(10-14-16) When it comes to mental health care in America, Republican candidate Donald Trump scores only one point on a five point scale ( 5 being the highest) while his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton earns three points on the same scale.

That’s according to Scientific American magazine which partnered with ScienceDebate.org to pose 20 questions to the presidential candidates — questions that were developed and refined by dozens of scientific organizations that represent more than 10 million scientists.

I’ve copy and pasted only the Mental Health question and answers. At the end of the responses is an explanation for why the group ranked Trump lower than Clinton and two independent candidates. I’ve leave it up to you to decide how important this study might be when it comes to casting your vote.

You can also listen to an interview conducted by Robin Young on the NPR program Here and Now  with Christine Gorman, a senior editor at Scientific American who oversaw the process.

Question 6: MENTAL HEALTH 

Mental illness is among the most painful and stigmatized diseases, and the National Institute of Mental Health estimates it costs America more than $300 billion per year. What will you do to reduce the human and economic costs of mental illness?

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(10-11-16) TREASON, my new novel co-authored with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, goes on sale today and, I’m happy to report that it already has won top praise from New York Times Bestselling Author Daniel Silva.

“Heart pounding! Treason is a great Washington thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat –filed with insider detail that only a writing team like Speaker Newt Gingrich and journalist Pete Earley could provide'”

I’m so excited that I’m going to give away fifteen free copies autographed by me. All you have to do to enter this give-away contest is share this blog on Facebook. Yep, that’s it. Just hit share so it goes out to your friends. Ten days from now, fifteen names will be chosen from those Facebook shares and those lucky folks will be notified and asked for a mailing address. The chosen 15 will be given either an autographed hardback book or a CD version. Entering a contest can’t be easier than this.

TREASON is the second novel in our House of Cards meets Jason Bourne style series. Our first novel, DUPLICITY, was released last fall.

Several of my Democrat and liberal friends sent me emails after DUPLICITY was released asking me how Speaker Gingrich and I became co-authors. Because of my journalism background, I’ve always considered myself an independent, neither a Republican nor a Democrat. (Although my friends claim I lean more to the left than to the right.)

The introduction came through my agent. He told me Speaker Gingrich wanted to pen a Washington based novel that he could infuse with his political insider knowledge. I wanted to write an action/adventure novel inspired by my nonfiction spy books. During our first meeting, Speaker Gingrich and I immediately agreed that we wouldn’t write a partisan novel. We simply wanted to write an exciting book that would interweave current events into a believable — edge on your seat — plot.

And that is what we’ve done in TREASON.

Our opening scene takes readers into Washington’s National Cathedral where a funeral is being held for Decker Lake, one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists and a close friend of the president. I think that scene reflects how funerals in Washington might be a bit different, or should I say, Machiavellian, than many in other parts of the nation.

Brooke Grant guessed there were two thousand mourners in attendance. She knew that many of them had not been admirers of Decker Lake. Some would argue that Lake had more enemies than friends in Washington. It was part of being influential. They had not come to grieve but to make certain he was truly dead.

The jackal-like process of grabbing pieces of Lake’s lucrative lobbying empire had begun within seconds after news of his death had been tweeted. Along the K-Street corridor, rival lobbyists had scheduled lunches and dinners to pimp themselves to Lake’s exhaustive and exclusive list of Wall Street firms and national associations. Lake had been too vain to groom a successor at his boutique-lobbying firm, leaving it rudderless and unable to keep the sharks at bay.

The ripples caused by Lake’s demise extended beyond the lobbyists now trampling over each other to replace him. President Allworth had lost her political champion and power vacuums in Washington never lasted.

This was how Washington bid farewell to one of its own: with pomp, sobriety, and a thinly-veiled impatience with all eyes cast on what was to come, who would matter, who would benefit and who would lose.

I’m posting the entire first chapter of TREASON. Please consider buying a copy, or maybe several! Writing and selling books is how I finance my mental health advocacy and pay my bills,  and TREASON is one of the best novels that I’ve had the pleasure of working on. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you will believe Daniel Silva.

(Don’t forget to share this blog to be automatically entered in my book give-away contest and THANK YOU for your support.)

 

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(10-6-16) I’m excited to be participating tomorrow (Friday) in a panel discussion about solitary confinement in America’s jails and prisons.

Entitled: “Unlocking Prison: A Case Study,” the discussion will happen at the   National Press Club (13th Floor) from 11:15 AM – 12:45 PM, as part of Double Exposure, the Investigative Film Festival and Symposium being held in Washington D.C.

This is the second year for the three day festival that begins today (Thursday) and ends Saturday, October 8, 2016. 

The Double Exposure festival is unique because it combines investigative journalism with the visual arts by featuring the work of investigative journalists who work on films and in other visual forms. The line up of films this year is truly first-rate. They range from an investigation of elephant hunting for ivory to a profile of the banker who leaked documents to WikiLeaks exposing secret bank accounts and tax havens to Wall Street shenanigans involving pyramid schemes,

Our panel discussion is being held in conjunction with the showing of a dramatic documentary called SOLITARY, a film made by Kristi Jacobson who spent a year filming the lives of guards and inmates at Red Onion State Prison in southern Virginia. Here is a snippet about the film from a Nick Schager review in Variety.

There’s little hope, but considerable insight, found in “Solitary,” Kristi Jacobson’s documentary about Wise County, Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, a supermax facility where convicts are holed up for 23 hours a day in separate 8′-by-10′ cells. Shot over the course of a year, the film presents an unfiltered insider’s view of their colorless day-to-days, which are largely spent trying to stave off madness…

“Solitary” concentrates on a handful of Red Onion’s inhabitants, all of them locked away for serious crimes and resigned to spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are, by and large, well-spoken and introspective, the latter born from the fact that their time is mostly spent by themselves, with only minimal contact with guards — and chats with other inmates through cells’ air vents — to mitigate their crushing seclusion.Click to continue…

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the powerful Senate Majority Whip, is making passage of Mental Health Reform Act, his top priority in upcoming lame duck session.

(10-3-16) I’m hearing the Senate may still pass the  Mental Health Reform Act (S.2680) in November when Congress returns for a lame duck session, but only if several new obstacles can be overcome.

The bill is the Senate’s version of Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy’s  Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act and was initially introduced by Senators Chris Murphy (D. Conn.) and Bill Cassidy (R. La.) as  S. 1945 but has been renumbered now that it is under the control of  Sen. Alexander Lamar (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

You might recall that the Senate version ran into trouble when Senator John Cornyn (R-TX.) moved to merge his mental health bill into the Murphy-Cassidy bill. Senate Democrats, including Senators Charles Schumer (NY) and Harry Reid (NV.), took issue with parts of Cornyn’s bill that dealt with restoring gun ownership to veterans who the Veterans Administration had decided were incompetent to handle their own financial affairs. I’ve been assured that  issue has been overcome.

However, now two new ones could kill the Senate version and both concern money.

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