Author: CS Admin

First, Do No Harm

I wish Annette Bosworth were my doctor. Since she lives and practices medicine more than1300 miles away, in South Dakota, that’s not to be.

Sadly, the question to be answered, officially, is whether Dr. Bosworth will be permitted to provide medical care to anyone in her state. Following convictions on 12 felony counts pertaining to petitions she circulated, the South Dakota Medical Board has asked Bosworth to surrender her license.

Today, Annette appears at a hearing before the medical board regarding the ultimate resolution of her status to legally practice medicine. Announcing she would fight to try to save her license, Dr. Bosworth declared, “I just can’t give up.”

No one seems to doubt that she is a caring and capable physician. At her sentencing, Judge John Brown noted the many letters he received supporting her, mostly from patients, concluding that, “you did good work.”

Even Attorney General Marty Jackley, who prosecuted her, agreed: “I join in the court’s recognition coming from those that know Dr. Bosworth best, her medical patients, that she is capable of helping them.…”

“It’s just a terrible shame,” offered her attorney Robert Van Norman, “for her, for all of us, in a rural state, to lose permanently this woman’s talents.”

It’s difficult to remain optimistic, given that Dr. Bosworth and the state medical board have clashed again and again over the years. Yet, if the board follows the “do no harm” principle of medicine, they’ll not prevent Dr. Bosworth from regaining her license and again providing the highest quality of care to the people of South Dakota.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Annette Bosworth, Dr. Annette Bosworth, injustice, medicine

Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall responsibility

Gold Medal Worthy

The 2024 Summer Olympics will not be held in Boston.

Beantown abandoned its bid to host the games after Mayor Marty Walsh refused to sign a contract that would have left the city responsible for billions in possible cost overruns.

Did I say possible?

Call it seemingly inevitable.

“I cannot commit to putting the taxpayers at risk,” declared Walsh.

People throughout the Bay State can now rest easy — no tax hike or debt burden to build expensive infrastructure … and produce bigger traffic jams. Of course, polls had long shown voters opposed to the idea. But that doesn’t matter to career politicians. Nor to the mayor — until recently.

Mayor Walsh’s deep concern for taxpayers notwithstanding, citizen activism made the difference. A month ago, the Yes on 1 committee joined together with Evan Falchuk, chairman of Citizens for a Say, in supporting a ballot measure to prohibit spending any tax dollars on the Olympics.

Last year, I worked with Yes on 1 — led by Steve Aylward, Rep. Geoff Diehl, Marty Lamb and Rep. Shaunna O’Connell — to pass Question 1, ending automatic gas tax increases in Massachusetts. Olympic officials had been assured a ballot measure was unlikely to get in the way; then came the Yes on 1 folks with the know-how to petition just such a measure onto the ballot.

Walsh claimed this opposition had nothing to do with his decision, calling them “about ten people on Twitter and a couple people out there who are constantly feeding the drumbeat.”

Dancing to a different drummer, Mr. Mayor.

Bostonians can thank the state’s ballot initiative process, which provides a way for the people to be heard. And, of course, citizen leaders who take the initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ballot initiative, initiatives, Massachusetts, olympics, tax policy, Yes On 1

Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom nannyism privacy responsibility

Pain Economies

Looking for a new doctor, a colleague of mine called his friend’s primary care clinic, and was told, “We are taking all patients except pain management cases.”

He was thankful his health issues were not pain-related.

After reading Leslie Kendall Dye’s Salon piece, “But what if I actually need my painkillers?” you will easily understand: America doesn’t make it easy for those who must fight constant pain.

Ms. Dye’s story is harrowing. Her chronic pain, the residue of a ballet injury, makes her personal, day-to-day experience not primarily about economizing pleasures, but economizing pains.

So she takes Tramadol. Regularly. Even with the drug, her agony too often returns. What she tries to do is carry on with as little relief as possible while living an active, normal life, always risking excruciating pain levels.

And she’s constantly harassed and inconvenienced and probed and lectured. “Each time I take my painkiller prescription to a pharmacy, I can’t help feeling suspected of a crime.”

She’s not paranoid.

The government is out to get her. And her doctors.

All to “save” the lives of people who “abuse” the drugs.

I read about cases of lost souls, overdoses, suicides, black market pills, portions of towns laid waste by narcotic abuse, and I worry. I worry for the addicts, but I also worry for those of us who would not be able to carry on without responsible pain management.

She admits to feeling “conflicted” about this.

My prescription? Feel less conflicted. Were today’s standard individual responsibility, not societal responsibility, responsible patients would suffer less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags drugs, FDA, medicine, nanny state, pain, pain medication, prescription drugs, regulation, Salon

Common Sense incumbents meme term limits

Scandal-Less

In the 15 states voters have enacted term limits for their state representatives and senators, those politicians and the lobbyists and heads of powerful interest groups constantly complain that the limits are a problem.

I know. That’s why I like term limits.

Am I a broken record on the subject? Perhaps. But let me tell you about a different type of record … criminal.

“Are term limits good ideas for Pa. elected officials?” asked a Newsworks.org headline, after Steve Reed, the former 28-year mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, “was arrested on nearly 500 criminal charges that included corruption, theft, bribery and dealing in proceeds of unlawful activity.”

“Top N.Y. lawmaker arrested on corruption charges,” read a January USA Today headline. Sheldon Silver, after more than 20 years as Assembly Speaker was “arrested on federal corruption charges alleging he was involved in a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme for more than a decade.”

In 2009, after Massachusetts saw its third House Speaker in a row indicted, I ranked New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts as the three most corrupt states. The top contenders all have one thing in common: a lack of term limits.

A couple years ago, I joined Greg Upchurch, a St. Louis patent attorney and entrepreneur at a conference on term limits in Missouri. Greg (the driving force behind the state’s 1992 initiative) told the audience, mostly opposed to term limits, that the limits are here to stay.

Before term limits, Upchurch pointed out, legislative leaders were going to prison for corruption. With term limits, there simply haven’t been such scandals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags corruption, democracy, elections, graft, term limits, voting

meme

Edmund Burke — “The people never give up their liberties but…”

Post author By CS Admin
Post date July 28, 2015
No Comments on Edmund Burke — “The people never give up their liberties but…”

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”

—Edmund Burke

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Common Sense folly free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Cruz “Loses”

Koch Brothers, Ted Cruz, political, politics, collage, photomontage, conspiracy, secrets, LA Times, Campaign Finance

When Sen. Ted Cruz gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, last week, he ruffled a few feathers. Calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar in front of everybody is just not done. “Elder party statesmen have not been amused,” the Los Angeles Times reports:

On Sunday, 81-year-old Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the GOP’s most senior senator, opened the chamber’s session with a reminder to colleagues of the ground rules.

“Squabbling and acrimony may be tolerated on the campaign trail,” said Hatch, who urged senators colleagues toward comity and decorum, and to keep their egos in check.

Cruz defended himself. “It is entirely consistent with decorum … to speak the truth.”

The “squabble” was over the Export-Import Bank, mainly. Cruz blurted out how McConnell had betrayed his own party members in the Senate by cutting a backroom deal for the crony-capitalist moral hazard that is the Ex-Im.

Regardless (or because of?) Cruz’s truth-telling, the Senate rebuffed Cruz and “voted to advance the Export-Import bank and deny the presidential hopeful a vote on his amendment.”

Crony capitalism continues.

But note an odd aside in the LA Times’s account. The paper went out of its way to identify Ex-Im as “opposed by the powerful Koch brothers but supported by a bipartisan coalition of business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

The Kochs were brought up … for what reason?

So vilified by the left, these days, the Kochs are a red herring … which the Times threw into the issue like an Erisian apple, nudging Democratic readers not to sympathize with Cruz.

We can’t have his anti-crony-capitalist stance attract Democratic readers, now, can we?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.