The Current Crop Of Whoppers On Capitol Hill

The vote on a bill to restrict the Second Amendment rights of people in America is described as still “too close to call”. The story, as reported in FloridaToday.com, goes under the heading, Background check plan needs GOP.

Words, words, words–it all becomes a blur, especially when so many of those words are just plain lies.

The plan would “strengthen the background check system without in any way infringing on Second Amendment rights,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins said in a statement explaining her support for the measure. But she added that “it is impossible to predict at this point” what will be in a final bill.

Excuse me, Senator Collins. If you are going to enter the names of people, many of whom are citizens, who AREN’T criminals, into a criminal background check system, for the express reason of denying them their Second Amendment rights, you CANNOT do so without infringing on Second Amendment rights.

Do I need to repeat myself!?

These background check measures that may be pushed through congress are unconstitutional so long as we have a bill of rights, but this is hardly the first time we’ve had unconstitutional laws on the books. If I remember correctly there was once this remedy to the mixing of the races called Jim Crow for the longest kind of time in the southern states of the USA.

The measure requires background checks for people buying guns at gun shows and online. Background checks currently apply only to transactions handled by the country’s 55,000 licensed gun dealers. Private transactions, such as a sale of a gun between family members, would still be exempt.

Thus, family members will still be able to sell arms to ex-felons, illegal aliens, spousal abusers, mental patients, and other errant human beings, and all is hunky dory. It is just licensed gun dealers who won’t be able to make such sales.

[Senator Joe] Manchin urged lawmakers to read the 49-page proposal. He said it should dispel any misconceptions about infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms.

I’m sorry. It will take more than a 49-page booklet to convince me that legislation enacted expressly for the purpose of infringing on the constitutional right of American citizens to bear arms is not legislation infringing on the constitutional right of American citizens to bear arms. When you diminish the citizenship of a segment of the population by subtracting this right or that, usually we have to call this subtracting, or restriction if you will, an infringement.

This attack on civil liberties and civil rights is plowing ahead full stream. It has been in effect, through unevenly enforced, since the insanity defense was used to condemn and excuse John Hinkley for shooting President Reagan. Blast the insanity defense! Incarceration should be about punishment, and not about therapeutic rehabilitation, regardless of the criminal’s mental state at the time of the commission of the crime. “Mental illness”, that ‘will o’the wisp’ of consensus reality, should not be an used to excuse people from punishment for criminal activities and, likewise, ill health should not be used as an excuse to imprison people.

Bringing the war in the classroom home to your doorstep

Did somebody say it’s jungle out there? It isn’t a jungle, it’s a war zone, especially in the public school system. Among the new disorders in the DSM-5, such as adult ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) , you will also find childhood PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) listed.

Just read between the lines on the first paragraph of this ABC News report, Psychiatry ‘Bible’ DSM-5 Will Add PTSD for Preschoolers, and imagine millions, perhaps billions, of shell-shocked kiddies returning home from their school day.

 When the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5, is published in May, a small section could alter the lives of millions of children.

Not to be alarmed, despite this potential sharp rise in the number of children labeled ‘off their rocking horses’, mental health professionals tell us they’ve got treatment, and that this treatment can be effective.

Small children develop PTSD at the same rate as adults — one in four — and the number of potential sufferers is vast, said Dr. Judith Cohen, a psychiatry professor at Drexel University’s College of Medicine.

I imagine we could just give children signs on their first day of class, basing children numbers on adult numbers, of course. Numbers, you know, don’t change. 1/4th of the students would receive a sign that read PTSD, and 3/4th of the students would receive signs that read NORMAL. The students with the signs that said PTSD could then automatically be enrolled in a treatment plan.

And yet because existing DSM criteria doesn’t apply to young children, and because of society’s tendency to idealize children as resilient, pre-schoolers aren’t getting the diagnoses they desperately need, [vice chairman of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Tulane University, Dr. Charles] Zeanah [Jr.] said.

Children are idealized as resilient. Oh, that explains it! We don’t have the time to offer classes to parents, teachers, and children in ‘how to be more resilience’ then I guess. Notice, they desperately need diagnoses, too. You think so?

If you will excuse me, I think I’ve had enough of this nonsense, and so I think I’m going to return to my bunker for a little blissful shuteye. The prospect of a nation of shell-shocked children is just a little much for me to face head-on alone at the moment. I’ve got my own patch of green pasture that needs tending.

Gun Ownership Prohibition Bill Introduced In Florida

Tallahassee, we’ve got a problem, and it’s called HB 1355. According to a Herald-Tribune blog post, Florida rep files bill to bar mentally ill from buying guns, State Representative Barbara Watson D-Tallahasse has just introduced a bill to deprive a segment of the citizenry of their constitutionally guaranteed right to own a firearm. There is now this piece of, legislation is not the word I had in mind, to be debated.

Under HB 1355, a person could be prohibited from purchasing a firearm if the examining physician finds the person imminently dangerous to himself or others and files a special certificate that if the person doesn’t agree to voluntary commitment for treatment, an involuntary commitment petition will be filed.

Alright. If that sounds like gun prohibition for a person who has been involuntarily committed. Think again.

At the time the person is diagnosed as dangerous, the person would receive written notice of the certification and agrees to accept voluntary commitment with a full understanding that he or she will be prohibited from purchasing a firearm or applying for a concealed weapons or firearms license or retaining one.

We’re talking about a plea bargain deal of the sort they offer in Virginia, the state with more National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) entrees than any other state in the union. You don’t get a reward for signing into the hospital voluntarily, instead you lose your gun ownership rights.

Were this bill law then, anybody who went into the  hospital after being Baker Acted, that is, hospitalized after a 3 day hold for evaluation purposes, would then be listed in the NICS database.

If the person refused to sign, he or she would be involuntarily hospitalized, in which case he or she can kiss his or her 2nd amendment rights goodbye anyway.

Not a good bill. This bill would prejudice law enforcement against people on the basis of psychiatric history. It would also send their names to the top of the list of suspects anytime a violent crime occurred in their locality.

Repercussions from the Sandy Hook tragedy slight in Florida

It looks like Florida may not suffer as extensively from the fallout over the Newtown Connecticut massacre as some other states. The Palm Beach Post headline,  State May Shrink Mental Health Spending, doesn’t tell the whole story.

Despite a growth in the state’s anticipated revenue for the first time in six years, Gov. Rick Scott’s proposed 2013-2014 budget does not include any increase for mental health services. Neither Scott nor GOP legislative leaders mentioned the issue as a priority on the opening day of the legislative session Tuesday. And lawmakers appear split on the only two proposals in play — mandatory mental health screening of elementary school students and extending the observation period for patients who are involuntarily committed by law enforcement or health officials.

The problem concerns these two pieces of legislation that I hope our legislators will have the common sense and decency to table or vote down. Busting school children for “mental illness” is what mandatory mental health screening is all about and, frankly, if there’s one thing we don’t need, that is it. Labeling children “mentally ill”, and putting them on powerful pharmaceuticals, is not good for their educations, nor is it good for their futures. Extending the Baker Act would be a completely absurd, unnecessary, and as far as humanity goes, a wasteful thing to do.

Thankfully, given our republican controlled legislature, as bad as things are, these representatives are not in hurry to make them worse. Praised be the tightwad when the spending he isn’t spending on is repressive and draconian legislation.

The issue with spending is that it could, if it were used for something else besides busting people for “mental illness”, reduce mental health spending in the state anyway.

More than half of Florida’s mental health spending goes to hospitalization. Other states, on average, spend less than 30 percent on hospitalization, said Florida Council for Community Mental Health President Bob Sharpe.

Hospitalization is very costly. Keeping people out of the state hospital system through building a statewide community mental health care system is one way to potentially save a lot of money.

As for the Baker Act…

DCF estimates that 35,000 out of 110,770 people held under the Baker Act last year had been Baker Acted before. Sharpe points to at least one man who was Baker Acted 100 times in a single year, meaning he was hospitalized nearly the entire year.

It would seem that one person would have a pretty good case for suing the state, if he had any legal rights to stand on at all, which apparently, as a mental patient, he doesn’t.  On the other hand, when the state can Baker Act one person 100 times in the course of a single year, there is certainly no reason to extend the Baker Act. It seems institutions here have that power already.

Policing Mental Health In The Schools

If you want to erase the “stigma” of “mental illness”, stop labeling people nutzoid. All the discrimination and harm that comes of “mental health” treatment has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is with the diagnostic tag.

The sad part is that now children are being labeled “mentally ill” at incredibly young ages, 2 year olds, 3 year olds, 4 year olds, 6 year olds, 8 and 9 year olds. I’ve got news for you people. Psychiatric drugs are no replacement for good parenting practices.

If folks knew this, perhaps they would be less inclined to label their toddler a problem toddler. All 2 year olds, for instance, are a world of trouble, as are all teenagers, and I’d think more than twice about labeling them, too.

I know it’s not bad parents, it’s ‘bad’ children, but all the same. I remember when we used to think of children as innocent, and when we used to put a great deal of emphasis on child rearing. If I remember correctly, there was much less childhood “mental illness” back then as well.

The problem we’ve got now is a big part of the Obama administration solution to violent school massacres.  Primary and secondary school workers, from principals on down to the janitorial staff, are being turned into mental health police. That’s right, the idea is to bust children for “mental illness”.

Well, the only thing we’re likely to get out of making our educationalists mental health cops is an increase in troubled peoples. When troubles are pathologized, hey, that’s a cinch for compounding them. The big tab for Obama care, as a result, is likely to get much much bigger.

The worst of the worse

If there’s a state to be given an Worst Gun Restriction Law in the books award, I think that state would probably have to be New York. New York now has a law encouraging mental health professionals to turn over the names of patients thought violent over to law enforcement. That’s right. Mental health professionals are expected to rat out volatile patients. If law enforcement agrees with this appraisal, the targeted individual is disarmed, and goes onto a criminal background checklist.

After New York state comes the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia, of course, has entered more names onto the National Instant Criminal Background Check System database than any other state in the union. After a 3 day detention for evaluation purposes, hospitalization in a mental health facility, voluntary or involuntary, will get you into the system. Voluntary admission serves a plea bargain purpose in this state, but it is not a plea deal that will allow you to keep your 2nd amendment right to bear arms.

Coming in at third place is Maryland. Should you volunteer yourself into the psychiatric hospital in Maryland, if you get out in less than 30 days you could celebrate by purchasing a firearm, however, if you stay for longer than 30 days, your name is entered into the database, and you are prohibited from purchasing a gun.

The problem is that we’re taking guns away from  people who are not violent. Most all of the massive acts of violence that have taken place recently were perpetrated by individuals who would have not been in the database EVEN with the new changes to the law. Disarm a population of people who are more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence, and you’ve taken away any effective means of self-defense that this population may have when it comes to people who do have guns.

Beyond preventing them from defending themselves, we are also permitting what would be confidential treatment records to be used for harassment purposes by law enforcement. These records are being used to prejudice public opinion against an entire segment of the population. The most notable example of this prejudice is the enactment of these laws designed to circumvent reasonable doubt in the presumption of future guilt by presumed “sickness”.  You can’t punish a multiple murderer who commits suicide. You can, on the other hand, punish an entirely innocent segment of the population for the crime of the deceased criminal. This essentially is what these laws amount to, prejudice against, and punishment imposed upon, a completely innocent population of people.

If you want to prevent violent crimes of this sort, copy cat crimes, you’re going to have to deal with the forces that cause them. Criminals are responsible, surely, but they are not solely responsible; they are not the only culprits. Criminals exist in the context of society, a society that manufactures criminals. “Mental illness” is no more the source of these crimes than is demonic possession; people were behind these violent acts. If we had a more loving society, a less violent society, then you’re going to see less violent crime. We should be attacking this lack of love, this violence, and we shouldn’t be going after people with problems,  people who are under going personal crises. These problems, these crises, in fact, may stem from the violence and the lack of love you see in our society at large.  Do something substantial about the way neighbor treats neighbor, and you may have done something to remedy what constitutes an intolerable situation.

Civil rights and civil liberties lose ground along the beltway

Generally, and to make it look good, in the context of mental health care gun restriction laws only go after people who have come under some kind of court order. The criteria for civil commitment, after all, most typically has something to do with being construed ‘a danger to oneself or others’. The legislature of the state of Maryland though has outdone itself by enacting laws to restrict gun use among former patients who went into the hospital voluntarily.

The story, as reported at delmarvaNow.com, bears the heading, Mental illness gun report usage questioned.

The gathering took place just hours after the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee passed Gov. Martin O’Malley’s gun bill with an amendment to restrict access to guns by voluntarily admitted patients.

Now the fact that former mental patients aren’t violent as a rule didn’t seem to phase the law makers behind this legislation one bit. Nor the fact that people labeled “mentally ill” are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crime, by a 3 to 1 margin, according to one recent study.

Previously only those involuntarily hospitalized for mental illnesses were placed on a list of individuals who cannot purchase regulated guns in Maryland, according to the bill.

Personally I have a great deal of trepidation about restricting the constitutional rights of my fellow Americans, even when those fellow Americans have seen harder times than the average citizen.

This is certainly a shot in the arm for so called “stigma”. I could not see myself in good faith encouraging anybody to enter a psychiatric facility if it was going to mean, as it will in Maryland, a reduction of his or her rights as a citizen.

Governmental Persecution of Former Mental Patients

What’s wrong with entering the names of people who have been in the mental health system into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database, and barring them from gun purchases?

1. The law behind this action deprives US citizens who have committed no crime of their constitutional second amendment right to bear arms. In doing so, it is an UNCONSTITUTIONAL and, therefore, ILLEGAL law.

2. The act of depriving this group of their second amendment rights is an example of PREJUDICE directed people who have been on the receiving end of the mental health system. People who have received mental health treatment are being made the SCAPEGOATS for gun violence in this nation, and gun violence for which they are absolutely in no way, shape, or form responsible; they are being made to pay for gun violence of which they are completely INNOCENT.

3. Statistics show people who have received treatment for psychiatric labels to be more often the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. They are, as a rule, peaceful, law abiding, and NONVIOLENT citizens. As they are more often the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators, and as it is merely a few frustrated and failed individuals for whom they are taking the rap. This rap is a matter of extreme prejudice, and it is entirely unjustified.

4. Placing the names of former mental patients on, of all things, a criminal background check list, is a blatant example of CRIMINALIZING people who have had mental health treatment. As I pointed out, most of them have broken no laws, and they are, therefore, not criminals. Not being criminals, there is no reason to place them on such a list.

5. When black people are harassed at traffic stops on account of their skin color by law enforcement, we call this harassment racial profiling. Use of the names and information entered into this database are going to be used, as that is its purpose, for doing psychiatric or MENTAL HEALTH PROFILING, that is, targeting former mental patients for harassment by law enforcement. This is not the way we should be treating our fellow citizens, neighbors, and human beings.

6. Through the names and information entered into this database police officers and federal agents are going to have access to people’s mental health treatment records. This access amounts to a BREACH OF CONFIDENTIALITY between patient and therapist at a massive level. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was designed to guard people’s confidential relationships for health reasons, but the law pertains to the mental health system and civil actions, and it can be entirely superseded by the criminal justice system. The result of these breaches ultimately usually serves neither health nor justice.

We’ve got better things to do with our time and energy than to CONDEMN people UNTO PERPETUITY for the mental health treatment they have received. This NICS database only represents one more way of furthering the misfortunes of people who have experienced the mental health system  first hand as patients. It constitutes one more INJURY directed against this group of people, and as such, it cannot be said to be in the interests of mental health and recovery to maintain it.

Let me reiterate for the sake of those of you who may not have been paying attention. The law behind the NICS database is unconstitutional. It is illegal. Former mental patients are being made the scapegoats for violence in this country. Entering information on former mental patients onto a criminal background check database is a form of criminalization. This list is going to be used for mental health profiling, that is, police harassment. It is also going to be used to disarm innocent people who are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crime. It is a massive government intrusion and an invasion of privacy. It serves neither the interests of social justice nor of mental health.

Okay then. Why the bad law? Law makers, confronted with a monumental tragedy in the form of a number of copy cat crimes, have to give the impression that they are doing something to relieve the situation. Unfortunately, it is more important for them to do something about the issue than it is for them to do something about the issue that is effective or that makes sense. They have their electorate to think about. If they do nothing, they are going to be savaged in the media and by the public. If they have no guilty parties in custody, then someone is going to have to take the heat. In this case, that someone is the set of people who have done time in mental institutions.

Mental Health Policing On Miami Teacher Curricula

Did I say teacher curricula? Actually school workers across the board are being trained to walk the mental health cop beat. As the Miami Herald reports, in a story bearing the heading, Miami teachers get mental illness training…(Really? They train people in that, do they?)

Teachers, cafeteria workers and janitors in Miami-Dade County middle schools and high schools will receive training on how to identify early-warning signs of mental illness.

All you Miami area students out there remember ‘the straight and narrow’ because if you ever forget you’re likely to wind up somewhere near a mental health counseling center, if not in Dante’s Inferno.

The Herald reports the training will be administered by mental health professionals to about 100 school district psychologists and counselors. They, in turn, will train other employees. Possible signs of mental illness can include sleeping through class, bizarre writings and extreme risk-taking.

Students are advised to be wary and take necessary precautions. Take uppers (so called performance enhancing drugs) if you have to do so to get through boring classes. Hire a non-creative writing tutor if you think it will help you get to graduation. Scratch the idea of launching your own Jackass type film production as a video class project.

Beyond this you need to do a little research, and it wouldn’t hurt to get an outline of the teacher police work curricula to better escape detection and diagnosis. A little knowledge would allow you to move more easily under the radar so to speak. Students, that is to say, given teachers with “mental illness” training, need to hone their own mental health skills. If you’ve any question about what mental health skills entail, read a book on any “mental illness” label there is, and exclude from your daily behavioral repertoire those behaviors listed as “symptoms”.

Flamboyance, eccentricity, and non-conformity are to be suppressed until after graduation if possible. Free and critical thinking as well. The idea is to study the idea of dull until you have it down by heart. Breathe dull, think dull, act dull. Got it! Study dull. Dull will win you awards. Dull is the way to go. Dull is blood brother to “normal”. Dull will get you a job with a multinational corporation. Successful people work for high paying multinational corporations.

Governor Seeks To Change Massachusetts Law For The Worse

The performance of various states differs when it comes to ratting out people who have done time in the Loony Bin. It has been reported that 14 states, for example, have 5 or fewer people listed on the federal background check database for reasons of mental health.

I recently had a close encounter with a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mass. doesn’t share mental health data. Apparently in Massachusetts it’s illegal to provide the government with information on a person’s mental health treatment background.

Massachusetts has among the toughest gun laws in the nation, but a 43-year-old law bars the state from providing mental health records to an FBI database for gun background checks.

Of course, when it comes to law breakers there are no law breakers like law keepers, take the FBI, for instance.

The Boston Globe reports that the FBI has processed 1.6 million background checks of Bay State residents who seek to buy guns from federally licensed dealers.

The governor is trying to bring Massachusetts law in line with much of the rest of the nation as far as  the oppression, harassment, and persecution of mental patients and former mental patients is concerned.

Gov. Deval Patrick has twice tried unsuccessfully to get legislative approval for the sharing of mental health data, but both have failed in part because of opposition from gun rights activists.

One of his most recent proposals involves calling for universal background checks in his state to include mental health information.

This insistence begs the question of a citizen’s constitutional rights to bare arms. The federal government has been persistently violating the 2nd amendment rights of a good number of citizens on the grounds that it has them on this list. Officials in Massachusetts, in other words, are not the only folks violating the law.

The news of this friction only goes to further substantiate the recent flurry of rumors about a rash of ‘schizophrenia’ outbreaks in high places, especially among officials in state and federal government..