On Dec. 23, 1783, General George Washington resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Many people at the time wanted Washington to become the new king. His quick resignation of his military post helped fortify the republican foundations of the new nation.
“I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy — but that could change.”
On Dec. 22, 1990, Polish labor leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa was sworn in as the first non-communist president of Poland since the end of World War II, a decade after he took over the leadership of a 1980 strike of shipyard workers in Gdansk.
A year earlier, on Dec. 22, 1989, the government of Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown after the army defected to the cause of anti-communist demonstrators, ending 42 years of communist rule.
It’s a dam shame.
There are plenty of private sector dams in the U.S., but the biggest are federal government projects, like those on the Columbia and Colorado rivers. These government-run outfits aren’t “free,” though. Indeed, they often prove to be good examples of typical government operations, providing special favors to some people at the expense of others.
Take the Hoover Dam, cherished as the nation’s highest symbol by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The dam supplies water and electricity to Las Vegas, Nevada — at cut rate prices. A typical family in Las Vegas pays half for water what the same family would pay in Atlanta, Georgia, despite the fact that Atlanta gets 13 times more precipitation. These cheap rates have predictable consequences — overuse, for one. Which then leads local water authorities to foist on consumers some heavily intrusive conservation rules.
Andrew Wilson, in a report for the Property & Environment Research Center, writes that “A market-ready solution for Las Vegas water,” though not often talked about, would have far fewer negative consequences. And it’s not a difficult idea as such: “discard the historic cost-based pricing model and move instead to a pricing system that recognizes the scarcity value of water.”
Raising the prices for water and electricity to Las Vegas (and, for that matter, electricity to favored Bonneville Power Administration customers in the Pacific Northwest — along with many other federal government “business” products) would not only help forestall shortages and draconian lawmaking, it would be equitable. There’s no reason for the rest of the country to be, in effect, subsidizing Sin City.
Or any other city.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
You probably associate methadone with heroin recovery clinics. Now it’s associated with state-run medicine. And iatrogenic fatalities.
Washington State’s “Washington Rx” is a medical assistance program that’s been in operation less than a decade, providing a drug discount card to those with low incomes and regulating prescriptions for Medicaid patients. The biggest challenge? Rising prescription drug prices — which places many drugs out of reach of poor and non-insured folks, and jeopardizes state finances with a financial hole to suck up ever-increasing amounts of money.
How to economize?
The board responsible for Washington Rx policy has pushed cheaper drugs. For pain medication, effective but expensive drugs like Oxycodone were swapped out for that old synthetic opioid, methadone, which is ultra-cheap. This saved the state millions.
Reasonable, eh?
Well, the problem with methadone is that it’s hard to control dose. The drug lingers in the body, builds up. It turns out to be rather easy to pass away during sleep of an accidental overdose. “Doctors,” a fascinating Seattle Times report informs us, “call it the silent death.”
Methadone overdose rates have radically increased in the Evergreen State, especially in poorer communities. Since Washington Rx set up shop, 2,173 Washingtonians have died of methadone overdose; an overwhelming majority of all overdose cases are from this one drug.
Programs in other states also list methadone as a preferred drug, and methadone overdoses are on the rise nationwide.
We are often told of the horrors of private insurers and their dastardly cost-cutting practices. But here’s a bureaucracy cutting costs. And effectively, too.
With a side-effect: killing people.
That’s hardly Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On Dec. 21, 1603, Roger Williams was born in London. Williams became an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation (Rhode Island), which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America. He was also a student of Native American languages and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans.