The influence of the Godfather of punk. The post “Iggy Pop is one of my heroes”: How punk inspired Mitski first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

For three weeks following President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the media reported left and right on Biden’s cognitive decline. The American people had seen with their own eyes how far the president had fallen, and the press could not possibly ignore it. The story dominated the news cycle and drove the growing Democratic movement to force him out of the presidential race. But with Biden’s announcement that he is dropping out of the presidential race, media coverage of his cognitive decline has all but dried up. The difference is jarring. Obfuscating the Facts: Biden Was Forced Out Consider the grim picture of decline painted by the media before Biden decided to withdraw from his reelection bid. The New York Times reported that people “who encountered [Biden] behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.” A Parkinson’s expert had visited the White House eight times over the past year, the Times later added. Journalist Carl Berstein told CNN that there had been “15, 20, occasions in the last year and a half” when the president had shown obvious decline. Axios reported that Biden was only “dependably engaged” between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. New York Magazine published an article headlined “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden,” which reported that “[t]he president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters.” Compare this to how the media is treating Biden now. From print to cable news, the president has been lauded as a hero for “passing the torch.” An op-ed in the New York Times following Biden’s surrender was headlined “What Joe Biden Just Did Is Utterly Extraordinary.” The paper’s editorial board added: “Mr. Biden has now done what Mr. Trump never will: He has placed the national interest above his own pride and ambition.” CNN’s Van Jones said in the wake of Biden’s decision: “His heart is as big as ever…. This is the difference between a politician and a leader.” The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols said, “President Joe Biden has chosen to put his country over his own ego, a heroic decision that shows the difference between a political party and a cult of personality.” Actor George Clooney (who just a week earlier had said the Biden he encountered at his fundraiser “wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020”) said Biden was “saving democracy once again.” This obfuscates the reality of the situation: Biden was essentially forced out because his cognitive decline had become impossible to hide from voters. In fact, a CBS News-YouGov poll found that 72 percent of voters “do not believe Biden has the mental or cognitive health to serve as president.” Biden is not a man heroically embracing a new generation of leadership. He is an aging old man who had the keys forcibly taken away from him because of his inability to reliably string together a sentence. The pretense that the president is a hero for stepping aside serves only to cover up the cognitive decline that made his continued candidacy untenable. The Media Refuses to Answer the Important Questions Many have even gone into defense mode for the president following his exit. In a Washington Post op-ed, E.J. Dionne Jr. argued that lawmakers who sought to remove Biden from the race really believe he is an incredible president: “Despite Biden’s suspicions to the contrary, they really do appreciate him. These people admire his extraordinary record.” Late Show host Stephen Colbert announced after Biden left the race that he was “retiring all of [his] ‘Joe Biden is old’ jokes.” Colbert said, “He steered this country out of a horrific pandemic. He saved countless lives by encouraging people to get vaccinated. He brought the economy back, he rallied our allies, he reasserted America’s place in the world stage.” What stands out most is what is unspoken. Virtually no mainstream media outlets are questioning whether the cognitive decline they have reported on so furiously in recent weeks impairs Biden’s ability to lead the country. The media only cared to report on Biden’s mental decline when it threatened the Left’s continuance in power. Now that the threat is neutralized, it’s all in the past. If the media doesn’t change its approach to covering Biden’s cognitive decline — and fast — the shift in narrative will give the public a whiplash that will further diminish trust in journalism. And it will leave the country exposed to the threats that will inevitably arise from having a president who has lost it. Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.  READ MORE: Cat-5 Chaos Among Democrats The Sum of All Democrat Fears The post Media Tries to Move on From Scandal of Century: Biden Is Cognitively Gone appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

What a lousy movie it would make! Some slightly-built small-town 20-year-old, known to his schoolmates as a nerd and a loner who was rejected for membership in the school rifle club because he was a bad shot, manages, in the hour or two before a presidential campaign rally, to make his way to the top of a nearby roof with his dad’s AR-15 and — despite his mediocre shooting ability, and despite bystanders who notice him and his gun and alert the police to his presence about an hour before the candidate is brought out onstage — comes within an inch or so of killing the most recent ex-president and leading contender for re-election to the Oval Office, while taking out one audience member and wounding two others. A Secret Service sniper eliminates the assailant quickly enough, and it soon emerges that, unlike virtually every other American kid of his age, he has left little or no online record of his opinions, political or otherwise. As I say, if somebody made a movie of it, you’d feel cheated. You’d feel that your intelligence was being insulted. You’d walk out of the theater complaining that none of it made any sense and that every detail of the story was, for one thing, in utter contradiction to everything we think we know about the Secret Service. In America, you’d say, assassinating a former president in this day and age just isn’t that easy. This isn’t some banana republic, after all. Hollywood Told Us the Secret Service Cared But what do we know about the Secret Service, and where did we get our knowledge from? For one thing, we got it from movies like In the Line of Fire (1993), in which an evil genius, played by John Malkovich, is obsessed with the assassination of JFK and determined to ensure his immortality by taking out the current president, who is running for re-election, and concocts an elaborate plot to do precisely that. Malkovich’s character — who goes variously by such aliases as McCrawley, James Carney, and Booth (in honor of John Wilkes Booth), but turns out to be an embittered former CIA agent named Mitch Leary (and who has certain creepy similarities to the maniac played by Dennis Hopper in Speed, released the following year — is also obsessed with someone else: Frank Horrigan, a veteran Secret Service agent played by Clint Eastwood, who, Leary knows, was once considered the best and brightest member of that agency but who, having been on the detail that was guarding JFK on that fateful day in 1963, is still haunted by his failure to save the president. (READ MORE: Did God Save Donald Trump?) For years Horrigan has been working the other side of the Secret Service — chasing down counterfeiters — but after Leary phones Horrigan and makes clear his obsession with him, Horrigan arranges to be placed on the president’s protective detail. What ensues is a perfect thriller, with Leary phoning Horrigan to play head games with him, not terribly unlike the way Hannibal Lecter does with Clarice Starling. He taunts him about his failed marriage and torments him about the drinking problem that Horrigan developed after Dallas. He even places himself in dangerous proximity to Horrigan only to make a run for it the moment he’s recognized. It’s a first-rate cat-and-mouse game. Meanwhile, Horrigan’s attempts to pin down Leary’s real identity prove fruitless while his efforts to persuade White House staffers to keep the president out of the limelight for his own protection are swiftly and condescendingly rebuffed. As it turns out, Leary comes up with an ingenious (and not inexpensive) way to cobble together a deadly weapon and sneak in into a high-securty presidential campaign fundraiser, and Horrigan is confronted with the nightmarish possibility of feeling responsible for the deaths of not one but two presidents. Anyway, no more spoilers, just in case you haven’t seen it. Bottom line: In the Line of Fire is a gripping portrait of two men: One of them a would-be assassin with training in covert intelligence who carries out an elaborate plot to achieve his end, and the other a highly experienced, gifted, and dedicated Secret Service agent who, aware of this serious threat, focuses intently on tracking down the intended perpetrator and on protecting the president — with his own life, if necessary. The tension ramps up impressively: never a dull moment. In short, In the Line of Fire is a terrific piece of work. And until the real-life events that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, the film, allowing for the usual touches of Hollywood excess, came off as a credible enough procedural. Cheatle’s Disgraceful Performance Then, suddenly, we were exposed to the mind-boggling incompetence — if that’s what it is — of the present-day Secret Service. There followed, this past Monday, a House committee hearing at which the director of that agency, Kimberly Cheatle — who was apparently appointed to her post in the first place because she had a connection to Jill Biden, whose priority during her tenure has reportedly been the hiring of more female and minority agents, and who agreed to appear before the House committee only because she had been subpoenaed — bobbed and weaved and dodged and stonewalled to a truly astonishing degree, serving up meaningless word salads and bushels of bureaucratese and repeatedly trying to pass the buck to FBI investigators and declining to “speak to specifics.” No matter what the question, she claimed not to know the answer. She wouldn’t even say whether she’d have resigned if Trump had been killed. As podcaster Dan Bongino noted, “Even the Democrats were ticked off.” (READ MORE: Clueless Kim Cheatle) Indeed, rarely in recent years have members of both parties at a high-profile committee hearing seemed to be almost entirely in sync. Kweise Mfume (D–Md.) challenged Cheatle’s refusal to resign. Pete Sessions (R–Texas) accused her of playing a “shell game.” Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) called one of her answers “bullshit” and accused her of being “full of shit.” Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) called her answers “completely unsatisfactory.” Pat Fallon (R–Texas) said, “Your agency got outsmarted and outmaneuvered by a 20-year-old.” Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Fla.) pointed out that people in the crowd recognized Thomas Matthew Crooks as a threat even though the Secret Service didn’t. (Crooks and Cheatle: it sounds like the name of a shady law firm in some comedy.) Asked by Greene if she had a timeline of the events that occurred at the Trump rally in Butler, Cheatle replied that, yes, she did, but it did not contain “specifics” — an answer that caused the chamber to burst out in laughter. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did herself proud, insisting that it was unacceptable under the current circumstances to have to wait 60 days for a report explaining what went wrong in Butler. (READ MORE: Security Breach From Pearl Harbor to Butler PA) There was a lot of competition for the honor, but perhaps the committee member who made the most apropos comment was Jared Moskowitz (D–Fla.), who compared Cheatle’s performance to those of the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania whose now legendary arrogance and ineptitude last Dec. 4 at a House hearing on campus antisemitism ended up losing two of them their jobs. (The comparison proved apt: Within 24 hours, Cheatle had resigned.) As suggested by Nick Langworthy’s (R–N.Y.) comment that hers was “the worst performance I have ever seen” in a congressional hearing, Cheatle did even worse than those university presidents did: She made the Secret Service look more secretive, and in a more reprehensible manner, than one ever imagined. She also made it look as if the job of the agency’s employees — at least some of those at the very top of the organization — isn’t to serve the American people and their elected leaders, as a flick like In the Line of Fire might lull you into believing, but to serve, at best, their own shabby career ambitions, and, at worst, some nefarious cause that, at this point, one hardly dare suggest. The post The Secret Service Isn’t What Hollywood Promised Us It Was appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is on a mission to convict Donald Trump before the election, and if needed, before the inauguration. At every level of the judiciary, Smith has urged federal judges to move at breakneck speed so he can get his man. Now that Judge Aileen Cannon has determined that Smith was unlawfully appointed, Smith is once again racing for another appeal. But there is no good reason for the courts to move more quickly than they usually would. Indeed, moving any faster or slower than normal would suggest that the judges are favoring one side or the other. Despite all the faux outrage over Judge Cannon’s decision, she disqualified only one person from pursuing this case: Jack Smith. Cannon did not grant Trump any immunity for his actions during or after he left office. The United States attorney for the southern district of Florida is fully capable of prosecuting Trump. To be sure, Attorney General Merrick Garland does not want his Justice Department to take the heat for prosecuting his boss’s political rival, but that is a political problem for Garland and the administration and not a legal problem for the judiciary. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has no reason to accommodate politically motivated efforts to convict Trump before the election or inauguration. Trump should be treated like any other defendant. Jack Smith Is Hardly Qualified to Investigate Trump In November 2022, Garland plucked Jack Smith from the International Criminal Court in the Hague to investigate Donald Trump. At the time, Trump was a private citizen, so there was no conflict of interest with the administration investigating one of its own officials. Based on past practice, Garland should have selected a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney to investigate the matter. Judge Cannon observed there is, at best, a “murky historical record” of appointing special counsels from outside the government. But still, Garland chose an outsider, who had a record of aggressive, and ultimately unsuccessful prosecutions of government officials, including former Gov. Bob McDonnell and former-Sen. John Edwards. (READ MORE: The Left’s Vicious War on Judge Aileen Cannon) Smith indicted Trump in the District of Columbia for his conduct leading up to and during Jan. 6. Smith also indicted Trump in the Southern District of Florida for his failure to return purported presidential documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago after he left office. The D.C. case was always the trickier prosecution since it raised novel questions about presidential immunity for Trump’s conduct while in office. In December 2023, the D.C. trial court largely ruled in favor of Smith and denied Trump immunity in most contexts. Trump sought to appeal this ruling, but Smith attempted to bypass the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by leapfrogging the case directly to the Supreme Court. Smith wanted the Supreme Court to rule on the immunity issue in a matter of weeks. He wrote that the case “involves an issue of exceptional national importance: the amenability to federal prosecution of a former President of the United States for conduct undertaken during his presidency.” Trump’s lawyers responded that Smith “never explain[ed]” why the expedited timetable was needed. The reason, they suggest, was “a partisan motivation,” such that Trump would “face a months-long criminal trial at the height of his presidential campaign.” The Supreme Court saw through Smith’s gambit and denied his request for a super-expedited briefing. Instead, the justices would wait for the court of appeals to decide the case, and then they resolved the issue on a somewhat expedited schedule a few months later. The Point Is to Affect the Election In the immunity case, there was at least a plausible case for speed. If Trump was immune from prosecution, then the entire case would have to halt immediately. But in the Florida documents case, there is no legal issue of national significance. This decision, unlike the immunity case, will have a minimal impact on the future of presidential power. And this case would in no way disqualify Trump from the ballot, as was at issue in the insurrection cases. Judge Cannon’s ruling simply held that Jack Smith lacked the authority to conduct the prosecution. Cannon’s decision does not prevent Markenzy Lapointe, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, from prosecuting Trump for the Mar-a-Lago allegations. Remember, Garland appointed a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney to prosecute Hunter Biden. If it was good enough for the president’s son, it ought to be good enough for the president’s political opponent. Simply put: Lapointe could seek a new indictment of Trump based on the existing record. And Judge Cannon’s decision would not bar Lapointe from hiring all of Smith’s deputies. Any delays would be minimal — all amounting to far less than the delays needed to appeal Judge Cannon’s ruling up through the Supreme Court. (READ MORE: Jack Smith and the Hijacking of January 6) Smith and Garland have been unwilling to allow Lapointe to handle this prosecution. Instead, Smith has already filed his notice of appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Smith has not accepted this temporary setback and he will not allow the Senate-confirmed United States attorney to prosecute Trump. Likewise, Garland is unwilling to let Lapointe, who was nominated by President Biden, prosecute President Biden’s political rival. Either way, Smith will be left with the same dilemma: How to tap dance around the fact that the primary purpose of rushing this case is to convict Trump before voters head to the polls? Historically, the DOJ sought to avoid the appearance of interference with elections when prosecuting political candidates. But here, in our opinion, the basis of Smith’s haste has been to affect (if not pre-empt) the election. Smith seems to have determined that it is in the best interest of our democracy for voters to know whether Trump is convicted of a federal felony before voting. This is an extremely difficult political judgment that turns on disputed conceptions of what the public ought to know for the sake of democracy. Moreover, seeking to time a trial and conviction in this manner would mark a public and complete break with DOJ principles and policies of prosecutorial neutrality. It is imperative that the case against Trump be tried in the ordinary course of law, in the ordinary way, under an ordinary schedule. This case cannot be tried using newly invented legal rules, by a faux prosecutor, under an expedited schedule serving nakedly political (if not partisan) ends. Then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson wisely observed that “the most dangerous power of the prosecutor” is “that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted.” Only by adhering to this course of conduct does the judiciary uphold the rule of law. (READ MORE: The Sum of All Democrat Fears) In December 2023, the Wall Street Journal observed that Jack Smith was “dragging the Supreme Court into the political thicket.” Once again, it seems that Smith is trying to drag the judiciary into this thicket. The courts should be in no rush. Let this case play out in the normal course. As Justice Antonin Scalia observed nearly four decades ago, “Under our system of government, the primary check against prosecutorial abuse is a political one.” Perhaps the greatest virtue of Judge Cannon’s ruling is that Garland will now be forced to make the tough political decision that he resisted since he took office: Appoint a politically accountable prosecutor to try the president’s political rival. Josh Blackman (South Texas College of Law Houston) and Seth Barrett Tillman (Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, Ireland) are constitutional law professors. They filed an amicus brief in support of President Trump in Judge Cannon’s court, and Blackman presented at the oral argument. The post Jack Smith — There He Goes Again appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service has become “the face of incompetence,” House Oversight Chair James Comer told U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle as she testified Monday before his committee. The day did not go well for Cheatle, who offered no good explanation as to how 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to out-maneuver the Secret Service, a $3 billion agency, and plant himself and his father’s AR-15 on a rooftop within range of Donald Trump as the former president spoke at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. Cheatle admitted that the failed assassination attempt, which wounded the GOP nominee and left Trump supporter Corey Comperatore dead and two other rally attendees seriously injured, was “the most significant operational failure in the Secret Service for decades.” (READ MORE: A Worthless Search for Trump Shooter’s Motive) And she admitted the Secret Service had been told about a suspicious person on a nearby building “two to five times” before the shooter opened fire. The threat risk that day was elevated from suspicious to a threat only “seconds” before the Pennsylvanian fired at the former president, Cheatle told the committee But ABC News reported last week that the Secret Service spotted the shooter on a roof 20 minutes before shots were fired. A government sniper killed the would-be assassin. Americans Don’t Trust the Government for a Reason Cheatle also made a claim that tainted every other word out of her mouth: “I have taken accountability.” If you wonder why the government doesn’t seem to work anymore, look no further. As of Monday, Cheatle had not resigned. President Joe Biden has not fired her. That cannot last. Americans’ trust in government wasn’t exactly high before the shooting — because there is no accountability in Washington. As Rep. Mike Turner, (R-Ohio), told Cheatle, “Because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent. If Donald Trump had been killed, you would have looked culpable.” (READ MORE: Believe Nothing About Biden’s ‘Resignation’) Members on both sides of the aisle voiced outrage at what Ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland referred to as “shocking” operational failures. Incompetence or Malice? It’s Hard to Believe Anyone Was That Incompetent There also was an ideological divide as to contributing factors. For Democrats, it’s the lack of an assault weapons ban, while Republicans asserted that Biden-era diversity, equity, and inclusion policies have undermined the effectiveness of federal law enforcement. Cheatle did not bite at the opportunity to blame gun laws; she countered that the shooting failure had nothing to do with DEI, but “has to do with a failure or a gap either in planning or communication.” Meanwhile, there is a basic question that has yet to be answered. As Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-Tenn.), asked, “Why was President Trump allowed on stage after the Secret Service spotted a suspicious individual?” (READ MORE: Security Breach From Pearl Harbor to Butler PA) My instinct usually is to blame incompetence for what others see as bad faith inside the government. But I have yet to hear a plausible explanation for how agents failed to respond, instantaneously, as they were trained to do. I’m a conservative, but even I have never imagined the government could be this incompetent. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post The Face of Incompetence appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the tragic death of Corey Comperatore, we have watched and rewatched the videos taken by every cell phone camera that day. We’ve heard analyses from experts and novices accompanied by a plethora of conspiracy theories all concentrated on the Secret Service, local police, and the last five minutes before the shots were fired. But they are all ignoring a critical point. We know very little about the alleged gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, but what has been reported brings up a pattern familiar with other mass casualty cases. (READ MORE: What Would Have Happened If Crooks Hadn’t Missed?) This did not start on a slanted roof in Butler, Pennsylvania. It started years before, and it continues to fester in communities across the nation. The assassination attempt is the latest example of the colossal failure of psychiatric treatment in our country. We have seen this before and we will see it again unless government and scientific leadership take meaningful steps to reform our weak mental health “system” and make the tough but necessary choices to build a network of effective evidence-based care. We are a long way from doing it and currently do not have a congressional and cabinet leadership committed to fixing this continuing catastrophe. Crooks Seems to Fit Established Patterns According to a recent analysis from the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC), there is no single pattern that fits every perpetrator. However, almost all are male, tend to be in their teen and young adult years, half the attackers are “motivated by grievances and were retaliating for perceived wrongs,” a quarter of the attackers “subscribed to a belief system involving conspiracies or hateful ideologies,” the attacker’s behavior elicited concerns to family and friends, many experienced stressful or traumatic events, and over half had mental health symptoms such as depression, psychosis, and suicidal thoughts. A 2021 study of mass shooters showed nearly 50 percent had schizophrenia, a severe delusional disorder that can lead to violence if untreated. Many perpetrators researched violent subjects about other mass attacks and made careful plans. There are always some behavioral indicators that something is awry, although the signs may be missed or dismissed by co-workers, classmates, schools, and families. (READ MORE: A Worthless Search for Trump Shooter’s Motive) Early information about Crooks is still an enigma of contradictions. High school classmates described Crooks as quiet, intelligent, a loner, not involved in school clubs. Reports from other students say he was bullied and appeared “a little weird.” His school said it has no records he was bullied, however, it is not uncommon that fellow students will report observations that differ from those of teachers and administrators. An FBI review of his phone record showed he researched former President Trump and his Butler rally, President Joe Biden, the Democratic National Convention, Catherine Princess of Wales, making explosive devices, and the Oxford High School shooting. Crooks had a picture of the shooter on his cell phone. He was a registered Republican but also donated to a liberal organization. Like many shooters, we do not know if he had a diagnosed mental illness or was involved in any treatment. However, he allegedly did an internet search for information about major depressive disorder, a path many will take to self-diagnose their condition. His parents reportedly contacted police the morning of the shooting expressing concern about him not responding to their attempts to contact him. Students with problems are often identified by school officials and referred for treatment. When a student is bullied, one would hope their school intervenes, but HIPAA regulations often block a school’s ability to discuss concerns with parents. Regular access to a caring adult is an important factor associated with a reduced likelihood of engaging in violence. Yet, schools may prioritize their safety efforts by purchasing much-needed hard security equipment. There may be no line item in their budget to have caring adults engage with students.  Once out of school, there is no obligation to follow up to see how they are faring. There is no warm hand-off to external counselors to continue care. Many attackers are lonely, isolated, troubled young men, who can develop a fascination for violence and seek revenge or recognition. In other cases, such as with schizophrenia, or psychosis disorders, the attacker may be suffering from a severe mental disorder, characterized by fixed false beliefs; believing their actions will be considered heroic. These actions typically appear unexpectedly in many men around age 20. Do we have a system in place to help identify, monitor, and stay engaged with persons of concern? No. Not on the federal, state, county, or local level. There is no safety net of care. We’ve Spent Money, But Not Where It’s Needed The key federal agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, tasked with coordinating treatment efforts for the mentally ill has all but abandoned care for the most serious subset of individuals diagnosed with a Serious Mental Illness (SMI). In the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in December of 2012, I led a multi-year investigation into our mental health system. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation in the Committee on Energy and Commerce, we discovered a hodgepodge of disconnected federal programs, scattered across multiple federal agencies, spending $130 billion on general “mental health” programs, not SMI. SAMSHA’s efforts were more involved with “feel-good” stress-relieving interventions for mild mental illness and ignored SMIs of psychosis and schizophrenia. Their anti-psychiatry policies prioritized advocating for patients’ rights to refuse treatment rather than rights to treatment. In response, I introduced major mental health reform legislation, to improve access to evidence-based care for mental illness, including SMI conditions. We eventually passed the bill, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, with near-unanimous bipartisan support (422-2) in the House, although key aspects were removed which significantly weakened reforms and access to care for the SMI population. With the creation of the position of Assistant Secretary of Mental Health as the head of SAMSHA, the bill required greater accountability, evidence-based programs, and cooperation between federal agencies. Initially, care for SMI returned, but the current administration is not treating it as a priority. With some exceptions, mental health care in the U.S. is often disastrous with a massive loss in lives and dollars. Mental Health Is an Issue Worth Voting on in 2024 A comprehensive death count associated with mental illness is not tracked by any federal agency. However, total deaths from suicide, substance misuse, early death associated with mental illness (non-suicide), homelessness, and homicide, in the past 20 years likely exceed the total military deaths in all U.S. wars since the American Revolution. The White House estimated the annual cost for mental illness at $280 billion. The actual cost, however, may be four times higher when adding suicide, depression, schizophrenia, and substance misuse, plus many other unknown costs for common psychiatric problems such as anxiety, attention deficit, and personality disorders. The total annual cost of mental illness easily exceeds the Pentagon’s annual budget. We are losing the war against mental illness. One in five persons has symptoms of mental illness right now, and about half of adolescents and young adults. We have a shortage of clinical mental health providers and few of them have experience working with violence risk or SMI. We have a critical shortage of dedicated acute-care psychiatric hospital beds. Those with untreated SMI are more likely to be homeless or in jail and often encounter police. Community problems associated with untreated SMI contribute to ongoing stigma and fear of people with SMI. Many are so impaired by their illness they are unable to seek or accept help. HIPPA laws prevent families from being able to communicate with doctors, and most communities do not have easily accessible and supportive care. Courts, communities, civic organizations, schools, and churches do not work together to create a safe network of continuous care. No single profile predicts a person’s propensity towards a mass attack. Rather than focus on a profile, we need a wider and more comprehensive approach. The public is desperately searching for leadership who will address this growing problem with the gravity it demands. A recent survey found that 7 out of 10 voters are more likely to support a candidate who prioritizes mental health care. What we need are leaders at SAMHSA, other federal departments, and Congress who are energized and committed to fixing the problems. This will require throwing some elbows, demanding important changes, and holding states and counties accountable. While Congress has hearings, it must also investigate why we still have major gaps in care. Our next president should appoint people who are tough enough to challenge the ineffective status quo. Too many lives are at stake. Tim Murphy, Ph.D., is a psychologist specializing in trauma recovery and the author of three books, including The Christ Cure: 10 Biblical Ways to Heal from Trauma, Tragedy and PTSD (2023). He served as a psychologist in the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps, was elected eight times to the U.S. House of Representatives, and authored major mental health reform legislation receiving wide bipartisan support. DrTimMurphy.com and LinkedIn The post Before the Bullet: Was Crooks a Victim of America’s Mental Health Crisis? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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