“Good Girls Don’t Have To Pay”: Michigan’s Shameful “Rape Insurance” Plan
No one plans to get raped, to be the victim of incest or to find herself pregnant when her birth control fails or was not used (something that is a joint responsibility, which lawmakers trying to legislate sex sometimes forget). So why would anyone buy abortion insurance? Who plans for such a thing?
Yet, this is exactly what Michigan’s legislature is requiring women to do. Using a rare procedural tactic, the state’s legislature is forcing – without the signature of the governor, conservative Republican Rick Snyder – women to obtain “abortion insurance” even before they get pregnant. The idea is so extreme that even Snyder opposes it. And it flies in the face of perhaps the most important part of the Affordable Care Act, that which prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage due to “pre-existing conditions.”
It’s similar to policies some people have had prior to the passage of the ACA, policies that, for example, demanded people buy special cancer insurance just in case they get the serious illness. Who thinks he or she will get cancer? But if you do, and you don’t have the coverage to pay for the very expensive treatment, you’re dead. Maybe literally.
What makes the Michigan law so hateful and misogynist is that it has little to do with actual cost; abortions don’t cost as much as chemotherapy and tumor-removal surgery. It’s about shaming women, insisting that they brand themselves with a big scarlet A on themselves to show they think they may be just the sort of irresponsible whores who might need abortion access at some point. Good girls, apparently, don’t have to pay, since they won’t be having sex.
And what about cases of rape or incest? It shouldn’t matter, since the decision to have an abortion ought not be based on whether the female in question is a victim or sexually active. But women and girls – some of whom might be too poor to pay for an abortion or too scared to come forward after an assault – will have to pony up for an abortion or pay in advance.
This raises some interesting issues for the defense, should a female report a rape or incest to police. So, Miss Slutsmith, you purchased abortion insurance. Should we not infer that you were planning to get pregnant – and could not possibly have been raped or abused by a male relative?
But then again, the law doesn’t address men’s sexual health. It doesn’t insist that men pay in advance, for example, for treatment for sexually transmitted diseases or for Viagra. They get to have sex without consequence, unlike the women. They don’t have to give up their privacy and undergo the humiliation of paying extra to deal with erectile dysfunction or gonorrhea. But for the women – shame! The word is appropriate here. But it ought to be directed at the Michigan legislature.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 13, 2013
“A Year After Newtown, Little Has Changed”: Don’t Blame Fate, Blame These Politicians
The first anniversary of the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School weighs heavily, above all, for the unfathomable nature of the crime and unfathomable grief of the families. Adding to that weight, though, is the demoralization over the fact that the massacre has not led to any broad national policy response to the problem of gun violence. If there is any doubt that this failure had exacerbated the pain of the families, consider this haunting line from one of the reports on the April failure of the post-massacre gun-law reform bill: “Mr. Obama hugged the brother of one victim, Daniel Barden, who was 7, and told him to take care of his mother, who was sobbing quietly.”
Since April, there has been all manner of rationalization and second-guessing about how this failure happened. The administration should never let itself get sidetracked by the gun issue to begin with. The president should have done more to push for the legislation, which was dubbed Manchin-Toomey. Or perhaps he should have done less. Maybe, though the Newtown families fell in line with the law enforcement and gun control groups who wanted expanded background checks, the bill should have focused more narrowly on reforms that directly addressed what had happened in Newtown.
In the coming New York Times Magazine, Robert Draper does us all a service by breaking through some of the second-guessing in order to analyze just how the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups managed to block a measure that polls showed were supported by some 90 percent of Americans. His conclusion is not so different from the one I reached, in slightly more optimistic tones, last spring: As confounding as the NRA’s win was, there’s reason to believe that, in “unsteady little increments,” its influence is being reduced.
However, even Draper’s deeply-reported look at the NRA runs the risk of diverting attention from this simple fact: Last April, 100 senators had the opportunity to vote on sensible gun-law reforms that many Newtown families were pleading for. And 46 of them decided to vote against it, which in the contemporary Senate was enough to kill the bill. Each vote counts the same, but here, for posterity’s sake, are some “no’s” that stood out in particular:
Kelly Ayotte
The first-term Republican from New Hampshire is a former prosecutor and state attorney general and thus well acquainted with the porousness of gun laws, which require background checks at licensed dealerships to screen for past felonies or dangerous mental illness, but not at the gun shows or private sales where an estimated 40 percent of transactions occur. Voting for background checks would hardly hurt Ayotte’s general election chances in New Hampshire, a state Obama won by six points against a part-time New Hampshire resident, which has prompted speculation that her vote was cast to protect her prospects for a national GOP ticket. Confronted after the vote by Erica Lafferty, the daughter of the slain Sandy Hook principal, Ayotte gave a dissembling explanation that sent Lafferty striding from the room.
Max Baucus
The Montana Democrat has been allied with the NRA ever since voting for the 1994 assault weapons ban, an experience that he “felt he had paid dearly for,” according to a Baucus staffer quoted by Draper. Gun control supporters hoped they would get Baucus on this bill, though, given its moderation and the fact that he is nearing the end of his career – indeed, shortly after casting his vote, he announced that he is retiring. But he voted no nonetheless, a decision he explained thusly: “Montanans have told me loud and clear that they oppose any new gun controls.” These must not be the same Montanans who told pollsters, by a solid majority, that they backed expanded background checks, or the ones being listened to by Jon Tester, Baucus’s fellow Montana Democrat, who has many more elections ahead of him. He voted yes.
Jeff Flake
The freshman Republican from Arizona is quite conservative, but gun control advocates had high hopes for him because of his close relationship with his fellow Arizonan Gabrielle Giffords. When the congresswoman was shot in the head by a gunman in 2011, Flake was one of the first to rush to her side in the hospital. In early April, he sent a hand-written note to another Arizonan touched by gun violence, the mother of a young man killed in the Aurora cinema shooting, writing that “strengthening background checks is something we agree on.” In a Capitol hallway just before the vote, as the New York Times reported, “Ms. Giffords, who still struggles to speak because of the damage that a bullet did to her brain, grabbed Mr. Flake’s arm and tried — furiously and with difficulty — to say that she had needed his vote. The best she could get out was the word ‘need.’” She didn’t get it. Flake faced a serious backlash back home, but, not facing reelection until 2018, shrugged it off: “That’s the beauty of a six-year term.”
Heidi Heitkamp
The freshman Democrat from North Dakota hails from a red state, but does not face reelection again until 2018. That puts her in a similar position as Joe Donnelly, the conservative Democrat from Indiana. He voted for Manchin-Toomey. Heitkamp voted against it, citing the many phone calls she’d gotten against the bill: “I’ve heard overwhelmingly from the people of North Dakota; and at the end of the day my duty is to listen to and represent the people of North Dakota.” According to one poll, 79 percent of North Dakotans surveyed backed expanded background checks – a far higher rate than even in Montana.
Rob Portman
The Ohio Republican, George W. Bush’s former budget director, is considered one of the more moderate members of the Republican caucus, a reputation affirmed when he came out in support of same-sex marriage after learning that his son is gay. But, as Draper notes, it was this very announcement that helped set Portman against Manchin-Toomey:
Portman told [parents of slain Sandy Hook children who came to talk to him], “You know, I have an A rating from the N.R.A., so I’m probably not going to support this.” At some point, 13-year-old James Barden, a brother of one of the victims, spoke up. “Senator, there’s over a thousand deaths from gun violence in Ohio every year,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of my little brother, Daniel. Do you think that this bill would save some of those lives?”
Portman sat quietly for a moment. Then he said: “It could. It could.” But what the Republican senator did not say was that he had already disappointed conservatives by coming out in favor of same-sex marriage because of his openly gay son. By the spring of 2013 it had become axiomatic in the Senate that among the three incendiary social issues of the moment — gun restrictions, same-sex marriage and comprehensive immigration reform — a moderate Democrat could afford to vote for two of them, and a conservative Republican only one. Portman had already selected his hot-button issue.
Also worth noting: having an A-rating from the NRA rating did not stop six other senators from backing the legislation, among them its co-sponsors, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, one of four Republicans to back the bill.
Mark Pryor
The Arkansas Democrat is up for reelection next year in a red state. That puts him in the same boat as Democrats Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. They voted for Manchin-Toomey nonetheless; he did not. Draper reports that Pryor was, like Baucus, haunted by the ghost of 1994, when his father, Senator David Pryor, voted for the assault weapons ban and “incurred the animus of the N.R.A.” But Pryor may have miscalculated – whereas Hagan and Landrieu enjoyed polling boosts from their vote for the bill, he did not, and all three now find themselves in trouble for unrelated reasons: the Obamacare rollout woes.
There are so many others that one could scrutinize as well: Ron Johnson and Dean Heller, Republicans from blue-state Wisconsin and Nevada; Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska, who had declared a “sea change” in the politics of gun control after Newtown; Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who was leading the way in drafting a background-checks bill before a group to the right of the NRA started flooding his phones…All 46 had a choice and opted as they did.
I reached out to all of the above-mentioned no votes over the past two days to see if any of the senators were reassessing the issue and open to supporting a revised version of the bill. The only one that responded to the question on the record was the office of Senator Flake. Wrote his spokeswoman: “No, he’s not reassessing, and no, not open to a revised version.”
It’s not handwritten, but that Aurora mom Flake corresponded with surely gets the message.
By: Alec MacGinnis, The New Republic, December 12, 2013
“Who Needs A Gun?”: Most Of Us, Including Many Current Gun Owners, Don’t Have A Good Reason To Keep Guns In Their Homes
In September, Navy Yard; in November, a racially fraught shooting in Michigan and a proposed “stand-your-ground law” in Ohio; now the first anniversary of the Newtown massacre — there’s no avoiding the brutal reality of guns in America. Once again, we feel the need to say something, but we know the old arguments will get us nowhere. What’s the point of another impassioned plea or a new subtlety of constitutional law or further complex analyses of statistical data?
Our discussions typically start from the right to own a gun, go on to ask how, if at all, that right should be limited, and wind up with intractable disputes about the balance between the right and the harm that can come from exercising it. I suggest that we could make more progress if each of us asked a more direct and personal question: Should I own a gun?
A gun is a tool, and we choose tools based on their function. The primary function of a gun is to kill or injure people or animals. In the case of people, the only reason I might have to shoot them — or threaten to do so — is that they are immediately threatening serious harm. So a first question about owning a gun is whether I’m likely to be in a position to need one to protect human life. A closely related question is whether, if I were in such a position, the gun would be available and I would be able to use it effectively.
Unless you live in (or frequent) dangerous neighborhoods or have family or friends likely to threaten you, it’s very unlikely that you’ll need a gun for self-defense. Further, counterbalancing any such need is the fact that guns are dangerous. If I have one loaded and readily accessible in an emergency (and what good is it if I don’t?), then there’s a non-negligible chance that it will lead to great harm. A gun at hand can easily push a family quarrel, a wave of depression or a child’s curiosity in a fatal direction.
Even when a gun makes sense in principle as a means of self-defense, it may do more harm than good if I’m not trained to use it well. I may panic and shoot a family member coming home late, fumble around and allow an unarmed burglar to take my gun, have a cleaning or loading accident. The N.R.A. rightly sets high standards for gun safety. If those unable or unwilling to meet these standards gave up their guns, there might well be a lot fewer gun owners.
Guns do have uses other than defense against attackers. There may, for example, still be a few people who actually need to hunt to feed their families. But most hunting now is recreational and does not require keeping weapons at home. Hunters and their families would be much safer if the guns and ammunition were securely stored away from their homes and available only to those with licenses during the appropriate season. Target shooting, likewise, does not require keeping guns at home.
Finally, there’s the idea that citizens need guns so they can, if need be, oppose the force of a repressive government. Those who think there are current (or likely future) government actions in this country that would require armed resistance are living a paranoid fantasy. The idea that armed American citizens could stand up to our military is beyond fantasy.
Once we balance the potential harms and goods, most of us — including many current gun owners — don’t have a good reason to keep guns in their homes. This conclusion follows quite apart from whether we have a right to own guns or what restrictions should be put on this right. Also, the conclusion derives from what makes sense for each of us as individuals and so doesn’t require support from contested interpretations of statistical data.
I entirely realize that this line of thought will not convince the most impassioned gun supporters, who see owning guns as fundamental to their way of life. But about 70 million Americans own guns and only about four million belong to the N.R.A., which must include a large number of the most impassioned. So there’s reason to think that many gun owners would be open to reconsidering the dangers their weapons pose. Also, almost 30 percent of gun owners don’t think that guns make a household safer, and only 48 percent cite protection (rather than hunting, target shooting, etc.) as their main reason for having a gun.
It’s one thing to be horrified at gun violence. It’s something else to see it as a meaningful threat to your own existence. Our periodic shock at mass shootings and gang wars has little effect on our gun culture because most people don’t see guns as a particular threat to them. This is why opposition to gun violence has lacked the intense personal commitment of those who see guns as essential to their safety — or even their self-identity.
I’m not suggesting that opponents of gun violence abandon political action. We need to make it harder to buy guns (through background checks, waiting periods, etc.) both for those with criminal intentions and for law-abiding citizens who have no real need. But on the most basic level, much of our deadly violence occurs because we so often have guns readily available. Their mere presence makes suicide, domestic violence and accidents more likely. The fewer people with guns at hand, the less gun violence.
It’s easier to get people to see that they don’t want something than that they don’t have a right to it. Focusing on the need rather than the right to own a gun, many may well conclude that for them a gun is more a danger than a protection. Those fewer guns will make for a safer country.
By: Gary Gutting, The New York Times, December 10, 2013
“Nuttier By The Day”: The Right Wing Is Eating Its Own, Again
The nut jobs on the right are getting nuttier by the day.
A new national survey for the Wall Street Journal and NBC News indicates that only one in four Americans (24 percent) support the tea party. The events of the last week demonstrate why the wingnuts in the Republican Party are so unpopular.
Overnight, tea party poster boy Paul Ryan became a RINO (Republican in Name Only). Ryan negotiated the new budget deal with his Senate budget counterpart, Patty Murray, D-Wash., who has not been accused by liberals of being a DINO (Democrat in Name Only)
I don’t understand why the wing nuts have gored Ryan so hard for being a RINO. Ryan embodies everything the GOP is all about: indifference to the plight of the poor, insensitivity towards the rights of women and toadyism to the super rich. He is getting pilloried for supporting a budget that denies unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed, reduces nutrition assistance payments to almost 2 million Americans, preserves tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and restores billions of dollars to the bloated Pentagon budget. How dare he? The tea party should give this guy a medal.
Right-wing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich, the spiritual grandfather of the wackjobs, are taking flack for praising the recently deceased former South African President Nelson Mandela. These two guys are giants of right-wing extremism, so the wacko birds are eating their own young. But I can understand why right-wing extremists are so upset. Mandela fought for universal human rights and suffrage for blacks, goals which the wacko birds completely disdain.
Will Ryan, Cruz and Gingrich be disinvited to the holiday – excuse me Christmas party – at the Heritage Foundation? Inquiring minds want to know.
Then the wingnuts went nuts when they saw President Obama shake hands with Cuban dictator Raul Castro. The right considers the greeting grounds for removing the president from office. But the wing nuts would demand his removal from office if he issued an executive order for the U.S. to celebrate Mother’s Day twice a year instead of once.
But the right clearly underestimated the power of social media. Immediately after the handshake went viral, the web was full of pictures of Republican leaders shaking hands and chatting with dictators. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was one of the first Republicans to pounce on the president. And sure enough, the next thing you know, reminders of the senator in a tote a tete with Libyan dictator Mohamar Gaddafi popped up on the web. Then the social media produced pictures of the first President Bush chatting with communist dictator Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Donald Rumsfeld glad handing Saddam Hussein.
Compared with Gaddafi and Saddam, Raul Castro is a joke as far as dictators are concerned. Cuba has been toothless since the Soviet Union went under a quarter of a century ago. And Obama’s handshake with Castro doesn’t even begin to compare with Ronald Reagan’s sale of missiles to the Islamic radicals running Iran. I’d take a handshake with a dictator over an arms sale to one any day.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, December 12, 2013
“A New Level Of Immaturity”: Ted Cruz Manages To Get Even More Repulsive
OK, Sen. Ted Cruz showed me: I accused him of hypocrisy for his Nelson Mandela praise last week – praise that horrified his racist wingnut Facebook fans – and he followed up by attending Mandela’s memorial service this week.
That’s nice. But far from getting into the “What Would Mandela Do?” spirit of the day, he made headlines by walking out on the speech by Cuban President Raúl Castro. President Obama, meanwhile, is being torched by the right for shaking Castro’s hand, and even seeming to “bow” to the Communist leader; can’t some tall conservatives, at least, explain that what we saw was a tall man greeting someone shorter? Nah.
Of course, Cruz couldn’t pull off his walkout with quiet dignity. ABC News broke the story, and its headline reads “Cruz says he walked out of Mandela service when Raul Castro spoke.” Get that? It appears Cruz wasn’t spotted walking out, he announced it, with a hectoring statement from his spokeswoman to ABC: “Sen. Cruz very much hopes that Castro learns the lessons of Nelson Mandela. For decades, Castro has wrongly imprisoned and tortured countless innocents. Just as Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, Castro should finally release his political prisoners. He should hold free elections, and once and for all, set the Cuban people free.”
I can very much promise you that Ted Cruz has not learned the lessons of Nelson Mandela.
Communist Cuba did indeed help the African National Congress and Mandela always expressed his gratitude. Castro had as much right as Obama to speak at the service. In fact, one lesson of Mandela applies to Cuba today: We should stop seeing the world in Cold War terms – which is what led the U.S., particularly Ronald Reagan and the American right, to support Mandela’s jailers and their apartheid rule — and realize that we can do more to support democracy in Cuba by engaging with Castro than by walking out on him.
Also: Are we supposed to think it’s a big deal that Cruz won’t endorse Steve Stockman against “liberal” Texas Sen. John Cornyn (he of the second most conservative voting record in the U.S. Senate, which is saying something). Because it’s not. “As the senator has said many times, he will likely not get involved in any incumbent primaries,” Cruz’s communications director told Jonathan Martin. (That’s a promise he made to mend fences with his GOP colleagues after his government shutdown fiasco.)
Of course, anyone who cared about either the state of Texas or the state of the Republican Party would “get involved” in that race. They’d stand up and say Steve Stockman isn’t fit to be a rodeo clown, let alone a U.S. senator, and endorse Cornyn. If Cruz’s staying neutral is supposed to represent a new maturity, I’d hate to see what’s considered his juvenile behavior.
Well, we’ve already seen it. But still, what a low bar for Ted Cruz’s “maturity.” Even Rand Paul is backing his Kentucky colleague Mitch McConnell over his 2014 Tea Party challenger – and Matt Bevin, said challenger, isn’t a racist nutjob. If Cruz won’t support Cornyn, that’s because he’s hoping he can get an edge on Paul with the racist nutjob vote in 2016. Good luck with that, Sen. Cruz.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, December 11, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 