Planned Parenthood, the Current Misplaced Fuss

With all the fuss being made these days by the phalanx of GOP primary candidates over Planned Parenthood (PP) it’s time to keep a few things in mind.

First, the claim that PP must be shut down because they “traffic” in fetal baby parts is ridiculous. The right wing has been after PP for years and this unfortunate event is merely the latest cover story for the ongoing assault.

[Update: It turns out that those videos seemingly showing callous PP employees discussing the sale of fetal tissue were edited, so much so that the independent firm that carried out the investigation said they are useless as revealing anything that might be true. This was not an instance of independent investigative reporting; it was more of the same.]

Second, the focus on abortions performed at PP clinics is wildly misplaced. PP is a large, health-oriented organization that specializes in “planning for parenthood.” It provides essential health services in over 700 clinics, mainly to women, primarily those who cannot afford private care and those who find it difficult to get advice and counsel on matters like birth control and sexually transmitted diseases.

The best estimate is that over 3 million women visit one of the their clinics every year and close to a quarter of all women in the country use PP’s services sometime in their lives. It does abortions, safely, legally and cheaply but abortions account for between 2% and 3% of all of its activities and no federal funds are used (a fact conveniently omitted in the wild rhetoric being tossed around by the GOP candidates). The notion popular among right wingers that they are abortion mills is nonsense. FWIW, PP also provides birth control services to men through vasectomies.

Third, for those who are unhappy about abortions (and, frankly, no is comfortable with abortions), keep in mind that providing free or inexpensive sex education and birth control is the single most effective factor in lowering abortion rates. If the GOP gets its wish and PP is defunded there will be a dramatic increase in unwanted pregnancies, an accompanying increase in abortions and a concordant decrease in women’s reproductive health.

Fourth, the anti-abortion movement claims to be motivated by concern for the unborn, for the fetus, for the child. These high-sounding ideals are bogus, a flimsy cover for a deeper truth: forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child to term is punishment. In their benighted ideology, any woman who has become pregnant without an express desire to have a child has sinned and the crime is to be paid by having to bear, raise and support the unwanted child.

If the true concern was for the child then the GOP would be leading the charge for sex education, freely available birth control, pre- and post-natal health care for mother and child, full funding for Head Start, pre-school and after-school programs, paid maternal and paternal leaves and funding for day care organizations.

Of course, the right-wing supports none of these and, in fact, works actively to defund those that exist — which, of course, is behind the push to break the back of Planned Parenthood.

Barney Frank put it best, “Republicans think life begins at conception and ends at birth.”

Washington State Tax Nonsense -- Via Doug Ericksen

The state of Washington is, finally, generating respectable tax revenue. The reasons are many and include increases in jobs across the state, taxes from the legalization of recreational marijuana, recovering private sector business and increases in property values. Time, you might think (if you think my kind of thinking) for us to get back to doing what we’re supposed to be doing: repairing and upgrading the infrastructure (roads, bridges, our ports), fully funding education, expanding health and other social services.

Alas, not if you’re State Senator Doug Ericksen (R, Lynden) a member of ALEC and a slick talking, wholly owned subsidiary of the oligarchy. Ericksen looked at the growing revenue and immediately proposed tax breaks!

Currently the state is under a court-mandated order to fully fund its schools. In fact, the failure to do so has brought a fine of $100,000 a day until the funding is authorized. The transportation system has continued to slide as Olympia hasn’t been able to agree on how to budget the state’s needs. And Ericksen wants to give the money back.

What is the matter with these people?

Hillary's Mistake

Hillary was the obvious front runner for the nomination in ‘08. She lost. She’s been the clear front runner now and, frankly, is in danger of losing. She made a mistake in ‘08. She’s repeating it. It’s not an obvious error but it could prove fatal and her goal of becoming the first woman president may crash on the rocks of a brutally honest, self-proclaimed socialist just like it splintered on the shoals of a young, silver-tongued Black Senator who wooed us with transformative visions.

The mistake is thinking that governing has anything in common with campaigning. As First Lady, as Senator from New York, as Secretary of State Clinton was on the governance side of the game. She learned that to govern, legislate, negotiate you must be careful, balanced, nuanced. You need to take stances with firmness and thoughtfulness. You cannot be rigid. Compromise works where bluster does not. Give-a-little, take-a-little works where inflexible demands and lines in the sand do not.

But the primary game is a different game. It’s a game of bluster, of the dramatic one-off, the headline-capturing frozen moment. It is image and press-worthy statements and style, where blatant honesty, forthrightness and an unshrouded “here I am, take me” style is effective.

Yes, of course, the unofficially anointed boring prig in the middle often gets the nod (Dukakis, Bush I, Dole, Gore, Romney) but when these cardboard character types lose they lose to candidates who come across as uncompromising candidates who offer themselves as themselves — even when that self is outside the media-sanctioned mainstream (Bernie Sanders) or outside anything anyone has ever seen on the national stage (Donald Trump).

This is not new. Goldwater won the nomination by being Goldwater, an unabashed conservative who was unafraid to say things that his base believed and loved but others were unwilling to utter. FDR played a similar role from the other end of the political spectrum.

Will Bernie pull off an Obama? I don’t think so but tighten your seatbelts it could be a bumpy ride — especially if Hill doesn’t cut loose from the sandbags that are weighing her down. The “distrust” factor looms large with Clinton. It comes from the sense that she’s always being a bit guarded, a tad removed from the moment. You look at her, listen to the presentation and find yourself ignoring the words and wondering just how much of it is little more than a crafted appeal-to-all cover story. Passion? It a0in’t there and that folks, may turn out to be her fatal flaw.

Could Sanders win the general election? Against Trump, yes. Against Bush or Kasich or Walker? I shudder at the thought.

Lefties Driving Lefties Crazy -- As Only They Can

We’re used to seeing nutballs on the far right drive away moderates who once were their allies. We’ve watched the crackpot wing of the GOP take control of the agenda and their old friends scatter like cockroaches when the lights go on. A neighbor revealed yesterday that after forty years with the GOP he’s now an Independent because, “my party got hijacked by sick people.” Next year he may be a Democrat. Who knows.

The GOP my friend once embraced was the party of Teddy Roosevelt, of Dwight Eisenhower. Now it’s the party of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The party of TR and Ike was worthy of respect, of measured debate over policy and process. Now it’s a cartoon, worthy only of disdain. If you ask someone who thinks of themselves as progressive or liberal what they think of the GOP you don’t get measured opinions about Ike or even Bob Dole or Thomas Kean. You get rants about Rubio’s climate change denials or Walker’s willingness to watch a mother die before allowing an abortion.

While I do get a kick out of what surely looks like political suicide, I’m concerned when my friends on the left do things that drive away their own. I’m not thinking here of radical minority movements like embracing Stalinism in the ’50s, the violent Weather Underground of the ’70s or today’s terrorist Animal Liberation Front. My concern is with positions taken by very smart people who think of themselves as sensible, albeit idealistic. Two of these drive me batshit crazy: insensitively imposing one’s own vision on others and political correctness. The first is here, the other on another day.

Imposition of vision: Why does the left do this? Well, because they cannot help themselves. They are smart (and know it). They think through an issue and come to a particular conclusion. They feel that it is right and, a fortiori, should become the standard model.

As misguided as this is, it’s different from the right-wing’s MO. There, positions tend to be staked out based on ideology and faith and buttressed, not by logic or measured argument, but by cherry-picking data and selective focus. There are good reasons why the left dominates in places where smart people congregate. Liberals are, indeed, smarter than conservatives.

Back in academia, I was our Department’s rep to our union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC). It focused on faculty rights and benefits, keeping workloads reasonable, raising salaries, improving the conditions of part-time faculty and adjuncts — standard stuff. Not surprisingly, the board was made up of well-credentialed left-leaning types.

No problem, right? Well, no problem with the usual lists of demands, no real problem with the focus on salaries and working conditions — though I thought there was occasionally too little attention paid to scholarship and too much to making sure everyone was treated equally.

I favored a merit-based salary scale. Egalitarianism is a worthy ideal so long as you understand that it’s based on a myth. I saw nothing idealistic about a professor who mentored PhD’s, had major grants and published regularly being paid the same as one whose contribution consisted of teaching the same dreary courses every semester because they were hired the same year. But that’s not the reason for today’s bitch session. Today’s rant concerns the manner in which the union tried to impose its standards and views on faculty and staff.

The PSC started addressing the membership as “Brothers and Sisters” and signing off with “In Solidarity.” The board began issuing statements contrasting faculty with the university administration as a battle between “Workers” and “Management.”

I appreciate that brother (and sister)hood is a lofty ideal, I grasp how important solidarity is to a union. I understand that I worked at CUNY but these words, dragged from the world of linguistic political correctness, just felt wrong. And I knew they were going to backfire.

Politically, I was on the same page as my friends on the board. Pragmatically, we were worlds apart.

Over time problems emerged. Many faculty, even those with progressive views started getting antsy. If I didn’t like being called “brother” you can be sure that I was not in the minority. If I took umbrage with treating scholars who took administrative positions as though they had somehow changed their values and goals and became “management,” you can be certain I was not alone. The President of the college was a good friend. He didn’t go into administration because he wanted to screw faculty. He was as opposed to how the real “management” folks, the business men and women who sat on the Board of Trustees, were acting as the PSC was — and he got seriously pissed when they labeled him “Management.”

Many faculty stopped coming to union meetings. Conservative groups initiated efforts to take over the PSC. The unity the union sought was degrading  before their eyes. Idealistic, unthinking Lefties were turning long-standing liberal supporters into enemies — and doing it by violating the very principles they themselves got elected on: inclusiveness, protection of minority views, egalitarianism. It was weird.

I retired in 2005. Many of the same folks still hold positions in the PSC but the language of their materials seems more moderate and inclusive. I don’t know what happened in the past decade but the fact that the crew didn’t get voted out and none of the less desirable alternative slates took over is a good sign. Maybe they are no longer driving away their once and future colleagues. Maybe a lesson was learned. Maybe ….

Daily Dose of Irony

Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, was just indicted on security fraud charges. The most serious of the charges is a first degree felony for misrepresenting his role in persuading investors to put some $600,000 in an energy company. Mr. Paxton made it appear that he too was investing when, in fact, his role was essentially that of salesperson and he was paid a substantial commission on the deal.

The fun part of this one comes from Paxton’s role in making this act a first degree felony. This kind of securities fraud used to be a third degree felony with sentencing from 2 to 10 years in prison. In 2003, as a member of the Texas legislature, he was one of the prime movers in changing it a first degree felony with sentencing between 5 and 99 years.

There’s lots more here. The NYTimes has it all if you’re interested.