I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

River_Rat

Ya gotta love the nerve of some people:

Darrell Issa: What government shutdown?  My staff is essential. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52668.html 

Enjoyful

Yes, because Big Business provides low-paying jobs to thousands of Americans but multi-million dollar salaries to their officers.  Somebody has to fund those multi-million dollar salaries.  Might as well be taxpayers.

3monstmama

we do remember that abortion is still legal in this country, right?  I may not want one, I hope my daughter never needs one but its still legal.  And I no more have the right to tell other women they can't have an abortion than I have the right to force them all to attend my Buddhist temple for services in lieu of their Christian church.

3monstmama

oh blue, don't be silly..... 90 old women serve no purpose.  They are just like the young unemployed woman--merely a drain on our society....why do we need to give them anything?

Are there no prisons? 

Are there no workhouses?

Ang7

I agree with you 3monstmama~

I had a friend in college who was raped and had an abortion.  I cannot imagine having to go through a pregnancy like that if abortion was not legal...

Anonymous

This is not about the $300 million.  That money would still go to fund family planning services, but states would decide which organizations get the money, it wouldn't all go to Planned Parenthood. 

Shrek4

I personally am very worried right now.

My sweetheart is leaving tomorrow morning for Afghanistan.He is the bread-winner for our house.

I still have a lot of issues that don't allow me to get back to work yet - and even if I would want to, a 50-years old with a huge lapse in work history due to cancer.... might make it really really hard. My health insurance is through the state's program that is basically funded by Medicare and Medicaid.

If that gets cut, I might not get the treatments and medical visits I still need.We discussed about getting married so I would get on his Tricare, but if this happens he will not even be here so we can do it.

On top of that, we dont' know when he will be paid. We do have enough for me to make it for about 2 months, but that's about it.

Now, on what is going on - my opinion is that right now the reps are trying the same blackmail they tried with Clinton back in 1995. I think we would have plenty of money and not be in this deficit if all the tax cuts for the rich and for the big corporations would be reversed. That if we wouldn't be involved in so many wars that aren't ours, some big funds could be slashed from the Defense (someone once said that Al Quaeda had one goal in mind - to bankrupt us - I strat believing they were right). Take out of most of the extrenal help we give away while people home are starving and have no health care - I know, it sounds cruel, but when you don't have food to feed your kids you don't take a loan to feed the neighbor's. 

A friend of mine said last evening - gather about 10 housewives randomly from the country, of the kind that in the last years have stretched the dollar from one day to the other, and you can be sure this darn budget would be fixed in a few hours.

River_Rat

Interesting listing of what things will be closed during a shutdown: 

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/04/politics/interactive.govt.shutdown.list/index.html?hpt=T2 

Of special interest to me because a friend has recently relapsed with her lymphoma.  She's already had chemo and an auto stem cell transplant, so about all that's left for her is an allo transplant or clinical trials.  I just got this news yesterday so this hit me in the gut:

Closed/ceased   Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health - No new clinical trials; won't accept new patients 

Alpal

And no new clinical trials is pro life??

Wabbit

This is exactly what really really scares me about what a part of the Republican party has become.  The minute they get a tiny majority it is all macho strutting and 'my way or the highway'.  They play a 51% election win as though they have been given dictatorial rights.  It is this authoritarian, controlling mindset that creeps me out. 

Planned Parenthood provides pap smears, birth control and health screenings on a sliding scale to millions of mostly young adult women who could not afford it otherwise.  IMHO adequate and available birth control does more to prevent abortions than anything else out there.  No unplanned pregnancy and abortion is not even an issue.  Take away those services and you are going to have more abortions not fewer.  It's not rocket science. 

I wish the real Republicans would take their party back.  The moderate ones who understand that compromise and looking out equally for the interests of everyone is what makes this country work.  We need at least a two party system.  We do not need a bunch of control freaks trying to play dictator. 

rosemary-b

If the $300 million dollars will be in the budget either way why are they still fighting over it? Because it is not about cutting spending but about ideological change.

That should be handled in other bills than the budget. Holding the budget for ransom so that the Republicans can push forward ideological points they could get no other way is deceitful and immoral.

Something is deeply wrong with people who would do things like that.

Alpal

Exactly the same thing they did in Wisconsin. All about collective bargaining -  not about the budget. Why are they so afraid to bring their issues out in the open?

IronJawedBCAngel

I do not take the GOP or the Tea Party seriously on their proclaimation to be fiscally conservative until they stop protecting the upper 2%, ultra wealthy from tax increases.  That is shared responsibility and sacrifice.  They should not be attacking Planned Parenthood or any other entity that is vital to providing life saving health care to women. 

Very little that they are proposing has to do with fiscal responsibility.  It is their means of trying to advance their platform and social beliefs on the rest of America.

My letters of the last few days have included the demand that if they shut the government down, they go without their paychecks and benefits.  Needless to say, a vast cavern of silence from the GOP members I contacted.

When they ran in November, the GOP and Tea Party also said they were going to devote their time to creating jobs.  They have not done anything but try to take down Big Bird and Planned Parenthood, redefine rape,and hold this country hostage.  A pox on their houses!

Anonymous

It is the DEMOCRATS who won't agree to letting the funding go to the states for distribution.  Because they trust the folks who run Planned Parenthood more than they trust state governments?

Unless there is something magical about Planned Parenthood that makes them uniquely able to deliver these services? 

rosemary-b

GOP

WHERE ARE THE JOBS??

apple

Gosh Day.. hugs and thank you to your sweetie

bluedahlia

Yes Day...sending you lots of hugs!

rosemary-b

It's still the Republicans who say no budget without ideological changes. They are the ones holding the budget hostage. If they want that change they should go through the regular legislative process.

3monstmama

I am pleased to read in the Washington Post that part of the agreement between the parties may cut federal pay [already frozen for 2 years] and step increases [only given at certain times based on good performance].  Thank goodness!  I mean those cuts will certainly quickly lead to a balenced budget and a bright future for us all.  I sure hope they made sure to include bonuses for federal workers and cut those too. 

Yes siree, we are certainly saved because something truly constructive is happening. 

As opposed to unconstructive  things like actually making corporations pay taxes or taxing the mega bonuses to Wall Street or cutting subsidies to agribiz which won't do diddly to diminish the deficit.

Alpal

Day - so sorry about your honey. My niece is scheduled to join her hubby in England on April 15th. Furniture is already gone. She's a stay at home new mom and is frantic about what's going to happen if his paycheck doesn't come. Even tho gov't pays for relocation, she has a mortgage payment to make as their house hasn't sold. He's already done one tour in Iraq and recently returned from 2nd tour in Afghanistan. They are the true patriots not the ones who think witholding his paycheck is just fine!

Wabbit

Planned Parenthood has a long time track record of providing those services to all who need them.   So yes, there is something about PP that makes them uniquely able to provide those services. 

Put it under state control and it all becomes political and will be based on the whims of whichever party is in charge at any given time. 

Jobs - they haven't even mentioned jobs since the election.  No way ... they are too busy trying to impose their social agenda on the rest of us and funnel more tax money to their donor/owners. 

rosemary-b

Oh Day

I remember how hard it is to have a loved one deployed. And my DH never went to war. How your heart must ache. And then money worries on top of that. This is no way to treat our fighting men and women.

rosemary-b

3monstas

Yippee!! A pay cut. Just what I always wanted.

Now when do corporate taxes go up along with taxes on the top 2%?

What that's not in the budget?

There are 8000,000 federal employees. A large voting bloc if they ever got organized. A pay cut might do it.

River_Rat

Day, I'm so sorry to hear of what you're going through.  My heart goes out to those who will be really hurt if there is a government stoppage.  I thank your sweetheart for his service.

lassie11

What a remarkable country where a few legislators can hold the whole country hostage to their narrow minority view of a single issue.  Their tortured logic that maybe possibly, amidst agreed extremely valuable health services, might come something they don't like is bizarre from this distance.  And really, why is it even an issue in budget deliberations when it has been settled legally for some time?!   Most peculiar.  

Bren-2007

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/08/planned-parenthood-president-shutdown_n_846640.html

As House Republicans threaten to shut down the government over federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the woman at the helm of that controversial organization, Cecile Richards, is fighting to set the record straight about what exactly is at stake.

"This isn't about federal funds being cut from Planned Parenthood," Richards, who's led Planned Parenthood since 2006, told The Huffington Post. "What has been proposed by the House of Representatives is to say that women can no longer go to Planned Parenthood to get their cancer screenings, to get their birth control, to get any kind of services through federal programs. That's what's getting lost here," she said.

Wabbit

This is not about the budget or reducing the deficit.

This is about attacking anybody and anything they see as Democratic supporters.  It's a political witch hunt intended to cripple any opposition to their agenda.  Authoritarian types do not like sharing power.

I have never before had the absolute distrust and loathing for any other politicians in my entire life as I have for this bunch of radical rightwingers.   I really do want to go back to the days when I could consider myself either a moderate Democrat or a moderate Republican and be comfortable with either or both.     

Anonymous

Somehow the President of Planned Parenthood rings hollow in her pleas given that she managed to take a $400,000 salary a couple of years ago.  Do you think that she's had a wage freeze?  Or a pay cut?  Do you think she'll get a bonus if she can keep that federal money flowing?

Cecile Richards, the daughter of former Texas Governor Ann Richards, received a salary of $385,163 plus $11,876 in benefits and deferred compensation.

That's according to the Internal Revenue Service Form 990 Planned Parenthood filed in 2008 - the last year in which the abortion business released a public annual report showing additional financial information.

crazy4carrots

 From democracy to plutocracy in less than a half-century.  Why is this "foreigner" (or should I say "alien") concerned?  Because our Conservative government is heading in the same direction.

From TPMCafe:

Bill Moyers, the highly respected longtime PBS commentator and President Lyndon Johnson's lieutenant in creating Great Society legislation like Medicare and the Voting Rights Act, calls the American political system of today a "plutocracy" -- that is, one that is governed by the few and for the few.

Last November, Moyers delivered a speech at Boston University (the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture) explaining how this plutocracy was created. Suffice it to say that it didn't happen by accident. (You should read the Moyers speech here or watch it here. It is simply the best explication by anyone of how we got to this miserable moment in our history.)

Moyers explains the loss of American democracy like this:

The Gilded Age returned with a vengeance in our time. It slipped in quietly at first, back in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began a "massive decades-long transfer of national wealth to the rich." ... The trend continued under George W. Bush -- those huge tax cuts for the rich, remember, which are now about to be extended because both parties have been bought off by the wealthy -- and by 2007 the wealthiest 10% of Americans were taking in 50% of the national income. Today, a fraction of people at the top today earn more than the bottom 120 million Americans.

Over the past 30 years, with the complicity of Republicans and Democrats alike, the plutocrats, or plutonomists ... have used their vastly increased wealth to assure that government does their bidding. ...

Moyers concluded:

Everyone knows millions of Americans are in trouble. As Robert Reich recently summed up the state of working people: They've lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings. Their grown children have moved back in with them. Their state and local taxes are rising. Teachers and firefighters are being laid off. The roads and bridges they count on are crumbling, pipelines are leaking, schools are dilapidated, and public libraries are being shut. Why isn't government working for them? Because it's been bought off. It's as simple as that. And until we get clean money we're not going to get clean elections, and until we get clean elections, you can kiss goodbye government of, by, and for the people. Welcome to the plutocracy.

Alpal

Refering to Planned Parenthood as the"abortion business" is like referring to the Tea Party as the "starving business" - as in no pay checks mean no groceries or the "killing business" as in no pay checks mean no doctors visits.