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Funds needed for mental health

While much attention is being paid to our state’s physical infrastructure, so, too, are basic community-based mental-health services crumbling beneath our feet.

Western Montana Mental Health Center cares for 15,000 Montanans and employs 900 folks, ranging from Libby to Livingston. Please remind policy makers that further disruption of mental-health and substance-disorder programs will only further exacerbate an exploding foster-care system, further overburden jails, and leave desperate citizens to choose to give up the struggle and end their own lives.

WMMHC wants to be a good partner with the state of Montana, but our organization is struggling to meet its mission: to provide comprehensive behavioral health services to individuals and families in our communities.

Recognizing the current state of Montana’s budgetary challenges, we beg policy makers to make informed decisions and work with us around the following:

—Bolstering the very bedrock of mental-health services, prescribers and ancillary services.

—Finding solutions to safe, stable housing, thereby decreasing lengths of stay in acute settings.

—Supporting Crisis Intervention Training for law-enforcement officers.

—Ensuring that officers have access to crisis stabilization after they have intervened.

—Supporting peer certification. Hiring people with “lived experience” greatly assist others to move towards path of recovery.

—Supporting substance-disorder treatment for individuals and families who are struggling. —Jodi Daly, Missoula, CEO, Western Montana Mental Health Center

Machiavelli, Orwell and Trump

George Orwell argues that political parties seek power for the sake of power, not for the public good because the object of power is to achieve power. Republicans have tacitly supported President Trump because it is a means to achieve power. Truly a Machiavellian strategy. As soon as the new president implodes, they will drop him like a hot potato and then claim the high ground. But the issue is they will use him to accomplish something that their billionaire benefactors have wanted since the New Deal — eliminate Social Security and the social safety net. Why? Some argue the government has no responsibility to provide a social safety net. However, the truth is, there will be millions to be made by Wall Street benefactors. Let’s look at what has been done so far to achieve these goals.

Cabinet appointees: Secretary of Treasury Goldman Sachs alum (1 of 6 nominated) Steven Mnuchin who made over $200 million due to the Wall Street crash in 2009. Mnuchin’s bank foreclosed 36,000 homes, many of which were referred as the “widow foreclosures” because they forced surviving spouses (some veterans) to pay the balance of reverse mortgages after assuring those same spouses that they didn’t need to sign the reverse mortgage papers. Leaving spouses in some cases homeless. The bank — under Mnuchin’s leadership — even started one foreclosure over an unpaid bill for 27 cents, according to allegations raised by surviving partners, their relatives and advisers. Mnuchin, as the secretary of the treasury, is akin to the fox managing the hen house.

Other Cabinet nominees are billionaires who have benefited financially the same way as Steven Mnuchin — having access to power and wealth through an economic system tilted in their behalf. For example Health and Human Services nominee who has pressed for the repeal of the ACA, the privatization of Medicare, Medicaid, and a reduction in Social Security towards market based plans dominated by wealthy Wall Street financiers. And then there’s ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, whose company has paid less in taxes than you or I. Don’t forget Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, a lasting legacy of a racist Southerner, who has had a history of enmity towards civil rights. How about billionaire Betsy DeVos, who has never set foot in a public classroom, being in charge of public education throughout the country and who wants to privatize schools!

The new president promised to drain the swamp of corruption in the U.S. government. With the Cabinet nominees, this will not happen. There’s a good chance that this government will be the most corrupt in American history. And the GOP, which endorsed the new president, will be sorry they did. In spite of the fact that much of the objectives of the new administration are in direct opposition to his campaign promises — promises that got him elected — achieving this power has emboldened he and the GOP to seek changes that will favor them and be detrimental to the working class. And achieving power for the sake of power, where the ends justifies the means — as George Orwell reminds us — leads to a nightmare for working class people. —David R. James, Eureka

Et tu, Marco?

I anticipated the circus that would take place at the hearings for President Trump’s Cabinet picks, especially Mr. Tillerson for secretary of state and Sen. Sessions for attorney general. The Democrats performed as expected. Both of these fine men deserve to be approved after the Dems get their chance to grandstand for the cameras.

Black Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., essentially accused his fellow senator, Mr. Sessions, of racism despite no proof to support his allegation. He, like the remainder of the Black Caucus, doesn’t seek equal justice regardless of race from the attorney general ... rather they are seeking special considerations for blacks as has been the practice with Mr. Obama’s attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. But Booker’s performance was a first step in the Democrats grooming him, as they did Obama at the 2004 Democrat National Convention, to run for the presidency in 2020 or 2024. I expected his performance. It was advertised well in advance to maximize viewership. But I was extremely disappointed in Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s questioning of Mr. Tillerson in which he demanded, repeatedly, that Mr. Tillerson brand Putin a war criminal.

I supported Rubio in the Republican primary. I thought he was a man of principle unlike many Washington politicians. But he demonstrated during his questioning of Mr. Tillerson that he is just another political hack trying to get face time for name recognition. He has faded into the wallpaper after dropping out of the Republican primary and is now, I am sure, struggling to get back in the limelight for a future presidential run.

After presenting nothing more than public domain information of Russian atrocities under Putin, he repeatedly demanded that the future secretary of state declare the Russian leader a war criminal. What a smart move that would have been for Mr. Tillerson ... declare the leader of one of our biggest military rivals a war criminal. THANK GOD Mr. Tillerson is smarter than Rubio. Not only did he refuse to sour his relationship with Putin before even assuming the role of secretary of state, but he demonstrated statesmanship by saying he would first want to see all the facts classified and public news articles before making such a damning statement.

Where was the incensed Rubio during the last eight years as his Senate colleagues Clinton and Kerry allowed much of the devastation caused by Putin’s Russia to go unquestioned while they served as secretary of state? Certainly Rubio never demanded that they declare Putin a war criminal. So Marco got his minute of fame. We will hear his toughness repeated in sound bites over and over ... for a day or two. Then, hopefully, he will fade back into his role as just one more political hack. —P. David Myerowitz, Columbia Falls