California now on board with Death with Dignity

 
It took a few years, but California has joined four other states in allowing critically ill patients "assisted suicide" as an avenue out of their debilitating pain.



The Catholic Church fought it. Spent millions lobbying against it while medical associations were in favor of it, or at least neutral. Early on, the AMA had opposed states trying to pass the Death with Dignity Act (which started in Oregon in the late 1990's.) But after seeing the success that Oregon had, the AMA has changed its tune and now doesn’t fight the movement. Not all doctors are on board, but a growing majority reflect the view that a person should have more control on their own passing than currently is available to them in most states’ law. 


Jerry Brown, governor of California has signed the legislation, Experts were watching which way his support would fall, considering he was a Jesuit trained seminarian for some time. But even Gov. Brown could see the benefit in this version of the act.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/05/calif-governor-signs-assisted-suicide-bill/73406408/




This act is the very foundation for my latest novel, The End just released by LULU Press.  The End deals with a woman’s losing battle over cancer and her brother’s refusal to unplug her from life support.



Here is a synopsis:

Your final act in life is to ask your brother to do one last thing for you. But he refuses. He can’t. His faith won’t allow it. All you want to do is die in peace. This is the premise of John Crawley’s 15^th novel, The End.

Released by LULU Press, The End is centered around the issue of a patient’s right to die with dignity. Set in Oregon in the late 1990’s, Lucy Brooks, a schoolteacher and her partner, Christine Bentley, a rising art star in the Pacific Northwest, are faced with the harsh reality that Lucy has a very aggressive strain of cancer that has metastasized throughout her body and she is going to die. But worse, the doctors warn them that this cancer is violently painful in the final days.

Lucy decides to seek assistance with Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, a law allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives at an appropriate time before long-term suffering ensues.  Unfortunately for Lucy and for Christine, the state of Oregon does not, at that time, recognize their union as an official marriage. Christine can’t represent Lucy in any legal matters. When Lucy lapses into a coma before they can act on her life termination wishes, it leaves her estranged brother, Father Walter Brooks, as the sole next-of-kin, who is needed to sign the life termination documents.

 

Clean House on Wall Street.

Why must we live with this trash?  I’m talking about the Wall Street hedge fund manager who just recently made headlines as he tried to gouge prices on pharmaceutical brands he had purchased.  Some of the excesses were over 5000%

I think he did it for the notoriety.  So I am not going to use his name here.  I could call him dick wad or ass hole.  But let’s just say this selfish, greedy bastard has had his fifteen minutes of fame.  Both the SEC and the IRS are now looking into his business practices as well as the Justice Department.  Maybe a few decades behind heavy iron bars would do his demented head some good.

Speaking of jail time, I think that is where the VW execs belong.  And while we are throwing Germans in jail, let’s throw the GM execs in there right along with them. It is time corporations quit hiding behind financial loop holes and paying FINES in settlements.  It is time the guys and gals in pinstripes exchange them for prison stripes.  Just like the Peanut Barron got this week.  Peter Pan’s man got 25+ years for lying to Americans about a product they consume. Let me tell you, the next guy in line isn’t going to change any numbers or change lab results to suit his or her agenda.  Not with JAIL time waiting as a gift from Uncle Sam.

Corporations wanted to be treated as people under the law…so be it.  Jail the crooks.

Where I grew up there was an epidemic of slant hole oil well drilling going on in the sixties.  Let me tell you, had real jail time been in the cards, there is no way those drill stems would have been anything but straight down. As it was a few hands got slapped a few fines paid.

If you break a law, you should serve the time.  No matter if you are a hood from the streets or a CEO from Wall Street.

Capitalism needs a good dose of cleaning up its bench players. It would do the whole team some good. And while we’re at it, let’s throw a few congressmen in there, too. Their hands are always being greased and by some of the shadiest characters in Washington.

Let’s clean up America.  And let’s start at the top.  America’s CEO’s are ripe for a  little soap and water… and if they don’t come out squeaky clean, then a little drying out in jail would be just in order.

Ahmed's clock told us the real time.

The young student from Irving, Texas discovered something far more valuable than how to make an electronic clock. He discovered just how racists and bigoted our society is. True we try to hide it. But his simple clock brought it out in the open where everyone could see it.

You see, when Ahmed Mohamad, who is Muslim and 14, brought his class project to science class, school officials and campus police suspected it was a bomb.  Right away they went to bomb. BUT THEY DID NOT LOCK DOWN THE SCHOOL.  WHY? Because they had their “man”.  The chief of police in Irving even claimed that the young man had been most uncooperative. “When we asked him what the device was he said it was a clock.  He kept saying it was a clock over and over. It’s just a clock.  He wasn’t very forthcoming.”

Well, let’s see…it was a clock.  Finally when the science teacher was called in the whole mess was straightened out, but not before Ahmed had been placed in handcuffs and lead away under arrest.  He was then placed in a confined space and surrounded by as many as five officers and questioned.  No parent present. No lawyer present. No constitutional rights?  Why?  He looked like an ARAB.  Therefore he must be a terrorist. Or so the police reasoned.

Well, guess what cops…it was a clock.

But more than tell the time of day, it tells the time of Irving.  Stuck deeply in the past of racial isolationism and fear.  But before we get all haughty over Irving’s failure, let us remind ourselves the rest of Texas (and the United States for that matter) isn’t much better.

Racism and bigotry are alive and well as never before here. 

I know the police had a tough job.  I for one am glad they are out there doing it. But the reason they are getting black eyes in the public is that over and over they are not doing the job they are assigned to do. Investigate. Look into. Dig a little. Quit assuming just because of color or religion someone is guilty.

Quit looking for the easy answers.

It is time for that.  That’s what Ahmed’s clock really told us.

Get rid of the guns!

And yet another professor has been shot and killed on a college campus. It seems like a weekly occurrence and yet, we still do nothing.  I found this article to explain my views.

I for one am tired of gun violence. There is no need in it. Get rid of the guns.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-wasserman/the-2d-amendment-does-not_b_2305361.html

The Second Amendment Does Not Guarantee Gun Ownership for All

Posted: 12/17/2012 4:41 pm EST Updated: 02/16/2013 5:12 am EST

The Second Amendment does not guarantee the right of any and all citizens to own any and all kinds of guns.

It demands, in the name of national security, that we regulate it.
Never let assertions of the so-called "sanctity" of the Second Amendment bully you into thinking it guarantees unregulated weapon ownership.

It does not.

Contrary to the propaganda perpetrated by the gun lobby, the Second Amendment is the most heavily modified, curbed, explained, complex and contradictory of all the first ten Amendments.
The slaughter of small children along with teachers, a principle and so many other innocents was the furthest thing from James Madison's mind when he wrote the Bill of Rights.

He compiled it from a wide range of documents, including the Bills of Rights of Virginia (co-written with Thomas Jefferson) and other states to pacify the new nation's grassroots abhorrence of a strong federal government. If our basic rights were not clearly and explicitly guaranteed, Americans were ready to rise up for a second revolution.

The First Amendment, the greatest of them all, guaranteed our basic intellectual freedoms. The 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th set the foundations (and limitations) of our criminal justice system. The 7th had to do with the civil courts. The 9th and 10th guaranteed a range of rights to the states and the people.
The third had to do with quartering troops.

But the second was politically complex. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has argued that Madison's real intent was not to guarantee all individuals a right to gun ownership, but to assure the states that the federal government would not disband their militias.

Thus it's the only Amendment that comes with an apologia, a rationale:
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state....

The First Amendment bluntly asserts our natural right to freedom of and from religion, and to democratic dialog and belief.

But the Second is compelled to say why. And it starts with a monumental hyphenation: well-regulated.

Why? Because to be of any value to a free state, a militia -- a citizen army -- must be organized. It can't be a bunch of free-lancers running around with uncontrolled weapons, killing whomever they please.

And what's the goal?

Security, as explicitly as Madison could make it.

That means safe not only from foreign invaders, but from unconstrained gun bearers killing small children, theater-goers, presidents, civil rights leaders, rock stars, random bystanders and whomever else they fell like it at every whim.

Now we have once again come to know that too many of those within our midst, bearing weapons without constraint, pose the greatest threat of all to the security of our free state.
If we are insecure in the belief that we can send our children to an elementary school and not have them killed, then we are secure in absolutely nothing.

Guns kill people, and guns in the hands of crazy people kill children... and so many others... and we have seen the reality of this far too often not to act.

It has become clearly "necessary to the security of a free state" that the right to bear arms must be "well-regulated," as in an organized militia.

As a nation, society and species, how many more times do we have to be shown that we are not yet highly enough evolved to allow guns in the hands of anyone who wants them?
But what about:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
It comes, as noted, heavily pre-modified.

AND, it does NOT say "all people" or "any person" or "all citizens" or "any American" has the unrestricted right to own firearms.

It says the people.

Attorney James Madison, revolutionary lawyer, visionary and genius, was nothing if not precise with his language. His Bill of Rights is as great a literary and legal masterwork as has ever been written.
Madison knew exactly what he said: the people.

That does not mean every individual. It means the people as a whole.

It is us, as a community, as the people, that has the right to bear arms. Even to maintain militias.
But is us, as a sane society, that has the right -- the responsibility -- to well-regulate the ownership of guns.

To those who would say we need them to protect ourselves against government intrusion, we must respond by doing the obvious:
Cease allowing this government to be an insanely weaponized threat to our personal security, and to that of so many others around the world.

A free state is not secured by an armed-to-the-teeth populace holding at bay an armed-beyond-belief government.

If you worry about the overbearing power of our own government, then stop it from spending more on war than the rest of the world combined.

Since the Bill of Rights was ratified December 15, 1791, our libraries have rightly filled with legal opinions, court briefs, pleadings, arguments, speeches, impassioned tomes epithet-filled accusations and so much more.

As per the First Amendment, we all have a natural, welcome right to our opinions.
But we have a duty to secure a free state. And that starts with protecting our children.
As a nation, we are largely isolated in our lack of gun regulation. It is done throughout the world in civilized nations at least as free as ours.

It's not perfect. But it's done, in countries thus far more secure from random, senseless gun violence than ours.

We cannot afford to let yet another horrific slaughter go by unanswered.
That means slashing the power of the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby.
That means gun regulation. In whatever sustainable form will stop this nightmare from repeating itself over and over and over again.

No more shrugging our shoulders and saying "no, we can't."

National security, the law, the Constitution, the Second Amendment, common sense, parental responsibility, the need to survive... they are all on our side.

We can win this. These children must not have died in vain. This corner must be turned.

Now!!!

Geno Smith's jaw isn't the only thing broken.

Ikemefuna Enemkpali, the backup who broke Geno Smith’s jaw has a history of using his fists in violence. The Jets knew of this history. They ignored it.

It is time that professional sports weed thugs like this out of the sporting world.

Enough is enough.  If we can't have law-abiding citizens playing sports, then lets just get rid of sports. I, for one am tired of seeing these idiots bashing fellow players or their wives and girlfriends and then offering "I am so sorry, Jesus." If they can't keep their violence in check, then they don't get to play.

Sure there are going to be scuffles on the field and sure there will be fights, but this guy hit a police officer a year or so ago and here in Dallas, Jerry Jones in noted for hiring the criminal element all in the name of giving them a "second chance." 

I don't buy it.

NFL, NBA, MLB and others should police their players closer and hold them accountable to a higher standard.  Too many young people are watching and learning from them.  And people like Enemkpali are not setting a very good example. In fact, they are hurting the sport far more than helping it.

The lies from Austin must stop

In today’s Dallas Morning News there are not one, but two articles that describe the condition that Texas’ Tea Party Government has forced us into. Conditions that make us the laughing stock of America.  And this, from a newspaper that supported the entire slate of lunatics that have us retreating into the 1920’s as fast as we can go.  From a Governor who sees the immanent threat of invasion by federal troops to a house and senate full of ideological nitwits, Austin has become so out of step with reality that is goes beyond comical and has become dangerous.

I don’t have permission to share either Steve Blow’s or  Mitchell Schnurman’s columns, but do so as a public service. In case you do not have access to the Dallas Morning News, I share them with you today. Both of these men open the wound of lies and deceit that Abbott,  Patrick and Paxton have been festering in our state capital.

It is time for Texans to awaken to realize the radical, right-wing, pseudo-Christian Tea Party is a power hungry organization who will stop at nothing to get its way, even lying to its constituencies. 

From the Dallas Morning News dated 6.5.2015

Steve Blow Follow dmnsteveblow sblow@dallasnews.com

Published: 04 July 2015 10:45 PM

Updated: 04 July 2015 11:24 PM

Politely, we could call it a ruse or a charade. But to put it in the plainest possible terms: They’re lying.

Texas public officials have been lying, and now the U.S. Supreme Court may decide if their lies amount to something unconstitutional.

Almost lost in all the attention to the same-sex marriage ruling was another action the Supreme Court took in the final hours of its term last week.

The court halted a Texas law that would have forced half the state’s abortion clinics to close. The action is only temporary — until the court decides this fall whether to hear a full appeal of the case.

But it was a solid sign that Texas officials may finally be held to account for their lies and underhanded tactics.

I wish this did not revolve around abortion. That’s such a huge, emotional subject that it almost obliterates the real issue at hand. And that’s abuse of government power.

Try to set aside your feelings about abortion for a moment. This is about Texas officials deciding they don’t approve of a legal right that all Americans have and using every possible inch of government intrusion to thwart it.

And they cover it all in a big lie: We’re only trying to protect the health and safety of Texas women, they say.

You know it’s a lie because they completely ignored the advice of those really working to protect the health of Texas women — their doctors.

Both the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the 2013 law, which forced extreme, unnecessary and unaffordable new regulations on abortion clinics.

“Yeah, it’s a lie. And it’s a really cynical lie to claim to increase safety for women when you’re actually restricting their access to a doctor,” said Jessica Pieklo, senior legal analyst for the online publication RH Reality Check.

Burdensome regulations in the law had already forced a dozen Texas clinics to close. Half the remaining 18 clinics would have also been regulated out of existence if not for the last-minute reprieve from the Supreme Court.

Already, Texas women are being forced to turn elsewhere for this particular medical procedure. Nationwide, abortion rates are declining. But not in Louisiana, where much of the increase came from women traveling from Texas.

A clinic in southern New Mexico draws half or more of its clients from Texas. And women are increasingly crossing into Mexico to buy pharmaceuticals with the off-label effect of inducing an abortion.

This is Texas leaders’ idea of protecting the health of Texas women?

Mitchell Schnurman Follow mitchschnurman mschnurman@dallasnews.com

 

Published: 04 July 2015 06:16 PM

Updated: 04 July 2015 08:29 PM

Just before the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act last month, Gov. Greg Abbott was railing against it.

“Now is not the time to double down on the welfare state,” Abbott wrote in an op-ed piece in the National Review. The headline read: “Congress and Governors: Just Say No to Obamacare.”

Abbott was anticipating the law would be rejected, but the court voted the other way, 6-3. And that’s not the only way he was wide of the mark.

After the ruling, Abbott wrote, “Employers won’t face the job-killing Obamacare penalties” in states that refuse to buy into the law, such as Texas. And he urged them to move here.

“I proudly welcome more by doing everything I can to end Obamacare in Texas,” he wrote.

That may play to his base, but it’s just flat wrong. His rhetoric won’t move Texas ahead on health care, and it’s not a clarion call to business.

“I’m confused by his remarks,” said Bill Hammond, CEO of the Texas Association of Business. “It doesn’t work like that.”

While states have latitude in how they approach the health law, it’s a national program. No one can escape the mandate for coverage by simply moving to a state that opposes the ACA. Taxpayers, employers and providers also can’t avoid paying their share by living somewhere that doesn’t embrace it.

Everybody’s paying for health reform. But Texas is lagging big-time in what it gets back.

It has the highest uninsured rate in the country, roughly 1 in 4 residents. And it trails the U.S. average in enrollment on Healthcare.gov, the exchange that provides federal subsidies for most of its customers.

In theory, no state has more to gain from affordable coverage for all. But Texas leaders are constantly dissing the law and forgoing billions in federal dollars. Money is the main reason business groups, including Hammond’s, want to expand Medicaid.

Texas’ sign-ups lag

If Texas extended the program to low-income adults, as have 29 states and Washington, over 1 million residents would get coverage — with federal money paying for nearly all of it.

But even more Texans, over 3 million in total, are eligible to buy insurance on the exchange. Yet just 32 percent of them enrolled this year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

While that’s an improvement from 2014, the national average is 36 percent. Many large states enrolled over 40 percent, and Florida hit 57 percent. Florida enrolled almost half a million more than much-larger Texas.

Top lawmakers in Florida often criticize Obamacare. But the state has exceptional outreach efforts among nonprofits and community groups, especially around Miami and the central part of the state.

On that point, would we see any of these personally invasive laws if they were directed at Texas men?

Imagine Texas men being forced to hear state-mandated information read to them before being allowed to make a decision.

Imagine Texas men being forced to submit to a medically unnecessary ultrasound examination and a 24-hour waiting period before being able to exercise a legal right.

And then imagine a big lie about it all being for the health and safety of those men.

I can’t see the Texas Legislature standing for it one minute.

Again, I’m not trying to sway your feelings about abortion itself. You may feel strongly that it’s wrong. I respect that. But one of the earliest philosophical points we learn as children is that two wrongs don’t make a right.

This weekend, we’re celebrating our American freedoms. And Texas leaders profess to be unrivaled in their passion to defend those liberties.

But part of being American is protecting the freedom of others to make decisions that you would never make for yourself. On that test of patriotism, Texas leaders have failed miserably.

Perhaps it will take the U.S. Supreme Court to set things right.

In Texas, large metro areas benefited from the work of consumer groups, local leaders and insurers. But the response has varied widely. In the College Station area, as few as 12 percent of those who were eligible signed up for coverage, Kaiser said. The share topped 81 percent in some Houston suburbs.

In northeast Dallas County, including parts of Richardson and Garland, 71 percent of those eligible signed up, Kaiser said. Several other areas — including Coppell, north Irving, Duncanville and DeSoto — topped 50 percent.

But there were no statewide initiatives to boost sign-ups, and a consumer program ended a few years ago. The governor’s office, insurance department and health department haven’t launched efforts to increase participation. And leaders required extra training, background checks and fingerprinting for navigators.

Researchers from Harvard compared the impact of state policies in three Southern states — Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas. Kentucky expanded Medicaid, branded its own program and had extensive outreach. That paid off in the highest application rates, enrollment and positive experiences.

Caught up in rhetoric

Texas performed the worst.

“Our study suggests that state policy decisions are likely having a critical impact not only on eligibility but also on who chooses to apply for coverage and whether they successfully enroll,” the researchers wrote in Health Affairs magazine last month.

The finding seems predictable: More residents enroll if a state promotes the program and provides more help. So what are we waiting for?

“Can’t we tone down the rhetoric and try to work collaboratively for the citizens of Texas?” said Steve Love, CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council.

As a starting point, he suggested Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote.

Employers still have many concerns about the health law, including mandates and filing regulations. But they’re relieved the court upheld it, said Marianne Fazen, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health. She wants the focus to shift to improving the law, not repealing it.

“Employers want health care to work better,” Fazen said.

Can Texas’ leaders even agree on that?

One man writes about the ACA and the other about the health care clinic debacle created by Austin. Both fundamentally flawed thinking that is hurting Texans.

It is time for the lies to stop.

Let's keep religion out of the arguments of the court.

SCOTUS just said clean air costs too much.

It ruled against the EPA restrictions on coal and gas-fired electrical plants. (The conservative justices’ actual argument wasn’t that we don’t need clean air, but that the EPA did not take into consideration the cost of their regulation. The EPA has only been working on the economic model of their regulations for about a half a decade. With that in mind, I am not sure how the right-wing justices pulled that one out of their collective asses.  But I’ll give them this one, for the sake of the argument.)

But because they did, and we are now stuck with a non-regulated dirty air environment, I am going to use some right-wing, evangelical rhetoric  on you that has been bantered about the past weekend about the same court’s ruling on gay marriage.

Here goes.

God left man in charge of the Earth. We were ordained to be “good stewards” of the planet. That means its environments, its people, its animals and everything that grows, breathes and lives on this rock — we are burdened with the responsibility of caring for it.   God said it was our duty. That’s in the Bible. So it has got to be true.  Right?  Come on my Baptist friends…speak up here. What would Robert Jeffress say about this? It came from God so it must be true… right?

Now, the EPA was just doing what God had told us to do. It was trying to take care of the Earth.  Trying to be good stewards of our resources. Air and water being resources we use a bit every day, the EPA was trying to preserve their qualities. You know, being good stewards and all. But now this evil court, using money as its foundation, has decided that it knows, once again, better than God what is good for mankind.

Today the court thumbed their nose at God’s edict.  It said, we don’t care what the Creator commanded, we think money (…the love of which is the root of all evil…also Biblical…) usurps clean air and drinkable water. We think money supersedes the will of God.

Now…let’s see how many pulpits in America get exercised over this breech of old and new testament hypocrisy.  Let’s see FOX News loose its cool over this ruling. Let’s see and hear from all the candidates running for election on the GOP ticket take a stand for God in this argument. 

They won’t ladies and gentlemen.

Because actually following God is not important to any of them. If the gospel doesn’t fit their politics, they turn their face away from it.   What they want to do is raise your ire and collect money in their coffers from you. Because…even to the church…money is more important than God.

So every time the court makes a ruling for or against your political point of view, quit running to the Bible to try and attack it or defend it. Because if you don’t, someday the court my just quote Leviticus and tell you that you must stone to death your wayward children.  And I know a lot of preacher’s kids that could use some very hard stoning.