Owning By Proxy

Last night, Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad, who like to fancy themselves fiscal conservatives and whose entire rhetoric about health care has concerned "bending the cost curve" and reducing the price tag in the bill, joined with Republicans to hand up to $250 million dollars to states to teach children that sex is icky.

The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday night approved an amendment providing tens of millions of dollars to fund abstinence education programs for teens.

The proposal, offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would provide $50 million per year through 2014 exclusively for abstinence education programs. The measure would effectively reinstate the controversial Title V program, which offered $50 million per year to states for abstinence education, but prohibited them from tapping the funds for other sex-ed subjects like contraception. The same prohibition would accompany the Hatch amendment. “Abstinence education works,” the Utah Republican said.

The vote was 12 to 11, with Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) voting with every Republican to secure passage of the measure.

Abstinence education doesn't work, this California Democrat says, backed up by every study ever done on the subject, including a 6-year study authorized by Congress that published in 2007. Even Max frickin' Baucus agrees, and his competing amendment on comprehensive sex ed, which also passed, wouldn't fund programs that were in his words "ineffective." Suzy Khimm has more on this.

I'm sure that giving in to Republican fears about liberated women, whether through this measure or trying to gut reproductive coverage in private insurance plans (thankfully, that amendment did fail in the Finance Committee today), will cause members of the party who don't think women should have the right to vote to flip on the bill and offer their support, right? We're just so close to consensus, and if we can just add to that 80% agreement with selling out women and futilely indoctrinating children to abstinence, we can all sing kumbaya and have a bill everyone can support, right?

Wrong. Republicans like Orrin Hatch will ask for concession after concession and offer nothing themselves. That's because they know that stooges like Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad will end up agreeing with them anyway, so there's no need to take ownership of the bill when you can own it by proxy.

Slightly off-topic, but this is a great story about 1,100 religious left leaders calling abortion "a moral decision" and demanding that women's rights not be sacrificed in the health care debate.

The Burdens Of Sarah

It is not a good time to be a Governor. It's an even worse time to be a Governor when the main natural resource propping up your petro-state is dropping in price. This is the world of Sarah Palin, Alaska's spunkiest reactionary.

A number of factors seem to have contributed to the bumpy homecoming: a residual anger among Democrats for the attack-dog role Palin assumed in the McCain campaign, lingering resentment from Republicans for the part she may have played in McCain's defeat, and a suspicion crossing party lines that the concerns of Alaska, at a time of economic crisis, will now be secondary to her future in national politics.

Nearly every move that Palin makes or does not make, acknowledges Joe Balash, one of her closest aides, is analyzed through a new political prism, scrutinized for its effect on a possible 2012 presidential candidacy. "There's nothing we can do to stop it," he said. "People wonder why she's doing something or not doing something."

The result of all this scrutiny and second-guessing, says one Republican ally, is that "the governor has been feeling beaten up."

Well ain't that a shame. It may be that she's feeling beaten up because her bad policies, ethics violations and obstructionist behavior is catching up to her. Her Attorney General had to resign for his role in Troopergate. She has to pay back taxes for past per diem expenses of trucking her whole family around Alaska on the public's dime. And her daughter Bristol managed to cough out the truth about the futility of abstinence-only education, which should be a benefit and a refreshing dose of reality, but will be met with shock in the social conservative milieu.

It might not be all the pressure, it might be that Palin is a bad politician.

This Is The Right Response

Obama:

At a brief press availability in Monroe, Mich., ABC News asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., if he had any response to Gov. Sarah Palin's statement that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant.

"Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits," Obama said, "and people's children are especially off limits.

"This shouldn't be part of our politics," he continued, "It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.

"And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," he said. "You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits."

Absolutely. This type of gossip and innuendo does have no place in our politics.

Women's issues and family issues have a place in our politics to the extent that I believe that nobody can demand from the perch of the federal government how families should organize themselves. As the McCain-Palin ticket wishes to do that to the country, that's fair game for criticism. A teen mother is not, and any speculation about her motives or decision-making is just that, speculative. Palin's radical extremism is the reason for concern, not her home life.

Report: Water Wet

And teenagers hitting puberty want to have sex.

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

If this is indicative of the culture declining, then decline, culture, decline!

But actually, it isn't, you can stop biological functions like human desire about as easily as you can stop biological functions like breathing, and I don't see any taxpayer-funded "carbon dioxide-only education" classes popping up.

Special note: someone was paid to do this research.

Ooh, Me, Over Here, I've Got Some Spending You Can Reduce!

I caught a hair of the Republican debate tonight. Seems like every Republican is bent out of shape about all the spending. That's apparently the big problem of the Bush years. Not the unnecessary wars or the expansion of unlawful executive power, to such a degree that every candidate up there except for Ron Paul asserted the right to pre-emptively attack another country without consulting Congress (paraphrased Paul: Have any of you read the Constitution?). No, it's spending that's the issue. Government's just too darn big and spending too darn much. This is a big line on the campaign trail, too.

Hey, I know where to start paring things down: how about getting abstinence-only education ads off my teevee?

4parents.gov is a government website run by the Department of Health and Human Services that is meant to provide parents with “information” to help “teens make healthy choices.”

But this “information” is not grounded in science. A recent federal report concluded that abstinence-only programs have had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.” Yet the latest public service announcement by 4parents.gov “encourages parents to talk with their kids about waiting to have sex.”

In the ad, various children say that they want their parents to talk to them about sex and tell them to “wait.” Near the end, the narrator says, “Tell your kids you want them to wait ’til they’re married to have sex.”

Abstinence-only education is useless, not to mention riddled with lies and misstatements. And we're PAYING to publicize it.

I'd love to see one of those candidates break with fealty to the religious right and decry THAT spending.

UPDATE: Yes, it goes without saying that this kind of stuff is fine, but SCHIP is too expensive. Right.

No Child Left

Conservatives nationwide have hailed the decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the federal partial-birth abortion ban that passed Congress in 2003. They share their concern for the unborn and their determination that they ought to be protected and defended. But once the gestation period ends, from the approximate ages of 0-23, Republicans have shown with their policies a total lack of concern for the life, liberty and happiness of these same children, thrusting them instead into a YOYO ("you're on your own") society where they are neither protected or defended, recalling the old adage by Rep. Barney Frank that for the GOP, "life begins at conception and ends at birth."

The very act of delivering the child, which gets far less emphasis than the medical decisions made beforehand, is becoming an increasingly dangerous practice in America, particularly in the American South.

For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

481 babies died during childbirth in Mississippi in 2005, and this increase tracked with drastic cuts to Medicaid for the poor.

Jamekia Brown, 22 and two months pregnant with her third child, lives next to the black people’s cemetery in the part of town called No Name, where multiple generations crowd into cheap clapboard houses and trailers.

So it took only a minute to walk to the graves of Ms. Brown’s first two children, marked with temporary metal signs because she cannot afford tombstones.

Her son, who was born with deformities in 2002, died in her arms a few months later, after surgery. Her daughter was stillborn the next year. Nearby is another green marker, for a son of Ms. Brown’s cousin who died at four months, apparently of pneumonia [...]

In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.

As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.

One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned last year as head of an office that informed the public about eligibility, said that under the Barbour administration, her program was severely curtailed.

“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our activities were contrary to that policy,” she said.

And if you are cursed with the affliction of being poor in America, and yet you manage to get born, don't expect to be educated, because that money for your education has to go to rich cronies who steal it:

The Justice Department is conducting a probe of a $6 billion reading initiative at the center of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, another blow to a program besieged by allegations of financial conflicts of interest and cronyism, people familiar with the matter said yesterday.

The disclosure came as a congressional hearing revealed how people implementing the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program made at least $1 million off textbooks and tests toward which the federal government steered states.

"That sounds like a criminal enterprise to me," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House education committee, which held a five-hour investigative hearing. "You don't get to override the law," he angrily told a panel of Reading First officials. "But the fact of the matter is that you did."

Stealing money from the Reading First program is pretty low. Of course, the NCLB has always been an unfunded mandate that forces schools to "teach to the test" which rewards anyone who prints those testing materials, including the President's brother. The lesson learned by Republicans on this, of course, is to dump education altogether as a priority rather than fund initiatives that help failing schools succeed.

Meanwhile, at those schools, students are taught abstinence-only education instead of responsible sex ed, which is both completely ineffective and medically dangerous, as it gives young people precious little information on sex and contraception, thus increasing the spread of venereal disease.

And once those kids go to college and require financial aid to get the kind of education they need to compete globally, rapacious student-loan companies search private data to prey upon anyone who takes out a loan with mass mailings and the like, including the potential for identity fraud and seriosu abuse. Further, the Administration has turned over the Education Department to lending companies:

The cozy relations that developed among the Bush administration, the Republican-led Congress and the lenders have left the loan industry essentially unregulated. Some observers liken it to the Wild West: Lenders and colleges pursue their own self-interest with little regard for students or taxpayers.

Every company wants to be a college's "preferred lender," competing fiercely to get on such lists. But the dirty little secret of the guaranteed student-loan market is how concentrated it is: Only 32 lenders hold 90% of the loan volume. What's more, the Education Department has found that at about 300 colleges, one lender controls 99% of the loan volume — essentially holding a monopoly on those campuses.

Any company trying to break into the market has to rely on unconventional means. Some upstarts have promoted revenue-sharing arrangements, in which colleges get a cut of each loan that their students take out. Established lenders, worried about losing market share, have taken up similar kickback practices. One of the most egregious schemes is called an "opportunity pool," which was pioneered by loan giant Sallie Mae. Here's how it works: A lender hands a college a fixed amount of private loan money that the institution then can lend to students who otherwise wouldn't qualify for loans because of credit problems. These are private loans — ones that typically come with higher interest rates and fewer consumer protections. In return for the "opportunity pool," the college makes that company its exclusive provider of federally backed loans.

Essentially, lenders are freezing students out of any competition in the student-loan market, forcing them to accept increased rates.

So all of this concern for the children is a lot of bluster, but when you look at the facts, the Republican Party has little more than contempt for them, excepting rich scions of privilege, of course.

P.S. Maybe this is why young people are moving to Democrats more and more, because they see them as the only Party reflecting their interests. This is a great piece on rising Party star and thirtysomething Rep. Tim Ryan.

John McCain: The Mark of Courage

(photo via Jesus' General)

Only a true patriot, only someone worthy enough to represent all people can speak on all sides of any issue.

McCain on Roe v. Wade, Associated Press, 2/18/07:

“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states. [emphasis added]

McCain on Roe v. Wade, Washington Post, 8/24/99:

“I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary,” McCain told the Chronicle in an article published Friday. “But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.” [emphasis added]

The John McCain Presidential Pander Parade continues.

McCain is also pro-abstinence despite, erm, abstaining from abstinence.

If this guy keeps going, he'll give everybody in the country a reason to vote for him! And also, 20 reasons to vote against him.

It must be these courageous stands on all sides of an issue that have caused so much anger from colleagues in his own party in Arizona:

The chairman of the local Republican Party here in the most populous county in Arizona has in his possession a bright yellow button with a black line slashed through the name McCain.

“I don’t wear it out very often,” said the chairman, Lyle Tuttle of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, in a slightly sheepish coda to a 20-minute vituperation about the state’s senior senator, served up from his living room chair.

“I think those who do not support Senator McCain,” Mr. Tuttle continued, “if they could just get the word out and help people to understand what has happened with him, we could have an impact.” [...]

Meanwhile, disgusted with Mr. McCain’s position on proposed changes to immigration laws (he advocates legalization that would not require illegal immigrants to leave the country), with what some see as wavering on the issue of gay marriage (he lent his name to a state ballot initiative to ban it but did not support a constitutional amendment), and with the campaign finance act that bears his name, some Arizona Republicans are making trouble for Mr. McCain.

They have elected local party leaders whom he opposes, criticized his policy positions and thrown early support to other potential primary candidates — all in the hope of tripping up Mr. McCain on his own doorstep.

“They can make trouble for him,” said Bruce D. Merrill, an Arizona State University political scientist and polling expert. “It is too early in terms of voting to tell, but it certainly could potentially affect people’s decision to give him money.”

Max Blumenthal has more on this. Basically, McCain tried to reclaim the party by ousting party leaders from their committee posts. It backfired, even though McCain's slate of candidates included a former Arizona Governor.

McCain also has a new website that pre-dates the invention of color and is creepy in its authoritarian nature. You have to watch the video with the "John Williams' Love Theme From The Death Star" soundtrack.

These are the best and the brightest of the Republican Party.