this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
1457 points (97.0% liked)
Political Memes
6037 readers
1756 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
To name another specific problem, "closing mental institutions and turning the afflicted out onto the streets" was a neat one-two punch perpetrated by both Kennedy and Reagan. Kennedy's last major thing before taking the plane to Dallas was to sign CMHA and step towards deinstitutionalization. Reagan further exacerbated the problem by closing some of the local facilities that supposedly replaced the system closed by Kennedy.
90% of the current homelessness crisis in major cities is attributable to these policies. The result was generations of mentally ill and addicts traipsing the streets instead of being corralled towards mental healthcare away from general populace.
Could you elaborate more on the connection between with what Kennedy did and what Reagan did?
I had always thought it was just a Reagan thing.
CMHA apparently means the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, which apparently was an attempt to remove many patients from long term psychiatric hospitals, and have them taken care of in community centers.
From a little checking, looks like it didn't provide enough funding, and kicked the responsibility to states, which largely didn't bother to create the community centers, so it seems like it was essentially the first half of what Reagan finished, and just dumped all the crazies on the streets with no actual support.
So basically Kennedy made the States (instead of the Fed) have to pay for the mental support services, and then Reagan removed the programs all together?