That’s ritard, short for ritardando

Unless you meant a non chord tone resolving downwards but that’s retardation

Obviously timing to be replaced by someone even worse

And now he can use his newly padded resume to get a cushy executive job at wherever guts the remainder of the usps

This is nothing on the order of watergate, prism, etc and you and I both know this admin has that level of corruption going on

Sit on this bombshell, which is ultimately that the admin uses a non approved communication modality that hides their tracks (shocker, they’re afraid of being on record). You still have evidence of that by sitting on this. Wait until they drop some real shit and leak that. But that would probably end with you needing to leave the country

Yeah maybe. But maybe not. I’d rather not bank on a potential when the actuality was literally manifested, but what’s done is done

Maybe the only way this happens again is if someone from within the administration develops a spine and leaks info

Okay and? He has a direct line into the administrations secret signal group. This is tremendous thing dropped into his lap

It’s like if bob woodward met with deep throat once, reported there was nonsense going on in the Nixon administration, but then told him to fuck off becuase it was too risky to continue. That’s insane and his bravery led to Nixons corruption being exposed

Or like Snowden going to greenwald and co and them reporting that “some guy told us about government corruption but we sent him on his way” instead of coordinating his transport to Hong Kong and Russia and passing of the document cache because it was “too risky”

Modern journalists being cowards is a huge part of the reason we have trump. He should be ashamed he threw away such a tremendous opportunity. You better believe they’re going to improve their opsec now.

Being a journalist is about taking huge risks to expose things like corrupt governments. Man got the golden ticket and threw it away once he verified it was real

Policy and advocacy? Maybe masters of public health

That said as someone who’s worked as a licensed counselor for over a decade one of my pet peeves is when someone gets an MPH and all of a sudden is an authority because they spent two years learning about “the issues”. It’s kind of like the MBA who comes into a company and is like “oh it’s pretty cool what you’re doing but I know everything because I learned that making more money is great!”

That said it does give you some cred. Ultimately the biggest thing is networking, like all things in life. Get to know people and play the game of “hey remember me from x! I’m doing x now and we’d love to x” it sucks but if you truly want to enact change you need people to know you and be on your side more than any letters

Pedigree and experience helps though. Just don’t get too bogged down in it. I’ve known people with my licensure (masters of counseling, lpc), that do work here. Plenty of psychologists, MDs and DOs, CRNPs, etc. they have the benefit of drawing on experience, which can be powerful.

I recently did some advocacy work and it involved writing an op-ed about my experience working in the residential inpatient system we are talking about here, for example. I have spoken to policy makers about what works and what doesn’t in this vein. I will admit it is unbelievably frustrating to speak to a politician who practices being super polite and nice to everyone. They hear you out and talk in empty platitudes, shake your hand, then vote for the insurance companies that you find out paid them $8,000 via open secrets. It’s disheartening but you keep trying, I guess

Well practitioners who are members of the APA/ACA/etc have the most sway. Writing opeds, participation in meetings, submission to calls to action, becoming more involved in the organization. Like any political action really you have similar challenges: how do you organize members? Except here it’s a bit different; a great deal of membership is in agreement that conversion therapy is abhorrent. But like governmental political action leadership is often hesitant to make serious moves

The troubled teen industry is a different issue. The worst examples of these facilities often operate outside of regulation. The thing is there are regulatory concerns for certain facilities but then there are loopholes around this. If I open an inpatient residential facility I have regulatory guidelines to follow. If I open a “camp” for troubled teens the regulations are much more relaxed, basically nonexistent.

Inpatient facilities that operate properly are a different story. These are fairly heavily regulated in most states but the regulations can vary wildly. However even in states where regulations are more strict it is often cash starved on the side of regulatory oversight. Ie the bodies that exist to ensure regulatory compliance have little money. This is addition to the programs themselves being poorly funded (and often the funding being unfairly distributed)

The solution to mental health treatment is such a multifaceted problem. People don’t want this; they want a simple line. Increased funding would help, but it wouldn’t solve it. In many cases it would simply be absorbed into private equity and administrative salaries. Increased regulation would help but if you just do this it won’t do much because the programs cannot cope without the funding, training, and increased staffing. Additionally regulatory bodies would need the teeth to actually enforce. And this doesn’t even touch upon the health insurance component that is necessary to be reformed heavily so people can access these (absurdly expensive) services without being bankrupted

That last point is key. These services are absurdly expensive. Inpatient on the low end can be 10k per month and as much as 60k a month. People don’t want to pay for this and politicians know this is a class of people that can easily be erased for massive healthcare savings (at the benefit of funneling them into private prisons instead, which is absolutely disgusting, but politicians are scum)

This is where the whole relationship of everything comes into play:

In a situation like that the role of the APA is to put pressure on the state acting poorly. If the APA fails in this role it is the role of professionals within the state and across the country to put pressure on the APA to act. Obviously this does not occur

This is an issue where state governing bodies are given too much power away from the ethical boards

The APA for example has firmly opposed conversion therapy officially since 1998 (way too late, but better than our shitty government). This opposition is functionally meaningless though because the APA does not license individuals, state boards do

So if your state is totally cool with conversion therapy it doesn’t matter that you are a psychologist who does this entirely unethical practice that has been recognized by the governing body as not evidenced based. They will both grant you a license as a new practitioner and continue to renew your license.

Now this is a comfortable position the APA can take because they do not have this power. The ACA, the American counseling association, has made a similar statement and has basically the same scenario. This becomes relevant in a moment:

A different scenario: the NBCC has made a softer statement. They “support government bans”. The ACA and APA ethics boards use much stronger language. To compare:

“The American Counseling Association (ACA) opposes the practice of conversion therapy and advocates for the banning of such practices in the United States. As a leading organization in the field of behavioral health care, the ACA stands against conversion therapy because there is no credible scientific data to support its effectiveness. Furthermore, extensive research has demonstrated that conversion therapy is a harmful and damaging practice for clients, often resulting in psychological trauma and distress.”

“NBCC supports all bans on conversion therapy in all its forms. Conversion therapy directly contradicts every moral and ethical standard that mental health counselors are held to, including the NBCC Code of Ethics and the ACA Code of Ethics. Not only is the practice wholly based on unproven claims, it has been shown in multiple scientific studies to cause great mental and emotional harm to those who undergo it”

The NBCC post is buried on their issues blog (instead of a formal post on the topic like the ACA and APA) and the language is not direct, which is ill advised when discussing ethical issues. The ACA is clear: the practice is opposed and advocacy for banning the practice is advised. The NBCC supports bans and feels the practice is not evidence based but does explicitly state that the practice should be prohibited. Again, you might say this can be inferred from their language (it obviously can be) but when you are discussing ethical issues inference is your downfall. The people looking to practice this bullshit will see this and say “oh well you didn’t explicitly say no so that is a yes”

This is important because unlike the ACA and APA the NBCC actually does have power here. They are not a licensing agency but a certifying body on a national level. One must adhere to their ethical code to maintain their certification. This is sometimes required for jobs at the VA or working with TriCare, some school and university jobs require it, and some insurance companies require it for paneling as well. They do hold some power.

In the meantime states should still ban it. But practitioners should still actively petition their boards to make explicit revisions to ethical codes that are equivalent to state bans.

This does bring up the other inherent issue: state licensing boards are in theory guided by the ethical code of whatever. The state licensing board of Alabama psychologists are supposed to go by APA guidelines. But the APA has little power here. The system is designed in a very dumb way that gives the governing ethical body no power over the state licensing body. The APA can pressure the licensing board by “strongly recommending” they take action but there is no consequence, really. They can take action against the licensee directly but only if they are an APA member. If they decline membership or have it revoked they still retain licensure, generally, unless it was for a gross ethical violation (which conversion therapy is not in these states apparently). You can sub in ACA/AAMFT/AMA/etc.

States rights!

He got 3 Supreme Court justices and an insane amount of court stacking done. He didn’t get everything but he got enough to set the stage for today

Republican “mavericks” are because every once in a while one of them develops a conscience. They get a gay kid or something. Democrat “mavericks” are theater: sinema and fetterman were always class traitors. Anyone looking into their history for even 30 seconds will see that clearly. They are promoted by the party to ensure there will always be some dissent, to make sure there will always be someone that can act as a heel. That way if something like right now is happening they can take the fall. Or if democrats get a commanding lead, they can take the fall again like when sinema and manchin had the role. “Oh sorry, no healthcare, student loan reform, minimum wage increase, etc for you!”

ACA was a joke. Admittedly the pre existing conditions bit amongst a few other regulatory changes were long overdue and very helpful. But ultimately the individual mandate with no financial support was toxic. People who didn’t have insurance weren’t not buying it because they thought it was fun not to. They couldn’t afford it, they were struggling. By forcing them to with penalties for not you created a generation of angry people. Not only did you not fix healthcare; you were financially punishing them for being too poor to buy into the system that you failed to adequately reform. But the increased signups thanks to this penalty system were great for the private insurance industry lobbying buddies that helped influence this bullshit

50 years from now democrats will be remembered for being absolutely spineless at best and more likely for being power hungry and owned by corporate influence

Almost like the democrats are a party designed to give working class voters something that feels like representation but is purposely sabotaged with malicious actors so that no meaningful progress can be made

Funny how the gop doesn’t have a fetterman, manchin, Lieberman, etc blocking project 2025, supreme court confirmations, post 9/11 bullshit, etc. and somehow manages to always get their agenda pushed through

Funny how the gop comes into office and smashes their agenda through where a single person will derail the democrats. “Oh this thing that will benefit all workers?? So sorry, Krysten sinema said no…” but then elon musk and trump dismantle the government in like 2 months and the democrats are like aw geez.