RI - Thank you, Patrick Kennedy

Rhode Island, home of the landmark lead paint public nuisance litigation, is also the home of Patrick Kennedy.  He may be just the leader to lift this state out of its downward trajectory.  Incidentally, at 9.3%, RI's unemployment rate heads towards double-digits.

It is Kennedy who pushed and succeeded to enact federal legislation that would mandate health insurance companies treat mental illness like any other medical condition. Last Friday, reports John E. Mulligan of THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, Kennedy and his dad Ted were in the Oval Office with President George W. Bush to celebrate this landmark mental-health bill.

That was a true bipartisan moment.  With the Kennedys and Bush was Republican Senator Pete V. Domenici.  His child Clare suffers from schizophrenia. Mental illness is the great equalizer across every conventional category of political orientation, class, race, ethnicity and income bracket. 

Yet because science knows so little about it, it's remained in the closet.  When my late sister had what I take to have been a schizophrenic break, the family paid out of its pocket to avoid the stigma of "it" being on her record.  Like many seemingly mentally ill, my sister died too young.  My hunch?  No one, including herself, pushed her to keep hunting for a course of treatment that would be effective.

While live-blogging lead paint trial II, I came to love RI.  In fact, my finance and I looked at houses there last Sunday.  My hunch is that if Kennedy seeks state office in RI instead of traveling the federal route, RI could get unstuck - economically, politically, and in terms of a legal system that allowed the lead paint nonsense to actually go to trial - twice.