Page Six as Lobbyist?

Page Six as Lobbyist?

Are the editors of Page Six doing PR for the drug companies and the
psychiatric industry? (Paula Froelich, "SECRET HELL OF OLYMPICS QUEEN," Page
Six, New York Post, June 23, 2007, page 10) On what evidence is the statement
"It turned out to be a chemical imbalance in her brain that caused her to
'become extremely lethargic
[...]'" based?
There is no such thing as a "chemical imbalance in the brain."
Psychiatrists do not do a chemical analysis of brain matter. They take
photographs. But even if they did scoop out brain matter and test it chemically
there is no standard for a chemical balance. This is a fantasy created by the
psychiatric industry and their mentors the drug companies to promote the false
notion that psychiatry is science based. It sounds good. It fools a lot of people.
But there is no science behind this nullity.
See also the efforts of civil rights activists from MindFreedom who
conducted a hunger strike to challenge the American Psychiatric Association to
provide evidence of their claim of a chemical imbalance. The APA could not
provide any. It is time to scrutinize these baseless claims of the boondoggle
called psychiatry, before everyone who has emotions and thoughts are medicated
into submission.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

SECRET HELL OF OLYMPICS QUEEN
New York Post
Page Six
Paula Froelich
page 10

June 23, 2007 -- OLYMPICS skating legend Dorothy Hamill still has nightmares
about the tragic death of her ex-husband Dean Paul Martin - because, she reveals
for the first time, he crashed his plane minutes after learning she had secretly
married another man he'd warned her about.

"The wedding had been so impulsive that I hadn't had a chance to tell him
beforehand . . . I wanted to tell him in person - he deserved to hear it
straight from me. The fact that he had to hear it from somebody else, and
immediately before he was to command an F-4 in the air, haunts me to this day,"
Hamill says in her upcoming autobiography, "A Skating Life," due out this
October from Hyperion.

While there has never been any evidence that Martin crashed on purpose, Hamill
raises the possibility he was under extreme duress in his last moments. She says
she was told that as Martin waited for weather clearance on March 21, 1987, he
was asked by an acquaintance about her recent marriage to sports doctor Ken
Forsythe.

"He'd turned to her, his face in shock, and reacted incredulously, 'She did?' "
Hamill writes. Also haunting the athletic pixie was the warning Martin first
gave her after she started dating Forsythe. " 'He's no good Dorothy. Watch out
for this guy,"' she quotes Martin as telling her. She and Forsythe later
divorced, had a custody battle for their daughter, Alexandra, and were forced to
declare bankruptcy after some business ventures went bad.

"I was in the depth of a depression. I had hit rock bottom," Hamill writes. "I
kept up with [the antidepressant] Paxil, but I was supplementing it with glasses
of white wine. Not a good idea . . . To add to my misery, I started smoking." It
turned out to be a chemical imbalance in her brain that caused her to "become
extremely lethargic . . . sometimes so paralyzed I [didn't] want to get off the
couch."
[...]

One-sided Argument for Same Sex Marriage

One-sided Argument for Same Sex Marriage

The Dig reports the usual pabulum on same sex marriage. (Julia Reischel +
Paul McMorrow, "Gay Marriage Scorecard," June 20, 2007) We know "members of the
legislature [...] are not opposed to gay marriage." The only thing politicians
oppose is losing their job, having "shifted gayward [...] to protect their
seats."
The authors quote a political reporter and two politicians and declare that
"Beacon Hill doesn't care." The Due Process Rights of 100,000 citizens, none of
whom were quoted by these authors remain voided. US Rep. Barney Frank shares
the elitist view that legislators should speak for the voter. Does the Dig
think journalists should speak for the voter too? Are voters incapable of
knowing how to vote? If they stupid what does that say about their votes
for the legislators?
Gay activists protect a flawed Court decision. The SJC does not have
jurisdiction on marriage issues according to the state constitution. [Chapter
III.
JUDICIARY POWER.
Article V. All causes of marriage, divorce, and alimony, and all appeals from
the judges of probate shall be heard and determined by the governor and council,
until the legislature shall, by law, make other provision.]
Until same sex marriage is codified the court case will remain vulnerable.
This battle may be a Pyrrhic victory. Gay elitists believe that they know better
than voters and laws.
[PART THE FIRST
A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Article V. All power residing originally in the people, and being derived from
them, the several magistrates and officers of government, vested with authority,
whether legislative, executive, or judicial, are their substitutes and agents,
and are at all times accountable to them.]
--
Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

Gay Marriage Scorecard
The ConCon changes everything

by Julia Reischel + Paul McMorrow
Issue 9.25
Wed, June 20, 2007
Unless you missed the enormous rainbow mushroom cloud blooming over the State
House dome last week, you know that on Thursday, to the surprise of pretty much
everyone, Massachusetts’s state legislators convened a Constitutional
Convention, killed the Protection of Marriage Amendment and enshrined gay
marriage until at least 2012.
Just six months ago, the legislature voted the opposite way by a
comfortable margin, giving the amendment a decent shot of landing on the 2008
ballot. Somehow, leadership on Beacon Hill engineered a semi-miraculous
turnaround in six months, cobbling together a pro-gay marriage coalition out of
thin air. And while the bloviators in the House and Senate say last week’s vote
is all about courage and rights, those aren’t the main reasons the gays
prevailed.
“Unlike a generation ago, and unlike most other states, most of the
members of the legislature, gay or straight, male or female, liberal or
conservative, are not opposed to gay marriage,” says Larry DiCara, a longtime
observer of local politics.
That’s been the case ever since 2004, when Carl Sciortino, an openly
gay representative from Somerville, beat out Vincent Ciampa, an entrenched and
virulently anti-gay incumbent. Sciortino’s long-shot victory, engineered by gay
rights advocates, sent tremors throughout the State House. Since then,
incumbents who’ve been faced with upstart progressive candidates (or the threat
thereof) have shifted gayward in election years in order to protect their seats
from opposition. And the ones who haven’t shifted have consistently lost
elections.
The change reflects Massachusetts’s population overall. “The
changing demographics of the state are significant,” says DiCara. “We think of
[state Rep.] Brian Wallace of South Boston, for example, of having a district
full of a bunch of Irish guys who wear scally caps and drink beer. Guess what? I
bet there are 3,000 or 4,000 gay people in Brian Wallace’s district.”
By showing up at the State House in person to lobby their
legislators in the weeks before the ConCon, many of those gay citizens tipped
the balance even more in their favor.
“I’m willing to suspend my cynicism and acknowledge that that did
work,” says Jon Keller, WBZ-TV’s chief political analyst. “Come on—with the
presence of your absolutely most respectable, solid-citizen constituents sitting
there in front of you, you’d have to be a real hater to not get it.”
Marriage-protection activists have been pushing constitutional
amendments since 2001, and legislators have ducked and dodged them as much as
possible, avoiding conclusive votes for years. Then Senate President Robert
Travaglini—with more than a gentle nudge from Mitt Romney and the Supreme
Judicial Court—forced the issue in early January, and the legislature had no
place left to hide.
“I think there was just a major-league ConCon fatigue,” Keller says.
[...]

Talking the Talk

Talking the Talk

L.A. City Attorney said, "If law enforcement officials are to enjoy the
respect
of those we are charged with protecting, we cannot tolerate a two-tiered jail
system where the rich and powerful receive special treatment." (Lorena Mongelli,
"Poor Li'l Rich Paris is Free," New York Post, June 8, 2007, page 6)
Oh? Hello? Earth to City Attorney! Does he believe we were all born
yesterday? In which city, county, state of this country is there not a
two-tiered system of justice? Do any attorneys treat poor persons the same as
they treat wealthy and powerful clients? For what office is he running using
rhetoric like that?

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

Enabling Court Corruption

Enabling Court Corruption

The defense lawyer said the defendant "was not criminally responsible for
the slaying because he had a mental illness and alcohol abuse problems at the
time." (Associated Press, "Lawyer details his client's ills," Boston Globe, June
9, 2007) Illness as a defense to crime is nothing new. Flip Wilson blamed the
devil for his misdeeds. If Twinkies, mental illness and alcoholism caused crime
why not simply lock up all alcoholics and mental patients?
The fallacy is that most alcoholics and most mental patients do not commit
crimes. They are often the victims of crime. That does not stop journalists and
lawyers from demonizing persons accused of mental illness.
During trials lawyers are permitted to exaggerate when arguing. It is
called "puffing." Fantasy is allowed in a courtroom.
Journalists report what lawyers and police say in court, the deceptions
used to win cases, as if they are facts. Readers depend on journalists for their
vision of reality. Does this help keep Americans misinformed?
The mental illness defense follows from American legal theory. If a person
does not know that his act is wrong he cannot be held liable for criminal acts.
Being accused of having a mental illness does not mitigate criminal
liability. It is the absence of knowing right from wrong. But the psychiatric
industry and its co-conspirator the drug industry promote irrational ideas as
part of their marketing campaigns. Corporate interests corrupt the legal system
as well as the social system in this country. The Boston Globe editors enable
these
abuses by with headlines and reporting.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

Lawyer details his client's ills
Cites alcoholism and mental illness in Nantucket case
Boston Globe
By Associated Press
June 9, 2007

NANTUCKET -- A former New York bank executive charged in the fatal stabbing of
his former girlfriend was mentally ill, struggling with alcohol addiction and
suffering from "the ultimate rejection" of a spurned marriage proposal when she
was killed, his lawyer told a jury yesterday.

But prosecutor Brian Glenny said the relationship between Thomas Toolan III and
Elizabeth Lochtefeld "came to a violent end at the hands of Mr. Toolan."
[...]

T Fares Fund Roads?

T Fares Fund Roads?

Retiring Senator Jarrett "Barrios said that much of that [MBTA] debt
actually resulted from the Big Dig." Huh? (Marie Szaniszlo, "Barrios, Wolf urge
state to cover debt, thwart more T fare hikes," Boston Herald, June 08, 2007)
This is rational transportation policy? Two Democrats lament
counterproductive policy mandated under the one-party system in Massachusetts.
Rather than promoting mass transit for energy savings, and for saving the
environment, the one-party government in Massachusetts places the financial
burden of funding the $15 billion boondoggle road project on the users of mass
transit. That makes sense if you want to encourage vehicle usage and to
discourage mass transit usage.
Underlying the irrational Democratic policies is that there is more money
to
be made by pouring taxpayer funds into the MBTA pit. Using government agencies
to make money for criminal organizations is the new pattern of government in
this country. This is like using appropriations for gambling addiction to build
casinos.
Is this a surprise for Barrios and Wolf? Did they just learn about
the abuses? Where have they been all of these years? Why is the rest of the
legislature silent on these abuses?

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

Barrios,Wolf urge state to cover debt, thwart more T fare hikes
By Marie Szaniszlo/Boston Herald
Boston Herald
Fri Jun 08, 2007, 06:21 PM EDT
Boston -

Some of the MBTA’s harshest critics yesterday urged state lawmakers to support
two bills that would relieve the T of most of its massive debt, one reason why
the transit agency has doubled fares over the last seven years.

Senate bill 2029 and House bill 3694 call for the state to pay $2.9 billion
- or about $280 million a year - of the T’s $5.1 billion in debt, which
according to T officials would otherwise cost the agency $8 billion to pay off
over 30 years. In return, the bills, filed by state Sen. Jarrett T. Barrios and
Rep. Alice K. Wolf, both Cambridge Democrats, would limit future fare increases
to the rate of inflation.

“Without doing this, the cycle of fare increases will continue,” Lee H.
Matsueda, a community organizer at The T Riders Union, said at a press
conference before a hearing on the bills. “And that injustice needs to end.”

[...]

Library Lights Go Off

Library Lights Go Off

Derrick Jackson argues rationally to encourage library use. (Derrick Z.
Jackson, "As TVs go on, library lights go off," Boston Globe, May 30, 2007)
Unfortunately the decisions regarding library funding are made by politicians or
politicians masquerading as City Managers.
Reading is dangerous from the perspective of deceptive politicians. People
who read books seldom give money to politicians. Few politicians read.
There is no tangible return from keeping libraries open. They are used as a
refuge by persons without homes. They encourage critics who learn that the
politicians may be misleading the public.
A way to overrule the interests of the self serving politicians is lacking.
That is why libraries are one of the first budget items receiving the axe.



--
Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

As TVs go on, library lights go off
By Derrick Z. Jackson,
Boston Globe Columnist
May 30, 2007

PLOP 'M DOWN. Kill the libraries. Fry the kids.

In a study in this month's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,
researchers found that 40 percent of children regularly watched television by 3
months old. By age 2, 90 percent watch an average of 1 1/2 hours of TV a day.

So much for doctor's orders. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children
should watch no television before age 2, as studies show that too much TV leads
to poor grades, attention deficit, obesity, and bullying. Denting the myth that
exhausted parents use TV merely as a cheap babysitter, two-thirds of parents
have convinced themselves the boob tube is a major educational and social
resource.

A combined 66.5 percent of parents say they let their infants and toddlers watch
television because the shows and videos are "good" for their brains, help them
relax, socialize with siblings, and get along well with others, and because they
"enjoy" them.
[...]
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.

World Class City Only for Residents?

World Class City Only for Residents?

The "Cambridge Water Department [...] wants to ban nonresident pooches from
roaming off leash." (Janice O'Leary, "Unleashed frustration," Boston Globe, May
30, 2007) Pete "Wilkins, of Belmont, wondered whether a park that receives
federal and state funding has the right to restrict access for people and
canines from out of town."
"If we make a decision, we need to have it be a reasonable one,"
[Councilor] Kelley said. Concurrrently the Council says it wants to make
Cambridge a World Class City. Taxes and reason aside, here is another example of
the Cambridge City Council promoting contradictory goals at one time. It
indicates how irrational City government is. How can a city be a World Class
City and prohibit dogs from nearby cities from using their parks? Will this
encourage visitors to Cambridge? Well, duh!

--
Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

The proposed rules would require dog owners like Jeff Ginsberg of Somerville to
keep their pooches leashed at Fresh Pond Reservation. (Evan Richman/ Globe
Staff) The Boston Globe Unleashed frustration Out-of-town dog owners howl over Cambridge plan By Janice O'Leary, Globe Correspondent May 30, 2007

CAMBRIDGE -- If some Cambridge officials have their way, dogs like Babe, a
frisky yellow lab mix, will be sidelined at Fresh Pond Reservation.
What's wrong with Babe? She's from Belmont.
Fresh Pond is one of the few parks in the area where dogs are allowed to run
free. But the Cambridge Water Department, which oversees the park, wants to ban
nonresident pooches from roaming off leash and plans to outfit Cambridge canines
with bright red medallions, so the rangers who patrol the park can see which
dogs belong and which do not.
The Water Department says all those roaming out-of-town dogs are leading to the
degradation of the soil and water quality in the park.
[...]

Doctor’s Bias Undeniable

Doctor’s Bias Undeniable

[Published in print edition June 7, 2007, online June 5, 2007]
Cambridge Chronicle
Tue Jun 05, 2007, 05:05 PM EDT
http://www.townonline.com/cambridge/opinions/x1121275257
Cambridge -

Byron Diggs’ denial is not unique among medical professionals who seldom admit
their negative bias toward persons with disabilities. Who would believe that
doctors are prejudiced? Ahem! (Byron R. Diggs, “Psychiatric care needs medical
care,” letter, Cambridge Chronicle, May 31). This doctor celebrates and boasts
of his bias.

Diggs declares that statements with which he disagrees are inaccurate and
distorted, showing his intolerance. Diggs denies that he suggested that all
persons with disabilities are violent by citing two extreme cases of criminal
acts. But that is what journalists, police and prosecutors do all of the time.
Diggs is part of the clueless majority hateful population who fear and demonize
persons with disabilities.

Medical professionals are a major barrier to persons with disabilities being
treated the same as ordinary persons. Diggs is unaware that saying his “answer
contended that such patients are potentially dangerous,” shows his prejudice.
How are persons with disabilities more potentially dangerous than the rest of
the population? They are only so in Diggs’ biased mind.

Diggs shows intolerance by stereotyping all persons who arrive at the ER in an
unconventional manner. If a person with muscular dystrophy who uses a wheelchair
arrived at the ER, would Diggs forcibly drug him because he was unable to walk
and acted funny? Diggs is unable to perceive that being upset may be a person’s
disability. He equates being upset to violence and crime. He recognizes that
there may be other reasons than psychiatric causes. But he asserts, “Such
patients are suffering greatly and out of control.” Oh?

Diggs would never generalize about women, homosexuals or blacks as he does about
persons with disabilities. That is evidence of his prejudice. He needs some
sensitivity training. Shame on this clueless, prejudiced doctor.
ROY BERCAW, Editor ENOUGH ROOM