Left Ahead

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is singularly strong on prevention, prosecution and treatment for the opioid crisis here. She joins me to talk about the new, stronger laws and what else she has in the works. I'll zoom in on the role of prescribers, mostly physicians.

Citizens are dying like mayflies. Do the solutions lie in enforcement and watchdogs? Education? Treatment? Elsewhere?

TV shows aside, we don't have homebrew labs for opioids. Those come via scripts and pharmacies. How will she break that chain?

On the all-time-for-Boston black-ice broken-bone day seven years ago, I found my leg in multiple pieces. Followiing the ensuing complex operation, I found docs and nurses pushing morphine on me. In the hospital and in recovery at home,  "Stay ahead of the pain," was the catchphrase.

In prep for the May 2nd 3 PM show with Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, I set the stage. She and I shall kick around what has and has not changed since my sojourn in Brigham & Women's. 

Alas for the lovers of the salaxcious, I do not have a woeful tale of drug additiction. However, I can tell how I had to fight. It would have been far too easy to follow the orders and lead of the medical types.

Jessica Berson, author of The Naked Result, talks exotic dance, striptease, and both the busienss and history of a surprisingly big industry. She understands the field as a former exotic dancer, as a dance instructor and professor, and as a scholar. She earned grad-school tuition as an exotic dancer but decided to write about the business and history as well. Her book as personal tales of dancers and club owners as well. She teaches dance studies at Yale, as she has at Harvard and elsewhere. She likes to describe her current incarnation as minivan-driving mom and wife. She's all these.

Presumptive nominees on both Dem and GOP side, or not? We knew, just knew that JEB! and Hillary were hkeaded to November. So very mcuh hkas changed. Now it's like 75% to 90% sure that it'll be Trump and Clinton. 

Let's noodle what the big votes yesterday in five states means to the survivors. Let's consider Rubio, who was surely politically dead and the question remains can he win his Florida and be a power broker in July? Can our favorite Muppet, Sanders, leap up again like a Jack in the box to take a couple of the populous states?

I'll play pundit. Again, it'll be an odd time (2:30 EDT) on an odd day (wednesday, but I"ll take calls (from unblocked numbrs) at 718-664-7966. Otherwise, you know I'll have my form of truth and knowledge.

The MBTA passed yet another 10% fare hike...and is no closer to solving the funding problems than ever.The idiots downtown simply don't ask the essential questions.

I'll go into the illogical and uprofessional funding scam teh legislature foisted on Massacchusetts residents, on how the Big Dig highway project broke the system, and why levels of subsidy are fungible jokes. I've ridden the T hobby horse for a long time and have a very different view of funding from the bureaucrats.

Our recent governors, the MBTA board and related pols simply don't ask the meaningful questions. The legialtrure knows the answer to the fundi9ng formula question; they simply don't wawnt to deal with the realityi. Let me help clartify the vision.

Was it Stupid-Tuesday or Super-Tuesday? It's easy to muddle that afer yesterday's results. Let's think and chat about what's likely to happen in the primaries and before the major party conventions and at those bits of political theater where the Dem and GOP nominees will be set. 

Be it known that I think Bernie Sanders s the only canidate anywhere with the policies and plans that would benefit Americans. His escalator has pretty much stopped between floors. So into the fray with the leftovers.

I'll talk about wat the leadup to yesterday's (y)(h)uge votes meant

Around tomorrow (WED. 2/17) at 2:30 Eastern)? Will your brain be in gear? If so feel free to call in at tell me your truth about filling the suddenly vacated Supreme Court seat in the 11 months before the next President touches the Bible. Call (718) 664-6966 then and make sure your phone number is not blocked — (718) 664-6966.

You can be sure I'll have my opinions and I shall fill the slot without you if that's hjow you want it.

Consider:

President Barack Obama has a Constitutional duty to nominate a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia.

The GOP has a Senate majority and before Scalia's corpse left Texas their leaders were swearing to block ANY nominee from the Dem Prez.

There are huge cases (think voting rights and abortion for two) next session.

Right now the left/right wings are evenly split after many years of a 4/5 favoring conservatives.

A divided court decision in effect upholds lower federal court rulings, which lean left.

The Senate must approve any nominee but is not required to hear or vote on any.

24 Republican Senate seats are up for reelection in November and no one can be sure how voters will treat obstructionist, duty-shirking sitting Senators.

Call in or leave me to go on by myself.

E3ven the most blathering pundits equivocate on the first two primary season results. They're eager to draw sweeping and even specific concusions and projections. At the same time they note that neither Iowa nor New Hampshire has a good record of picking the party nominees nor the Prez winner.

That said, it won't stop them...nor me...

We had the two expected winners yesterday. The margins are worth remarking on and on the GOP side, yhr jumble under Trump settled nothing. The fantasies that the first two contests would clear much of the Republican field were jsut that. On the Dem side, Sanders had a very impressive (over 20%) margin, not bad for someone who was down 40% not long ago there.

I kinow a bit about South Carolina politics, certainly lmuch more than I do about thoe in Nevada. It's my turn to analyze and forecast.

Everyone's uncle, niece, cousin and coworker has opinions on the Presidential race. Hovering between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, we blowhards just le it rip. My turn.

I'll drop my cornhusker conclusions — Bernie, Hillary, the dropouts, Trump, Cruz, and Rubio — plus New Hampshire know-it-all forecasting. 

My 6-month granddaughter is among Sanders' youngest supporters, aided by her mother. They went from Seattle to Des Moines and now on to ye olde Granite State. So expect some skewing.

Huge disadvantages of the fabulously wealthy include no one around with the guts and wit to say, "You're being stupid!" Another, more intractable one is the delusion if you are rich you must be brilliant...in everything.

Over the past decade or so, John Henry has pushed his The Boston Globe and Red Sox to the edge of ruin and seems to have no sense of that. He is the ugly side of capitalism, or one of the ugly sides. He jacked up ballpark/ticket prices to the highest in basebaqll. Likewise, he is huge in expeneive newspaper paywalls and has made both home delivery and online Globe prices the highest in the nation, higher even than papers like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. Those two at least give you info to earn you money back and more. The Globe simply relies on its almost monopoly status (there is an asthenic Murdoch-owned tabloid for a weak competitor.)

This past week, Henry blew it again. He's already pared the writing/reporting staff to the nub. Now he went after the delivery contractor, switching to a cheaper vendor. That makes perfect capitalistic sense; bottom line, don't you know. The problem is that the new contractor has already failed elsewhere and certainly plonked here.

Let us consider Henry's empire and whether the delusional rich can ever objectively judge their decisions. I suspect you already know my conclusion.