Per activist group Blue Oregon, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should yank radio station KPOJ’s license because its owner dropped progressive talk shows and switched instead to a sports format. “Clear Channel must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community. That’s us. We’re the community,” the group says. More: Willamette Week.
Archive for December, 2013
The Washington Post on Medicare eye drugs
Last week the Washington Post flayed doctors who participate in the Medicare program, along with the pharmaceutical company Genentech, because they often prescribe the $2,000-a-dose (and fully FDA-approved) eye drug Lucentis in preference to Avastin, a biologically related compound also made by Genentech that seems to work equally well against “wet” age-related macular degeneration and can be obtained off-label from compounders for only $50 an injection (albeit with some additional risks and hassles). Taxpayers have shelled out billions of dollars, the Post complains with some justice, because many docs (currently close to half) choose FDA-approved in preference to off-label treatments.
Great investigation, guys. Now that you’ve accused doctors of being socially irresponsible and greedy for not going off-label to prescribe, could you investigate who exactly has been demonizing off-label prescribing as a dangerous, unregulated practice that the FDA needs to crack down on? What would happen if you found that that it was some of the Post’s own favorite sources and advocacy groups?
Medical roundup
- “Essentially, the agency wants to ‘protect’ patients from knowing about their own health” [David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman, USA Today, earlier] FDA-defying workaround lets you get your info even if 23andme’s muzzled [Ron Bailey]
- “Insane Department of HHS plan would criminalize lifesaving bone-marrow donor incentives out of woolly concern with ‘altruism'” [Steven Pinker, Sally Satel/Bloomberg, Michelle Meyer/Bill of Health]
- Affordable Care Act opens up funding stream for alternative medicine. The start of something big? [Kevin Williamson, NRO]
- On underused Gotham hospitals, de Blasio is in hole of his own digging [Bob McManus, City Journal]
- ADA lawsuit against hospital a harbinger of others to come? [Peoria Journal-Star]
- If goal is access to affordable contraception, making Pill available over the counter would seem good first step [Shikha Dalmia/Time, earlier]
- Home-health-aide overtime rules are bad news for seniors hoping to stay out of nursing homes, but AARP can’t shake its scripted role as loyal union ally [More: Free Beacon, from 2011 on AARP brief in state overtime case; earlier here, here, and here]
“Texas: Architects need to be fingerprinted”
Finally addressing the entrenched social problem of architect-perpetrated crime? Or just the security state running mindlessly forward on its own momentum? David Lancaster of the Texas Society of Architects told a trade newspaper that his group “believed fighting the legislation would be ‘futile.'” [Mike Riggs, Atlantic Cities]
“British Man Arrested for Making Nelson Mandela Joke”
Authorities in Rugeley, Staffordshire, England, detained sandwich shop owner Neil Phillips for eight hours, searched his computer, fingerprinted him and swabbed him for DNA after a local elected official complained that Phillips had engaged in online jokes and comments on Facebook, including jokes about Nelson Mandela. [Birmingham Mail, The Star] Afterward, Phillips complained that the constabulary had “over-reacted massively”: “There was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech?” Charles Cooke explains at NRO:
Well, the Public Order Act of 1986 happened to freedom of speech – in particular, Section 5, which makes it a crime in England for anyone ”with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress” to
(a) [use] threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) [display] any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.
In other words, Section 5 allows anybody to have anybody else investigated for speaking. And they have. The arrests have run the gamut: from Muslims criticizing atheists to atheists criticizing Muslims….
Is it still legal for Britons to laugh at this Mark Steyn column?
“The FCC Absolutely Should Allow Cell Phone Use On Airplanes”
“Should we have a federal law against talking on the phone in restaurants? … If the flying public hates phone calls so much, airlines can be expected to prohibit them. The government does not need to get involved.” [Josh Barro, Business Insider; Ira Stoll]
Seattle jury awards $50 million in wrongful birth case
His parents say they would have aborted little Oliver Wuth, now 5, had they been given proper genetic counseling. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
“What’s worse than sponsored content?”
“… The FTC regulating it” [Jack Shafer, Reuters]
“Push to ban crime box on job applications expands”
The federal EEOC has been helping prepare the ground with guidance indicating that it legally disfavors asking job applicants about criminal records across a wide range of situations. Meanwhile, activists in places like San Francisco seek local laws banning the practice in private employment, following successful campaigns to end it in the public sector. [San Francisco Chronicle]
Public employment roundup
- Detroit: pension trustees’ sins come home to roost [Steve Malanga, City Journal; Aaron Renn/Urbanophile; Steven Greenhut (CALPERS next?)] Role of binding arbitration [Malanga, IBD]
- Since declaring bankruptcy San Bernardino has given police $2 million in raises [Scott Shackford] Twenty-eight members of Santa Monica police force made more than $200K last year [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism] “Do other big city balance sheets resemble Detroit’s?” [Public Sector Inc.]
- Phoenix firefighters sue insurance company over workers’ comp denials [ABC 15]
- Under new California law, county worker who stole $360,000 may forfeit pension [San Diego Union-Tribune]
- “Crime Rate in Camden, NJ Going Down After Unionized Police Force Sacked” [Ed Krayewski, Reason (“On any given day, 30 percent of the force was absent because of the liberal sick policies.”)]
- Trying to drop one’s membership in the Michigan Education Association can be a long-drawn business [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner]
- Lawrence Harmon, Boston Globe; Police unions fight to protect even worst of bad apples [Greenhut, City Journal on California and use of “Brady lists”]