“He was wearing his SEAL Team 7 T-shirt, red, white, and blue board shorts, and illuminated a shadow box next to where he was,” said Larkin as he choked up while talking with DCJournal.

He had just recounted how his son fought a losing battle not only inside his own head but with the Veterans Administration. “He says… ‘All they do is keep writing me prescriptions and these drugs, I don’t even feel like I’m in my own body.’ And he said to me, ‘I’m banged up inside.’”

Government statistics say there were 6,146 veteran suicide deaths in 2020, almost 60% higher than non-veteran adults. The next year, 519 active-duty members of the Armed Forces took their own lives.

Larkin, a former Navy SEAL and Secret Service agent who also served as the 40th U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms, used his son’s death to form Warrior Call. It connects veterans and former first responders with resources to help them get past isolation and thoughts of suicide.

“In many cases, it’s because the time they spent in service to our country is not well understood by our society,” Larkin said. “So, when they come out of their service, or while they’re still in uniform, there’s kind of a translation challenge with folks who are on the outside that have not served to understand what life is in uniform.”

Visible injuries sustained while on duty may be one reason why veterans and first responders have trouble adapting to civilian life. But invisible injuries also exist, mainly in the form of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI). In March, researchers from the Naval Health Research Center discovered a combination of high-level and low-level blasts may increase the chances of military members later developing migraines and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Their conclusion was there is a need for “public health surveillance initiatives for blast exposure and or safety recommendations for training and operational environments.”

The good news is Congress seems to be getting on board. The Senate has passed a resolution making Nov. 12 National Warrior Call Day. It encourages Americans to call active duty military members, veterans, and first responders and talk with them about how they are feeling. The resolution implores people to connect veterans with support, knowing that it could save their lives.

“Those who have taken the oath to defend our country deserve our appreciation and support long after their service ends,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in a statement. She and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) co-wrote the Warrior Call Day resolution. “I’m glad the Senate passed my bipartisan resolution that, if signed into law, would designate a National Warrior Call Day to help raise awareness and strengthen the relationship between veterans and civilians.”

The House has yet to vote on National Warrior Call Day, something that has caused Larkin to feel frustrated. He wants veterans and first responders to realize that they are not alone. “Much of this work, at least the advancement of the knowledge of what’s going on, especially with regard to brain health, is occurring in the nonprofit and the private sector with a lot of the universities and research institutions that are not aligned with the government,” he said.

He hopes people will start checking up on veterans that they know. “If you sense that they’re not in a good place, then get them tied up with some resources that potentially can help pull them out of the darkness and get them to a better place.”

Taylor Millard writes about politics and public policy/InsideSources

His video showed a gang in masks and hoodies breaking open glass displays and grabbing clothes, purses and luxury goods. The band of thieves barged out of mall doors while a security guard watched nearby.

“This is nuts,” Escobar muttered as they fled.

The scene is hardly unique in America in 2023. Near Charlotte, N.C., hammer-wielding thugs recently bashed in a Kohl’s jewelry display in broad daylight. In Glendale, Calif., 30 robbers committed a “flash mob burglary” at a Yves Saint Laurent store, stealing $300,000 in merchandise.

All told, shoplifting mobs and smash-and-grab robbers are costing retailers $100 billion in losses in what law enforcement calls organized retail crime (ORC). Shoplifting today isn’t teenagers sticking a few beers in their jackets or stealing party supplies at the Food King. Instead, many robberies are executed by some of the most dangerous criminal cartels in the world. The profits from retail theft in New York and Chicago help fund drugs, prostitution, and human trafficking in Mexico and Central America.

And American shoppers may unknowingly be contributing to the cartels’ profits.

“These folks that are going from store to store and state to state with lists and compiling all the merchandise and warehouses, cleaning it and selling it on online marketplaces,” said Alysa Erichs with United to Safeguard America from Illegal Trade (USA-IT), a public-private partnership fighting the sale of counterfeit, illicit and stolen goods.

“Like, it’s legitimate street gangs,” added Erichs, a former executive associate director at Homeland Security Investigations. “Depending on where you are, there are different gang names for different areas and regions. … We’re seeing that gangs are recruiting juveniles because it’s basically a revolving door when they get caught because they’re below adult age. If they get caught, they have more sources that are out there.”

There is also the potential for human trafficking. Erich says some ORC suspects are people who were smuggled across the border. “They’re finding it more easy to pay off their debt doing ORC-related activity as opposed to smuggling drugs.”

The National Retail Federation agrees. Its 2021 National Retail Security Survey reported retailers experienced a 26.5% increase in ORC from 2020 to 2021 — including ORC-related violence and aggression.

The effect is being felt from shelves of deodorant and razor blades all the way to corporate board rooms.

Dick’s Sporting Goods saw profits plunge 23% in the second quarter because of organized retail crime. Nordstrom closed its flagship store in San Francisco in August, citing declining sales, with employees blaming the surge in crime.

Most disturbing, law enforcement says, is the violence that has become more common in these crimes. Target executives reported a 120% increase in violent theft at its stores this year. Shoplifting teens tend to run away when confronted. Gang members fight back; at least two store employees have been killed.

Gary Rasor, an 83-year-old great-grandfather, died last year trying to stop a suspect at a North Carolina Home Depot. Another Home Depot employee, this time in California, was shot to death while attempting to stop a female theft suspect from leaving with what was believed to be a phone charger. In both cases, police eventually captured the suspects.

Retailers say the surge in crime is hurting their business on both sides of the checkout counter. In addition to losing merchandise, they are finding it more difficult to fill their industry’s more than 900,000 job openings.

“Stores that experience frequent, visible ORC incidents, particularly those that involve threats or assault against retail workers, may experience reduced morale and higher staff turnover,” the retail federation told Congress in June. “Younger workers and their parents cite the ORC they see on the news as a primary concern about the relative safety of jobs in retail stores or shopping centers.”

The National Retail Federation supports bipartisan legislation called the “Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023” to strengthen laws against organized retail crime.

“Retail crime was a dirty secret for a while,” said Carol Spieckerman, a retail consultant and adviser. “Now retailers are quantifying the impact. … Retailers are ready to invest in new technologies that take mitigation to the next level. The digital rethinking of physical retail is accelerating, and retailers are waking up to the reality that these efforts can’t be isolated to upside opportunities like retail media. Retailers will have to invest in crime-thwarting technology to maintain profitability.”

Retailers are also beginning to transform their store interiors. That includes adding thick plastic barriers or security cages in front of some products (also known as product hardening) and more high-resolution video cameras. Some mall stores limit the number of customers allowed inside the shopping area. Supermarkets and big-box stores also hire off-duty police officers to serve as armed security guards.

That is not always enough, according to analysts like Spieckerman. “Local police often don’t have the bandwidth to effectively address retail crime. In smaller communities, a single big-box retailer or a handful of dollar stores can overwhelm law enforcement.”

Small businesses can’t always make the same changes or absorb inventory losses the same as big-box stores. Some owners end up either shutting down, moving, or raising prices.

Congress recently passed the INFORM Consumers Act, a law meant to require that online marketplaces verify certain information, including bank account and tax IDs from larger third-party sellers. While Spieckerman called it a step in the right direction, she noted, “It won’t be an instant fix. It will take a while for the deterrent effect to kick in.”

Taylor Millard writes about politics and public policy for InsideSources.com.

“A lot of my friends in organized labor know: When I think climate, I think jobs. I think union jobs,” Biden said.

But for climate activists, “union jobs” can mean “more carbon and less green energy.”

And that, some economists say, is the contradiction at the center of the administration’s policy of spending billions on green energy projects and paying incentives to meet higher “prevailing wage” mandates.

“It’s obviously a terrible strategy,” National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad said. “They’re trying to shut down the vast majority of the workforce to help out Joe Biden’s union buddies who spent $2 million to get him elected.”

Just 6% of the private-sector labor force belongs to a union.

Biden acknowledged the Inflation Reduction Act was misnamed, saying it was “the single-largest investment in climate action in American history.” The IRA spends $370 billion in green energy subsidies on producing and selling products like electric vehicles and electric heat pumps.

One key element is the 500% “bonus” the IRA offers for renewable projects that pay “prevailing wage.” That is, wages are set not by local market forces but by a federally mandated formula that even supporters acknowledge raises labor costs. The rule also applies to private companies accepting federal loan guarantees, the Wall Street Journal reported, such as Ford Motor Co.’s electric car battery plant.

“Folks on the left love these green subsidies,” said Scott Lincicome with the Cato Institute, who compared the labor-climate unity strategy to a “have your cake and eat it too” situation. “These groups want to boost unions,” Lincicome said, so they “start larding down these subsidies with all sorts of mandates, restrictions and cost-inflaters.

“At the end of the day, by doing everything, they end up doing nothing,” Lincicome added.

The math is difficult to dispute. According to a recent report by the Beacon Hill Institute, the “prevailing wage” formula used for federally assisted infrastructure projects adds at least 7% to their cost.

Worse, said Lincicome, that federal spending and its mandates are unnecessary.

“Investors were plowing cash into these technologies before the subsidies,” Lincicome said. Renewable energy investment hit $353 billion in the first half of 2023. Rather than demand, “the problem has long been supply-side stuff. We lack a sufficiently qualified workforce in some of these areas.”

And when the government does step in, it is rarely efficient, said Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. She pointed to examples like Solyndra, the Obama-administration-backed solar panel company whose failure cost taxpayers a half-billion dollars.

“Often, these subsidies attract companies that don’t have the right business money or would never be able to make a profit and make a go out of it. They also signal to investors that it’s worth investing in these bad products. … It’s not a good deal,” de Rugy said.

“The actual solution is the free market,” Mourad said. “The federal government should get out of the way and, to the degree that green energy stuff works, it’ll work in places where the economics make it work. Union shops and non-union shops should be able to bid on that work and see who can produce the best bid.”

Taylor Millard writes about politics and public policy for InsideSources.com.