2017 Jan 7^th

Today’s news is dominated by the murder of five people in a Florida airport. They got the guy who did it; after killing five people and wounding eight others he spread-eagled himself on the floor and waited to be arrested.

This gives Rick Scott, the Florida Governor, a splendid opportunity for publicity as he assures his citizens the he will keep them safe and that he sure hopes tourists won’t decide to go elsewhere. He also has several conversations with President-elect Trump but none with President Obama. You would suppose that Governor Scott, being in government, would know that a sitting President can be considerably more helpful, if help is needed, than a President elect who has no power to do much of anything except tweet.

Keep in mind that Rick Scott has a history of activities that would lead one to conclude that he isn’t the brightest light in the window. He has decreed that the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” cannot appear in any official document of the State of Florida. As you know much of Florida is not far above sea level. A sea rise of just six inches would cripple South Florida’s flood control system.

The Governor’s remedy for this problem is just don’t talk about it and maybe it will go away. That is rather like trying to eliminate death by outlawing obituary columns and funeral homes.

In the case of the airport killer, there isn’t much that Scott could have done to prevent that tragedy, nor is there anything he can do to prevent it from happening again. The killer, Esteban Santiago, boarded the plane in Anchorage, Alaska. He had a handgun in his luggage, where its transport was entirely legal. He had previously brought himself to the attention of the Anchorage FBI office by asserting that he was hearing voices controlled by the CIA pushing him toward joining ISIS. They called local police who had him examined by someone in the mental health community. He had been in service and discharged as unfit; he had been accused of violent behavior by his girlfriend but none of these made it illegal for him to buy a firearm.

Unless a judge has determined that you are mentally incompetent, or you have been incarcerated for mental issues, Alaska allows you to buy and carry a handgun. Part of the problem is a lack of standards for what constitutes a “mental health professional.” You can be licensed in most states if you get a master’s degree from an online “University,” have so many supervised hours of counseling, which might consist of a supervisor with an office down the hall and never in your entire experience have spoken to a person exhibiting psychotic symptoms. Until there is some recognition of the difference between a person with a doctorate from a legitimate university and a diplomate in clinical psychology and the MA level counselor from “Online U,” the problem will continue.

Now there seems to be an effort to declare that Santiago had been “radicalized.” The belief that this was another example of an ISIS attack would bolster our new president’s enthusiasm for his undefined “extreme vetting.” But Santiago was an American citizen; he wasn’t an immigrant although not being an immigrant he could still have been radicalized; so far that’s a stretch. It looks like it was just those voices in his head. Like many others he was a law abiding citizen until he started killing people.