B12 Solipsism

Houston is famous for having a patchwork quilt of zoning regulations, and a subsequent crazy mess of a urban jungle. If Chicago Aldermen don’t watch out, we’ll end up in the same dire predicament: having a city without rhyme or reason, loved by nobody except developers, and their politician puppies.

In the ongoing “Neighborhoods for Sale” series, the Tribune has documented an insiders’ game in which aldermen rake in millions of dollars in campaign cash from developers, zoning lawyers and architects while often overriding the concerns of homeowners and city planners. Out-of-scale buildings leave existing homes in their shadows, the result of nearly 6,000 council-approved zoning changes in the last 10 years that have transformed neighborhoods.

The results of this patchwork approach to development have been jarring, with mini-mansions replacing modest bungalows and condo blocks rising over increasingly traffic-choked streets.

The Tribune has found that zoning rules have been ignored or changed to make it easier for developers and harder for residents to have a meaningful say in what gets built on their streets.

Developers commonly fail to put up signs required by law to notify neighbors of proposed zoning changes. Neighbors frequently don’t get letters notifying them of nearby projects.

And if they manage to learn of pending proposals and attend the City Hall hearings, they may find themselves prohibited from asking questions of developers and aldermen.

For a street-level view of how the code really works, look at the 50th Ward and the story of the proposed seven-story senior housing complex the City Council recently approved at the behest of Ald. Bernard Stone.

[From Who calls the shots in your back yard? Not you. -- chicagotribune.com]

[A now-destroyed building, replaced by a 20 story residential building, still being constructed, called R+D 659]

There are rumors that a a large building¹ is being planned on the corner of Jefferson and Randolph: large enough that the historic Crane’s Alley might be appropriated. Our Alderman, Brendan Reilly, claims to know nothing about it. We shall see.

1. either a hotel, or a 40 story structure, I’ve heard both [↩]

Some additional reading August 19th from 12:57 to 21:17:

• Orcinus - Right Wing Violence and Mental Illness - "characterizing the assassination of the Arkansas Democratic Party chairman as "starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to 'take out' more liberals."…"But, after gathering more info, including my own sources, I decided the case was looking increasingly like a political killing.

  There was also, in fact, what we knew publicly about Johnson, particularly that he had a large stash of guns, and these were not collector items. Such a collection is typically not indicative of a left-wing bent, but rather a right-wing one. There was also a note found in his home indicating he had selected Gwatney as his victim in advance."

• Top 100 Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork - Good stuff here, most already on your rotation, but maybe a few that aren't… Can quibble about any list, especially top 100 music lists, why bother? Just incorporate all the suggestions, laugh at the omissions, and scoff at a few weirdos (Duran Duran, really?)
• Bushisms for Wordpress - Oh why not!
  [bushism]

  This is a Wordpress plugin called "Bushism". It will display a silly quote from our Commander-In-Chief whenever your blog is loaded.

• Swerve Left: The dirty dozen - "The Environmental Working Group has ranked veggies and fruits by the amount of pesticide residue each contains.

  The group's "dirty dozen" are peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, grapes (imported), pears, spinach, and potatoes."

• Jared Leto Hits Back, Slams Virgin/EMI Lawsuit | Listening Post from Wired.com - Hate his music, but sympathetic to his plight. "If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren't they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn't a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records?"
• Burning Spear Beats Down Babylon, Takes Back Copyrights - Excellent. "However, after experiencing firsthand the brutality of some recording contracts there, Burning Spear and his wife/manager Sonia Rodney learned the importance of hanging onto his copyrights. Now, the couple either owns or has acquired the entire Burning Spear back catalog with the exception of a few songs, for which EMI says it cannot find the contracts, according to a spokeswoman. They plan on getting those back as well."
• Electronic Voting Machines At Center Of Ohio Lawsuits — E-Voting — InformationWeek - Nice. "On May 30, Premier sued the Ohio secretary of state and the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and requested the court to state that it had complied with all of its obligations under contracts and warranties for the voting systems. In April, the Butler County Board of Elections notified Brunner of potential equipment malfunctions. Brunner's IT staff and boards of elections staff launched a statewide investigation and concluded that similar problems occurred in 11 Ohio counties that used Premier's machines.

  Brunner continues to investigate the malfunctions and test Premier's explanation that the problem was caused by the antivirus software. The state is developing mitigation plans to identify the potential for dropped votes and to fix the problem."

• Are Macs More Expensive? Lets Do the Math Once and For All - “Actually, a MacBook is in the same ballpark as a roughly similar Dell or HP, and less than a Sony. If you’re tempted by a MacBook and can afford its pricetag, go ahead and buy one–it’s a decent deal.”
  yeah, but with a Mac you get a decent operating system…
• ROSANNE CASH : Blog : Regarding the Use of My Father’s Name To Further Political Agendas: - "It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father’s name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalites to him that cannot possibly be determined, and to try to further their own agendas by doing so. I knew my father pretty well, at least better than some of those who entitle themselves to his legacy and his supposed ideals, and even I would not presume to say publicly what I ‘know’ he thought or felt. This is especially dangerous in the case of political affiliation."
  I use a Johnny Cash quote in my email signature, does that count?
• Gapers Block: Rearview - Tuesday, August 19 2008
  by Seth Anderson

Some additional reading August 19th from 06:40 to 11:12:

• The South Loop Historical Society - First Regiment Armory - "One of Chicago’s many under-appreciated contributions to world history is the birth of the labor movement. The Haymarket Affair, on May 4, 1886, was a demonstration by tens of thousands of workers at Desplaines and Randolph Streets (then called Haymarket Square) in response to a police crackdown after a general strike called on May 1. During the demonstration, a bomb was thrown that resulted in the deaths of seven police officers. …

  Yet in the aftermath of the violence in Haymarket Square, prominent business leaders in Chicago became concerned that they and their families might be targeted with violence. The area with Chicago’s most affluent business leaders in the late 19th Century was Prairie Avenue in the South Loop, home to Marshall Field, George Pullman, Phillip Armour, Potter Palmer, among others, on a stretch of opulent homes known as “Millionaire’s Row.”

• MobileMe: Supplemental 60-day extension eligibility and details - "The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped. While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards. We are extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for our members’ patience as we continue to improve the service."

White Washing, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Republished at GapersBlock today, whoo hoo.
( http://gapersblock.com/ )
( or http://gapersblock.com/rearview/archives/2008/08/19/ after today )

Workers painting R+D 659, on Randolph Street, West Loop
[view large on black: www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=112 ]

I have never been fond of the pageantry of the Chicago Air and Water Show¹. Apparently, I’m not alone, though for different reasons. Colin McMahon is an Iraq vet, and thinks the display is sickening.

Here we were, toasting our firepower even as young American men and women were dying at sickening rates in a foreign land. Oohing and aahing on the beach while the very types of warplanes we were celebrating were inflicting horror on some good, innocent people—not merely on the bad guys.

It seemed beyond anachronistic. It seemed perverse. And it was freaking me out.

That was a couple of years ago. But even if the roar of the Blue Angels no longer bedevils me, I remain convinced that the militaristic aspects of the Chicago Air & Water Show should be accorded honors and laid to rest. Especially today, with jet fuel costing what it does and all of us trying to consume less energy.

[From Ground military air show -- chicagotribune.com]

If you want to see a photo gallery of the display², Frank Hashimoto created a public Flickr group.

1. or other similar displays in other cities [↩]
2. which is actually quite aesthetically pleasing, in an abstract way. Airplanes are beautiful feats of engineering. [↩]

I’m on the hunt for the smallest pump-driven (or semi-pump driven) espresso machine. I don’t really have an obsession with crema, but am nearly ready to splurge on a proper coffee making device.

[This is a fine machine, capable of making a good, strong coffee, but it ain't espresso. The coffee Geek writes:

There is a fifth type of machine often (mistakenly) called an espresso machine; these are the steam driven machines marketed by companies like Krups and Braun, usually found for under $100. Rather than producing authentic espresso, these machines produce a strong coffee, more akin to what a moka pot or Bialetti stovetop device brews. There's nothing wrong with these types of machines; it's just that, for the scope of this guide, we're going to be pretty much ignoring them.]

Anyway, back to the hunt. Alex Abramovich of Slate was on a similar hunt a few years ago:

I should upgrade to a pump-driven espresso maker, which heats water in a sealed reservoir, then forces it through pre-ground espresso beans at a requisite 15 atmospheres of pressure. (Click here for a more detailed description of how these high-tech machines work.) These espresso makers are bigger, heavier, and more difficult to use than their steam-driven cousins. They’re also messier and a lot more expensive. But they’ll produce a dark, rich, foamy espresso, with the flavorful oils of a good coffee all on the surface. Once you’ve made a few shots, it’s hard to go back to anything else

[From Which espresso machine is best? - By Alex Abramovich - Slate Magazine]

“Bodum Chambord 12-Ounce Coffee Press” (Bodum)

I’m still on the look-out for my next machine. I don’t really want to spend over $300 dollars, and I have a fairly limited counter space to keep the thing, so I may settle for an also-ran machine that fulfills these parameters. Does seem to be more available than last time I researched the subject. Hmmm.

Any suggestions?

"Gaggia 14101 Classic Espresso Machine, Brushed Stainless Steel" (Gaggia)

Some additional reading August 18th from 17:26 to 20:50:

• TELL TALE SIGNS PT 3: MONEY DOESN’T TALK… - The new Bob Dylan Bootleg Series will–if I buy the two disc version at $18.99–cost me 70 cents per song, and the three disc version at $129.99 will cost me $3.25 per song!? But wait! I also get a book (that probably costs $15 to produce) filled with colorful pictures of picture sleeves! Whoopee! Is it really any wonder that people illegally download product and are killing the record companies? What do you say to the fans when you pull this kind of garbage? Do you really think that people are that stupid? You should be ashamed.”
• Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights - I think I just fell in love with Bitch PhD. Let me add her to my RSS feed, stat! Anyone that the Catholic League hates is ok by me. “On the home page of Bitch Ph.D. there is a picture of two children: one of them is shown flashing his middle finger. Today’s lead post, which was written August 17, is called ‘Jesus Christ.’ It begins with, ‘I’m a really crappy Catholic who hasn’t been to mass in ages because most parishes around here ‘will’ insist on being aggressively anti-abortion….’ The writer then objects to some children’s toys on the grounds that they are more offensive than desecrating the Eucharist. The toys are actually balloons that have been made to depict Jesus in various poses, including a crucified Christ; one of these images shows Jesus with a penis. Several who commented on this image made patently obscene comments.”

Some additional reading August 18th from 00:10 to 08:30:

• Fluke: iFLAC your Mac - "Fluke is really quite simple. The installer you download installs the components necessary for it to work: XiphQT, FLACImporter, and Set OggS. Fluke itself is an AppleScript saved as an application bundle. I kept the script inside the bundle editable so it's all nice and open-saucy."
• ThePanelist.com - The Holy Grail of Health Insurance: DENIED - "The Washington Post recently published an article, later picked up by MSNBC, on the fact that health insurance companies are now targeting patient’s electronic prescription records as a quick, easy and relatively inexpensive way to evaluate a person’s insurability.

  Gone are the days of contacting a physician's office or hospital business center and speaking with a live human or, alternatively, waiting weeks for medical records to be mailed. The Internet, once hailed as the harbinger of a paperless society, has finally succeeded in becoming just that. Unfortunately, this single instance of achievement is in precisely the sort of arena where human, rather than machine, contact is so essential, and delay (rather than haste) may err on the side of justice. "

• How to play .flac files in iTunes - Simple Help - "This tutorial will guide you in installing all of the required software (and in which order) to get iTunes to play .flac files. This works for iTunes version 7.4.1 (and Quicktime 7.2.0) running on OS X.

  Update: I’ve added a 2nd, much easier way to accomplish the same thing (playing FLAC files in iTunes. And this method works using iTunes 7.6.2."

• Hullabaloo They Did It - John McCain "is incapable of cheating because he was a POW. We shall hear no more about it.

  (Of course his first wife and the shareholders in the Lincoln Savings and Loan might disagree, but far be it for me to bring that up.)"

Weed Pollen Count High to Very High, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

no wonder I’m sniffling.

Some additional reading August 17th from 22:05 to 22:07:

• Oil, Alaska, Bakken, Middle East | Salon - "The upshot: Oil is a finite resource that takes a long time to create, but we use it quickly. So wouldn't it be great if oil were an inexhaustible, inorganic substance? A few researchers, notably Soviet scientists in the 1950s, have tried unsuccessfully to make this case. Corsi, known for his attacks on John Kerry, and now making the media rounds with a loopy book on Barack Obama, also promotes this view. In 2005, Corsi coauthored a book, "Black Gold Stranglehold," asserting that oil is inorganic and abundant, and he continues pumping out related columns at the conservative current-events site WorldNetDaily.

  Corsi prefers to cite a lone American academic supporter of the idea: Thomas Gold, the late Cornell astrophysicist and habitual scientific maverick who proposed that inorganic methane shoots up from the earth's mantle into the crust and turns into oil. "

• MicroStock Photography - Share Your Experience - In my brief exploration of microstock photography sites, they seem like a ripoff. Too much of the margin goes to the agency, not enough to the photographer.

Frank Rich marvels at the wholly, demonstrably false portrait of John McCain that so many moderately informed people still have.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.

[From Frank Rich - The Candidate We Still Don’t Know - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com]

and there is this:

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being “proud” of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about “whitey.” But we still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, “lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,” in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain’s future role in her beer empire won’t be revealed before the election.

One of the most telling metrics is that there are Republicans who know McCain well, and they are campaigning for Obama:

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

MoDo’s best line in a while:

If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.

[From Maureen Dowd - Russia Is Not Jamaica -NYTimes.com]

Bush doesn’t care that he’s a light-weight, more interested in vacations and sight-seeing than governing.

After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.

He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.

This count, outrageous as it is, doesn’t include all the time spent attending sporting events, exercising, and traveling the world.

[and not drinking Red Stripe]

Some additional reading August 16th from 16:32 to 22:26:

• Bob Dylan’s Poetic Pause in Hollywood on the Way to Folk Music Fame - NYTimes.com - Barry Feinstein, the rock ’n’ roll photographer, was digging through his archives last year when he came across a long-forgotten bundle of pictures, dozens of dark, moody snapshots of Hollywood in the early 1960s.

  And tucked next to the photographs was a set of prose poems, written around the same time by an old friend: Bob Dylan.

  “It was the lost manuscript,” Mr. Feinstein recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Woodstock, N.Y. “Everybody forgot about it but me.”

• Pinto beans - Am soaking some pinto beans for tomorrow, and discovered this factoid:
  "Pinto beans are an excellent source of the trace mineral, molybdenum, an integral component of the enzyme sulfite oxidase, which is responsible for detoxifying sulfites. Sulfites are a type of preservative commonly added to prepared foods like delicatessen salads and salad bars. Persons who are sensitive to sulfites in these foods may experience rapid heartbeat, headache or disorientation if sulfites are unwittingly consumed. If you have ever reacted to sulfites, it may be because your molybdenum stores are insufficient to detoxify them. A cup of pinto beans supplies 128.3 mg of molybdenum–that's 171.0% of the daily value for this trace mineral."
  Wine? Sulfites? eat more beans!
• Political Ephemera from the Vietnam War Era - "The University of Washington has put a collection of Vietnam War era printed ephemera (posters, flyers, pamphlets, magazines, mostly cheap mimeographs or photocopies) online. The browsable collection ranges from Defend the Black Panthers to How to Make a Revolution in the U.S. to the Planetary Citizen Human Manifesto to plain old Do Something. The collection offers a fascinating insight into the passion, energy and graphic sensibilities of grassroots, home-front politics in late 1960s and early 1970s Seattle.
  There are over 200 items, many with multiple pages (scroll bar in upper left frame)"
• Jon Henley on dining like an Olympic champion | - "Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all time, eats 12,000 calories a day. Eggs, mayonnaise and assorted fats make up a jaw-dropping proportion of his diet. How can he force it all down? And what is it doing to his body? With nothing to lose but his waistline, Jon Henley tries dining like an Olympic champion"

I didn’t realize this myself. I had read so many times that Bill Casey was refused a speaking platform at the 1992 Democratic Convention for his anti-abortion views that I assumed this was not in dispute. I was wrong.

For the past 16 years, news organizations have been repeating an obvious falsehood about the 1992 Democratic convention. According to countless news reports — in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, ABC, NPR, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and on and on and on — then-Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey was denied a speaking role at the convention because he opposed abortion rights.

That’s false. And it’s obviously false.

Here’s all you need to know in order to know with absolute certainty that Casey’s views on abortion were not the reason he was not given a speaking role: that very same Democratic convention featured speeches by at least eight people who shared Casey’s anti-choice position, including Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley Jr., Sens. John Breaux and Howell Heflin, and five governors.

[From Media Matters - "Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser]

The reason Casey was not afforded a prime time speaking position was that he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, and wanted to do a Zell Miller spew-fest, trashing the Democratic Party for various reasons, mostly having to do with abortion. Strange how that got twisted.

People involved in planning the 1992 Democratic convention have long maintained that Casey was not given an opportunity to speak because he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, who was to be nominated at the convention. That’s what they said at the time, too. The Washington Post’s first report on Casey’s request for speaking time included a quote from the Democratic National Committee’s press secretary: “anyone who is speaking at the convention will have endorsed Governor Clinton by the time of the convention and Governor Casey has not.”

It should be noted that it wasn’t merely that Casey hadn’t gotten around to endorsing Clinton. He was arguing that Clinton had only a “flyspeck” of support and that the party should consider nominating someone else at the convention.

Of course, only those involved in the decisions about who would speak at the convention know for certain if Casey’s refusal to endorse Clinton was the reason he wasn’t given a speaking role. But we do know that as soon as Casey asked for one, the Democratic Party publicly indicated that his failure to endorse Clinton would prevent him from speaking. If the convention organizers were making a bluff, Casey could have called it by simply endorsing Clinton. He chose not to. Instead, he began denouncing the party for having a “radical, extreme position” in favor of abortion rights and claiming it was bowing to “the radical far left.” Members of his own delegation were quoted saying he was “being a jerk” and said they were considering removing him as head of the delegation.

It’s also important to keep in mind that Casey didn’t merely want to speak at the convention. He wanted to devote his entire speech to opposing the Democratic Party on a single issue. After the convention ended, Casey released the text of the speech he would have delivered had he been given the chance. The speech ran more than 1,000 words — and not one of those words was “Clinton.” Nor was the word “Gore” mentioned. Casey’s speech did not include a single word of praise or support for the ticket being nominated at the convention he wanted to address. Instead, it accused the party of being “far out of the mainstream and on the extreme fringe” on abortion. That’s what the entire speech was about: disagreeing with, and insulting, the Democratic Party on abortion.

Barack Obama had better vet Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton’s speeches pretty carefully. Pretty damn carefully.
Jamison Foser continues

The first thought I had upon reading this article about methadone use is that insurance companies probably love methadone because it doesn’t have an active patent, and thus is cheap to proscribe.

Methadone, once used mainly in addiction treatment centers to replace heroin, is today being given out by family doctors, osteopaths and nurse practitioners for throbbing backs, joint injuries and a host of other severe pains.

A synthetic form of opium, it is cheap and long lasting, a powerful pain reliever that has helped millions. But because it is also abused by thrill seekers and badly prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with its risks, methadone is now the fastest growing cause of narcotic deaths. It is implicated in more than twice as many deaths as heroin, and is rivaling or surpassing the tolls of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin.

“This is a wonderful medicine used appropriately, but an unforgiving medicine used inappropriately,” said Dr. Howard A. Heit, a pain specialist at Georgetown University. “Many legitimate patients, following the direction of the doctor, have run into trouble with methadone, including death.”

…

OxyContin is still widely prescribed, but a survey of Medicare plans in 2008, by the research firm Avalere Health LLC, found that many did not even include OxyContin on the list of reimbursable drugs. Critics like Dr. June Dahl, professor of pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin, fault the insurance companies for favoring methadone simply because of its monetary cost. “I don’t think a drug that requires such a level of sophistication to use is what I’d call cheap, because of the risks,” Dr. Dahl added.

Federal regulators acknowledge that they were slow to recognize the dangers of newly widespread methadone prescribing and to confront physician ignorance about the drug. They blame “imperfect” systems for monitoring such problems.

[From Methadone Rises as a Painkiller With Risks - NYTimes.com]

and apparently, I was right:

The rise of methadone is in part because of a major change in medical attitudes in the 1990s, as doctors accepted that debilitating pain was often undertreated. Insurance plans embraced methadone as a generic, cheaper alternative to other long-lasting painkillers like OxyContin, and many doctors switched to prescribing it because it seemed less controversial and perhaps less prone to abuse than OxyContin.

The subtext is that the FDA only was concerned with methadone for narcotic abuse¹:

In what critics call a stunning oversight, the F.D.A-approved package insert for methadone for decades recommended starting doses for pain at up to 80 mg per day. “This could unequivocally cause death in patients who have not recently been using narcotics,” said Dr. Robert G. Newman, former president of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and an expert in addiction.

The F.D.A. says that in the absence of reports of problems by doctors or surveillance systems, “we would have no reason to suspect that the dosing regimen” might need to be adjusted.

In November 2006, after reports of overdoses and deaths among pain patients multiplied and The Charleston Gazette reported on the dangerous package instructions, the F.D.A. cut the recommended starting limit to no more than 30 mg per day. “As soon as we became aware of deaths due to misprescribing for pain patients, we began the process of instituting label changes,” Dr. Rappaport said.

1. in other words, there was not expensive advertising campaign touting the benefits of methadone, thus the FDA didn’t really care what the materials describing proper use actually said. Junkies don’t care what the current advertising says, and the FDA officials can’t get future jobs [↩]