I continue to shake my head and ask myself WTF has happened to the GOP. A political party that once upon a time had some integrity and decency. Of course, I know the answer: the hate filled Christian Right and the Tea Party crowd have staged a coup and the few moderate and sane Republican lack the guts to stand for integrity and decency. As a result, we see the open war on unions - a force that did much to create the middle class that now finds itself under assault and financial decline - a vote to defund Planned Parenthood that will do more to cause more unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions rather than fewer abortions, and cuts to programs that provide the already pathetic social safety net in this country. Meanwhile, a bill to cut government support of NASCAR has been killed. As noted before on this blog, what the GOP base supports in politics and what it claims to profess in terms of the Gospel message are increasingly light years apart. Greed, self-centeredness and hostility to many other groups of humans are now the principle hallmarks of the Christian Right and the GOP.*
Going back to the Planned Parenthood for a moment, the GOP tools of the Christian Right say anti-abortion Christians should not have to fund contraception and other things they oppose on religious grounds. Never mind that these same people are perfectly fine with forcing gays to pay taxes to the government yet allowing the very same government to fire gays at will because we don't subscribe to Christianist religious views. It's the Christianists who continue to demand special rights even as they say its others who are doing so. The term disingenuous liars is what best applies to these false Christians. As the New York Times notes, here's what would be killed in funding cuts and the actual INCREASED cost that will fall on society:
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Planned Parenthood offers family planning, H.I.V. counseling, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, cancer screening and other services as well as abortions, mainly to low-income women.
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For every dollar spent on contraception for low-income women, the government saves four dollars in medical costs within the next year by averting unwanted pregnancies, said Ms. Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute.
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That's right - it'll cost four times as much if these services go away. And that's only in terms of unwanted pregnancies. Factoring cancer prevention and other services the figure mushrooms - and that's without putting nay human cost into the equation.
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On the union busting mission of the GOP and the manner in which it will hopefully backfire, here are highlights from the New York Times:
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The unrest in Wisconsin this week over Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers is spreading to other states.
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Already, protests erupted in Ohio this week, where another newly elected Republican governor, John Kasich, has been seeking to take away collective bargaining rights from unions. In Tennessee, a law that would abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers passed a State Senate committee this week despite teachers’ objections. Indiana is weighing proposals to weaken unions.
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The images from Wisconsin — with its protests, shutdown of some public services and missing Democratic senators, who fled the state to block a vote — evoked the Middle East more than the Midwest. The parallels raise the inevitable question: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights?
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But Wisconsin is also proving to be a catalyst for Democrats and labor leaders, as they take heart from the way thousands of workers have rallied to the cause. With the falling popularity of unions in recent years, some union leaders see the attempt to take away bargaining powers as an effort that could shift the question from whether public-sector workers are overpaid to whether they should have the right to negotiate contracts at all.
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To that end, unions and Democrats are preparing their own post-Wisconsin campaigns in a number of states against what President Obama called “an assault on unions” in a television interview this week.
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Planned Parenthood offers family planning, H.I.V. counseling, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, cancer screening and other services as well as abortions, mainly to low-income women.
*
For every dollar spent on contraception for low-income women, the government saves four dollars in medical costs within the next year by averting unwanted pregnancies, said Ms. Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute.
*
That's right - it'll cost four times as much if these services go away. And that's only in terms of unwanted pregnancies. Factoring cancer prevention and other services the figure mushrooms - and that's without putting nay human cost into the equation.
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On the union busting mission of the GOP and the manner in which it will hopefully backfire, here are highlights from the New York Times:
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The unrest in Wisconsin this week over Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers is spreading to other states.
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Already, protests erupted in Ohio this week, where another newly elected Republican governor, John Kasich, has been seeking to take away collective bargaining rights from unions. In Tennessee, a law that would abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers passed a State Senate committee this week despite teachers’ objections. Indiana is weighing proposals to weaken unions.
*
The images from Wisconsin — with its protests, shutdown of some public services and missing Democratic senators, who fled the state to block a vote — evoked the Middle East more than the Midwest. The parallels raise the inevitable question: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights?
*
But Wisconsin is also proving to be a catalyst for Democrats and labor leaders, as they take heart from the way thousands of workers have rallied to the cause. With the falling popularity of unions in recent years, some union leaders see the attempt to take away bargaining powers as an effort that could shift the question from whether public-sector workers are overpaid to whether they should have the right to negotiate contracts at all.
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To that end, unions and Democrats are preparing their own post-Wisconsin campaigns in a number of states against what President Obama called “an assault on unions” in a television interview this week.
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I shudder to think what the USA will become if the Christianists and today's GOP are not defeated. It will certainly become a country in which I will not want to live.
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