The MOTHER of all Republican wedge issues!

The New Freedom Commission!

Anyone that can post over at freerepublic, go post this onlinejournal artical and watch freepers say things about George Bush, you didn't think they were capable of thinking.

They'll quote 1984, Brave New World, call Bush Hitler, compare him to Stalin, it's really amazing. Who knew they could read that well? :shrug:

Have you ever read Brave New World? Well, that is what this legislation is all about. Tucked away in the Omnibus Spending Bill in December millions of dollars we allocated for the implementation of this program, the New Freedom Commission (the use of Freedom in the title should be setting off your Orwell alarm). This has ALREADY passed, thanks to the lobbyists of big pharmaceuticals our tax dollars are being spent to screen children for mental illness, once diagnosed they are required to take the medications prescribed to them. Their parents have NO say in this! They are NOT allowed to get a second opinion. If the parents argue or refuse to put their children on the meds, they could face parental neglect charges. I have called and written numerous emails to many in the corporate "news" media, that was months ago. Since you probably haven't heard about it, you can see how well they covered it.

Remember a time where every other commercial on television wasn't an ad for some miracle pill you should ask your doctor about? Well, when they made advertising prescription drugs legal this is the effect, NONE of the major "news" outlets will touch it, else they loose the BILLIONS of dollars they make every year in advertising.

Here is a link to a great explanation of the program and it's first lawsuit:

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/061405Prin...

This is the MOTHER of all Wedge issues cause republicans don't want their kids put on dangerous anti-psychotic drugs either. Guess what, it's one of Bush's baby programs. He started it in Texas, they can't throw this one on us.

So if you have a republican friend send them the link to the onlinejournal and a link to this, REPUBLICAN RON PAUL's argument against the NFC:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul204.html

And this a link to the bill that would have added parental consent to the bill, which in case you didn't know was voted down 312-81:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.181.IH:

Thanks.

PS, for Importance, please keep this kicked and nominated.

I'm sick of DUers saying they never heard of it.

Bill number? I have a hard time looking for things the Congressional website and bill number helps sometimes.

Rep. Gene Taylor of MS

The rest either didn't show up, didn't read the legislation, or is bought off by big pharm.

We were really upset when it happened.

I just sent a e-mail to Howard Dean about this, in the hopes that he mentions it.

memory hole.

thing.

makes it sound sinister.

Do you think it might be possible that too many f-ed up crazy little delinquents are running the classrooms, and should have the help they need to sit in their chairs with their mouths closed and their violent tnedencies toward others controlled with the proper medication?

They vaguely define mental illness, they don't say who is doing the testing, they don't say what they are testing for, they basically aren't telling us a damn thing.

What if being a democrat means you're mentally ill? What if hating Bush Means you are mentally ill? Do you want your children on anti-psychotic drugs with out your permission? Pills like prozac are very DANGEROUS to delveloping brains, they cause all kinds of crazy side effects.

Please look into NFC further, google it, whatever, but IT IS BAD NEWS!!!

is messed up.

Anyway, the schools are full of lunatic children whose parents, in a lot of cases, refuse to accept the fact that their own drug/alcohol abuse during and after pregnancy has produced brain damaged children, and they won't get them any help.

Meanwhile, the normal kids have to put up with it due to mainstreaming, cause god forbid we put all the problems in one room, where they can terrorize each other instead of the rest of the school.

There is a working link in my other thread about this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1566848

Sorry this one didn't work.

I agree that plenty of children have problems but Bush's program pushes anti-psycotics not therapy.

What if the school told you your child must take ritalin or they would call child services on you? Either way it SHOULD be your decision to make.

because SOME kids are ill-behaved?

What you're suggesting is all just to make sure these mythical "bad kids" don't interact with the "normal" kids?

I know many folks would like to sweep the problems in our schools under the rug, but theae kids are symptomatic of how our SOCIETY is suffering. the problem is much more complicated than how you present it.

We should approach the solution with a mindset of healing and compassion - instead of one that stigmatizes and punishes these kids (yes, they are still kids) just for the circumstances under which they were born.

I only had two students who were really messed up whose parents wouldn't get them help. Granted, I only taught for three years after my college training, but that's what I saw. The vast majority of parents out there are trying to help their kids the best they know how. Meds don't work on every student, and therapy is expensive.

This law is dangerous because of the nebulous definition of a "problem" student. Would they medicate kids who are liberals? Kids who like Goth? Kids who are just different?

on Ritalin thanks to my ex, and when he was with me, I refused to administer it. Simple enough.

I was screaming to the heavens about this. So were alot of other DU'ers. Most of us were written off as tin-foil hats. I wish I had saved the links. They did say who was doing the testing and what they were testing for. The schools will do the testing, the tests are made up by a board of teachers and people from the pharmaceutical industry hows that for vague. They are testing for "mental illness". More vague. Oh and by the way, the bill allows them to test every single American so you are next. They are going to just start with the kids.

this since we heard about it.

And it is ALL Americans, I forgot to add that part.

sure the 'special' cons will be exempt from having their kids tested. What if the fix is REALLY in and all kids tested will be deemed to have some form of mental problem? The thought of a country
full of kids on meds is beyond scary.

please

friends have school age children, and I have a 6yr old granddaughter.
I forgot to say THANKS for posting this!

Remember a long time ago when I told you I'd called DeFazio? I finally got a letter, it must have taken so long because I could tell it wasn't a form letter. He said the New Freedom Commission requires parental consent, which makes HR181 redundant. See how I said that in one sentence? He took 6 paragraphs. Anyway, I thought I would write him back and ask him about funding for qualified counselors in every school, schools removing kids if parents disagree with school psychiatrists, etc. Since Thurston is in his actual hometown, I'll point to that and the misdiagnosis of Kip Kinkle as a basis for my point. We have to be very careful with this.

Anything you want me to tell him? DeFazio is a very good guy and always wants to do the right thing.

I'm not exactly clear when this goes into effect? Or has it completely passed yet? And if so...I'm SO out of here! NO WAY will they drug my child! :mad:

in Jan, it was tucked away in the omnibus spending bill.

to Sandnsea, I have looked everywhere for confirmation that parental consent was added, but couldn't find it anywhere.

In the onlinejournal article above the parents sueing were never informed of their daughter being screened.


Teenscreen is the program that they tested her under, although it is part of the NFC, because it goes by a different name it may not have to follow the same regualtions, which I still can't find.

...second blow will come when the dominance of Christianity forces psychologists and psychiatrists to redefine "deviant" in Fundamentalist or Dominionist terms. Then someone can be pronounced "mentally ill" (and under another BushCo law defined as "mentally defective" for life) merely for expressing Paganism or other heretical viewpoints. The political danger in this law is huge and approaches infinity, no matter who supports it. The fact BushCo supports it should raise all our political paranoia to new heights.

Edit: clarification of a thoughtlessly crafted sentence.

will lead the list . . . "oppositional behavior" should be right behind (no pun intended) . . .

of your local paper.

This is big and bad, and we must fight it.

Kick for importance! Please remember to nominate this, otherwise it will fall down the DU memory hole.

...demanding he act upon it. I think (hope) Dean is enough of a grass-roots libertarian to recognize both the infinitely fascistic danger of this legislation and, too, its breathtaking potential for political coalition-building.

(At last, an opportunity for the Left to again present itself as the true guardian of liberty.)

it here.

Hope, he reads his e-mail.

...who accused a Wiccan mom of "magical thinking" (a psychiatric diagnosis) and on that basis tried to take her two kids. To these authorities, rabid Christofascism is "normal" but anything else -- Zen, Wicca, Taoism, Native American spirituality etc. -- is "magical thinking," considered a severe neurosis and a basis for confiscating your children.

Sorry I don't know any more about this. But if this story is true -- and I believe it is; my source is very reliable -- what we fear is already happening.

it! I agree w/ you on not only how frightening this is, but also that this issue is the MOTHER of all wedge issues that will freak out the GOP!

One of the more outspoken opponents to this program is Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). I think the key is going to be educating and informing the public about this program. Like the Schiavo case, Americans just don't have any patience for this kind of interference into our family life and medical decision and the role of Government...

I'm glad that you agree it is the mother of all wedges, please send a link to every republican you know.

And yes, Ron Paul is someone I like too, although he's more "Libertarian" than GOP and more like the Republicans of past and how I was raised, not the Neo-con led GOP w/ its Rapture and Reality TV Brain-drained supporters we now see running this country and defending programs like the "New Freedom Initiative".

Maybe there are more GOP members who will remember their roots!

According to this

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00181:

it's still in committee, but if it was just voted on, perhaps the site hasn't been updated yet.

%3BLH%3A58%3BBGC%3Awhite%3BAH%3Aleft%3BAWFID%3A8c89fa359b35081f%3B&q=teenscreen

:kick:

Thanks to all who are trying to get the word out about this very important issue and a kick back to the top...
:kick:

when it was up for approval. People of all stripes don't like their kids messed with. The problem is that very few know it is law. The future will also probably be linking adult mental health tests to your ability to get your RealID card, which will be essential to do anything...drive, travel, purchase, etc.

I also substitute taught in the same school system in 1989. Either I'm a lot older and crankier - or kids today have turned into monsters. And guess what - a lot of those monsters are already medicated. Medicating kids is not the answer - IMO. Parents - even what we might think of as bad parents - should not be forced to medicate their kids for depression, etc.

I wonder if you can avoid these "mental illness tests" by homeschooling your kids? I used to think homeschooling was only done by very right-wing religious people, but after subbing - I think it is the way to go - if possible. You can sign up for distance learning schools online, and so many classes in schools, especially classes for the slower kids, are computerized anyway. In the reading classes for which I subbed, kids would get a book from the library, read it every day, then take a computerized test on the book. The teacher was there for discipline. Also, they had "Accelerated Math", where kids would print out individualized instructions and assignments, fill in the multiple choice answers on a computer card, then have the computer grade the assignment and decide what the next assignment should be. The teacher might answer some questions, but mostly they worked individually and the teacher was there for discipline. When kids were sent to time-out or in school suspension, all their work was done independently without any instruction from a teacher and they were supervised for discipline alone. This really made me wonder why we need schools. The socialization the kids got in those schools was not ideal. In the high school kids took drugs and had sex AT SCHOOL. I was totally freaked out.

Maybe the schools are just too big today. Maybe a parent home schooling her children and maybe a few of her friends children would be better. Or a teacher could set up a small classroom in her house with local children? PBS is already making lesson plans available to teachers as well as home schoolers. http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/ My sister in law is a teacher and she thinks this is a terrible idea because of the lack of socialization. But I've read studies where the kids do not suffer by being home schooled. The home schooled kids have less socialization with kids their own age, but more socialization with kids of different ages and adults. They said it was not clear that socialization with a lot of kids the same age was better.

I wish my state (Indiana - not the most progressive) would develop online lesson plans for home schoolers and make them free to all residents. Then students with behavioral problems can be sent home to work online. This would be much cheaper for Indiana than all the money they spend on discipline. I think they could even afford to buy students a laptop and it would still be cheaper. Already, many organizations offer classes to children outside the school system. For example, Alliance Francais offers French instruction much better than you would find in most public schools. http://www.afusa.org/lear/lear.html And if more people home schooled, the communities could have sports teams for all kids, even home schooled kids.

I think the public school system is broken. Teachers are exhausted from dealing with behavioral problems. Police officers walk the halls. Principals are terrified of lawsuits. Kids often complained to me that their teachers were too lazy to grade their homework and all they did was watch movies. Kids are often anonymous if they are not high achievers or undisciplined nightmares. But most kids are B students who just might change the world someday. With homeschooling, if a child had a particular interest, he can really dig deep into a subject. In a classroom with 30 students and a set schedule - that isn't possible. I think home schooling should be looked into seriously and encouraged by the states.

Just my opinion.

...of the problem is that capitalism's deliberate destruction of community, now complete, has expanded into deliberate destruction of the family: not in the patriarchal sense the Christofascists are always lamenting, but in the much broader and more vital sense of the emotional bonding and the setting of examples that cements kinship -- the passage of culture (which includes behavioral rules) from one generation to the next.

When parents are frantically trying to stay alive in an ever more murderous economy, the transmission of culture itself breaks down. Capitalism discovered this (to its infinite glee) during the Indian Wars: note what was done to American aboriginals. It then perfected the technique on all the rest of us during the 20th century, first using "mobility" to destroy community and economic pressure in general to destroy family (not so much structurally as functionally). This destruction (and the defacto orphanism it creates) plays out in today's schoolyard expressed as ever-more-savage Lord of the Flies behavior.

The Democrats can't do anything about it because to attack the REAL destruction-of-families problem is to attack the very essence of monopoly capitalism, which the party dare not do. As a consequence, the issue is conceded to the Christofascists and their boardroom masters, and the issue gets mangled all out of recognition: maliciously bonded to homophobia, recast as "moral deterioration" etc. ad nauseum -- and then turned into a red herring to distract people from what's really happening. The Lord of the Flies behavior you observed while teaching plays perfectly into the hands of our monopolist overlords: a generation of people methodically reduced to moral imbecility cannot be organized or mobilized, simply because their self-centeredness allows them not even a spark of empathy, which is the bond of collective action.

If the Democrats took up the issue properly (as an issue of deliberate economic exploitation) they'd be damned as Communists -- even though such a stance would have widespread bipartisan appeal, to secular and/or libertarian Republicans as well as to any liberal or progressive. It might even open the eyes of the more thoughtful Christians. It would also give the moral high ground back to the Democratic Party -- "moral" used here in its broadest sense (and not in its narrow Christofascist meaning). But -- thanks to the rabid fear of Communism lingering from the McCarthy Era -- it will probably never happen: I doubt even Dean has the requisite chutzpa.

I had a much longer post but I'll shorten it. We (the Democrats) need to reclaim that word!! Morality involves more than sexual behavior. It involves compassion - as you pointed out. Somehow most churches don't seem very good at instilling compassion, or at least compassion for people who are already born.

re: teenagers and anti-depressants.

What Big Pharma doesn't want you to know.

Last November 1st a co-worker's 16 y.o. daughter committed suicide. She'd been on anti-depressants for about two weeks--specifically, an anti-depressant called "Lexapril."

This young woman was suffering from anxiety problems due to bullying at school. The school counselor recommended that her mother take her to a clinic for teenagers in the local community. A Nurse Practitioner prescribed the Lexapril, saying the only real side-effects were dry mouth and occasional headaches.

A week later she increased the dosage by FOUR times.

Three days later, the girl was dead.

This is the real deal, folks. There is a link between anti-depressant medication and teenage suicide. What that link is, no one is exactly sure. But the fact remains that this young woman had 4 times the normal dose in her system and was not legally considered to be in control of her own actions at the time of her death. The ME reports suggest that she was absolutely not responsible for her own suicide.

Let's keep in mind that her "depression" (she wasn't depressed, she was suffering from social anxiety) was at least partially induced by outside pressure (a bully at school) and she was given a drug ONLY recommended for adults.

Beware of anti-depressants.

BEWARE.

Lexapro is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) - it increases the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin the brain.

Serotonin is often low in the brains of people with depression (though some have normal levels of serotonin, but lower than normal levels of dopamine or norepinephrine). Increasing serotonin levels can help relieve symptoms of depression.

The problem: serotonin affects more than one emotional state.

Serotonin also relates to aggression and impulsive behaviors. Males in positions of power who give orders that others follow show a rise in serotonin levels - which makes them behave more aggressively and impulsively - which increases serotonin levels. (When they loose power their serotonin levels drop.)

So, while increasing serotonin can lift symptoms of depression in some people, it can also cause aggressive and impulsive behaviors -- including self-injurious behaviors.

The UK has made (or will soon be making) it illegal to prescribe these types of meds to teens.

Lots more from Mother Jones article, "Doping Kids"
<http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/09/ma_503_01.html>

:kick:

Glad to see the UK is ahead of the curve on this one.

especially the Dem friends who have 'dropped out of politics' since November. The fight isn't over people.

Must be held accountable!!! This is inexscusable, I've never seen anything like it. :mad: :mad:

They and whoever else is a democrat in name only needs to start taking on their responsibility.

Jeeeeesus !!! I am NOT putting my children on meds like this!!

here is a link to my other thread, with the working link to the article mentioned.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3908769

it is one of my misgivings, that the bureaucrats will "decide" who should make decisions for our families health care, particularly issues like whether we choose to immunize or drug a child. I live in the bluest county in a blue state....I've watched a very good neighbor go through something similar, when the school system decided their son needed Ritalin.
It is extremely difficult to fight back without them becoming suspicious of your motivations. The educators and the doctors all behave as if they are the only experts.
I have watched in horror as this poor kid who's the same age as my youngest now a junior in high school, was transferred out of a regular public school into a "special" school after he was put on Ritalin, because the medication caused mood swings. Both of our kids started off the same, both were very physically active kids who at age six had not yet learned full physical control of their limbs.
When I was growing up this was thought to be normal behavior. Now those kids are labeled as hyper active with attention disorders. We were lucky, we could afford to send our kids to child centered private school through their third year of school. Since the parents initially relented to the system, they're now caught in the system. Obviously we all want people to have access to healthcare....I'm just don't want it at the cost of giving up my right to medicate or not medicate my own children.

I think we have to be very careful how much control we give the government in this respect...universal healthcare is all well and good, but not at the expense of personal choice.

New Freedom Commission

I imagine she'll be bringing it up again now.

They won't get away with this.