Down in the dumps

Many moons ago, I lost a month’s work as a newspaper editor. I couldn’t get off the couch — aftershock of years of paralegal work in U.S. immigration prisons, translating and recording the lives of torture victims and other refugees, nearly all of them victims of U.S. foreign policy, virtually all of them denied political asylum. This was under the Reagan administration.

Fortunately, my news editor was the daughter of a psychologist, and the higher-ups were patient and understanding. When my sick leave ran out, they kept me off the books for a few weeks, then welcomed me back.

Thanks, guys and gals. You know who you are.

During my month on the couch I read a lot about depression and trauma. I learned that I was suffering a long-term effect of being under stress for years in the prisons. I accept the medical explanation that to cope with this unrelenting stress, my body had in essence “turned down” the receptors of my “fight or flight” hormones: adrenaline (epinephrine), noradrenaline (norepinephrine) and cortisol. So that now, when I was no longer under constant stress, those hormones had become more or less inaccessible to my brain. I couldn’t feel up, and didn’t even know that I was down. I thought that profound depression was reality (which it was, for me).

I emerged from it thanks to a kind doctor, good bosses, a few good books and time.

That’s why I began this column in sympathy with two-term Congressman Tom Kean.

Depression is no joke.

My head was turned around by The Guardian’s stellar U.S. columnist, Arwa Mahdawi, whose July 4 column was headlined, “Tom Kean got months of paid sick leave — after voting against it for others.”

In what we toner-stained wretches call the nut graf, Mahdawi wrote: “The congressman spent four months mysteriously away from work, but he doesn’t seem to think his constituents should get mandated sick days.”

Tom Kean Jr. is the son of former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean. During his illness, Mother Jones reported that in his career, “the nepo baby ‘voted against New Jersey’s historic Earned Sick Leave Act, which mandates five paid sick leave days per year for New Jersey workers. He also voted against New Jersey’s No Surprise Medical Bills actand two of its paid family leave laws, in 2008 and 2018.’”

Kean also supported Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, which made devastating cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, and will make life a lot harder for people with disabilities.

“Kean, in short, voted to ensure the most vulnerable people in the US suffer, all so the rich can get more tax cuts,” Mahdawi wrote.

Thanks, Arwa.

While down in the dumps, Kean missed more than 100 votes in Congress, while collecting his full taxpayer-funded annual salary of $174,000, along with benefits far and above those of mortal men.

So, benefits aside, Kean cashed $53,540 in paychecks during his paid leave. That’s 24 percent more than the median annual income of our country’s 81.5 millionhourly wage workers, who do not get four months of paid rest and rehab.

Now, to quote Mahdawi’s lightning-bolt of a column: there is “a valid discussion here about how Kean is a massive hypocrite who has devoted his life to ensuring normal Americans are not afforded the same sort of time and resources to deal with a personal crisis that he has just enjoyed. Not everyone gets to take four months of paid leave when they need it: the US is the only OECD [the 38-nation Organization for Economic Development] country without a national paid leave policy.”

According to a 2024 Department of Labor fact sheet, “among the lowest wage workers, who are predominantly women and workers of color, 95% have no access to paid family leave and 90% lack access to short-term disability leave.”

So, Congressman Tom, I’ve told you about my trauma, what was yours?

Running for a third term in Congress, and your pressing need to grub up money for it?

I don’t want to rag too hard on a fellow sufferer, but can you to guess what his first public appearance was after he returned from paid leave? That’s right, a fundraiser.

Now that you’re up and about, Congressman Tom, medical problems all squared away, on the public dime, you think you might give a thought now and then for the welfare of your constituents? Or is that too much to ask?

(Speaking of public health, at least 12 prisoners at the immigration prison in Aurora, Colo., have been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and dozens more have been isolated for it. Yet the 1,500-capacity prison, run by the nation’s largest private prison company, GEO Group, refused to let Adams County health inspectors into the prison, which drew protests from Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado Department of Public Health. Immigration prisons are vectors of epidemics, as they are crowded, poorly staffed (the Aurora prison has one doctor on staff) and they transfer prisoners frequently to other prisons, far and wide, and to foreign countries.)