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When cutting red tape puts patients at risk

I was three years old when I was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, called juvenile rheumatoid or “little people’s arthritis” back in 1985. My parents were floored by the diagnosis because I did not look like my grandparents’ arthritis. I looked like a 3‑year‑old who did not like to be touched and then stopped walking. Before I even learned to read, I learned what it meant to live in a body that could suddenly turn on itself, and what it meant to depend on powerful medicines, often at adult doses, just to get through the day. Biologic drugs have transformed ...

Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

**Note – Today’s narrative from the Bullpen is a rewritten version of one printed in the second week of September 11, 2011, ten years after the tragic occurrences which happened on September 11, 2001, twenty-five years ago yesterday. The title words above were penned by Country singer ...

Thoughts on Lakewood’s sidewalks, taxes, rentals

LAKEWOOD SIDEWALKS Jamestown just celebrated a great week with the hosting of the annual Lucille Ball Comedy Festival at the Comedy Center. It surprises me that during the comedy fest nothing was mentioned about the sidewalk installation in Lakewood. Because the sidewalk issue is a comedy. In a recent NYSDOT letter to the mayor of Lakewood it said and I quote "Installing sidewalk segments between Chautauqua Ave and Green St are not currently included in the preferred alternative." Since that letter was sent I have heard two different things that make me say, "What is the state doing"? ...

Sept. 11 events are firmly in memories

CHAUTAUQUA—If you’re more than, say, 35 years old, you’ll recall where you were when you heard the first news bulletins of 25 years ago today. Maybe you were in school or college. Maybe you were at work. Maybe you were running errands. Maybe you were with relatives or ...

Thinking about the downside of bigness

We have had a tradition in America, not always but mostly, of trying to avoid the perils of businesses that get too big. The most prominent example in our history was likely the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which became law in 1890. Though its primary target, twenty years later, became John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company—its original passage resulted from a growing public concern about the concentration of power in big business, the elimination of competition and the resultant driving up of costs to everyone else. Today, we are seeing big business on a new and ...

Economic policies should improve, not harm, standard of living

Our domestic and international economic policies should improve not harm our standard of living. Domestic economic policies that encourage the creation of low-paying jobs to compete internationally on price do not raise our standard of living. Placing higher tariffs on imported goods without wage increases to offset the higher costs of these goods does not raise the domestic standard of living; it does the opposite. Tariffs also spark retaliatory tariffs. As the cost of U.S. goods to foreign consumers goes up, U.S. overseas sales go down, hurting manufacturing and agribusiness and ...