Bill to Screen, Medicate Kids May Hit Senate This Week

The New Standard ^ | 11/15/04 | Christopher Getzan

[A Navy Vet]

I am completely flabbergasted. I never heard of this initiate and the House just pasted their version of it.

I thought Bush's 15billion for AIDS to the sinkhole Africa, and his absurd idea to grant down payments so low income people could buy real property was bad enough...but this!!

I swear I should have voted for Kerry just to expedite the momentum towards socialism and get on with the revolution. This is absolutely unexcusable.

Conservatism is Dead

[A Navy Vet]

initiate = initiative

[TaxRelief]

If this is past, it will be used to determine children's "gender identities". Watch.

[A Navy Vet]

" I never heard of this Initiative and the House just pasted their version of it."

I misunderstood. To clarify after looking at the New Freedom Initiative, this is just an extension of the Disabilities Act. However, Title VI, part B, creates the National Commission on Mental Health. It is from their misguided recommendations the House has already passed legislation and it's heading to the Senate floor. Anyone know the name of this Bill?

[DBrow]

Geez, this is such a GREAT idea! Why not test and medicate everyone? Or just dump it in the water?

[A Navy Vet]

I believe this article from The Standard News has jumped the gun. I can't find any direct funding in the House or Senate "Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2005" for any mandated mental health screening. I believe they are talking about funding for Bush's extension of ADA called, the New Freedom Initiative above, which includes a number of commissions, including the Commission on Mental Health.

Of course, the above Commission has already suggested such screening, but I can find no legislation mandating it or appropriations for it.

See: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.html

[A Navy Vet]

There was HR 3063 submitted in 2003 which would authorize 10 test facilities for screening, but with parental approval. It doesn't seem to have made it out of the last sub-committe.

See:http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query

[TKDietz]

This is wrong on a couple of counts. It is a bad idea for government to do this sort of thing, but moreover it's especially bad that the federal government is doing this sort of thing.

It is not a bad idea though for government to try to do something about addiction and mental health problems. I represent juveniles and adults on criminal charges. Alcohol and drugs and mental health problems are behind a lot of the crime we see in this country. Our response for too long has been to just lock people up and ignore the underlying problems. That approach doesn't really work and what it has done is give us the highest incarceration rate in the world, costing us billions and billions and billions every year, yet our crime rate is still high compared to other industrialized nations who in most cases have far lower per capita incarceration rates.

I deal with a lot of crazy people who end up being frequent flyers through the criminal justice system. A lot are just crazy or just drug addicts, but there is a significant overlap between the two problems. So often, there isn't anything built into our system to effectively deal with the underlying problems that cause these people to be back over and over again. For instance, there is no way us to get these people to mental health specialists and get them on medication that in many cases could keep people leading fairly law abiding lives. We'll get these nut-jobs in and the prosecutor and judge and I will sit back in chambers talking about the case pulling our hair out trying to figure out what to do with them. We can get them evaluated to see if they were too insane to be guilty of a crime or to assist in their own defense, but that doesn't get them any help for the long run. We can do mental incompetency hearings and get these people sent off for up to 45 days for evaluation, but most are let go in 3 or 4 days and there is no follow up care. In many cases the court just ends up letting them go, because jail isn't appropriate for them and for that matter the jail is always full. But these people will be back, over and over again, and someday someone may very well get hurt or killed during one of their psychotic episodes.

We don't need to go testing and drugging every kid. What we need to do is do a better job and taking care of these underlying issues when juveniles and adults get in trouble with the law. I'm not asking for some sort of liberal love fest with criminals, I'm saying that if we could get better at taking care of underlying drug and mental health issues we could cut down on crime and save a whole lot of money we now spend locking up more people than any other country in the world. Think about it, we lock up something like 715 per 100,000 people compared under a 100 per 100,000 in the European Union and less than 200 per 100,000 in almost every other industrialized country in the world. We have something like 2.1 million locked up right now. If we cut that in half we'd still have a higher incarceration rate than most industrialized nations but we could save billions on building new prisons and warehousing prisoners and the states could use some of that money they save to pay for programs that might, unlike prison, actually keep a lot of these people from re-offending. Ninety-five percent of these people are released in a few months or a few years and 70% of those released from prison are rearrested on new felony charges within three years. Our system is broken.

[firebrand]

Paging R. D. Laing . . .

[TaxRelief]

If this is passed, it will be used to determine children's "gender identities". Watch.

[WhiteGuy]

The most disturbing aspect of this initiative is that president bush supports it.

Truly frightening.

[malia]

Sounds like Seattle's McDermott wrote this one.

[DoughtyOne]

I didn't the first time, even though I didn't want to see Gore in there. I did the second because I didn't care to see Kerry in there. I completely agree with your take on this though. It was a tough choice for me.

My nose is still sore.

[DoughtyOne]

Lets be magnanimous and say they are trying to do what's best for the children. Conservatives like to see the best in other people's motives. But at some point you have to ask yourself if they are totally blind.

Christians have a duty to be ever vigilant.

We vote in people to exercise our will, and they basicly enact the leftist agenda only the most fervent leftists should approve of.

It's totally disenhearting.

[DoughtyOne]

It's totally disheartening.

oops

[DoughtyOne]

;-)

[DoughtyOne]

Thank you for the informative post.

[DoughtyOne]

You know what, it probably wouldn't even phase the republicans if 99% of us did stay home on the next general election day. Somewhere between 85% and 95% of their agenda would be passed anyway.

I am very sympathetic to the concept you have addressed. If the republicans just stayed home from work every day for a month, the republican leaders would carp their pants.

That's about the only thing I can think of to get their attention.

[DoughtyOne]

Thank you. That's good to know. It's terrible that it's actualy being considered.

[joesnuffy]

Since when does the senate listen to the voters...