Based on the fact that you’re reading this online, I assume you’ve seen the online outcry over Komen for the Cure cutting off grants to Planned Parenthood. In the words of CBS News:
Many suspect the cutoff is linked to the abortion debate. Komen has been under fire by anti-abortion activists, after its connection to the pro-choice organization was publicized.
I’ve ruined the trademark CBS subtlety by marking in bold the network’s refusal to frame the debate as “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice,” or “pro-abortion” vs. “anti-abortion.” Pro-lifers should be glad the reporter didn’t label Live Action and its allies “anti-choice,” I guess!
Unyielding sympathy for Planned Parenthood isn’t limited to fossilized media outlets and your NPR-loving Facebook friends. Many of the senators and representatives up for reelection this fall support abortion so strongly, they’ve voted repeatedly to make you pay for it.
All five of these incumbent Democrat senators are rated 100% by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Among the extreme pro-abortion votes earning Bill Nelson (FL), Claire McCaskill (MO), Sherrod Brown (OH), Debbie Stabenow (MI), and Jon Tester (MT) their perfect Planned Parenthood scores:
All five voted against SCHIP language which, in Planned Parenthood’s words, “unnecessarily personified the fetus.”March 14, 2008, Allard Amendment to S. Con. Res. 70, Roll Call vote 81
All five voted against reinstating the Mexico City policy, which – until President Obama abolished it by executive order – prohibited federal funding of foreign abortion providers. January 28, 2009, Martinez Amendment to H.R. 2; Roll Call vote 19
All five voted against preventing Obamacare from subsidizing abortion coverage. December 8, 2009, Nelson-Hatch Amendment to H.R. 3590, Roll Call vote 369
All five voted against ending federal funding of Planned Parenthood. April 14th, 2011, H. Con. Res. 36, Roll Call vote 60
With Obamacare looming larger every day, conservative voters must remember what Planned Parenthood is all about – and recognize how far outside the mainstream the group’s enablers are. Susan G. Komen for the Cure is right to stop funneling donations to the nation’s top abortion provider, and it’s past time for Congress to do the same with taxpayer funds.
If you live in Montana, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, or Florida, help make your incumbent Democrat senator’s pro-abortion record known by all!
At a September 2009 Organizing for America rally in Columbus, Ohio, Sherrod promised to pass a health care bill with a public option — because Saint Teddy knew it was good for us:
As we saw last week, Sherrod Brown’s take on Christianity features a central government equal parts asphyxiating and unaffordable. If citing Ted Kennedy is Sherrod’s idea of bolstering a faith-based argument, Sherrod is not a person we should defer to on “moral issues.”
Aside from the implication that Jesus hates limited government, why should we resent the Ted Kennedy standard for socialist healthcare? Teddy himself said it best after the 1969 drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne: “I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately.”
Ted Kennedy was a contemptible man whose name yielded Progressive victories logic and basic mathematics should have rendered impossible. Whether his failings are glossed over by the likes of Sherrod Brown out of Christian forgiveness or partisan convenience, Kennedy should serve as a moral gauge for no one.
SENATOR SHERROD BROWN: But, what struck me is the kind of life that Ted Kennedy could live and was living… and he didn’t need to stay in public service for 47 years. He easily could have walked away. But, you know, like Pastor [??], Ted Kennedy understands that Progressive government and social justice and economic issues and health care are moral issues.
And as Pastor [??] hap– he and I happen to same, uh, share the same faith, as Lutherans – Pastor [??] talked about, Senator Kennedy understood that part of his faith was the question, the moral questions, and the issue of equal justice, and the issue of health care for all. That’s why he never quit, that’s why nobody in this crowd is quitting, that’s why we’re gonna get health care with a strong public option.
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) doesn’t have a voting record ranked as far left as Socialist Bernie Sanders by accident; Sherrod thinks a bigger central government is the answer to every problem. In this video, Senator Brown applies his trademark class warfare to the issue of Medicare, instructing a gathering of teachers’ union members to indoctrinate their family, friends, and students against cruel conservatism:
Like the first half of Sherrod’s answer to a question about whether privatization of government programs is a Wall Street conspiracy, there is so much stupid in this clip that it’s tough to begin. To his credit, Sherrod Brown is consistent! Sherrod consistently glosses over exploding federal deficits, consistently attributes the worst motives to anyone who tries to limit government’s power, and consistently brags about the wonders of failed Progressive governance.
Sherrod’s mathematically outrageous and transparently political scare tactics are, like most every policy Sherrod has ever pursued, wrong for Ohio and wrong for America. Next November, Ohio should send Obamacare champion Sherrod Brown packing… along with the guy that awful legislation is named for.
We must not overlook the truly significant blow that Ohioans dealt Obamacare last week, with a mix of 2.2 million Democrats, Republicans and Independents rejecting this intrusion on individual liberty and family control over health care decisions.
Indeed, you would be pressed to find a statist boondoggle Sherrod Brown doesn’t love. Check out this rant from a Q&A session Sherrod held this spring with Ohio’s largest government union:
According to Senator Brown, privatization is always driven by “greed” and always makes “the services get worse.” Hearty red meat for a government union crowd, but keep in mind this was an unscripted response. Bigger government, higher taxes, and demonizing The Rich are the only things Sherrod knows.
Sadly for Sherrod, every county in Ohio voted to amend the state constitution against Obamacare’s individual mandate – even after a $30 million Progressive smear campaign against union reform. With huge turnout for an off-year election, the citizen-driven Health Care Freedom Amendment passed by a wider margin than the union issue failed! Brown claims the amendment was “confusing,” which would be a great explanation for the opposite result.
Think class warfare will convince Ohio to retain America’s most liberal Senator, a freshman who rode into Washington on a 2006 Democrat wave in the Buckeye State? Not if I have anything to say about it.
As public record proves, many of these folks get rich portraying big government as a moral imperative:
You have a chance right now to help a Midwestern swing state escape leftist control! Two Ohio ballot measures up for a vote on Tuesday deserve the full support of conservatives nationwide.
Issue 3 represents an unprecedented citizen-driven effort; its passage would amend the state constitution to block Obamacare’s individual mandate in Ohio. Conventional wisdom is that Issue 3 will pass, but efforts to kill Issue 2 may claim Issue 3 as collateral damage. If conservative Ohioans stay home Tuesday, union propaganda could prevent a repudiation of Obamacare.
Issue 2 has been the focus of a $30 million smear campaign, with an alphabet soup of unions framing government union reform as an “attack on The Middle Class.” There are many reasons to support Issue 2, but the best is also the simplest: Issue 2 restores a little power from union bosses to taxpayers.
Ohio’s status quo ensures that unions – instead of our elected officials – set the rules of public employment. Public wages are garnished for union propaganda and professional agitators’ pockets, while taxpayers are demonized over any effort to restrain spending. Their own employees describe Ohio union bosses as “rife with hypocrisy,” but $30 million buries a whole lot of dirt!
Far from theoretical, Ohio’s need for reform is rooted in fiscal urgency. Based on forecasts prior to Kasich’s election, 260 Ohio school districts will have deficits amounting to more than $500 per resident by 2015. Passing Issue 2 would ensure fewer layoffs, fewer tax hikes, fewer service cuts… as well as fewer six-figure union salaries. Any questions as to why AFL-CIO, NEA, AFSCME, and SEIU are dumping millions into a state ballot issue?
Like the broken law Issue 2 amends, I’ve been part of Ohio since 1983. Will you help me do good where decades of bureaucracy have done so much harm? Will you encourage Ohioans to free themselves from President Obama’s terrible policies and dishonest financiers?
Citizens of the Buckeye State, vote Yes on Issue 2 and Yes on Issue 3. Everyone else, please help counter union lies on your social media network of choice!
The Ohio Supreme Court this morning unanimously rejected an attempt to block an issue from the November ballot that would attempt to opt-out Ohio from the new federal requirements that everyone obtain health insurance.
Good news, as expected. The Health Care Freedom Amendment does what it says, providing Ohioans with an opportunity to fight leftist attempts at centralized government medicine. Complainant ProgressOhio uses this platform as they use all platforms, spinning harebrained Progressive nonsense:
“Ohioans will now have a choice — to return to the days when children were denied insurance coverage over pre-existing conditions; return to the days when seniors have to choose between prescription drugs and groceries; return to the days when young adults can’t stay on their parents insurance and return to the days when small businesses did not get tax breaks for providing insurance.
“This fall “no” will be a beautiful word.”
Where is the option for magically affordable coverage for everyone? Somehow ProgressOhio has missed the past year’s worth of news about what a budget-busting, care-rationing disaster Obamacare will be if it’s not disassembled.
If you live in this dimension’s Ohio, where things aren’t free just because socialists think they can force The Rich to pay for them, vote Yes on Issue 3!
Cross-posted at Columbus Tea Party and Third Base Politics.
With yesterday’s news that the Secretary of State has certified more than 425,000 signatures supporting The Healthcare Freedom Amendment, it’s official – the November ballot will include a referendum on Obamacare’s key mandate. This is excellent news for Ohioans, and less-excellent news for Progressive advocates of big government.
The amendment, championed by the Ohio Liberty Council and other conservative groups, has found support among Ohio’s GOP establishment – which is finally recognizing the old Democrat-lite agenda as a dead end. In addition to being unaffordable, guaranteeing rationed care, and limiting Ohioans’ health care choices, Obamacare is plainly unconstitutional. Unless you believe (as Sherrod Brown does) that “interstate commerce” means “Washington can decide what you do or do not buy; when, where, and from whom.”
But those reasons don’t explain Republican support for The Healthcare Freedom Amendment! No, according to the Dispatch, “The measure was supported by the state Republican Party as a possible GOP counterweight to the Democrat-backed referendum on Senate Bill 5.”
Ok… let’s go down that road. Progress Ohio and the usual array of mathematically-impaired leftists insist Obamacare is good and necessary legislation, while Senate Bill 5 is the work of hateful extremists. Need proof? Just look at the campaigns behind the two ballot issues:
Socialized medicine is a long-time goal of Progressives, therefore opposition to Obamacare is evil. Senate Bill 5 changes a law passed by Democrats in 1983, therefore Senate Bill 5 is evil.
Wealthy people sometimes donate to tea party groups – those capitalist swine! Union bosses pay themselves six figures in member dues – those martyrs for workers’ rights!
Obamacare was written by a few Democrats and lobbyists before being rammed through using flagrant bribes, as all legislation guiding the lives of 308,000,000 people should be. Senate Bill 5 was passed with GOP maneuvering, which is obviously far worse.
Shall we start a collection for train tickets so the InnoProgPolicy Ohio scholars can depart our cloud of backwardness when The Healthcare Freedom Amendment passes and the SB 5 referendum fails?
Conservative muckraker James O’Keefe’s team at Project Veritas released their latest video on Sunday, and whatever you think of O’Keefe, it’s worth watching. Why? Because Ohio’s Medicaid bureaucracy was targeted, and the results are not pretty.
Imagine two guys walk into a county office inquiring about Medicaid coverage. Now imagine they explain to staff their concerns over getting government handouts while dealing drugs, driving an $800,000 car, and whoring out their underage sister. It’s a little painful to watch, but makes an incredibly powerful point when peppered with out-of-control Medicaid spending figures from the Dispatch.
As Hot Air and The Blaze have noted, O’Keefe’s tactics remain somewhat creepy. His emulation of leftists’ personal attacks causes very real grief for the individuals caught on tape – not to mention obvious questions about editing. That said, if your response to a drug dealer looking for public funds isn’t to laugh in their face and call a supervisor, you’re doing something wrong.
I’ve contacted county officials in Columbus, Marion, and London for their responses. If the video’s targets promptly reported the Veritas guys to their supervisors and/or local police, good news: sometimes, government works! If not, this is another arrow to the heart of Progressive arguments that can be boiled down to “MORE.”
The video follows, with uncut footage of the Columbus sting at the end of the 10-minute piece.
As for the entirely predictable response from Media Matters, Talking Points Memo, et al, of course O’Keefe is going to exaggerate the importance of his footage. That hardly invalidates his criticism, if the Franklin County, Marion County, and Madison County Departments of Job and Family Services advised the Project Veritas scammers and did nothing to prevent them from acquiring Medicaid funds. Of course, leftist outlets will shriek desperately about O’Keefe’s political agenda if doing so serves their own!
Sarah Palin’s reportedly ignorant belief that Obamacare cuts cost by way of a “death panel” of bureaucrats passing down coverage decrees is nearly as notorious as Palin herself. Mind you, Palin was being ridiculed for this long before The Krugman, a bearded novelty act who does a traveling show for The New York Times, sung the praises of government-rationed care in an ABC appearance:
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Palin was responding, in part, to a statement by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, another crazed right-wing nut. If you have a memory or possess the power of Google, it’s not hard to recall the dinosaur media’s response. Smarmy leftists at The New York Times and MSNBC ranted and raved about lies and incited mobs, while slightly-better-hinged commentators settled for dismissing Palin’s thoughts as partisan nonsense.
The point of PPACA is cost containment. This supposedly depends on the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, which is a perfect expression of the progressive mind, is to be composed of 15 presidential appointees empowered to reduce Medicare spending – which is 13 percent of federal spending – to certain stipulated targets. IPAB is to do this by making “proposals” or “recommendations” to limit costs by limiting reimbursements to doctors. This, inevitably, will limit available treatments – and access to care when physicians leave the Medicare system.
Will’s closing line is brilliant:
The essence of progressivism, and of the administrative state that is progressivism’s project, is this doctrine: Modern society is too complex for popular sovereignty, so government of, by and for supposedly disinterested experts must not perish from the earth.
If you’ve not read about the recent McKinsey & Company study investigating the likelihood of businesses dropping employee health coverage due to Obamacare, The Weekly Standard has all the gory details.
The study finds that, “Overall, 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI [employer-sponsored insurance] in the years after 2014… Among employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion increases to more than 50 percent.”
You didn’t actually believe President Obama when he promised you could keep your current coverage, did you? This particular mandate, of course, isn’t mandatory for government medicine’s loudest proponents, as summarized fiendishly by Karl Rove’s minions at Crossroads GPS -
Inefficient providers have effectively killed nearly every pilot program that previous administrations promised would make Medicare more efficient. Suppliers of wheelchairs and other medical equipment have blocked efforts to reduce the inflated prices Medicare pays them. The industry has killed or sabotaged at least four federal agencies dedicated to researching which medical treatments don’t work.
CER can be beneficial if used solely to inform doctors and patients to guide decision-making. However, the new law lays the groundwork for bureaucrats to use CER in Medicare to make coverage decisions and otherwise compel physicians to treat patients not according to what is best for the individual but according to what the evidence shows is best in most cases.
By a margin of more than 2 to 1 (48 to 20 percent), likely voters think Obamacare would reduce, rather than improve, the quality of health care. By a margin of more than 3 to 1 (53 to 15 percent), they think it would raise, rather than lower, health costs. By a margin of 4 to 1 (56 to 14 percent), they think it would raise, rather than lower, deficits.
To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi’s immortal words: the more that we find out what’s in Obamacare, the more appalled we are that you passed it.
Bigger, more expensive, more intrusive government is not the answer to big government’s past and current failures in the health care industry. As responses to Paul Ryan’s budget remind us, Washington leftists have no connection to fiscal reality, no interest in personal freedom, and certainly no concern for the will of the voters.
Thursday, 02-02-12, 10:00:34am 
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