Springing From a Nearby Scrub Room, Dr. Pan Medicine Man!

Not to pick on Dr. Richard Pan Medicine Man, the new Democratic Assemblyman from the 5th District, but he sure has set himself a very lofty bar for 2011.

This has nothing to do with the questionable judgment of the UC Davis pediatrician with a masters in public health from Harvard University scaling back his practice — which actually improves people’s lives  — in exchange for a sojourn on the Capitol’s equivalent of Monkey Island.

Dr. Pan Medicine Man volunteered a litany of pledges, promises and pronouncements in return for voters sending him to the state Assembly.

“Mothers trust him with the lives of their babies,” voters were told several times in campaign mailers.

Dr. Pan Medicine Man is also a “physician we can trust with our well-being.”

He also cares about our future.

One mailer notes Dr. Pan Medicine Man has experience “meeting a payroll, balancing budgets and cutting wasteful spending.”

Not sure that experience will be of much use inside the White Sepulcher.

He is a “problem-solver” and an “independent leader who knows how to build coalitions and unite people around common goals.”

Any and all are welcome.

Voters of the Fifth District have also ended “partisan gridlock.”

Dr. Pan Medicine Man says this about that:

“Tired of Political Gridlock?

“Partisan Politics Getting You Down?

“Sick of Political Extremism?

“Elect a Physician, Not a Politician.”

It’s that easy.

Because Dr. Pan Medicine Man is a healer, he will “protect our children, the disabled and the elderly.”

None of his promises will be empty, like those OTHER GUYS.

He wants to invest in our schools, which, parenthetically, over the last two years have received more than $12 billion less than they are entitled thanks to those same OTHER GUYS.

Included in Dr. Pan Medicine Man’s investment plan is expanding after school and job training programs and “strongly opposing damaging budget cuts to our schools.”

Like “reform,” one suspects “damaging” is in the eye of the beholder.

But, as Dr. Pan Medicine Man will soon learn, if he isn’t aware already, a Democrat in a Republican-leaning district gets to take a powder on a lot of ugly votes, an out made even easier to take now that the budget is passed by majority vote.

But there’s more to Dr. Pan Medicine Man’s mettle than that.

He will strongly oppose college tuition increases – “’especially when administrators give themselves pay raises.”

And he wants to set standards for “academic achievement.”

Can probably knock that down the priority list a little ways, doctor, the state has those already.

Deborah Johnson tells voters in one mailer that Dr. Pan Medicine Man “isn’t running for the Assembly to push a political agenda.” In fact, the Sacramento school nurse says he will “stand up to the special interests and fight for all our families.”

Not just some of the families like those OTHER GUYS.

Would that other newly elected state lawmakers committed to doing so much. That pesky budget mess and a qhole boatload of other vexing problems would be licked lickety-split.

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