Trump Seeks $54B Military, Security Increase in Spending Plan

Donald Trump seeks to increase military spending $54B

Military Defense Increases to $603B, All Non-Defense Spending Shrinks to $462B

By JIM PURCELL

According to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, the Trump administration has proposed a $54 billion military and security spending increase for the coming year. Meanwhile, all other departments of the Federal Government would see stark decreases in support.

Up to one-quarter of the Environmental Protection Agency's funding can expect to be slashed, according to CNN.

Trump summed up this budget as a "public safety and national security budget" at the White House on Monday. A CNN source identified as a Trump administration official said foreign aid and the EPA are specifically being targeted by the administration.

The unnamed official said that cuts would come through defunding programs currently in operation in the government that Trump considers "unauthorized" and said, where there is duplication in efforts, services will be consolidated.

A budget "congress" has been announced by the White House on March 16. Meanwhile, Mulvaney said Trump's administration intends to add to the lopsided budget next year when, in 2018, Trump intends to begin public financing of the U.S.-Mexico wall he promised to build as a candidate.

Being a Consumer of Mental Health

By JIM PURCELL

There are many issues surrounding consumers of mental health services. It is a holistic problem so its fall-out for people so afflicted are far-encompassing -- from personal to professional to medically.

I am a mental health care consumer. I have Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety, PTSD and complicating all of that is alcoholism. Are these 'real disorders'? Well, doctors think so. Living with this mess, I can assure you I regard them as legitimate disorders also.

But, there are people who say that these disorders are made up: not real. They cannot be seen. Well, for that matter, gravity cannot be seen either -- nor can time -- but they are very real as also. Still, I would not offer an argument to detractors who may think otherwise. If the idea is that mental health disorders are not real, then that opinion is informed by the individual.

Where it gets dicey is when those who do not regard mental health disorders as bona fide medical problems somehow convince consumers of mental health services of the same thing they believe. There is nothing quite so spectacular as a mental health patient who does not take their medication. If medication moderates erratic behavior, and it does, then abandoning such medication will give rise to erratic behavior again.

I am well medicated. Yet, even still, there are those days when depression and/or anxiety gets through. There are days when medication will fall short. There will be times of challenge, even regulated by a well thought-out plan for meds and despite regular talk therapy.

The mental health consumer has to know that not everything will be 'solved' for all times with talk therapy and medications. All these things do for me is give me a fighting chance to interdict very difficult emotions, feelings and moods.

When a mental health consumer is un-medicated, though, they have very few tools to work with, if any, There is always talk about support networks, and support networks of other people can literally be the difference between life and death at their most necessary. However, I would say to measure people in your networks. Be sure that they are people who can handle 'your crazy,' for lack of a better term. They also need to be people who know when it is time to get professional services involved.

Living with mental health disorders is hard. It is not a zero-defect situation. If it were then there would be a shot and  -- boom -- no more mental health problems. This is not the case yet. Maybe some day.

I am writing this just to bring up the challenges of living with mental health disorders, maybe to remind people who have fallen away from treatment to consider it again -- at the very least to let other consumers of mental health services to know they are not alone.

A Basic Human Need: Ending Housing Discrimination for Mental Health Cons...

George Washington: Lessons in Leadership

President George Washington Born This Day in History: Feb. 22, 1797

It is too easy to fill the page full of amazing and great things about America's first president, George Washington. In all of America and its history, he is perhaps the most deserving and popular of all citizens.

George Washington was a farmer, a surveyor, a citizen-soldier and adventurer, general, president and statesman.The United States needed, at one time or another, all of Washington's considerable talents.

Now, more than two centuries later, after historians have long finished their weighing and judging of this man, it is still universally believed that there would be no United States of America without him.

For more information about President Washington, please click on this LINK. 

Generations: Mom and Dad

By JIM PURCELL

My parents were from the World War II Generation, which they characterized as the Depression Era Generation. They were an uncommon people, and thank God for them, which is not to say that there were not a lot of problems with those folks. They just seemed to to make things work out, though, for the most part.

My father was born in 1919 and my mom was born in 1925. They were products of their environment, which is to say they were from Newark, New Jersey and were both from Irish-American families whose feet were still wet from walking off the boat. They were part of a community of people like them: Irish people. A portion of those people had some kind of life in Ireland before, some didn't. Those who didn't were being raised by parents who still bought into a lot of the traditions from the Old Country.

I remark on this because the same things was true of Italian-American communities, German-American communities, Polish communities....you get the idea. There were communities where people were essentially homogeneous and maintained what they thought of as 'pure racial lines' among White people. Of course, if White people were so hung up on whatever country their parents were from and someone from another Caucasian experience was considered different or 'other,' then how Whites looked at Blacks or Latinos must have been liked they were from the moon. In fact, that was how they looked at Blacks and Latinos. Mom and Dad thought there was a place for Blacks and Latinos in their community -- on the other side of it in their own part of town where they lived their lives among one another.

With that said, how people who were so self-segregated and who believed so much in tradition could cooperate together to do something so phenomenal as winning the kind of World War they fought, and establish the industrial-manufacturing/pre-technological society they did astounds me. My parents did not like the fact that I rebelled against their traditions or notions of right or wrong. Maybe every generation does that, though, to make their own mark. Still, I recognize what my parents did, and their generation.And, my parents were very ordinary in the ranks of their peers.

Dad was a street kid when he was very young, who easily could have fit in to the mold of one of the "Dead End Kids" of the 1930s. He loved his parents and went to school when he could, earned whatever money he might find for his family and played sports when there was a chance to do it. He was a working man, not an intellectual or academically inclined. During the war, he was already in the New Jersey Army National Guard, where he was a combat engineer. So, he knew what he was going to do during the war. He was one of those brave souls who fought in Normandy and came to liberate Europe on June 6, 1944. I cannot imagine the rare variety of hell that was. After the war, he came home and owned a taxi company briefly before he settled down and became an oil truck driver for Liberty Fuel Company, in Linden, which was his last job in life. He worked it for 30 years. He married a pretty girl from the neighborhood, had two sons, bought a house in the suburbs and did everything his generation expected from him.

Mom had a common story. She was from a big family. Mom loved her parents and did not like school. She was very social and well liked. During the Depression, she did without, helped her family make things stretch for the good of the household. She was a 'good girl' who went to church and went to dances at church and school. Then the war came and she became a factory worker very much in the picture of "Rosie the Riveter." She worked on an assembly line in Edison, helping to create component parts for tanks being used to fight the Axis.

These people were part of a team -- they did their best in teams. Their generation was able to come together like no other generation has in the history of this country -- including that of the Founding Fathers -- and fight back a darkness from the face of the world that would have consumed light as efficiently as a black hole from space. And, they made it look as easy as it could have looked. They bore terrible sacrifices and hardships, and did it all with a grit and determination that informed the world 'they got this.' No matter what it was.

My mom and dad were uncommon for the achievements they had in their life. But, they were part of a larger class of people, Americans from every walk of life and color who, as a group of contemporaries, were so dynamic and industrious.

A friend of mine, who was from my parent's generation, died about a week ago. John was affable, good-natured and cut the perfect image of a kindly and benevolent grandfather. Even as he was dying, he had a serenity and hard-earned peace about him that gave a lesson to everyone who met him: Live life well, do things right and fight the good fight. During the war, John was an infantryman in the 45th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. His unit, nicknamed the "Golden Lions," were savaged by the last gasp of Hitler's army. John's experiences are not easy to identify with, but they are easy to appreciate. He was a hero at a time when there were so many everyday heroes.

The Depression Era Generation cannot be put into a neat, spare box and quantify them in a few words. They were forward-reaching, if not forward-thinking. They were dynamic and a force to be reckoned with. They could accomplish anything from building marvels of engineering to fighting Adolf Hitler or, if they had showed up wanting to fight, Martians or enormous sea creatures. Still, that generation struggled with diversity and civil rights. They struggled with the role of the individual in society and what place society has in the lives of individuals. No, this generation was not good at sorting out everything. They left a lot to do for the rest of us who came afterward. But, we should all feel very lucky for them because they allow us the opportunity to have those conversations, those arguments, in a relatively free world where individual expression still has meaning. Because if the Depression Era generation had not made their contribution to this world, it would be a place of far less opportunity for the rest of us.

I say God bless to my mom and dad, to John and to all of those wonderful people we were lucky to have as parents or grandparents. They carried the water.

Nine Suggestions designed to Help Hard Core Criminal Addicts

By David H. Kerr              

1. Continue to promote and encourage law enforcement to use the drug court for relapse prone addicts with a criminal background. The weight of the court and a pending prison sentence is enough pressure for many criminal addicts to enter and complete treatment.
2. Try new approaches such as have been suggested in Scranton, PA. See article below. Once an addict is apprehended, allow the option of treatment even before any criminal charges are filed. This would be a real incentive for many if not most chronic addict offenders since the charge would not be filed if treatment was completed.
3. I have noticed that regular visits with the addict in treatment by the criminal justice referring agent will have a positive impact on prolonged recovery. Addicts in treatment tend to forget that they're on Probation or Parole or Drug Court etc. The brief "legal" visits should be once every three to four weeks and must be face-to-face or virtual via Skype.
4. The recovery process begins upon entering treatment. Legal video referral visits between the referring agent and the recovering addict in treatment must begin {or continue} for a minimum of once every three weeks.
5. Random urine testing must be done and certified by the authorized same sex treatment staff member, occurring every two to five weeks based on the client's treatment plan.
6. *There must be continuing face-to-face or video coaching after treatment for a minimum of four years. This is the most critical point to understand considering the relapse nature of the disease. The fear of the {observed} positive urine test along with the encouragement of the coach are essential to ensure long-term recovery, legal compliance and success. {This new protocol is well worth State funding.}
7. The treatment coach and the legal referring agent should also maintain video contact while the client is in treatment and thereafter. 
8. All treatment programs know the relapse prone nature of the disease of addiction and should stick to the protocol of maintaining regular virtual contact with their client for many years thereafter. If the legal referring agent mandates regular observed urine testing for several years after treatment, I encourage the treatment programs to comply provided there is State financial support. A very minimal investment for considering the relapse nature of the disease.
9. It is my suggestion that the State Department of Human Services fund the coached recovery of each client during and continuing for several years after treatment, until recovery stabilizes as demonstrated by the client's new drug free lifestyle. More and more data shows that addiction is a lifetime disease similar to that of diabetes. Think of the need for an addiction treatment coach for a recovering person just as critical as the need for insulin for a diabetic. Based on my experience with thousands of recovering addicts over nearly 50 years, long-term coached recovery may be the missing piece in our present day protocols for treatment. This process is more likely to result in a durable long-term recovery. Credentials for a recovery coach should only require a signed approval letter by the treatment program director. Certification and degrees should not be a mandatory requirement for a recovery coach. Positive experience and the recommendation of the treatment director are more critical. If the recovery coach is in recovery as well, he/she must also submit to random urine testing by the State or by the treatment program.

*****************************************************

       The Proposed Scranton Project:

The department is preparing to apply for a federal grant of about $730,000 to fund a three-year program that would offer a treatment option to low-level offenders and others suffering from opioid addictions, before any criminal charges are filed police Chief Carl Graziano said.

If a person successfully completes the treatment program, no charges would be filed for what otherwise could have been a crime, such as simple possession of heroin, he said. That person won't have a criminal record and, hopefully, will have a better chance at full recovery, he said. If a person facing arrest does not complete the treatment program, charges would move forward.

http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-eyes-pilot-pre-arrest-drug-treatment-program-1.2149722

Scranton        eyes pilot pre-arrest drug treatment program

Jim Lockwood, Staff writer/published: February 2, 2017

The Scranton Police Department hopes to offer certain opioid addicts a chance for treatment that, if successfully completed, won't result in any charges filed for potential crimes, authorities said.

The department is preparing to apply for a federal grant of about $730,000 to fund a three-year program that would offer a treatment option to low-level offenders and others suffering from opioid addictions, before any criminal charges are filed police Chief Carl Graziano said.

If a person successfully completes the treatment program, no charges would be filed for what otherwise could have been a crime, such as simple possession of heroin, he said. That person won't have a criminal record and, hopefully, will have a better chance at full recovery, he said. If a person facing arrest does not complete the treatment program, charges would move forward.

"Rather than get photographed and arrested, they would essentially sign what we're calling a 'Contract for Recovery,' " Chief Graziano told Scranton City Council during an informal caucus on Jan. 26.

He told council that the grant application would come before it soon for its consideration. City endorsement of the application is a required precursor of its ﮋling, he said.

The grant would come from a federal smart policing initiative seeking effective prevention and response approaches to prescription and/or illegal drug overdose and deaths, the tentative application says. The programs aim to help an addict get treatment before he or she has a criminal record, "to give them a real shot at turning their life around, of getting a job and having a future," the application says. It estimates the program over three years could help about 100 people, though the numbers could vary depending on lengths of treatments.

The Contract for Recovery initiative would complement Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition and drug court programs already in existence, but differ from them in a key way. That's because people in ARD or drug court have been charged with crimes that, even if expunged, could remain on the internet and hinder them from getting or keeping jobs and staying clean, the chief said.

"The difference (with the proposed Contract for Recovery) is they never actually enter the criminal justice system, so they don't get a criminal record," the chief said. "It's going to be a pre-booking intervention program. It will target the heroin and opioid addiction problem in our area."

This effort would take two approaches:

Pre-offense diversions, in which police would spread the word on the streets about the Contract for Recovery to entice those who want to seek treatment immediately.
Pre-arrest diversions of people involved in "minor criminal acts," such as simple possession, and in which officers could offer the contract option.

The Gloucester, Massachusetts Police Department has a similar program that relies upon citizens going to police seeking help for addiction. The United Kingdom has a "test on arrest" program that results in mandatory treatment assessment for those testing positive for drugs. Scranton's proposed approach would fall between these other two methods.

Scranton's initiative would involve two treatment centers: A Better Today and Drug and Alcohol Treatment Service of Lackawanna County.

Results of the program also would be empirically tracked by the University of Scranton's Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Crime.

Lackawanna County District Attorney Shane Scanlon praised the city police department for "thinking out of the box" to try to stem the opioid epidemic. Early intervention hopefully would prevent what otherwise could become a downward spiral of addiction and recurring crime and jail time, Mr. Scanlon said.

"I think it's an outstanding idea," Mr. Scanlon said of the proposal. "If we can get a person on the right path — the sooner the better."

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The Mob is in the Streets, at the Door

By JIM PURCELL

The Patriot Movement: It is an interesting phenomenon. It is a movement that promotes itself and its members as 'true patriots' to the nation. These people claim to be the ultimate Americans, more knowledgeable than any political party, academics, military or governmental active people or veterans, subject matter experts or any other enthusiasts of government or public policy.

I think it would be a mistake to condescend to these people. They arrived on the political scene as a response to societal stress, winds of historic change, economic unrest....take your choice. But, it was a real thing that created them. And, mob rule is not new.

Every mob in history has needed more than just the environment to spark, they have needed the strong man, a relatively permissive society that would allow the machinations of revolt in the first place, and a means of communication to the mob. And, the mob is a breathing, living thing. It has one mind, one focus, it seeks destruction. Indeed, destruction is the point of the mob. It cannot build. It cannot create. It must destroy. Once assembled, it will do one of two things -- it will be put down or it will fulfill its ultimate mission of destruction of everyone and everything that breaths even a hint of opposition. It is humanity at its worst -- it is the illogical conclusion of political thought.

Facts no longer matter.

Realities no longer matter.

Common sense no longer matters.

The mob is a seething, toothy beast.

It is a historical creature, who has prowled the streets of Ancient Israel, the Roman Empire, Paris during the French Revolution, Moscow during the October Revolution in 1918 and all the way to Arab Spring in 2010. Now, the mob has convened here in the United States. And, it is circling, building up its courage. If it is allowed to circle this republic long enough, it will strike.

Mr. Trump is the focus of these people and they have imbued this very self-centered, hedonistic, mentally unstable real-estate developer from New York with super-human strength of character and wisdom. And, frankly, he has done nothing throughout the long stretch of his 70 years that would incline a reasonable mind to believe he has any superior abilities in anything. Well, reason is not in the house here right now. It has vacated the premises. It no longer resides in the halls of power, in the streets surrounding those halls, in the homes along those streets or in the hearts of the nation's citizens.

Yet, when the mob controls the halls of powers; When its strong man rules a mighty nation, rest assured that havoc is loose in the streets. Where will it go? Beats the hell out of me.

As bad as it might get, as terrible as its historical consequences of the past (and quite possibly the future) the mob can be an agent of change -- and even the most brutal change can bring good in its wake. Not right away. Right away it is bad. And, it will be bad for a long time. With America being the greatest democracy in the world -- leader of the free world -- all of that is by the way side in the wake of some mob going loose in this country. I think that is likely.

This mob loves guns. They will use them.

This mob hates people who are not white. Well, we all know how that will work out, historically speaking.

This mob hates central government. And, it will direct its ire against it, probably using the guns they love so much.

Of course, this is if things go as far as they can. This will happen if there is not an agent of change. This will happen -- and innocent people will suffer -- if there is not an agent of change to disperse this crowd of "Patriots." These people are not devils, nor any other supernatural thing -- they are our neighbors and family. They are our friends. They are us. They are simply caught up in something that they cannot control, and God help the rest of us.

Hopefully, things will not go South. Hopefully, this whole thing -- this whole country -- does not melt under the weight of its angst. It almost did in the 1960s. But, Hippies were about peace and love -- not about guns and God. I do not know what is the more deadly of the two -- God or guns. Arm someone with a gun and they can take lives. Arm someone with a false idol and they will take many more lives. Arm an angry mob with guns and a false idol -- do the math.

For the record, I am under the impression that God is about peace and love, caring for the poor and instilling peace among nations. I know that is not a popular idea right now, but it is the one I live with. There is no use convincing the New Patriots of Jesus in the Book of Mark or about God's gentle hopes and desire for us. The mob is loose in the streets. The course will be run.

What is left is prayer.

Sometimes, it takes Divine Providence to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

As a younger man, I would have argued common sense, science, God and recorded history to try and convince a mob from its appointed duty. But, I am not a younger man: I am one who has seen something of the world. I think people are going to do what they are going to do, and relying on their better angels, sense of right or duty is an utter waste of time.

This drama involving President Trump and his followers will play out in American history. I have no idea what the result will be. I do not believe anyone does -- not Trump himself. We are all in God's hands now. Now is the time for those of us who profess faith to have it. Sometimes, the best we can do is get by the day until we catch a break -- Lord knows we all need one.

Fingers crossed, folks. Fingers crossed.

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A Tribute To Lt. General Hal Moore: Feb. 13, 1922 - Feb. 10, 2017

A tribute to the late and great Lt. Gen. Hal Moore. If ever there were someone who deserved an easy rest, it is him.

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Arby's reports serious security breach

COMMUNITY NOTICE

According to a report filed by Abigail Elise for National Curator, more than 335,000 people who ate at Arby's between October 2016 and January 2017 may very well have had their credit or debit card information stolen. She cited a statement reportedly issued by the fast food chain.

Arby's reportedly discovered the security breach around mid-January. The fast food chain has more than 3,000 sites nationwide. Arby's Senior Vice President of Communications Christopher Fuller said, "Although there are over 1,000 corporate Arby's restaurants, not all of the corporate restaurants were affected."