living matter including an open society, thus our government suffers from too much corruption. Does anyone working in Washington ever bother addressing this chronic issue during their press conferences – never? It’s a deadly infection, a malignant tumor that’s metastasized and is killing the patient – America.

The crisis and your plea is the latest evidence that 535 mental patients are now unable to work with each other in the interest of 310 million Americans and for all those dependent on this government for their paycheck, their Social Security and disability checks, their healthcare... Somehow none of this is enough motivation to get the members of Congress from, both, the Republican and Democrat parties to come together and solve this crisis that y'all have made for everyone else.

You’re being paid to perform a job on my behalf and many others, if you can't accomplish the task in a timely manner then I would suggest that you and your colleagues resign and head straight for the door. Please leave town and don't stop by K Street for a job interview. There are tens of millions of out of work Americans and surely some of them are capable of doing as good or even a better job than you and your colleagues are doing. Why should I suffer, for one minute, at the hands of your insanity, at the hands of your incompetence and recklessness? Why should anyone have to? I would be embarrassed to call myself a member of this Congress. Now, go wave your flag at that!

Sincerly,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “My reply: Weigh in on the debt plans" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

My reply: The Supreme Court was right to strike down California’s video game law

2011-07-06T09:55:00.014-05:00

Note: The following link, The Supreme Court was right to strike down California’s video game law, is an op-ed that was written by Professor Catherine J. Ross of the George Washington University School of Law, in Washington, DC, which appeared in my local newspaper over the weekend. My reply to her piece follows. Enjoy!

July 6, 2011

Professor Ross,

I read your supportive op-ed of the Supreme Court's ruling, which struck down California's violent video game law as a violation of free speech. I can only wonder how this same ruling might be applied towards children, who are out of school for the summer, and watching endless hours of pornography every day, on their computer. Is this a matter of free speech, as well? Are there no natural boundaries in this society where extreme capitalism always profits at the expense of the individual and this very sick society?

We are, indeed, a warped nation and Scalia's majority opinion that its "difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try" seems to only confirm it. It's a pretty dishonest and lazy statement to make for someone who safely holds his job as a justice for life. It certainly runs counter to one of Thomas Jefferson's famous quotes – "For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead". Scalia and the majority didn't even bother to investigate it. The court has failed to protect the American people. That's long been the case with this court and Washington, in general, for some time.

The nation’s capital is a morally corrupt city with all these crazy ideologies that simply don't work, in any of the three federal branches. All are in a mess. There’s no better example than the following. Currently, the Republicans in Congress and the president are engaged in a game of Russian roulette, with over 300 million Americans being held hostage, and all of us are staring down the barrel of a gun over the federal debt limit and the possibility of this government defaulting on its loans.

To think that some in Washington (the high court) are above it all is total nonsense and lacks all truth. You live there (working at GWU), I don't. I see what's going on, but I think you've lost your objectivity. You're in the soup and you're just another cooked rabbit trying to make waves.

Once again, the disease called Washington has quickly spread and infected all of America. We have become a toxic nation at the hands of a relative few and I think your piece has added your name to this notorious and very dysfunctional Beltway society. The lack of reality as our country is coming apart, at the seams, is truly insane and mindboggling to watch. Y'all should definitely be quarantined.

Rather than support the rights of children to get their hands on any and all X-rated material, why don't you use your position, as a law professor, and your talents more constructively by telling your fellow Washingtonians something they’ve not heard in a very longtime – the truth? It would be shocking to see and hear, but very refreshing. You should try it some time.

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “My reply: The Supreme Court was right to strike down California’s video game law" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

My reply: No silver bullet for Alabama's insurance crisis by Sen. Ben Brooks

2011-06-19T16:52:00.017-05:00

June 19, 2011

The following link, No silver bullet for Alabama's insurance crisis, is an op-ed written by Alabama senator Ben Brooks (Mobile-R) appearing in today's edition of the Press-Register. My reply follows.

Sen. Brooks,

The Republicans love to promote the virtues of the free market while demagoguing a government of any size and it's influence. Isn't the free market working, just fine, on this issue of coastal home insurance even though some carriers have left the market, the rates have gone up significantly and the coverage has been restricted? As a Republican, you're arguing for a government intervention to solve this supply and demand issue. Am I right?

I wish you felt that same way about these high gas prices at the pump. What's the problem with insurance -- is it simply a matter of higher rates following a series of storms caused by the overbuilding and underinsuring, in hurricane-prone areas, during the last real estate bubble?

It looks like even government action can't bring the rates down through new laws, so what's the root cause of this crisis and why can't you pro-market politicians just accept this new reality -- a new world with higher insurance rates due to greater coastal exposures and increased rebuilding costs? Floridians know all about this.

I think the real problem is that it's becoming more and more expensive to live and work, in America. The cost of doing business is eclipsing our stagnant wages leaving everyone in debt. We're pricing ourselves "out of the market" with our various lifestyle choices from getting an expensive college education with loans, driving around town in luxury cars and SUVs, maintaining and updating a home that's lost value, paying for out of control health care premiums to retiring without a solid pension or having an adequately funded 401k plan.

If insurance carriers and the reinsurance market aren't making money by collecting our premiums then they're surely investing elsewhere, either, on Wall Street or in the global market, such as, in developing countries where profits may be much higher and the risks are perceived to be lower than selling wind policies on the Gulf Coast.

Follow the money and you'll know whether your wasting your time and energy, or not. Regardless of what you want or Montgomery does, these carriers may never come back to Alabama anytime soon. Wouldn't you like to know this, once and for all?

"Follow the truth wherever it takes you". -- Thomas Jefferson

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “My reply: No Silver Bullet" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

How would you reinvent Capitalism? (Corporate consciousness)

2011-06-13T10:01:00.001-05:00

Note: Last week, I received the following email from The Nation magazine seeking my input on their upcoming special issue on “Reimagining Capitalism.” I am unfamiliar with this publication and I’m sure how I got on their mailing list. Their email reads,

“The Nation asked sixteen activists and economic thinkers, “If you had the ability to reinvent American capitalism, where would you start? What would you change to make it less destructive and domineering, more focused on what people really need for fulfilling lives?"

Their responses provide a provocative sampler of smart ideas—concrete proposals for reforming the dysfunctional economic system in fundamental ways. These brief essays should stimulate imaginations and maybe start some healthy arguments. At the very least, they demonstrate that the nation is alive with fresh thinking and bold outlines for big change, and that we can change the way we talk about what’s possible.

Now we want to hear from you. Send us your succinct proposal—not more than 400 words please!—by July 4. We'll publish a forum of reader responses with elaboration and annotations for the most imaginative ideas.
All the best,
Peter Rothberg
Associate Publisher, The Nation”

So, that’s the task, at hand. In August 2009, I wrote the following essay after the U.S. and global economic meltdown. That year, it was one of three commentaries, that I wrote, which were submitted to the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) by its Chair, Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, who’s a member of my audience. This piece has been modified and expanded to address this discussion. I think the issues raised back then continue to ring true and remain unaddressed in the halls of academia, in corporate boardrooms, in the media, on Wall Street and in our nation’s capitol.

I have decided to share this essay with some of my audience members – those teaching at some of the U.S.’s and the U.K.’s top business schools: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Northwestern, UCLA, USC and London. All were added beginning in 2010 and have never had an opportunity to read the original version.

Enjoy!

Ted

P.S. I should disclose that I am a corporate dropout having worked for seven, large and small, companies in an eight-year span (1996-2004) where I was fired from four of my sales jobs before quitting altogether. I’ve drawn great insight from this experience, but it’s not my only perspective in writing this piece.

See below: Corporate consciousness

June 11, 2011

Corporate consciousness

By

Ted Burnett

Dear The Nation,

What’s lacking in American capitalism is consciousness, not smart ideas. We need honesty, truth, not just brains. That’s what’s gotten us in all this trouble. As defined by Wikipedia, consciousness is often used colloquially to describe being awake and aware—responsive to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in a coma.

The American business community and industry for way too long have been “asleep at the wheel” in how they operate from procuring their raw materials, from sensitive regions in the U.S. and from around the world, to how they manufacture their goods and the byproducts they generate – the hazardous pollutants dumped on the land, pumped in the air and water, to their conduct within their organizations (how they treat their employees) and their external communication (how honest is their PR and advertising?).

Investors, the citizen/taxpayer should demand this, but sadly we don’t know to because we’ve all been brainwashed, we’ve all been lied to, for so long, about how these reasonable and responsible needs would negatively impact their bottom line. Instead, our society unfairly shoulders some of their real costs of doing business – economically, environmentally, politically, socially and spiritually without ever enjoying some of the profits. We’ve always been slaves to this wonderful economic system called capitalism. Ouch! Old southern plantations have long been replaced with factories, mills, plants, towering glass and metal office buildings in business districts across America and nobody’s anymore free than the African slaves were while working in the fields. Yea, we get paid, but even that’s become stagnant.

Leading up to the economic meltdown not one member from any of these industries – mortgage lending, banking, Wall Street brokerage firms and investment banking or insurance “blew the whistle” on the overheating of their company, their industry or our economy.

Too hungry for illusionary revenue and profits, all had their heads buried deep in the sand and they saw no problems on their radar screen until the storm had already hit. There was no awareness by any of these smart executives working in their boardrooms, on Wall Street or in Washington. The systems were too impotent to respond to the threat. The basic problem is a lack of housekeeping. Nobody wanted to face reality, so instead they chose to live in a blind state of insanity, and was it ever? There was nothing random about the impending man-made storm, so why didn’t any of their wonderful algorithms detect it? Its 2011, has anything changed?

Smart ideas, whatever they look like, won’t cut it in a society that’s already bankrupt and on the verge of, either, a total collapse or a revolution. We need a God-consciousness in how American companies operate going forward. Profit can’t be the sole purpose or the entire mission statement for why an organization exists; it must share the same healthy environmental, political, social and spiritual values as our new society. Otherwise, it remains a threat and will ultimately cannibalize the very society that it’s serving. What do I mean by cannibalize?

Look up the average debt load each American now carries and note the lack of any personal savings. We’re giving them our entire paycheck and then some. They’re eating us alive. That’s insane. Capitalism as we know it is artificial, it’s inflated. It’s based heavily on the created demand, caused by marketing and advertising, and not based on our intuitive needs. Awareness and the organic economy are the real answers to repeating these expensive national economic crashes where nobody ever learns a damn thing.

So, I say, “Clean house and keep the lawn mowed!”

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL US

Copyright © 2009 – 11. All Rights Reserved. “Corporate consciousness" by Ted Burnett.

My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

Who's going to roll your next burrito -- Juan or John?

2011-04-18T09:38:00.008-05:00

Introduction

My last essay, “Is the whole the sum of its parts?”, received the biggest reaction to date from you. Several friends shared their encouraging critiques of my piece and I got a number of hits from faculty, both, in the U.S. and abroad. Even my former father-in-law and my ex-wife, both of whom I mentioned paused long enough to pay a visit to my blog on more than one occasion. Since February, I’ve grown this audience adding more faculty of law at the University of Amsterdam and the London Business School. I paid my fifth virtual visit to Harvard adding the balance of professors teaching in the five original undergraduate programs, from 2008, plus famed biologist, and Alabama native, Dr. E.O. Wilson a.k.a. “Lord of the Ants”.

I now have over 800 Harvard professors in my audience; it’s the largest number of any university. I also paid my third virtual visit to Yale adding President Richard C. Levin and the balance from those same five original undergraduate programs. From there I went on to add, both, Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and Tufts University’s The Fletcher School (their international relations program). In the process, I picked up two notables – former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright (1997-2000), who is currently serving as a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown, and Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow. Just last week, I discovered Republican campaign consultant/advisor and CNN Senior Political Contributor Ed Rollins. He and several others accepted my invitation.

Along the way, it dawned on me that I had overlooked the foreign ministers (FM) when I added ten heads of state and their ambassadors to the U.S., last fall. The following foreign ministers are now part of my audience – Australian FM Kevin Rudd, Canadian FM Lawrence Cannon, French FM Alain Marie Juppé, German FM and Vice Chancellor Dr. Guido Westerwell, Ireland’s Tánaiste and FM Eamon Gilmore, Italian FM Franco Frattini, The Netherlands FM Uriël Rosenthal, New Zealand FM Murray McColly and Russian FM Sergey Lavrov.

While I continue to enjoy writing and sharing my work, I’m finding the growing interval between finished essays to be critical to, both, my development and to my enthusiasm for living each day while keeping my work fresh. During my early years, I strived to write one or two commentaries per month while keeping your workload in mind. That urgency to produce one a month has diminished somewhat over time and it’s reflected in my lower output. Last year, I produced just nine essays and after four months, into 2011, I’ve completed only two. At this rate, I hope that I am keeping your interest piqued while I’ve been enjoying a beautiful spring on the Alabama Gulf Coast. This is giving me the capacity to work on new projects and thus I wait for the next opportunity to reveal itself.

Finally, I received an early 40th birthday present when Steve LeVine contacted me, from out of the blue. Steve performed a web search and found my Woodrow Wilson fellowship application, from last October, posted on my blog. He wrote to me wanting to know the outcome of my app. As I shared with you back then I was unable to secure the needed references to apply. So, my efforts have now been recognized with Steve’s kind words…

"Ted, I admire your perseverance. Things tend to work out for those who keep plugging away. Your stuff is solid. Good luck and best..."

– Steve LeVine, Contributing Editor
Foreign Policy magazine
Washington, DC
April 5, 2011

N > 7,300

Enjoy!

Ted

See attachment: Who's going to roll your next burrito – Juan or John?

(Minor edits have been made to this letter.)

Note: Alabama state senator Ben Brooks (Mobile-R) is an attorney in private practice and an early member of this audience, which dates back to May 2007. He has had the opportunity to read virtually every one of my essays while watching my global audience grow from only a few dozen contacts to over seven thousand. This is my second time to address to him about an issue before the Alabama Senate.

April 12, 2011

Who's going to roll your next burrito – Juan or John?

By

Ted Burnett

Dear Senator Brooks,

It’s been reported that the late Jesus Christ of Nazareth while he was dying on the cross, in Calgary, cried out, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." When I hear talk of the Alabama legislature, now led by the new Republican majority, pursuing an Arizona-style immigration bill, which has already passed overwhelmingly in the state’s house and is now to be considered in the senate, I’m reminded of Christ’s wise words. What he implied was that if the Roman authority, if the Pharisees were aware or conscious of their actions, if they were living in reality, if they were living in truth they wouldn't have pursued his death. He wouldn’t have been perceived as a threat. It’s only in their disturbance, in their own insanity that he became a threat to their dishonest way of life, in the first place.

If the Romans, if the Pharisees lived freely and not as slaves to their material world or to others, if they enjoyed their own free speech, their own freedom they would have naturally allowed Jesus the right to express his, the right to be. Unfortunately, neither party knew their own freedom and Jesus was crucified. Worshipping the Old Testament had failed; the laws no longer worked any more than a straightjacket does by the time Christ arrived on the seen. Members of the temple were merely going through the motions, they were anything, but aware of their emotional and spiritual condition and the situation hasn’t improved much some two thousand years, later.

Instead, the Pharisees were living in the insanity of the times and Jesus’ new message and new reality were a challenge to their old way, to this hypocritical way. Today, the same is true of the state’s Republican Party and their efforts to criminalize and expel Latinos now living and working illegally, in Alabama. Their reasons for passing this legislation can always be justified or rationalized as good or noble, but just like with the Romans and the Pharisees, during Biblical times, the insanity persists and the truth is lost. Republicans perceive the Latinos as being the newest threat. This wasn’t an original thought on their part instead it was borrowed from their successful colleagues at the statehouse in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Republican’s grave concerns aren’t over the Latinos’ status – as illegal or legal residents, over the tax dollars spent on them in state services – education, healthcare, legal/penal or social services nor is the issue about the state not collecting any income tax. The great fear and the real issue is whether whites will continue to maintain their grip on society as the majority in the future, whether white America will remain in control of this country and its many institutions – academically, economically, legally, politically and socially. Might Spanish one day replace English as the official state language? Will the state’s addicted and enslaved whites go the way of the drunken Native Americans? According to the latest British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report, by 2042, the collective population of all minorities will finally surpass that of white, non-Hispanics, 54% to 46%, respectively. This monumental shift will occur in just 31 years, from now. If true and still alive, I will be 71 years old and a member of one of the newest classes of endangered species.

So, what’s driving this migration – well, all animals move from where food and water are scarce to where it’s plentiful, man is no different? We see this each year when animals track across the Serengeti or when fowl migrate from the North to the South for the winter, as well as, when man departed Africa through a corridor known as the Middle East to all parts of Europe and Asia and off the coast of West Africa via the European’s trusty wooden sailing ships. Isn’t the pursuit of food what brought Native Americans to North America when they left east Asia across the Bering Strait, some twelve thousand years ago and isn’t that what sent European explorers on their quest for a westerly route to the Far East when they unexpectantly discovered the “New World.”

These explorers and conquistadors quickly began claiming their findings for their homeland, for their kings and queens, over four hundred years ago, along, both, the east and west coasts of North and South America. Of course, not everyone left Europe for the hardships that awaited them in the colonies – the kings and queens, the dukes and the earls stayed behind because they were content. They were fat and happy. You’re not opposed to your ancestors leaving the Old World for America, are you?

There has always been a natural movement of humans, of sea life and wildlife in search of a better food and water source or as predators simply following their prey. Even our beloved space program, NASA, is in search of new land, planets and stars with resources that would allow Americans to establish a colony. A manned-mission to Mars is already in the planning stages. Do you hear any celestial protest? Only in man’s artificially created world of property ownership, boundary lines and territories do maps exist that show dotted lines running between neighbors, states and nations leading to conflicts. However, in the natural world those lines don’t exist and you would never know that you’re leaving one county and entering the next, leaving one state and entering the next if it wasn’t for a well-marked green or blue metal road sign announcing your departure or arrival.

There’s no dotted line running across the roadway, from the air there’s no line delineating where the United States ends and Canada begins nor is there a line cutting through the shared deserts of the United States and Mexico. It only exists in man’s fixed mind, through his surveys and treaties, but it doesn’t exist in reality as invading armies have long reminded us. So, maybe the Latinos are a herd naturally on the move, again, leaving a region with a shortage, for a region with abundance or maybe they’re the newest invading army just like any other invading species. After all, Mexico at one point controlled the land now known as the state of Texas and much of the Southwest U.S. What Latinos are finding in the U.S. are conditions ripe for feasting using, both, their skilled and unskilled labor. In some cases, their performing work that most Americans have long abandoned because we can’t earn a sustainable wage, due to our pride or maybe the work is too difficult and dirty.

Their standard of living back home is much lower than the middle class life that many of us knew as children and now as adults. In some cases, their skills and strong work ethic simply outstrip American workers – its sad say, but it’s true – construction comes to mind. We, soft Americans, don’t want to hear any of this. They’re challenging us at the jobsite and they’re winning. We use to do this to the rest of the world, did we ever complain about our newfound economic, military and political success? We changed the world and now it’s changing us. Change happens and man’s attempt to fight it only delays it, it never denies it. The resistance will ultimately give way to the change. It’s Darwin at work, it’s spirituality at work. It’s both. We know one thing that’s true about our world – it’s in constant flux. Live in reality and quickly adapt or live in denial, resist and surely face extinction. Those are your two choices and sometimes adapting isn’t good enough or quick enough. We will all die at some point.

When I think about this piece of legislation and its intent, I’m immediately reminded of Alabama’s racial history. I have to ask, “Is history repeating itself?” The Republican Party appears to be indifferent and no different from the previous generations of white, Christian, Democrat segregationists who first denied African slaves their freedom and then free blacks their basic rights, under Jim Crow laws, for over a half century with the help of the Klan’s brutal tactics of intimidation by lynching.

Our state troopers, “the law”, once served as white society’s muscle for carrying out many of these wicked policies with their wooden batons and tear gas during the march from Selma to Montgomery. During the Birmingham campaign, blacks demonstrated, non-violently, in the streets resulting in the city’s police force unleashing their dogs and water cannons, on men, women and children, to the shock of the world. This is some of Alabama’s sad legacy caused by the conduct of a fearful and ignorant white majority. Have we learned any lessons from this? Your party seems insensitive, in deep denial to this real issue and out of touch with the state’s past. You seem destined to repeat the shame when this bill is placed on the Governor’s desk for his signature. Am I the only one who sees this? Does anyone working in Montgomery have a caring bone?

From media interviews, it appears you support the bill and will vote for it. Are you familiar with our antiquated Alabama Constitution of 1901?

“… [It] is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 40 times longer than the U.S. Constitution and is the longest still-operative constitution anywhere in the world? (The English translation of the Constitution of India, the longest national constitution, is about 117,369 words long, a third of the length.) About 90 percent of the document’s length comes from its 827 amendments. About 70 percent of the amendments cover only a single county or city, and some deal with salaries of specific officials. The extreme length is both because of and the cause of heavy centralization of government power in the state capital, Montgomery, leaving very little authority to local units. Counties cannot even legislate on local issues, requiring the state legislature, and ipso facto uninvolved parts of the state, to pass local laws.

The constitution addresses many issues that are dealt with by statute in most other states. Unlike most other states, a large portion of the tax code is written into the constitution and prohibits local governments from passing any ordinances on tax issues. Adding to the problem is the requirement that a proposed amendment of any sort must be unanimously approved by the legislature; otherwise it must be submitted for a statewide vote. This has resulted in local county or municipality-related amendments being overwhelmingly approved in the affected area, but rejected statewide...”

Source: Wikipedia.com

Where do you come down on this growing body of flawed law, do you, does your party support it as written or do support the struggling efforts to rewrite it? Do you see any complications caused by this dysfunctional document first written during the days of the Old South that’s affecting the present-day lives of all Alabamians, 110 years later? Given the era, do you think it was written in the interest and of the spirit of all current and now deceased residents? Look how difficult it is to change this long running collection of amendments. What's the consequence of having it serve as the supreme law of Alabama – inequality in education funding on racial lines, home rule denied, unfair taxation policies…? Where is your party’s – the new majority – bill to rewrite this injustice – maybe y’all like the rigged system just the way it is? Do you think the proposed immigration bill will retain its integrity, any better than the state constitution has, over the next 25, 50 or 100 years?

What burden will this proposed law have on future generations with the state's changing demographics? That is what this legislation is trying to prevent – doesn’t it reek of racism. Am I correct? Is there anything honorable, in this particular case, about the actions of Alabama lawmakers many of whom are Baby-boomers? When will your generation wake up and start growing up? When will you realize that all humans have the same freedom to egress and ingress to where the “food” is plentiful especially when Americans have long abandoned these jobs – on construction sites, on farms, in restaurants, in factories and plants? Where’s your party’s soul? Its flagrant values are an abomination.

Your generation is very irresponsible and it shows in the condition of every American institution, which y’all control from academia, commerce, government, law, media, military, non-profit to this corrupt political system that works no better than the Bible does. It’s all broken and it’s causing great pain and suffering. Simply put y'all lack the guts to do the heavy lifting, do to the next right thing or knowing when to do nothing at all. There’s no high bar to clear, only a low one to step over. It’s to exist and operate without any concept of God, without a concept of a Power that’s greater than all of us. It’s to go to the grave without ever making an apology.

My generation and those following will be saddled with the debts and the sins of yours – one that’s long been defined as being of peace and free love! I'm not sure what you learned or found out at law school or on countless Sunday mornings, but it doesn't appear to be your humanity. I know of migrant workers from Mexico and Central America that are very hard working. They manually harvest the produce grown and served on your dinner table, every summer, from the fertile fields of Alabama’s Baldwin County while replanting pine saplings in hundred acre clear-cuts, during wintertime, walking up and down some of the most hilly and rocky terrain that I've ever seen, in east Alabama (1994).

Watching these men work while carrying 80 or even 100 lbs. sacks, over their shoulder, filled with saplings and holding a planting tool in their other hand instantly left me feeling humbled, as a white, male college student observing. They clearly had the hard job while I got the easy one. Neither, the average educated black or white American male would dare sign-up to do this backbreaking labor in, either environment, in the hot and humid fields or in the cold and wet timberland. I won't do it, no way. Would you? Would anyone in the state legislature get out there and break a sweat for such minimal pay and rough accommodations, as y’all prepare to take away some more of man’s rights, – I think not?

Let’s look at Alabama’s big brown threat for one minute. With an Arizona-style law on its way to becoming law in Alabama (AL) we must really be under siege with Hispanics and Latinos, but that notion is not reflected in the latest U.S. Census for Alabama. For 2009, the state’s estimated population was 4.7m, for the U.S. it was 307m. White persons as a percentage was estimated at 70.9% (AL), 79.6% (US). Black persons as a percentage was estimated at 26.3% (AL), 12.9% (US). Native American, Asian and Native Hawaiian…, combined, was estimated at 1.5% (AL), 5.8% (US). Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin it was estimated at just 3.2% (AL), 15.8% (US). Is all this excitement in the Alabama legislature and in the Republican Party over an existing and out of control immigration problem or one that’s in your party’s head, one of pure hysteria?

What you’re doing is dishonest and, more importantly, very short-sighted. Younger generations will have to live with your hateful actions. You and many others claim to be Christians on Sunday while your actions, during the rest of the week, speak otherwise. I’m tired of witnessing this, the lack of moral character and the subsequent destruction to society. This explains the mess that America is in. We’re spending all our time solving problems that simply don’t exist while ignoring the big and pressing ones that really do, which are sinking our ship. While it may be a safe play to your constituents, in the end it’s downright cowardly. I guess you and your party want to claim to be defenders of justice and of state homeland security. In a time when Americans have become all too finicky about hard work, I am not buying the actions or the motivations of your party.

So, you’re all hot and bothered at the loss of Alabama jobs to hungry Mexicans. Where’s the first statute that addresses the loss of hundreds or even thousands of Alabama jobs, in one fell swoop, to countries abroad when old factories, mills and plants are shutdown and our jobs are exported from the beloved Heart of Dixie to Mexico and Latin America, to Europe and Asia? Let me guess that’s not your concern, maybe you’re powerless as a legislator to do anything about it or maybe your stock answer is that it’s simply market forces at work. So, there are no fees, no penalties when a domestic or foreign corporation pulls the plug on their “unprofitable” Alabama operation and simply leave? No one goes to jail, except for Carlos and Juan, a bricklayer and a cook.

Is there a single law that bars these often good paying jobs from walking? Why don’t you write one and become a hero to all Alabama workers and to the state coffers? This immigration bill is creating a double standard, an imbalance in the spirit of Alabama law and in its letter. It makes more criminals out of the working poor while kindly allowing rich executives and profit-driven decision makers “to get off the hook” even if they destroy an Alabama community’s economy. All I can hope for is that someone wearing a black robe and working in a nearby federal courthouse strikes down this soon-to-be law written with great ignorance and fast.

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “Who's going to roll your next burrito – Juan or John?” by Ted Burnett.

I am available for speaking, consulting and political advising. My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com/.

References:

Beringia – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia

“Latinos will be part of new U.S. "majority" sooner than predicted” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/08/latinos-will-be.html

Luke 23:34 New International Version (© 1984) – "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

U.S. Census Bureau – http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/01000.html

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama The Constitution of Alabama

Is the whole the sum of its parts? (My reply: "Don't turn away from mental illness" by James F. Walsh)

2011-02-17T17:15:00.010-06:00

Introduction

The month of February marks my fourth anniversary as a full-time writer. This “record of accomplishment” may seem unremarkable to most of you unless you shared my dreadful work history where I never stayed with any one employer for more than eighteen months and where I was at my last job (2004) for just nine months before getting fired for the fourth and final time, on seven tries. I’m talking about Fortune 100 corporations down to a four-man insurance agency. None of it worked and for the life of me, I didn’t know why. I felt like a complete failure and I quickly saw my life passing me by.

Only after arriving in my late thirties and with several years of writing “under my belt” have I finally come to terms with this “demoralizing” chapter of my life. This 9-year struggle had a devastating impact on my career, finances, health, and marriage while producing untold amounts of misunderstanding and shame in the days following college that left me having to contemplate more schooling (graduate), in the end. Life had stripped me of almost everything that defines one as being human, as being a man. Reality or waking up to reality has been a cruel journey and it couldn’t have cared less. However, I did survive and I am stronger for it. This could’ve easily gone the other way, as it has for so many suffering with an addiction or with a mental illness, or both. I know both.

My track record related to selling goods and services for corporate America was so bad that once I finally slammed the door shut on this form of torture I knew that there would be no going back. What looked so easy for my family and friends to achieve and maintain – long-term employment – eluded me, like, fine sand slipping between my fingers? I tried to keep my head up even as the last bit of confidence had already drained out of my big toe. It’s hard to do any task with any degree of success, such as, going go the next job interview or making another sales call without having one’s mental chest puffed out and for good reason. Success is made all the more difficult when you feel completely lost.

I’ve tried to adhere to my policy of “no return”, ever since. After all, it seemed clear-cut to me leaving little room for doubt or inner debate. I’ve made no real attempts to apply for another job in the corporate world while I was enrolled in school or later as I began this writing endeavor. During periods of “poverty”, I’ve searched online and applied for a small number of jobs related to this field, but nothing that would bring me back to the source of so much confusion and unhappiness. What I experienced during this difficult time I, now, view as being rich, as being good for me. I mean all of it. Without the mental hardships, I would’ve never been able to appreciate or gauge, both, my current personal and professional success as a writer. I’ve been in combat, in hell and I lived to tell about it.

All of my outside sales jobs entailed heavy amounts of “cold calling” and for much of those years I hated every bit of it. I think every salesman does. Not once did a customer, new or old, call me up “out of the blue” with an order ready to place over the telephone or for me to pick-up a waiting check at their office. It never worked that way. Cold calling involved, either, making many outbound phone calls from my office to businesses located in my territory (usually several defined zip codes) or physically canvassing office buildings and office parks for that one new business lead. The activities evoked many fears of direct, personal rejection and failure. It was always an affront to my bullet-riddled character, thin skin and my hollow chest. Frequently, too much time and energy was wasted avoiding, delaying or dancing around this undesirable activity due to the negative emotions it produced and the horror-film-like endings projected in my head even though it rarely materialized. Yes, I was thrown out of numerous offices and I was asked to leave entire buildings, but I always returned another day. I had to.

The ongoing mental wrestling match hardly ever existed between a prospect and me instead, it lie completely within me. I made many cold calls over the years improving my technique and increasing the number of appointments, but success, in terms of getting more sales and commissions, continued to languish. In truth, my performance was a “flat line” by any measure, if plotted on a graph over my tenure. I always knew it wasn’t working out, it never did. I refused to fool myself into thinking otherwise. Idea of getting fired was a constant thought. What were my choices without any identified skills or talents – they seemed very limited? I felt trapped and thus I waited for the ax to drop. My jobs always fell beneath what I thought I deserved thus creating another nagging conflict. I never could or would give into this reality.

In the beginning of my career, I would call on the closes person sitting near the office’s front door often treating them and their words like gospel, like gold. Sometimes what they had to say was valuable, but other times their information or their memory turned out to be wrong. Cowardly, I got out of the building as fast as I walked in.

All the sales reps in my office were encouraged by our general manager to attend a daylong sales seminar held in the ballroom of a downtown Atlanta (GA) hotel. The featured speaker was a four-time “salesman of the year” formerly with a major computer manufacturer. Drawing from his own experience, Tony encouraged the audience to initiate our first sales call within any given organization not with the first person that we laid our eyes on or spoke to over the phone. Not to start with the receptionist or the office manager and work our way up the system’s hierarchical maze, but instead to start with the organization’s top officer and to work our way down. This was a scary idea to me and probably to everyone else listening. What did I have in common with Mr. CEO, Ms. President? It was always safer just to walk into the lobby and to begin asking my standard questions at the first moving object I saw – to write down the contact’s name, their phone number and collect any other facts before leaving.

The seminar’s speaker argued that we, salespeople, actually had more in common with the top executive who, in many cases, was a prior salesman/woman. Most importantly, they were ultimately responsible for the company’s P&L (profit and loss) statement. This responsibility made him or her likely to be more honest than anyone else working in some other capacity and positioned further down the corporate ladder. Part of the speaker’s prescription for improving sales included writing an unorthodox sales letter to the firm’s identified top executive, be it – the CEO, CFO, SVP, President, Managing Partner, Owner… and following it up with a scheduled phone call at a specified date and time, as always noted in the initial correspondence.

While this task was much more challenging on the nerves and the exercise required the discipline to actually follow-up on the letter compared to operating on random cold calling, the letter was targeted. If successful, it would quickly cut down on hours of wasted driving in my territory and my energy while quickly turning an executive into a critical ally while helping me to obtain first hand information on their plans, if any, to make a purchase on the products that I sold. They always and freely provided me with the firm’s contact person responsible for procurement thus making it possible for me to “drop” the executive’s name in my next phone call. Once I saw the value of calling on top executives I never wanted to be seen in “their eyes” as just another salesman who makes lots of empty promises to curry favor while hoping that Mr. Prospect forgets what I said to him or her, the last time we spoke. I ceased measuring myself on my good intentions and instead began measuring myself on my actions. This was critical in my development, in my personal transformation.

Developing real follow-through became important to me and I saw it as a reflection of my character instead of doing things well 3, 4 or 5 times out of 10, or 30%, 40% or 50% of the time, I needed to be accomplishing things 8, 9 or 10 times out of 10. The change didn’t occur overnight, but I had become aware of its importance, both, as a person and as a professional. In time, my output slowly improved in part to promising the world less and I soon noticed that I was getting burned much less. (I don’t make any promises to you that I’m not prepared to carry out.) I also began holding myself to a higher standard regarding the things that I could control. Quality, values mattered. As personal values developed rarely did I deviate from them unless while working in hostile environments where pressure and stress were great, job security seemed low and my morals weren’t shared.

What left me always feelings insecure when selling building products, photocopiers and fax machines, payroll services and commercial insurance had unknowingly served as a real proving ground, a rite of passage strengthening me along the way to where I, now, peddle my experiences, insights and wisdom (ideas) to the world? Mental illness struck me down (and hard), it struck down my reputation, my career, everything. My five-year recovery included a few bouts of mania/psychosis. It forced me to face my fears, which led to me growing beyond my own limitations to, ultimately, find my freedom and happiness. In 2007-08, excellence and success as a thinker and writer were slowly revealed replacing this mediocre salesman identity; a natural world replaced an artificial one.

The years of cold calling top executives pushing my wares that I neither believed in nor had an interest in selling would finally come in handy as I began sharing my ideas with local attorneys, bankers, business executives, clergy, state and federal judges and lawmakers, major foundations, media, Washington policy institutes, professors and publishers,…with you. Making contact with hundreds and then thousands of professors and professionals has become easy and instinctive, with time. After four years of isolation and unemployment (2002-06), I was finally combining the gift of writing, the love for sharing a spiritual message with the skill for calling on leaders.

What I, now, have to offer is the most expensive product man can sell and few can afford its price tag. Reality, the truth is indeed pricey; its message has cost many people their lives including a few historic figures. It’s with this understanding I gladly share my work and choose to measure my success by something other than annual revenue or the size of my paycheck. Four years of writing has taken me from nervously, sheepishly making my first calls on American-based professors and professionals to, now, reaching out to heads of state, ambassadors, billionaires, former governors, to the most popular internet media site and world-class universities, in ten countries.

With a diverse audience of 6,800 and a high retention rate exceeding 99.8%, I can now write to anyone, living anywhere in the world who just might embrace my message and some who might not. Last summer, I added, both, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to this audience. What has come of it, you ask? Since then I have received seventeen direct hits to my blog from, at least, five different networks, or sources, in Moscow, RU. My work must be making its rounds and earning me some new friends. Well, my bags are packed, my passport is in my shirt pocket and I am just waiting for an invitation to come see all things great in Russia including getting a VIP tour of the Kremlin, most definitely! Only the “mentally ill” can getaway with making such a ridiculous statement as this one. Can’t a man dream?

Today, I frequently discover new prospects from watching TV interviews, from reading op-eds in print or on-line. If I can find their email address then they’re most likely going to hear from me, as you already have. That was the case, over the holidays, where I added Huffington Post co-founder and Editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, American paleontologist Jack Horner (dyslexic, technical advisor and the inspiration for one of characters in the Jurassic Park film series), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) President and CEO Paula A. Kerger among others. This writing effort has created two different worlds for me – the one that I live in seven days a week hanging out with common folk and this one that I’ve invented from scratch and that I make contact with every four or five weeks. I have no interest in giving up the world that I live in to embrace the trappings of this new virtual world because I have personally witnessed so much misery and tragedy in the lives of those with similar personalities.

However, the two worlds complement one another very well because I’m the same person with the same set of values, but it’s often hard to explain to my old classmates, friends, neighbors and acquaintances that often see me in their mind as “ill”. They chose to dismiss my sudden success and my miraculous recovery from the grips of mental illness. They see me as some sort of lost cause to fit in their concept of how a mentally ill person should live and act, such as, Jared Lee Loughner, Rep. Gabby Giffords’ failed assassin. At the same time, this audience likely sees me with its own set of “labels”. Is any of it accurate, I don’t know? I’ve come to see myself as being a mystery, but aren’t we all?

In every introduction, I try to give you some “meat on the bone”, fresh information with depth (intimacy) about me and my story. Anything less would be boring. In my previous essay, I revealed a lot of financial information in hopes of getting better participation from this audience in the form of references that I “need” for fellowship applications. I did my part by asking for your help, it doesn’t appear to have worked. Maybe I don’t need a fellowship, after all. Those details were intended to bring us closer together and they were just another slice of my story. To balance it out I want to share with you the following. You may identify with this couple better than you do with me. Maybe you would offer them the help that you’re withholding from me.

As I have previously stated, I was once married (2002). I dated my wife for five years before getting married. My career struggles and later health issues covered the entire 9-year relationship. Our marriage was cut-short due to my bipolar disorder, which it ruined from the outset. The mental illness changed the dynamics of our five-year relationship by throwing the new marriage for a loop. My ex-wife’s (Lisa) parents fought long and hard, during the courtship, to keep me out of their family. From the get go, I was the family’s black sheep and I served as an escape from their own troubles.

As I’ve readily written, I gave them all the ammunition they would need to justify their attitude towards me. For starters, this Virginia couple liked, neither, my honesty nor the troubled home life that I came from – an alcoholic father. My troubled career would be revealed later and it would serve as more fuel for the fire. Once engaged, her parents put up one final barrier to getting married to their last unwed daughter, a sure enough choking hazard – a prenuptial. Poor ol’ me refused their offer, twice. They didn’t expect that from me.

My former father-in-law, a retired physician, is a Yale man, he attended medical school at the University of Virginia (UVA) (both, my ex-wife and her older sister graduated from there) followed by his residency at Duke and then a fellowship at Vanderbilt. In the nine years, that I was in his life struggling with my career and then my illness I never once felt his love or experienced his bedside manner. I never earned his approval and he even told me so (1999). It took me eight years to get over his words and to heal my wounds with the help of my discovery to think and write.

In truth, he’s probably a nice guy, but he was on strict orders to always be curt and difficult with me. Neither he nor his wife ever saw me as being suitable to marry their daughter. In their eyes, my family lacked enough money, power and prestige for their ego’s consumption. In all those years, they had no interest in getting to know me. In their minds, they had heard enough. As an addition to their prominent family, I was a disgrace. I didn’t fit-in with existing window dressing. When my then-wife finally called her parents to say that she was leaving our marriage and coming home they must have thrown the biggest party on the banks of the James River (2006). “Good riddance!” they must have said about me. Given all that you wouldn’t expect the following to be occurring.

It’s been almost four years since my divorce and I’ve developed a secret admirer of my writing via my blog. I’ve been getting hits to my blog for years now from a familiar Virginia town where “my name” is used in the web search coming from a known service provider. Who’s behind it – my former father-in-law? I am the same honest me, but, now, I’ve got talent. I can only imagine what he must be thinking and now says to his wife, to his three daughters and to his friends. I took great pride when I added faculty from Duke, UVA and Yale during the summer of 2008, especially Yale. It’s his old stomping ground, this was personal. The doctor’s periodic visits to my sites have served as some vindication, in my mind – to my character, to my honesty and to my intelligence.

That’s a clean and short-version to a rather long and very ugly one. In the end, this entire experience has made me treat everyone, with class, and no class as equals while looking at this audience in a similar skeptical light that I see my former in-laws in. I think it’s justified. My former in-laws and others like them have nothing I want except for their daughter. Lisa no longer speaks to me.

End of story.

Happy Anniversary!

Ted

See attachment: Is the whole the sum of its parts? (page 7)
Note: The following link, Don't turn away from mental illness, is to an op-ed by James F. Walsh, President of NAMI-Alabama (National Alliance on Mental Illness), which appeared in the (Mobile, AL) Press-Register. It was written in response to last month's Tucson, AZ shooting.

Is the whole the sum of its parts?

By

Ted Burnett

February 6, 2011

Mr. Walsh,

I read with great interest your essay, which appeared in today's Press-Register. In 2002, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I know well the harsh consequences that come with being sick. Out of my breakdown, at the age of 32, came a breakthrough to think and write, exceptionally well. This talent has lifted me off society's bottom rung and up to the intellectual top, a rare feat.

Once a "C" student, I now share an almost monthly commentary, on political, social and spiritual matters, with a distinguished audience of 6,800 contacts including over 5,000 professors teaching at thirty-two world-class universities (Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford...), in ten countries, their heads of state and their ambassadors to the U.S. along with many American notables.

My experience with mental illness, it's stigma within the mental health profession including local agencies, their counselors, doctors and nurses at psych hospitals, jails, probate judges and, most importantly, our Godless society has convinced me that the problem lies not with some of its parts, not with me per se, but with the whole.

It's not an individual or DNA issue, but rather a social one where personal rejection is so widespread and having any flaws or troubles are considered a liability. We've denied our humanity resulting in our neurosis. This is the breeding ground for all insanity. The scope goes well beyond just those diagnosed and "undiagnosed". It's an equal opportunity illness that doesn't discriminate.

Nobody wants a mental illness and thus all those with it are shunned by their families, friends, the mental health field, lawmakers through their actions to inadequately fund the system and by society, in general. Getting this label is a death sentence, for most. They lose their place in society, their jobs, their reputation, their marriages, families and many friendships. It puts you in a box and often defines your every move. The illness introduces you to a new and cruel, poverty-stricken way of life. Few escape from its grip. Keeping the mentally ill in their place is a constant message heard and made by all to make themselves feel better, to feel superior.

Our entire society is insane and sadly few know it or will admit to it, except for those taking their meds! Look at the mess called America, do you think sane people would run up a $14t national debt, cause mass unemployment, nationwide home foreclosures and break the bank -- I think not? That's all irrational behavior, it's illogical, but who's calling it like it is? Highly paid, crazy people, wearing their dark suits and ties, caused this crisis in their corporate boardrooms, in Washington and on Wall Street. How many of them got committed for their actions -- none? Why, because we've defined this conduct as being sane in spite of it almost destroying the U.S. and global banking system.

Mental illness can strike anyone given the right set of pressures and stressors. Spirituality is a major part of the solution, but it's rarely recognized by those in the mental health field or NAMI who prefer to push pills. Few understand mental illness and thus the success rates reflect it. Lastly, you'll be surprised to know that NAMI's national executive director, Michael Fitzpatrick, has been in my audience for several years, now.

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved. “Is the whole the sum of its parts?” by Ted Burnett.

I am available for speaking, consulting and political advising. My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com/.

Updated Post with 9-page introduction -- Dear Dr. Robert Shiller -- Financial Reform Laws Didn't Resolve Key Problems (Huffington Post)

2010-11-19T10:34:00.008-06:00

Updated post with a 11-page introduction.

Note: What was intended to be the usual one-page Introduction has slowly evolved into nine pages covering a host of topics that came to mind while writing, which included my need to do a little housekeeping. If you would like to skip the intro and go straight to the two-page essay, it begins on page eleven. This piece was written and shared with Yale’s Dr. Robert Shiller, as well as, posted on my blog, in late October. The introduction came afterwards and has taken much longer to complete.

Enjoy!

Ted

Introduction

As I mentioned previously, I added Russian Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to this audience after stumbling across the president’s website, in July. Inspired by the ease by of my effort, I communicated to you my plans to invite the remaining heads of state that are members of the G-20 (the world’s twenty largest economies). Since writing my last piece, “Dear Jay Ambrose”, I have begun working towards this goal.

In October, I added nine (9) more heads of states (and their ambassadors to the United States who serve at their Washington DC embassy). The names of these respective chancellors, presidents and prime ministers (P.M.) are: Australian P.M. Julia Gillard (Hon. Kim Beazley), The Ambassador Brazil to the U.S. Hon. Mauro Luiz Iecker Vieira, Canadian P.M. Stephen Harper (Hon. Michael Wilson), President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, The European Union Ambassador to the U.S. João Vale de Almeida, French Ambassador Hon. Pierre Vimont, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Hon. Klaus Scharioth), Taoiseach (P.M.) of Ireland Brian Cowen (Hon. Michael Collins), The Ambassador of Italy to the U.S. Hon. Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata, The Ambassador of Japan to the U.S. Hon. Ichiro Fujisaki, The Netherlands P.M. Jan Peter Balkenende (Hon. Renée Jones-Bos), New Zealand P.M. John Key (Rt. Hon. Mike Moore), the United Kingdom P.M. David Cameron (Her Majesty’s Hon. Nigel Sheinwald), The Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Hon. Sergey I. Kislyak, The Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Hon. Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir and the President of the Swiss Confederation Doris Leuthard (Hon. Urs Ziswiler). With the exception of Brazil, Italy, Japan, Russia and Saudi Arabia, I have a heavy faculty presence at their top universities. I will keep you posted on my progress as I continue to add the rest of the group, in the coming months.

When I write and share, with you, an essay or a fellowship application I never know what kind of a reaction I am going get, if any. On several occasions, my commentaries have come in response to reading an op-ed in my local newspaper, the Press-Register (Mobile, Ala.). September’s essay, “Dear Jay Ambrose”, is the latest example. I usually write no more than one or two pages, which is short in comparison to many of my commentaries. The length of my reply to Mr. Ambrose over taxes, the Bush tax cuts and tax policy fell short of one. Upon completion, I emailed Jay my thoughts before deciding whether or not to share this short piece with this group. By the end of that night, I had received an answer from him. That’s pretty rare. If you read my commentary, then you know that I included his critique of it.

When I start blasting a completed essay my first step is to send it out to my group of (non-academia) professionals, some 240 contacts, which includes local attorneys, business leaders, clergy, former governors, state and federal judges and lawmakers, major foundations, American notables, Washington policy institutes, extended family and friends due to its small size. It also allows me to quickly gauge their response while continuing to make final edits before I launch it to my six thousand plus professors. Sometimes a commentary, and almost every fellowship application, makes me cringe over the anticipated response that I might get, in particular, from my audience of academia. This could be due to its length, the nature of the piece (such as, an application) or maybe the group’s unfamiliarity with a topic. There’s no history to support my concerns, if anything it’s often too quite for comfort. At times, I find myself “on the fence” over whether I should or should not share the piece.

I find myself repeatedly questioning, “Is this commentary (app.) a foolish effort or does it have some merit? Recognizing this natural tension within me I think it’s a good thing and it keeps me focused on turning out my best work over doing quantity. In this case, the combination of its length, my viewpoint and/or ignorance of the subject while being called on some part, or all, of it was bothering me. However, I felt like my message was unique and that the argument was missing from the national debate over our ‘programmed’ attitudes towards taxes. Once more, courage and faith (taking a risk) won the day and I gave you an opportunity to read it. My decision was well rewarded.

Whether taxes were a more popular topic with this audience then some of my other essays I don’t know, but I quickly received feedback from several friends. Their reactions served as the catalyze that gave the push needed to share it with my professors where I experienced a second wave of feedback. Over the course of a weeklong launch, three professors, in all, wrote to me. Their comments led to a series of email exchanges that I think resulted in a shared concern over the current economic climate and its impact on tax policy. One law professor and an expert, on the subject, who teaches at New York University School of Law, had this to say...

“Sir:

An underlying problem is that such a small proportion of the public contributes to the common enterprise. We need a VAT in the US. Its absence (plus our generally low rates of individual incomes taxes) makes us one of the lowest taxing developed countries. There are only 3 OECD countries with a lower overall tax burden.

Subject to that point, which would undercut the argument that the “rich” already pay more than their fair share, you are – of course – correct. The suggestion that raising the marginal rate by 4 percentage points at income levels above a quarter of a million dollars is going to produce dire economic consequences is laughable.”

– Name withheld per the editor.

My letter with my initial doubts produced, to my surprise, the biggest response among any of my commentaries in quite sometime. It’s a reminder, to me, why taking chances, which leads to growing emotionally and spiritually is so critical to human, organizational and society development. In general, that’s what’s missing at all levels of our society and we’ve gotten very sick, as a result. Men can’t cry and women love to gossip. In America, insanity rules!

The presenting symptoms can be seen everywhere in all forms of addiction, the crime rate and overcrowded prisons (2 million inmates), our personal and national debt, our dysfunctional state and federal governments (all three branches) and the widespread distrust and fear of one another on the street. We have an expansive and overburdened health care system serving the system’s providers and suppliers at, both, patient and taxpayer expense and bulging waistlines among the young and old, alike, which can be easily seen while it’s still being denied. Our insanity has already reached epidemic proportions, but who even stops to notice or speak up?

I don’t hear the president or the first member of Congress saying a word. Nobody gets this or anything else, for that matter. Solve this and much of our health care troubles will simply go away. Maybe you’re waiting on bird flu (H5N1), swine flu (H1N1) or some other virus to strike and finish us all off. Is it possible that you’re being told to focus on the wrong public enemy? Your resistance to disease is directly linked to the degree of sanity (emotional, mental and spiritual health) within your family’s environment. You probably won’t read this in any medical and psychology book, but it’s true.

Your sanity is grounded in your level of reality, the more reality (or personal truth) that you’re living in then the less external pressures and internal stresses you feel. That’s because things use to bother or upset you no longer have that power over you. The net result is that your health improves. As a matter of fact, the pressures and stressors will start to diminish as you make better decisions in your life leading to solutions while learning to live an ever simpler life. You will continue to have problems and crisis in your life until your death, but you will learn how to resolve them better and quickly without feeling lost and overwhelmed. That’s growth.

Experiencing a growth spurt can be so invigorating, but it can also leave you standing alone, as I have come to find out. Regardless, it’s a constant must, a daily exercise. Skip the gym and start working out these limp and long-neglected abdominal muscles running up and down your belly. You’ll never learn about these critical muscles that make up our intestinal fortitude and lead to our growth and success, in any anatomy class. Both, science and medicine will deny and ignore their existence because they can’t see them, but they’re there because we can all feel them quiver when we’re confronted with a problem or crisis. Either, we learn to grow (up) or we go. We, either, live life to the fullest or we simply exist bound by artificial limits as the world passes us by. Is that not what’s happening? Take your pick, which one will it be? The consequences are enormous.

One update on the Woodrow Wilson International Centers for Scholars (Washington, DC) fellowship application and it’s a rather disappointing one, at that. While everyone, on this list of 6,800, got a chance to read it, my intended audience – the fellowship committee of a dozen or so – didn’t. This was due to a lack of volunteers from this audience. Nobody came forward, on my behalf, to serve as one of the two much-needed references. In addition, to putting out a call for help, I followed up by soliciting seven members. All had received my work for well over two years, but not one of them even bothered to acknowledge my email. In general, I expect little from you. After all, I’m the one who invited you to join and not the other way around. I feel privileged to have you, as my guest. I want you to have a one-of-a-kind experience with minimal effort, expense or inconvenience with no hassle or pressure coming from me. If you want to stay in this audience, please do and if you ever choose to leave that will be ok, too.

In the pursuit of reality or the truth, my experience, insight and the lessons learned have often come at a tremendous cost to my family and me, as previously mentioned. As you will soon see, I continue to share, with you, more about my life. Due to its high price (an honest life), I’ve come believe that few in this society really want to make a similar purchase. I hope you see a value to this effort and are personally profiting from it. I know some are. Over the past two years, I’ve gotten the opportunity to hear from six (6) former high school classmates after they read some of my essays that I’ve been posting on Facebook.

All summoned up the courage to reach out to me, for the first time in twenty years, about the troubles facing them after reading about the troubles that I had faced and the success I was, now, enjoying as a free man and writer. In two cases, I met them in person, for close to three hours, to share my story and to discuss theirs in greater detail. I befriended one of them for a year while he went through a difficult divorce and custody battle. I emailed my thoughts to three others and I am waiting to setup a lunch date with #6. This is a reminder that I never know who my story, and my essays, are touching, either, in this audience, on my blog or on Facebook, but it always does my spirit good when someone writes to me. That’s been the case for twenty-one years, even if talking to someone else appears to have only helped me. If it keeps me sane and sober for that one day then much has been accomplished. This brings me to my next item.

There are two personal matters that our western culture tells us repeatedly not to air in public, or at least it use to, and they have to do with one’s finances and one’s sex life. What? Did you think that some subjects were surely off limits around here? Gotcha! You don’t know me all that well, do you? Now, I bet you’re getting, either, very excited or quite nervous over what I’m going to say next. For your sake and mine, I will spare you of the latter. That leaves us with the former, which ties back to the earlier topic of needing references so I can obtain funding to continue developing this project further.

Finances are a sensitive issue and bringing up my situation may seem offensive to some of you, but that’s not my intent. I have lived with this burden for almost four years and to varying degrees. At times, I have had enough money to cover all my basic expenses with a little room to play. That’s not the case, now. Here’s my new reality. Those excess funds are gone and I live solely on my monthly Social Security Disability check, which comes to almost $1,200 or to roughly $14,400/year, plus Medicare and Medicare Part D (the Bush drug prescription plan). I’ve recently learned that my earnings for 2010 are only three thousand dollars above the poverty line. For the second time, in two years, Social Security recipients (seniors and the disabled) won’t receive a cost of living adjustment (COLA), yet I am being told that food and fuel prices are going up if they haven’t already. As you will see, it looks like I already live on or below that line. Due to my limited income my medications are heavily subsidized with little out of pocket expense to me. (Thanks, W.!) My mental health services are provided, at a minimal charge, by the county’s mental health agency.

Every six months, I see a nurse practitioner (CRNP) and in-between those visits I see a nurse. Since losing my health insurance in 2006, I haven’t seen a psychiatrist. While I really like the nurse practitioner who’s been very supportive of my writing, which is a first among any of the mental health professionals that I’ve ever met, his technical training as related to psychiatry is no substitute for a medical doctor, but that’s the system for you with its limited resources. He writes my prescriptions under the care of a psychiatrist whose name I don’t even know because I have never laid eyes on him. I guess this is what rationed health care looks like. Without proper insurance and a diagnosis that carries a social stigma, one’s life has little value to, both, this society and to our health care system. If I sound like a man with a mental illness, well I am.

I’m told by some of my retiree friends who also hangout at the local bookstores and the public libraries that I could leave this all behind for the good life where the bananas, mangos, and papaya grow year-around in your front yard. Where the colorful hibiscus bloom daily and volcanoes rumble off in the distance, where the ocean is always blue and it rains six months out the year. They tell me that I could live like a king on my disability paycheck alone in almost any Latin America country that I so choose. Unfortunately, my passion for writing and sharing these political and social essays with a real interest in seeing change occur in this troubled United States keeps me staying put, for now, and it pushes this idea of leaving to the backburner, as my option of last resort. There’s a fire in my belly that keeps me from saying, “Screwing it”, packing my bags, grabbing my passport and catching a jet flying south of the border, forever.

Years ago, I honeymooned for nine days in beautiful Costa Rica and I know one Baby Boomer who now calls this tropical paradise home. Unlike the comfortable retirements enjoyed by “The Greatest Generation”, their children born during 1946-64 (Baby Boomers) are doing their research on where to retire due to having no company-paid health insurance or pension and their retirement plans are insufficient to live out their final years, in the states, in grand style. My youth, at 39, also plays a factor in keeping me staying put, for now. However, a quickly deteriorating U.S. economy could put me on the next airplane leaving out of New Orleans or Atlanta for San Jose, Panama City or Quito, as the newest expatriate. I would prefer to return to the status of U.S. taxpayer, but I need your help. Repeated attempts to bring in additional income, this year, have been fruitless. Under the current Social Security rules, I’m allowed to earn another $900.00/month before my income becomes taxable. The current economy has made the task difficult to achieve, either, as a writer or in some other logical capacity.

I will say that I have learned much about living “on the public dole” and I have a good appreciation for the welfare system, like jails and mental institutions. I might have to write about it sometime or maybe that’s what I am doing right now. I can say that I know what “going broke” and “being broke”, now, feels like. I’ve met and see many folks who appear to be a whole lot worse off, standing in the same line, seeking public assistance while I have also gotten to meet those employed or volunteering in the social services field. My expectations of what I would encounter didn’t always meet the reality thus I got an education on how things really work and sometimes don’t. In my mostly white suburban community, I’ve had to forgo a few monthly needs. Each month, I am one of several hundred residents who visit a local food pantry, run by a church, for a box of provisions. This year, I signed up for and began receiving food stamps ($25/month) and once a year I’m able to visit three area charities for food and/or utility-payment assistance.

Due to my diagnosis of bipolar disorder, my learning disability and my disastrous work history, I have not worked full-time since 2004. I last filed a tax return that following spring. I have no savings or a retirement plan to speak of. I have no wiggle room or any margin of error. This way of life keeps me living ever so simply and in the moment. Please, don’t feel sorry for me because I am truly living my best life. How’s that you ask? Well, I’ve learned to live every moment of the day in a conscious state of living engaged in activities that produce maximum pleasure while minimizing the time it takes for solving life’s unpleasant tasks. If a chore doesn’t match my slowly-developed values then we quickly part ways. The Killjoys, Procrastination and his corrupt cousin’s Guilt and Shame, aren’t allowed to hang around here. I’ve learned to apply these same values to my family and friends ruling out my participation in all tasks that might produce personal discomfort and misery while making me wish that I was doing something else, somewhere else. You know what? It works! Everyone should live this way we would have a happier world.

Prior to my diagnosis, I had always held a salaried position, paid my bills on time and maintained good credit. Currently, I owe two banks a combined total of $36,000 due to my divorce, illness and unemployment. What little cash that I got from the sale of our house and my wife’s tax return was quickly spent in the first year. I naively thought that I would re-enter the workforce or find a source of income as a writer, by now. That’s been almost four years, ago. Neither has happened, but I remain hopeful. Last year, one bank obtained a judgment against me for roughly half of what I owe and thankfully they haven’t tried to collect on any of it, yet. Maybe they know my poor financial condition about as well as I do. My credit score has gone to hell. I’ve given the issue of repayment little thought because it’s currently an impossible reality. My fall out of the workforce, both, in pay and in position turns out to be quite common for the mentally ill. I could’ve easily given up after this latest strike against me. I know many who understandably have and they’ve never returned to their previous income bracket or occupation. This has a tremendous impact on one’s emotional, financial, mental and spiritual welling, as well as, on their families. I would like to see my monthly bills as something that I no longer have to worry about as a writer.

Shear determination, perseverance to change my family history and my future with this gift to think and write has kept me moving forward while defying the odds. I’ve encountered much resistance along the way, but I’ve learned how to go around it. My friends can see it and one of them recently commented on it. I’m the trout swimming upstream trying to avoid the angler’s fly, the eagle and the hungry grizzly bear returning to the headwaters to spawn. I should be another statistic among the bankrupt, defeated, helpless, hopeless, homeless and very insane or maybe it’s death by suicide. This society fears us and y’all make it virtually impossible for us to get back into the workforce with all your prejudices. Am I wrong? Where’s the helping hand given my talents, I see none. Where’s “the land of opportunity” that I am always hearing about – is it just another meaningless patriotic phrase that America has become all too known for? Surprisingly, I have been able to stave off bankruptcy by being nimble, paying attention to the details while staying on top of my monthly bills and taking quick action to intervene on any unforeseen ones. I don’t know how long this will last.

I reluctantly share this personal information, not out of desperation, but in an effort to give this audience a better understanding of my daily reality in hopes of getting greater participation from you. Over the years, I have only had one person, a local business executive, who expressed an interest in investing in this endeavor, which was withdrawn as the economy slowed. Two professors have already served as references in prior fellowship applications. With 6,000 of you, I would like to grow my pool of volunteers to ease the burden on them while also knowing that, on some level, I do have your support. I am not sure my writing style lends itself to a traditional business-model with a guaranteed ROI for investors, at this point. After hearing horror stories involving now-famous artists and their first investors taking advantage of them, I would be pretty cool to this idea. Reader support in the format of something like PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) might work better for everyone.

Some form of this project will continue if that’s what the good Lord wants even if it continues to run on just my modest paycheck and I am forced to stop pursuing fellowships due to a lack of support. Dollar for dollar, taxpayers should be happy to know that they’re getting their monies worth. Show me a fellowship or grant recipient whose reach is global, who’s touching world leaders, billionaires, major foundations, universities all the way down to the common man.

Could there possibly be another visionary doing so much on so little? In truth, the gap between the top and the bottom of this audience and this global society is much smaller than anyone wants to realize. Simply put we’re all children of God and human beings, all other labels serve only to divide on behalf of the ego (or insanity) and at the expense of the human spirit. All are welcome to actively participate or to remain silent and nobody is ever excluded from reading these commentaries. My work is available to those who can afford to pay and, more importantly, for all those who can’t. That’s what freedom look like. The people in my life, now, come from all walks and they aren’t from the same preppy white life that I left. This effort is to bring public consciousness to the world and it’s dedicated to all the above. I wouldn’t have it any other way. In a society that’s so spiritually-poor, I offer this free food for your soul.

I see this project as being a counterbalance to the drug known as “mass consumption” by corporate America via media’s incessant advertising and marketing of goods and services. This effort is the free distribution of honest ideas across all demographic lines regardless of age, gender, race nationally, sexual orientation, income, political and religious affiliation, I think it’s in keeping with the spirit of Jesus Christ. Your modest financial and moral support of me is supporting the spread of these wholesome ideas come with a dividend for you.

I’m sharing with my most pressing challenge as a human and as an ardent writer. I ask that you give this latest disclosure some consideration and see your possible role in helping to resolve some of these issues. This is another aspect of who I am and it explains a little more about my story. It reveals more about where I coming from, but not necessary where I have always been. It’s my current reality, but hopefully a temporary one. Your input can make the difference in bringing it an end, sooner rather than later.

Like much of my life, my friends are knowledgeable about this aspect. This topic has been frequently discussed and kicked around many times in an attempt to solve it. They’re ongoing support of this venture has resulted in the purchase of countless lunches, dinners, tanks of gas and bags of groceries. On several occasions, cold-hard cash has been placed in my open palm to help cover an extra expense while I continue to live as a full-time “starving” artist and a Bohemian writer.

My continued focus of this enterprise has been a three-pronged approach. It’s to write essays, grow my audience while seeking funding through fellowships and developing credentials as a foundation recipient. Both, the production of some fifty essays, growing a global audience have been a real success considering that I write to you without any institutional or organization affiliation. It’s simply my thoughts turned into words shared with you. You, either, choose to accept the message, reject it, speak up or say nothing. The overwhelming reaction has been silence with many positive remarks. I think that’s a good sign.

These new friends have almost all come into my life following my breakdown and breakthrough, a 20-minute geographic relocation from my hometown and the start of this new life. While they’re employed, work a forty, have their own bills and problems to face none of them make a whole lot of money. However, they’re continued support for me has been unwavering without regret or resentment. That’s quite a feat especially when money gets involved in any friendship. If distinguished job titles and employment at prestigious institutions meant little to the Woodrow Wilson fellowship committee and others like it, then I wouldn’t even bother asking for your help. I would gladly live and die by the reference letters of those who know me best, those who I live and play with.

On the other hand, I don’t get any support, financial or moral, from my family and old friends that I once knew as classmates and playmates for well over thirty years of my life. Phone calls are a rarity and I haven’t gotten the first invite to one of their parties since my diagnosis and divorce, in 2007. I suspect they need someone to stand beneath them on their very old and rickety social ladder. They would rather have the plague be on the guest list at their annual Christmas party than me. I continue to be seen, in the eyes of some, as the crazy one and I probably always will until I get my big break and they’re finally forced to come to terms with my talents and maturation.

For now, an axe has dropped, with a loud thud, severing all those ties. I think God had something to do with it. There are absolutely no friendships or a marriage to rekindle, at this point. I continue to grieve the losses. Recently, I had the opportunity to see some of them at our twenty-year high school reunion including two who were in my wedding party. Over the course of the evening, little of any significance was spoken. That might be it until the forty-year, I don’t know. I remain open to the endless possibilities. The event reminds me of how deeply indebted I am to my new friends. I think they would tell you that what I write in these essays is a reflection of the person that they’ve gotten to know. (I hope so.) If it wasn’t for my written story, I don’t think any of them would believe me, for one minute, about my wild history with mental illness.

In closing, I would like to say that due to my lifestyle I have the luxury of listening to a lot of music throughout the day. There are many songs, from different genres, which I’ve discovered and been moved by. One song that comes to mind is “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength” performed by Lorrie Morgan, an American country music singer. It speaks, as well as, any song can or does to picking oneself up after taking a hard fall. That’s something I’ve gotten to know a lot about during this past decade. I’ve survived and thrived under some very difficult circumstances. Mostly importantly, I’ve lived to tell about it. I take great comfort in Morgan’s song as I reflect on this journey and look ahead.

In the course of writing this introduction, a new motto came to mind. It speaks to the philosophy that I live by daily and write about monthly. I hope you like it.

To living life without limits. ©

Enjoy!

Ted

See attachment: Dr. Robert Shiller (Yale University) – Financial Reform Laws Didn’t Resolve Key Problems (Huffington Post)

Note: The following link, Shiller: Dodd-Frank Does Not Solve Too Big To Fail, is on the topic of financial reform and Wall Street’s “Too big to fail” banks features the comments of Yale economist Dr. Robert Shiller. The story appeared this morning (10/27/10) on the Huffington Post. My reply to Dr. Shiller follows.

October 27, 2010

Dr. Shiller,

As a philosopher and writer on political and social commentary, I have an audience with over 5,000 professors teaching at thirty-two world class universities, in ten countries, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford…I have been writing about the corruption of, both, our nation’s economic and political systems, since 2007. A member of my audience, Harvard Law Professor, Elizabeth Warren took notice of my work and forwarded three of my essays to her Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), in 2009. Each time, I received a notice from her congressional committee.

Regarding this entire crisis, shamefully no one in Congress or in the Bush or Clinton Administrations have ever admitted to making mistakes and/or resigning, from their office, in disgrace over their actions or inactions leading up to and during this nation’s real estate mortgage crisis and the Wall Street banking meltdown. However, all appear to be running for re-election, this November. They’re too deep in denial about the problems created for taxpayers by their involvement.

There’s been no significant transformation in our federal government’s conduct, both, in its legislative affairs (Congress) and in enforcing federal policies and laws (The Administration). Likewise, there’s been no dramatic change in the behavior of Wall Street banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs…, their lobbyists, K street or with our government regulators (the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission). So, what’s really changed with the passage of the Dodd-Frank law – nothing?

Compliance with old regulations and new ones goes only surface deep. At best, the banks will give you what you request and nothing more. They continue to operate the same way. They’re secretive as ever and transparent to no one. There’s a saying, “The thinking that creates a problem is not the same thinking that will solve it”. A man by the name of Albert Einstein is credited with making this statement.

Basically, Einstein argues that a higher level of conscious, personal, organizational or community growth has to occur, in order, for you to see the real solution or to see the problem in its true perspective. I think neither action has occurred with “Too big to fail” because the folks who wrote Dodd-Frank were incapable of taking the necessary steps to see beyond their own limited ego-driven interests and their fear-based mindset. They have not grown up, either, emotionally or spiritually. This is a must for permanent change. Instead, they remain insane.

It’s like King George III offering a “solution” to his unhappy American colonists when Thomas Jefferson among others have come up with newer and more honest ideas about how the colonies should be run and how each colonist should live. The King and the founding fathers were oceans apart in how they saw the American problem and the solution. The colonist’s newer and truer ideas won out.

That’s the same problem we’re facing in America on a host of issues beyond financial reform and the home foreclosure crisis that our federal government seems unable to resolve. All Congress and the president care about are holding onto their money, power and prestige at the expense of some 300 million citizens and taxpayers. The Dodd-Frank laws and other reforms are desperate attempts to show some teeth to the American people, but it’s just all bark to the banks. Without a serious congressional change, “Too big to fail” has become the law of the land. There’s no political will to force Wall Street banks to grow up. We demand it of our citizens, but not of our reckless banks and corporations.

So, if you’re an expert then why didn’t you express a similar message, a similar truth that I have just laid out? Are you just as blind to reality as Congress and President Obama? If anything, your comments have only enabled things to remain the same and you have just helped lull everyone back to sleep. The next financial storm, or market correction, will hit and swamp Wall Street, the United States and the global financial markets, once more, in the next ten years. We’ve had three crashes, in the stock market, over the past thirty years, why would it be any different or get any better? Seeing that you’re held in such high regard, as an economist and you teach at Yale University, I think these are fair questions, to ask, given the dire times.

There are a few Thomas Jefferson’s out here watching and writing, I know of at least one. It’s time for another revolution.

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved. “Dear Dr. Robert Shiller – Financial Reform Laws Didn’t Resolve Key Problems (Huffington Post)” by Ted Burnett.

I am available for speaking, consulting and political advising. My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

Dear Jay Ambrose (his op-ed opposing tax increases)

2010-09-27T15:36:00.013-05:00

The following link is an op-ed, by Jay Ambrose, that recently appeared in my local newspaper, the Press-Register, on the topic of opposing tax increases. Click on the link to read his essay "Ambrose: The hokum argument for tax increases". I’ve recently come to my own conclusions about taxes, tax policy and our attitudes towards them. Mr. Ambrose’s piece gave me that opportunity to express those thoughts, see below. On Sunday night, I received a response from Jay. His reaction follows mine, on page 2.

(Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com.)

Enjoy,

Ted

September 26, 2010

Jay,

Your essay, opposing tax increases, appeared in my newspaper, the Press-Register, today. I've come to conclude that Americans who oppose taxes and raising taxes are no different in their thinking than Islamic terrorists. Both groups are being irrational. All have been programmed or brainwashed into believing in some notion that simply isn't true.

During the years of prosperity under the Bush Administration, we cut taxes. The rich and the super rich saw their income and net worth grow disproportionately under these unrealistic and unsustainable policies. All that economic growth has evaporated and now these unfunded tax cuts have kept the federal government from collecting $3 trillion.

Americans seem to be convinced that any tax increase is a sin, is stealing. We demand the highest standard of living, the lowest tax rate and yet we seem to be pretty unhappy as a tribe. With future unmet obligations, coming due soon, on our biggest social programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- what gives?

The baby boomers are coming, but the U.S.S. America has already sunk. When do we, the have-nots, start collecting from the haves? Our federal treasury needs money to fund the government. If we don't live within a balanced budget and we don't tax during times of prosperity or during a recession, then when?

Maybe our logic is all wrong. Could it be that less is actually more? Is man, is this nation better off living in a smaller natural state than this artificial one with its economic balloons that rapidly expand and then burst?

Sincerely,
Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL

September 26, 2010

Re: Jay Ambrose’s response to my comments.

In your view, then, half the economists in the country are terrorists. They can tell you the evidence of history, which apparently means zilch to you, is that raising taxes when recovering from a recession is a pretty sure recipe to get you back into it. I would try to explain to you, but you didn't even read my column well enough to know that the top five percent of income earners in the country now pay half of all the income tax. Time to start getting them to do their share? Good heavens, they're paying many times their share right now. And by the way, you are also unbelievably ignorant in saying how low our tax rate is compared to other countries. It isn't. The answer to prosperity and relief is to cut spending, as even Obama knows. It can be done. Yes it can.

Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved. “Dear Jay Ambrose (op-ed opposing tax increases)” by Ted Burnett.

I am available for speaking, consulting and political advising. My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com

The Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship proposal

2010-09-01T12:12:00.013-05:00

Introduction

Since sharing with you my essay, “Saving Face or Saving Your Ass”, I made several attempts to write a follow-up to that piece, in July, but it just wouldn’t come together. So, after several weeks of struggle, I decided to drop it for now and to enjoy the rest of the summer. Meanwhile, I continue to grow my audience.

I added professors from the Faculty of Law at the University of Amsterdam and while looking for a list of top universities in Russia, I came across Moscow State. After visiting the school’s website over a period of several days and navigating around the site, which is written mostly in Pусский also known as Russian, I inadvertently found myself looking at the official webpage of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, after clicking my mouse one too many times. On his site, in English, I noticed that I had the opportunity to write him a letter and so I did. I was quite surprised by my discovery and the experience felt so intimate, unfiltered, as though I could say anything and he just might be reading my thoughts at bedtime. That’s not the impression you get when you write to the White House or to the rest of Washington.

In my letter, I invited President Medvedev to join this audience, but I didn’t stop there. I also searched on the web for the office of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin where I invited him to join, as well. I also shared with the two of them my latest essay. In my delight, I announced to several of my friends, in an email, my great achievement, adding “maybe I can be a conduit for world peace”. Two of them quickly and smartly wrote back only to say that, “It was nice knowing you”. One added, “I’ll be sure to save your email” [as evidence]. One or two weeks passed when I noticed, one morning, that I had received some web traffic on my blog from Moscow, from the previous day. How about that?

In truth, this wasn’t the first time, but its timeliness definitely made me wonder. As I’ve come to see this writing endeavor evolve I have to now ask, what’s a world stage without world leaders? Turned on by the ease of this effort, I hope to add more political leaders – chancellors, kings, presidents and prime ministers – from the nations making up the G-20, the world’s twenty major economies and maybe a few island nations located near the equator. What a crazy idea coming from an almost forty year-old man who, was born and raised in the Heart of Dixie, and was once “buck-tooth and skinny” with a full head of hair the color of cotton. I wouldn’t call this a dream of mine and definitely not some goal to achieve, but instead a journey, it’s my unplanned journey that’s so full of mystery and surprises. I’ve come to embrace both.

The following is my latest essay – a project proposal – as part of my fellowship application with The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, based in Washington, DC. Limited to just five pages to write my proposal, I think you’ll find the pages three, four, six and seven to be new, revealing and provocative material. Page five, should be familiar to all, it comes from my standard solicitation email that’s sent out to new audience members. I hope this project proposal gets you thinking and talking with your family, friends and colleagues about the seriousness of America’s fundamental troubles that go well beyond the fear-based noise being pushed at you by our print, TV and Internet media. It’s what I continue to describe as an emotional and spiritual crisis. Throwing good money after bad has never worked and it never will when you’re dealing with feelings of fear, hate, neurosis, paralysis and God.

In closing, do you have any friends in high places at The Woodrow Wilson Center or would you like to think you do? I could use two good references (2). Check out the center’s board of trustees on the following link, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.trustees. Everyone’s participation is welcome. No one goes through life without a little help from others. Every one of our U.S. presidents in order to become “the most powerful man in the world” needed a lot of help in the form of money and influence from the rich and powerful along with the votes from millions of ordinary Americans to get elected. How many of you blindly threw your money and your political weight behind someone whose character you really didn’t know much about, but you liked their politics? Did you ever get burned by their conduct? From my writings, I hope you see me in a different category. If you will support a politician, I hope you can support me and my ongoing project.

Check out my proposal before making your decision to help. The deadline for applications and for submitting all reference letters on my behalf is October 1, 2010. The center doesn’t make their announcement for their next class of fellows until March 1, 2011 with a start date in September 2011. Click on the following link to check out the center’s reference letter form and their guidelines – www.wilsoncenter.org/sf/docs/reflttrform09.pdf. Thank you in advance.

This is my second attempt (2008) to earn a fellowship with The Woodrow Wilson Center.

Enjoy!

Ted

Project Proposal – pages 3-7

List of Publications – pages 8-11

August 25, 2010

Project Proposal

By

Ted Burnett

What started out, in 1989, at the age of 18 as simply a quest for personal survival to better understand myself and the world that I live in has become an unfolding research project, like no other, of twenty-one years. It’s built on many life experiences, some that weren’t always so pleasant, countless insights and observations. What took ten thousand attempts for Thomas Edison to finally invent a, commercially-successful electric, light bulb has taken me a journey of a thousand footsteps or more, through valleys and up mountains, and two decades of living to finally awaken, to see the truth about how life really works and to see how insane our society and this government have become. It’s to have fallen backwards in great failure into a state of enlightenment and grace. It’s led to the development and mastery of problem-solving skills, through repeated trial and error, critical for confronting and resolving life’s problems and major crises that ultimately lead to peace, serenity and to personal success.

It’s resulted in emotional and spiritual growth while slowly leading to my freedom, happiness while reclaiming my personal power by constantly looking within, by soul searching and standing up for what I believe. Weaknesses caused by doubts, fears, lies, procrastination, regrets and shame have been slowly replaced by strengths of character, courage, faith, rigorous honesty and a willingness to change while silence has given way to a thunderous roar. Immaturity has gradually led to maturity while childishness and self-centeredness has been replaced by a childlike-state and a desire to help and serve others. For the past three years, my personal development or growth has continued while I’ve put many of these experiences down on paper and shared them with the world, with my growing international audience.

As a child, a set of family, educational and religious beliefs, social values and many illusions were instilled in me defining who I was, who I was to become and what would be my place in the world. It hamstrung me for decades and it was all wrong. These beliefs and delusions have been replaced with personal experience, insights and lessons learned. It has led to clarity to be able to see the world in all its beauty and grandeur, in its actual size, while learning to rely on my own inner compass and intuition for direction. It’s resulted in a solid understanding in the relationship between how integrity, dignity and sanity plays or interacts with individual, organizational and society development and wellbeing. It’s made me a true believer in role of spirituality, truth, faith, freedom and happiness – the long forgotten words of Thomas Jefferson.

The significance of my journey and research is that it’s ultimately produced an American thought leader on the subjects mentioned above. I have an expertise in freedom, slavery, “drug” addiction, recovery and mental illness as it relates to individuals, families, organizations and societies, what’s become an unspoken American disgrace.

My work is built on the ground-breaking efforts of author, educator and lecturer John Bradshaw and his award-winning Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series Bradshaw On: The Family, Bradshaw On: Healing the Shame that Binds You, renowned educator and lecturer Fr. Joseph C. Martin, his “Chalk Talk” series on alcoholism and drug addiction, best-selling author Melody Beattie of Codependent No More, Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, internationally-acclaimed spiritual guide and public speaker Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. author of Awareness – The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, The Song of the Bird, founder and headmaster A.S. Neill, author of Summerhill [School], former Catholic priest Fr. Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessing, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Lois Wilson, co-founder of Al-Anon Family Groups and Ala-teen, musician, singer, songwriter, director Sting, psychologist Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD, author of Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Millard Fuller, co-founder and president of Habitat for Humanity International.

In the course of my journey, I’ve come to see that the American culture is very sick, very toxic to all who are touched by it – every American, families, organizations and the world. The Washington establishment doesn’t see this nor do they want to. Washington doesn’t want to acknowledge much of anything including its sorry role in this current crisis because they’re indeed the problem; they’re the source of so much suffering. They constantly make claims, they tell lies to the American people, to the men and women serving in the Armed Forces while rarely following through on any of its promises. It’s shameful, its grounds for mutiny. They know only how to play their broken records and games. America is tired of it. I’ve lost all hope for the players hogging the media limelight with nothing to say except point fingers. This country is bankrupt, in every conceivable way, our ship has hit an iceberg and it’s sinking fast. As residents of Washington, I suspect this fellowship committee doesn’t want to acknowledge these truths, neither did King George III.

Due to the economy crisis of 2008, the national home foreclosure and unemployment crises, I now have a growing interest in understanding the role of the natural economy (without marketing and advertising) versus an artificial one, achieving market equilibrium, natural ebb and flow, excess capacity and crashes, as well as, the natural and artificial states of individuals, organizations and societies and the application of true democratic principles throughout our society. I have written repeatedly on the issues of business, history, natural law, philosophy, political science, sociology and theology.

In terms of originality, many of these basic ideas have been expressed throughout history by Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, MLK, Greek and Roman philosophers, by mystics and philosophers of the Enlightenment era, but they don’t seem to have taken root on any large scale. There’s been a lot of talk, but that’s about it. In terms of post-modernism, these ideas continue to run counter to conventional wisdom thus making them ever so fresh to explore, to disseminate and to put into action. These ideas are alive, unlike our shallow Western culture. They continue to attract a new audience in younger generations, those young at heart.

Life is simply a series of events, from birth to death, and how we respond to each one determines whether we’ll enjoy a happy and fulfilled life or a sad and empty one, whether we’ll live in faith and courage or in fear and doubt, whether we’re constantly growing or do we become stagnant and regress. Are we embracing each opportunity as it’s presented to us or do we turn our back on them out of fear and run?

For much of my life, I haven’t been able to effectively articulate my thoughts, both, in writing and orally, first, as a struggling student and later as an underachieving adult in the workforce due to a learning disability, known as dyslexia. It’s affected me all my life, but here’s the strange twist. It also affected your center’s namesake Woodrow Wilson. He’s one of many political leaders and other notables who had dyslexia, or was thought to, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, JFK, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and inventor Thomas Edison. Did you know this about President Wilson or the rest? That’s a pretty remarkable group and I am a part of it.

In 2002, I had a mental breakthrough. It’s a long story. I began writing for the first time ever, at the age of 32, on some deeply religious and political history. Noting a drastic change in mental ability, I took an IQ test where I scored a 142. The score was a 40-point upswing from a decade earlier.

Since 2007, I’ve been writing commentaries, full-time. I am a philosopher and writer on business, political, social and spiritual matters in the United States. Primarily, I write one to two monthly commentaries and share them with a growing international audience. I offer a spiritual approach to addressing many of these important issues of state, national and global interest. Rather than simply take sides to the symptoms of America’s social problems, like, our politicians, pundits and the media so often do, I seek to point out the root cause.

I’ve been telling the world including many Americans what’s not being said in the halls of Congress, in the White House, at the State Department, in the media, at Harvard, at Yale... I believe that our elected officials in Washington and at most statehouses across the United States are living in a radioactive slough. They are so sick, in denial and spewing poison from their lips at one another. Their heated rhetoric and twisted legislative actions has gotten America very ill. These environments produce insensitivity and disrespect towards one’s self and towards one another including every constituent as a result of the ever hardening of heartened hearts.

The United States is in serious trouble do to the many faulty belief systems promulgated and embraced by most of its citizens, we have become brainwashed. We must wake up to this reality, to the truth and set a new course that leads to peace and harmony with our fellow man, nature, God and ourselves. The “celebrity” lifestyle of money, power and fame that most of this society seems infatuated with is literally killing this nation. The subjects that I write about I believe are a breath of fresh air to one’s lungs, heart and to the human spirit.

I have produced fifty thought provoking essays on matters ranging from gay rights, Middle East peace, freedom and slavery, our government’s treatment of our soldiers and veterans, global warming, abortion, capital punishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, free markets, America’s lost virtues – truth and freedom, crime and society’s role, self-governing, democracy, the current economic crisis, success, corporate consciousness, health care reform, finally recognizing the 1915 Armenian massacres and my own spiritual journey for the past twenty-one years.

My proposal to the Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship committee is to produce nine forward thinking and provocative essays (one per month) challenging the conventional wisdom of this organization’s leadership and the mindset of Washington, DC, in general. The topics will cover matters at the state, national and international level and they will be determined by me, spontaneously. In each piece, I will identify the topic, the underlining problem(s), and not merely the presenting symptoms, while offering up “where the rubber meets the road” solutions.

This project’s relevance is that it’s grounded in reality, like its writer, while our entire society and this government aren’t. This nation is quickly digging a hole so deep that it won’t be able to climb out. America may one day have to sell its “Louisiana Purchase”, as Napoleon did, to pay off her debts. Nobody is talking this crazy way and yet it just might happen. It may not occur while the generation “in charge” is alive, but it maybe something their kids or grandkids may have to face. What a sad and irresponsible legacy to leave behind. We could be forced to the sell off the Hawaiian Islands or California or worst, maybe the entire Western United States.

Might everyone have to load up their wagon and move back to the East Coast? Maybe China, using its economic strength, will simply announce that it’s foreclosing on America, tomorrow. If you think the events of 9/11 hurt and were unimaginable, then image the U.S. losing some or all of its sovereignty. Individuals, families and businesses sell assets, all the time, to pay off their debts, why is America any different? Can you imagine this? I can.

The Roman Empire at its height occupied an area larger than the United States, but today it’s no bigger than a city. Might America be reduced in size to the city limits of Washington DC or NYC? Things change. The laws of physics say that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Things naturally rise and fall. Should we wait and see what happens next or get busy solving our many political and social problems? Churchill, while in his political wilderness, warned of a rising Adolf Hitler. Did anyone in Parliament listen? Not really. Here’s my warning to you.

I am inviting your organization, the leadership including the board of trustees to sit back, read and learn something different for a change. With a reputation for producing honest, insightful commentaries with great depth, they may vary in length from a single page to ten or more. It’s not uncommon, for me, to get comments from my audience who tell me that it took them 3-times to read and fully digest one of my essays. The writing process is very intense and it generally takes me 5-7 days, from start to finish, and currently another seven to setup and blast my essay to my audience. With some money and the purchase of some web-based software, I should be able to cut the delivery time down to only two days.

Following the email blast, I usually give myself 2-3 weeks of down time for some rest and relaxation before developing the next topic. I recently read the following quote, which I have come to believe in very strongly. “Great writers write what they know.” I draw on my personal experience and in some cases like education it dates back to my early childhood. The extent of my so-called “research” generally relates to “fact checking” and not working on a new topic from scratch. I have enough curiosity to keep my mind powered like that of a nuclear submarine.

It’s my intention while in the fellowship program to continue growing my audience of professors teaching at top international universities, notables and world leaders (G-20). In July 2010, I added my first two global leaders when I made contact with the offices of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In the subsequent days, I received some traffic to my blog from Moscow. Who knows my work just may be serving as a conduit for world peace.

In America, we make countless claims about our nation being the “land of the free”, “under God” and to knowing the “truth.” At the age of thirty-nine, I have come to believe that these virtues are in extremely short supply and that there is even less of a demand for them.

The current economic recession due to widespread corruption involving the federal officials, American corporations and banks tells me that this nation is in some serious trouble, but nobody wants to face this reality much less talk about it openly and honestly. Neither President Barack Obama nor Congress nor the American people will acknowledge this rapidly growing and out of control deadly “virus.” All anyone of us seems to really want is to produce a synchronized chorus of – “give us our drugs and leave us alone.” Is this truly happening here in America? Sadly, I think so.

List of Publications

1. A Letter to the Editor: Is Corporate Social Responsibility Good for Business?"
Exec Digital Magazine, www.ExecDigital.com
--Dean Tsouvalas, Editor in Chief
August 31, 2009

With the exception of several “letters to the editor” this was my only essay, on corporate consciousness, to be published online, in 2009. This essay was also shared with my entire audience where it caught the attention of Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren. Professor Warren submitted this piece to her congressional committee, the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP). It would be one of three commentaries that I wrote that she would submit to the committee’s record, that year.

The fellowship committee should be aware that getting my work “published” in the traditional sense wasn’t my primary objective given the following constraints. First, I don’t have a degree in English, journalism or some other relevant field, as some editors might desire. As a new writer, in 2007, I had no experience or contacts in print journalism. In reality, I had no friends, in the business, to call on and to sell some of my writings to so I could earn a quick paycheck while jump starting my new career. So, I took an entirely different approach.

Instead of having to shop each and every written piece among editors at local, regional, national and international newspapers, magazines and journals with their different markets and selective palates, I chose to bypass these standard channels with their gatekeepers, editorial control, long waits and the general outlook of old media for instantly blasting my essays upon immediate completion into the inboxes of my growing international audience, each month.

I’ve created a single market of professionals and professors allowing them to easily follow me each month while slowly deepening their understanding of my work. The headache and hassle of getting fifty essays published, on my timetable, has been eliminated with virtually “fifty” clicks, in three years and eight months. This arrangement has allowed me to control the entire project, from beginning to end, in a very efficient and effective manner. I’m pleased with the results.

For almost four years, I have given away my work to an audience that otherwise would’ve never spent the first dime on buying one of my essays from this anonymous writer. We’re small in number making it very personable. They, now, know my name and the caliber of my work. Every month, I produce one to two commentaries on business, political, social or spiritual matters.

Who are they? It’s a distinguished group; almost everyone comes with their own sphere of influence. The group includes major foundations (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations Network, Pew Charitable Trust, Charles and Helen Schwab and the Turner Foundation), Washington policy institutes (Brookings, Cato, New American Foundation, AEI…), state and federal lawmakers, over six thousand professors teaching at over sixty colleges and universities, in ten countries, top university presidents, American notables, millionaires and even two billionaires.

My following also includes attorneys, business executives, clergy, state and federal judges, two world leaders, media and publishers. Due to the nature and depth of my writing, it probably takes new audience members reading two or three essays before they begin to catch on to my spiritual message. I have a heavy faculty presence at universities located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Among the schools are thirty-two world-class universities with over five thousand professors at Harvard College, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School (over 720), Yale, Yale Law School, Stanford, Stanford Law School, Stanford Business School, Berkeley, Princeton, Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia, Columbia Law School, Chicago, NYU School of Law, Emory, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, Virginia, Penn, The Wharton School, Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, Trinity College Dublin, École normale supérieure-Paris (ENS-Paris), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Universiteit van Amsterdam Faculty of Law, Leiden, ETH Zurich, Freie Universität Berlin, Toronto, McGill, British Columbia, Australian National University, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. Among the fifty-six hundred professors, my retention rate exceeds 99.9% (as of 7/10).

Included are ten nationally top-ranked university professors -- Emory University's Patrick N. Allitt, PhD (Berkeley), University of Toronto's Kenneth R. Bartlett, PhD (Toronto), University of Pennsylvania's Thomas Childers, PhD (Harvard), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Bart D. Ehrman, PhD (Princeton), University of Virginia's Gary W. Gallagher, PhD (U.Texas @Austin), Emory University's Luke Timothy Johnson, PhD (Yale), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Lloyd Kramer, PhD (Cornell), University of Georgia's Edward J. Larson, PhD (U.Wisconsin @Madison), Oxford University’s Daniel Robinson, PhD (CUNY), University of Pennsylvania's Jonathan Steinberg, PhD (Cambridge).

Other notables receiving my essays include Boston University's Dr. Andrew Bacevich, former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Dr. Alan Blinder of Princeton University, civil rights leader, social activist and professor at the University of Virginia - Dr. Julian Bond, New America Foundation President Steve Coll, former three-time New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Harvard University President Drew G. Faust, U.S. Presidential advisor and Harvard Professor David Gergen, University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, economist Dr. Simon Johnson of MIT Sloan, Dr. Patty Kelly of George Washington University, Neoconservative political analyst William Kristol, NYT columnist Paul Krugman, American University's Professor Peter Kuznick, Harvard Law School Dean and Professor Martha Minow, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Dean and Professor Christina Paxson, Judge Richard A. Posner, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Dr. Larry J. Sabato at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro, investor Charles Schwab, R.E. "Ted" Turner III, philanthropist and Chairman of the Turner Foundation, David M. Walker President and CEO of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, Ashoka President Diana Wells…

How is this direct approach working, you ask? If Professor Warren’s actions of submitting three of my essays to her congressional committee are any indication, I think just fine. Here’s what some in my audience are saying about my work.

“Thanks for writing. You have an impressive opus…” “[I] would be happy to receive further correspondence.”
-- Paul Gibbons, Founder and Director
Future Considerations, London, UK/Madison, WI, USA
June 13, 2010 (an email reply to my resume and essay – “Ashoka Foundations”)

"Hey Ted, Hope this finds you well. I want to let you know that we’ve featured your letter on the homepage of Exec Digital today. Thanks for writing in and for reading our magazine. Great blog too!"
--Dean Tsouvalas, Editor in Chief,
Exec Digital Magazine, www.ExecDigital.com
August 31, 2009 (an email reply to my essay -- "A Letter to the Editor: Is Corporate Social Responsibility Good for Business?")

"Love your blog. Always thought provoking…" "Keep up the good work."
-- Norman Fisher, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA
January 29, 2009 (an email in response to my essays -- "Business as Usual?") and "Success!")
Added to audience in January 2008

"…You obviously have a flair for writing as well as a keen perspective on the ever-changing Mobile and Alabama…"
-- U.S. Congressman Jo Bonner, 1st Congressional District of Alabama
March 19, 2008 (an excerpt from Bonner’s hand-written note in response to my email to Mobile, AL Chamber of Commerce President Win Hallett -- From the desk of U.S. Congressman Jo Bonner...)
Added to audience in November 2007

"Thanks for sending this essay, Ted. I am sharing it with the director of our Course of Study, Rev. Beth Luton."
-- Jan Love, Dean and Professor of Christianity and World Politics Emory University Candler School of Theology, Atlanta, GA
January 15, 2008 (an email in response to my essay –- Freedom and Slavery - A Cycle of Life)
Added to audience in January 2008

"It's a great piece..."
-- Amy Carlisle, Features Editor, Capitol Hill's Roll Call newspaper, Washington, DC
August 31, 2007 (an email in response to my essay -- Our Soldiers, Veterans and the U.S. Government: A Real Dereliction of Duty)

There’s more than one way to get your work out, today. In the digital age, newspapers and periodicals are no longer the only way. I am a different kind of philosopher and writer. I believe President Wilson, a Princeton professor and university president, would approve of my methods and just might enjoy reading my commentaries. I hope this fellowship committee meeting in his name finds some flexibility with your own criteria for fellowship applicants otherwise you’ll let a great one get away.

Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved. “The Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship proposal” by Ted Burnett.

I am available for speaking, consulting and political advising. My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My biography can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.

Saving Face or Saving Your Ass!

2010-06-22T22:05:00.006-05:00

Introduction

As a writer, I frequently share with you my opinion on many different issues, of interest to me, at the state, federal and international level. I would be remiss not to say something about the nation’s largest environmental disaster occurring right here in my backyard along the Alabama Gulf Coast, British Petroleum’s (BP) still leaking oil well, at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. I can think of no better example to illustrate my next essay. Just like with this crisis, airplane crash experts now tell us that the cause of a small private airplane or a commercial jetliner falling out of the sky isn’t the result of a single action taken or not taken by the captain and crew, but instead a series of actions taken in the 24 to 48 hours leading up to the accident, itself.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, a similar pattern is emerging in the form of critical operational mistakes made on the rig and corporate negligence at the highest levels prior to the methane gas explosion and the inferno that killed eleven workers while consuming the $500 million oil rig before sending it to its watery grave. An accident or crisis’ history (or tail) could be weeks, months, years or even decades, in the making, before an undetected flaw or a long denied cover-up finally surfaces when colliding with reality’s brick wall, at a given day and time. This actually happens all the time, in our lives, just not on this grand scale.

From birth to death, life is simply a series of actions or inactions taken in response to a succession of events occurring over the course of a lifetime. How we respond to each of these events will determine how many positive outcomes or negative ones we’ll have while influencing or dictating how we’ll respond, either, out of fear or out of faith (taking risk), to the very next problem or crisis that arises. This ultimately affects our quality of life, it determines whether we’ll grow up – emotionally and spiritually mature, feel happy and free, find our talents and purpose while reaching our destiny and living out our best life. The stakes are real and very high. It’s a tall task for everyone, both, rich and poor, black and white, male and female. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to getting into this end zone only illusions. Sadly, most of us give up long before ever getting started.

What determines whether you’ll live a happy life or a miserable one comes down to your tools, for living life on life’s terms, which are, either, sitting in or missing from your “toolbox.” Assuming you own an actual toolbox for the odd jobs and home improvement projects around the house, you know that each tool has a specific job and rarely works in place of another tool. For example: A hammer is a piece of standard equipment found in most toolboxes. It’s used to drive steel nails under great force to hold, in place, two objects, a handsaw is another commonly owned tool that is used to cut objects down to size, such as, wood, metal or plastic while pliers serve to loosen or tighten nuts on bolts and screws. Each tool has a unique role, a hammer can’t cut a board in half with the same efficiency or precision as a saw nor can it tighten or loosen a nut on a bolt or screw and vice versa. The right tool for the job leads to the best chance for success while using the wrong tool is most likely to lead to failure and frustration.

Our happiness, our joy in life is directly related to having a complete set of tools in life’s toolbox and knowing, through, either, intuition or from past experience, what is the right tool for the job. Unlike the toolbox containing our hammers, saws, measuring tapes and screw drivers, I am talking about a set of spiritual tools for living. Most of us were handed a set of beliefs, a way of thinking, social etiquette, rules and values by our parents, the church, our schools and our community that were most often driven out of fear rather than faith, out of slavery or, lost power, rather than freedom. The maturation process got interrupted by sheltering or isolating us, as children, from what’s really taking place inside the family, inside their marriage or from feeling pain and suffering due to life’s scrapes and bruises occurring in the neighborhood, at school, on the playground or at church.

What started out as good-intentions, by our parents, teachers and preachers, ends up backfiring because they interrupt our natural development for being honest, for problem-solving, forming much needed inner discipline and patience, keeping or reclaiming our personal power, risk taking (growing faith), which impacts our confidence, self-esteem gained from living in reality. Instead, the façade of a chameleon was created and we learned to change “our colors” to please the present company, friend or foe, including authority figures resulting in an emptiness that never leaves us until we have the courage to face those childhood fears, our painful past by being open to everyday life, which leads to a slow transformation to wholeness, to health, to sanity. Coming from a place of fear and navigating through life with these handed down beliefs system never worked for us anymore than it worked for our parents or their parents, but that’s all they had to work with. They did their best and we’re doing ours. The art of living has been lost and for sometime, now. Out of convenience, lies replace hard facts. It may feel good allowing us to avoid immediate conflict, now, but it usually comes at a terribly high emotional, spiritual, mental, physical and/or financial price, later.

In the case of BP, the world now knows that the oil giant came to the Gulf of Mexico, to explore for more sources of oil, at great depths and at great risk, with the wrong set of tools and it’s costing them and the coastal residents and businesses, dearly. And no one is happy!

An update: One year ago, I wrote the essay, “Why is your life so empty?”, in response to my observations and frustrations regarding the shallow comments being posted continuously by old classmates, friends, acquaintances and even strangers in my Facebook community. My commentary was well-received by some in this audience and from members of another social networking site. While I get only a minuscule amount of web traffic on my blog, www.toxicnation.blogspot.com, this piece has slowly moved up into second place in popularity, over the past year, due to the number of almost daily hits that I continue to get. I find it surprising or maybe troubling that so many people, many Americans, are searching the Internet, for answers, using some combination of this phrase. To date (6/21/10), I have had 437 hits total, 242 coming from the USA and the balance coming from 44 other countries. The comments on my Facebook community keep coming and they remain unchanged. Oh well.

Note: Since the last commentary, “Ashoka Foundation”, I have added more professors to this audience. Among this group are faculty at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute (based in Auburn, AL, USA), at the University of Pennsylvania, at the University of Cambridge (UK) including its Faculty of Law and at the University of Oxford (UK) and its Faculty of Law.

N > 6,600

Enjoy!
Ted

Note: The following commentary was originally intended as a letter to a UK-based consulting firm that I have an interest in going to work for on a contractual (or part-time) basis (6-12 month) so I can tour Europe. With a mediocre resume including my academic transcript, a mostly unspeakable work history in sales and no real credentials, to speak of, prior to this writing endeavor. I’ve struggled to land a fellowship, in the past three years. This effort is a change in strategy or course heading.

With this latest piece, I hope to show off my problem-solving skills, thinking and writing talents in an effort to overcome my resume’s glaring deficiencies while shining like a new rising star. Naturally, the letter turned into an essay. I’ve given this topic great thought over the past twenty-one years. It, as much as anything else, has helped to shape my moral character. I have tried unsuccessful to explain this guiding principle to friends and strangers, alike, for many years. This is my first attempt to put it down in writing. Too few individuals, families, organizations and governments live and die by it. As a result, we’re all paying for it, as individuals and as a society.

And finally, I just finished reading with great pleasure The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. This Princeton graduate and entrepreneur encourages frequent mini-retirement vacations, months, at a time, as opposed to the usual one or two weeks each year, while we’re still working over waiting to live out our dreams upon retirement. As a writer, I’ve come to embrace my own version of this lifestyle for the past three-years, but I’ve been limited in my travels due to income. My current work schedule provides me with several weeks of downtime between commentaries, which I thoroughly enjoy. It also gives me the capacity to pick up some more work and money. That hasn’t happened, yet. Hopefully, this consulting opportunity or something like it will materialize.

In the following essay, all names have been changed.

See the attachment: Saving Face or Saving Your Ass!

June 13, 2010

Saving Face or Saving Your Ass!

By

Ted Burnett

Dear “Dr. Smith” and “Mr. Miller”,

Following a recent email exchange with “Peter Crosby”, I am contacting the two of you seeking an opportunity to work with your firm on, either, a temporary or contract basis (6-12 months), in a capacity to be determined. I am an American thought leader, philosopher and writer on business, political, social and spiritual matters, at the state, national and global level. Since 2007, I’ve produced a monthly commentary and freely share them with a growing international audience that now exceeds 6,600 contacts (mostly academia).

Among the group are over 5,000 professors teaching, in five to eight different programs and schools, at twenty-eight world-class universities in ten countries (the US, the UK, Ireland, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Some of these top-tier schools include Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics, École normale supérieure–Paris... (See my biography for a list of top schools and American notables.)

Much of what I write about are on the subjects of human, organizational and society development and health, the role that integrity, dignity and sanity plays, spirituality, truth, faith, freedom and happiness. While I continue to develop this strong passion of mine and build a worldwide following, I’m want to see Europe while working with an EU consulting firm that shares my values.

These principles weren’t instilled in me, nicely and neatly, in the safety and comfort of my home, church and schools, as a child, but instead they’re developed at the school of hard knocks, on life’s mean streets where I was forced to finally face my own character defects in response to my handling or frequent mishandling of life’s problems and later some major crises. What began at the age of eighteen continues well into my late thirties. I view myself as a work in progress. Through trial and error, I have grown from being a very immature and fearful boy into becoming a wise man in every sense of the word.

I have slowly regained my once lost integrity, dignity and sanity. I have reclaimed 100% of my personal power while developing discipline and much needed patience. I am a free man who’s free to speak my mind about anything to anyone and live my life in whatever fashion that best suits me. I am happy.

I’ve been knocked down more than once and I’ve learned to get back up every time and stronger. Along the way, faith and courage have replaced fear and doubt. My personal limitations have been shattered, like glass; the sky is now the limit. Talents have finally surfaced, maybe genius, too. I have discovered and come to enjoy what not one single alumnus from Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge knows or enjoys in their daily life because this education can’t be bought. It has to be lived, it has to be experienced. I have what no living American President or British Prime Minister enjoys in their daily life because this isn’t ego power, this power is real. It comes from the same strand of DNA as history’s many greats.

In my youthful formation, I was given a set of beliefs by well-meaning folks. However, much of what I was told didn’t work when it came to dealing with adversity. They’re teachings proved to be artificial, hollow and ineffective while almost always resulting in the piercing of my integrity and dignity. I became thin-skinned and vulnerable to any and all criticism, which my ego didn’t like. I went insane. These family, Catholic school and church values were simply a toolbox without any tools. Praying my problems away, bargaining with God, using superstition, telling lies, using my fists or getting angry to intimate or scare away “problems” sometimes worked, but most times they didn’t.

As a teenager, I discovered alcohol and consumed increasing quantities of beer, over time, to maintain this drug’s effectiveness. During my junior of high school and heavy into my addiction, I found alcohol to no longer work. Rather than try a harder substance, a cry for help soon landed me in Alcoholics Anonymous. This spiritual program speaks of three basic ideas – rigorous honesty, open-mindedness and a willingness to change, on a daily basis. I tried to adhere to all three for twenty-one years, now. Above all was the borrowed phrase, “To thy own self be true”, which resonated in my core. This spirituality spoke of a freedom that Catholicism never once offered in my first eighteen years. I’ve never returned except to attend an occasional wedding and funeral.

With a small spirit and an even bigger ego, I was a very sick person, emotionally and spiritually. I was a full-blown hypocrite who dreamed of mighty ideals, but was unable to offer a sincere apology to my fellow man. I stumbled a lot, in the beginning. A late night tryst with a female led to a character assassination of her in order to protect my version of events and my reputation in the eyes of friends. Unforeseen was how quickly my story got back to her and we soon had a he said, she said on our hands. The truth got trashed. I was terribly embarrassed about the situation and how fast it had unfolded. My lies caught up with me, in what seemed like seconds. While I‘ve never laid eyes on her again, I still have her on a list of those that I owe an apology to. It was a great teaching moment and I’ve never forgotten. I was corrupt, insane and for that I can forgive myself for my hurtful actions to her and move on.

From this event and others, I quickly came to see that all problems were addressed in one of two ways. First, one could take the easy way out, in the name of “Saving Face”, avoiding (or denying), at all cost, a problem(s) existence altogether by attempting to out run it for days, weeks, months, years or for a lifetime, all the while, hoping it never catches up, with you, and bites you in the derrière.

Applying this method to problems usually results in there being little or no upfront cost with a solid lie (denial), but unknowingly a “truth” meter starts running, and only gets faster with time and louder in one’s mind. It doesn’t stop until the issue is finally confronted and the tab is paid in full. Once a lie is told it becomes “reality” in the minds of all present. The story has to be continually retold until the individual is confronted with the truth. Periodically, the symptom(s) of the problem may, unexpectedly, rear its ugly head requiring lots of time, money and energy to suppress them. It becomes so costly – spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically and ultimately financially extracting a heavy toll with lots of, either, private or public humiliation, pain and suffering.

In the end, it would have been much easier and cheaper to have dealt with the matter once it became first known, but the ego refuses to acknowledge unpleasant truths and perceives all bad news to be a disgrace and a hit to one’s reputation. The ego’s constant obsession with perfection is its fatal flaw and serves as an indicator of there being a psychological problem. The ego has lost all touch with humanity – no love or compassion for oneself or others. This is the preferred method among society’s many fools. This is the common downward spiral taken in dealing with, both, personal and organization problems and crises, alike, but not for everyone. I also learned this approach to avoiding problems from watching my parents, my own actions, the Catholic Church, among others while growing up, as a child and as an adult.

The wise come to learn through similar humiliation, pain and suffering and from listening to the experience of others on how to approach problems and crises, differently. Rather than continuing to “Save Face”, for pride’s sake, and leave one’s backside exposed to imminent danger the wise learn to “Save Your Ass”, (SYA) first, even at the expense of Saving Face or one’s ego. This is achieved by charting a new course instead of trying to out run the storm and hope it never catches up. The wise become wise by turning the bow of their ship straight into the storm and sailing right through it. They come to learn the value of “taking the hit” to their pride and coming clean, upfront, rather than putting it off until later. The cost to one’s pride, wasting time, energy and/or finances is an enormous trade off along with quickly moving pass the trouble and soon regaining serenity to the eventuality of taking a much bigger and certain hit, later.

This is a very scary tactic to apply on one’s first attempts and it can still be challenging, at anytime, even for the seasoned problem solver. An approaching storm can appear to be very big, dark and intimidating stirring up its rough waters producing lots of fears of being swamped and left to die, out at sea. With sufficient courage, the momentum is usually enough to sail through any size storm and make it out on the other side where the seas become calm and the sun reappears. The voyage is sometimes quick, sometimes slow. Surviving leads to new found strength for the captain and crew, alike, as they bail out their vessel before sailing onward.

“Saving Your Ass” (SYA) should never be confused with “Cover Your Ass” (CYA). There’s a big difference between the two. SYA is an ego-deflation process, where repeatedly taking responsibility, for your part, leads to emotional and spiritual growth and slowly, over time, develops strong moral character including humility. CYA, like Saving Face, is an ego-inflation process revealing one’s lack of character through their repeated acts of dishonesty, denial, irresponsibility while leaving oneself exposed spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, financially and/or legally and always deferring blame to others. The initial cost for taking responsibility (SYA), for “doing the next right thing” by facing a problem can be very high including losing Your Face or reputation in the eyes of others, your career, your job, your marriage and friendships, your money, if its criminal, possibility jail or prison, but once the issue has been honestly confronted it never has to be readdressed, ever again! It no longer has the power to weigh us down. The lessons and consequences learned from this one exercise are huge, if repeated. Saving Face, on other hand, keeps oneself from ever looking at their actions, in any matter, from ever growing up, from ever maturing.

So, do you operate in the short-run and defer all problems for later or do you operate in the long-run living in reality and facing all opportunities or crises as they are presented? Do you want to be constantly changing course, in a sea of chaos, or due to the latest trends? Do you want to move away from that way of living for calmer seas and a clearer eye on True North? Saving Face leaves no room for growing up thus being selfish and insane prevails. Saving Your Ass is the only pathway to truth, to wisdom.

Only a few people and organizations will ever learn the value of taking this route, every time, with all present and future opportunities. This repeated action leads to health and to sanity while insuring against telling another lie or a dark secret from staining the fabric of one’s being, of one’s integrity. The first step to responding to any crisis is to ask, are you trying to Save Face, are you trying to save your reputation at the expense of your integrity, your assets or are you trying to Save Your Ass, are you trying to protect your assets while worrying about your image for another day? How do you know, which choice you are making? Are you in it for the short run or for the long run?

Saving Face is worrying about what people think of you, today. That’s living in the short run while neglecting one’s personal responsibilities. The long run is acting to save oneself or maybe a child, hooked on drugs, from killing themselves regardless of how it might appear to family and friends. Addiction has a stigma, but that can be dealt with later after getting one’s son or daughter the needed help. Saving Face requires no action except telling a lie and sticking to that story. Saving Your Ass requires taking risk, telling the truth or maybe asking for help. Ask yourself are you in – denial, anger, bargaining, depression or acceptance. This is known as the five stages of grief (Kubler-Ross model). Ultimately, you have to be in acceptance of a situation in order to face it and to take responsibility for your part. The quicker one can move from a place of denial to acceptance, the quicker that one can move through the problem and beyond.

Values of honesty, integrity, faith, health begin to develop replacing fears, laziness, excuses, procrastination and sickness. Dignity, self-esteem and self-worth grow as honest living leads to a clear conscience replacing low moral character, guilt, hypocrisy, shame, denial, pain, suffering and a handful of bad habits or addictions to mask it all. Spiritual, emotional, financial, mental (sanity) and physical health begins to slowly return as honesty and personal accountability grows from having a conscience to experiencing full awareness, consciousness (moving on a scale of integrity: 0-50% to 51-100%).

We become humans again and are no longer robots or puppets on a string, to be jerked around. We are natural and are no longer artificial or actors, we’re no longer slaves to our drugs, to material things or in our relationships with others. We now experience freedom. We reclaim our humanity and rejoin the human race for we’re alive. We see our role in society and in God’s entire kingdom. Our world grows from a small zip code, city, state, country to its actual size of 27,000 miles, in circumference plus the Heavens. We look beyond manmade labels and embrace everyone, all six billion people. We make peace with our fellow man, with nature, with God and with ourselves.

After twenty-one years, this is how I have come to see our world. It’s the same one that I write about and share with my group. While I find myself in the minority in my outlook and my work is in relative obscurity, I’ve come to know that I’m in good company.

Spirituality is a thread that’s shot through all of life, thus all problems have a spiritual solution. So, do you want to face reality, face the truth and quickly resolve a problem, a crisis or spend the next day, week, month, year, decades or a lifetime hoping it doesn’t come back to bite you?

I am a big picture thinker, always looking for the end zone and then developing a strategy to get the ball down the field so I can score. I look at most problems with their trailing history in mind, from all directions even observing any personal bais while searching for an honest, long-term and cost-effective solution ever so humbly. This view is backed by lots of experience – blood, sweat and tears. I know it works.

In 2002, I had a breakthrough moment, in my life, which resulted in me developing exceptional thinking capacity and creative writing skills. The change was so dramatic that I took an IQ test just to confirm it. I scored a 142, a forty-point upswing. Now with three years of honest writing, my audience retention rate now surpasses 99.8% (as of 5/10).

In February 2008, I discovered Traci Fenton, the founder and CEO of WorldBlu while she was visiting my adopted hometown, Fairhope, AL, USA, giving a speech to the local chamber of commerce. I was so moved by what I read, on a posted flyer, about Traci and her work that I immediately tried to contact her while adding her email address to my audience. She's been getting my commentaries ever since. It was from visiting her website that I learned of your firm.

In closing, where would BP be, if it had chosen to address with honesty its troubled oil well operation, in the days and weeks, leading up to the gas explosion on the Deepwater Horizon? Where would Toyota be had they faced with courage their gas pedal recall long before it ever grew to some 9 million vehicles (worldwide) while being forced to temporarily halt the sale of their brand new cars and trucks sitting on the lots of their dealerships, nationwide? What immediate impact did their slow response have on, both, their cherished reputation for quality, safety and their quarterly and yearly sales? What impact has the United States paid for its decision to start two simultaneous wars against Iraq and Al-Qaeda/Taliban in Afghanistan in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11? The wars seemed to make sense way back then, but as time has passed, do they still? We’ve now spent a trillion dollars on each war while causing lots of death and destruction. Could we have done something else with our time, money and energy achieve a better outcome? How better off might your life be, now, if you would’ve faced one of your still unresolved problems or crises from the past?

Pay now or pay later, but you will surely pay!

References:

Toyota Vehicle Recall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932010_Toyota_vehicle_recalls

Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved. “Save Face or Save Your Ass?" by Ted Burnett.

I am available for speaking, consulting and political advising. My other essays can be viewed at my blog – http://www.toxicnation.blogspot.com/. I can be contacted via email at – tebjr1@yahoo.com. My bio can be viewed at http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com.