Thursday, January 5, 2017

Yes The GOP is STUPID

CNN GOP Plan to Defund Planned Parenthood


I am assuming I will be using that post title many times over the next 2 years as the Religious Right chooses to over reach and alienate many Fiscal Conservative Socially Moderate voters like myself. Here are posts where Jerry and I have been arguing this lately.


G2A Conservative vs Liberal Intent
G2A Birth Control Funding

47 comments:

  1. How long will it take and what policies / gop results for John to wish Hillary had won the election?

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  2. Laurie, Quite a bit...

    It is nice to be complaining about the silly GOP for a change. You must agree after your getting so angry at me for picking on the Democratic politicians...

    And I do not need to listen to the Liberals complaining about those GOP folks obstructing the proper function of government for at least 2 years.

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  3. Defunding Planned Parenthood plays well with the GOP base, and doesn't seem to hurt them that much in presidential elections. The problem the GOP has is that many of it's behind the scenes financial supporters like Planned Parenthood, and so they pressure their legislators not to be effective on the issue. This is true with respect to a lot of issues. Lots of GOP voters simply reject the more extreme GOP rhetoric on issues because they think GOP moderates in combination with Democrats will prevent Republicans from acting on their rhetoric. We are seeing that dynamic play out with Obamacare now.

    --Hiram

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  4. I know I am counting a lot on the Democrats and socially moderate Republicans to push back against the far righter behavior police.

    And I think if the GOP increases the deficit, reduces the care available to poor women, and unintentionally creates a lot of unwanted children. Many of us Conservative suburban voters will give up on them.

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  5. Republicans don't care about the deficit when they are in charge. And Republican dogma of personal responsibility pretty much lets them off the hook on issues of sexuality. With respect to suburban voters, Hillary defeated Trump by 10 percentage points in the third Congressional district. In presidential elections, Republicans have already lost the suburban vote. What is interesting in the third is that this doesn't translate into the vote for congress where the republican won easily.

    --Hiram

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  6. sort of related to the topic the gop is stupid. it is really more about the media is stupid.


    The Age of Fake Policy

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  7. about -"You must agree after your getting so angry at me for picking on the Democratic politicians."

    the thing that was very disturbing to me is your continued inability to see Trump for who he is - the worst person to ever be elected to the office of president - unbelievably corrupt and incompetent for starters. I will continue to post links related to the major defects shortcomings in his qualifications and character.

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  8. Laurie, it is sometimes said of Mussolini that he made the trains run on time. And they still do, in Italy. I would be much more interested in hearing your complaints about the actual policies Trump pursues or accomplishes than what a terrible person he is (or was). Trump himself has conceded that Obama "seems like a nice guy," but unfortunately Obama's history on policy have made it difficult for me to make that concession, though in fairness I cannot say I have ever met him.

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  9. Laurie regarding your link... Please remember one of my favorite sayings...

    "Perception is Reality"

    If Trump can make enough CEO's believe that it is better for them to have Plants in the USA, they will have Plants in the USA.

    If American's can ever believe that "Buy American" is best for them personally, they will pay more to pay our higher paid employees. (ie no tariffs reqd)

    How often did you ever here Bush or Obama push on either of these groups to do the right thing for the American workers and our country?

    Now for the BIG question, how do we get the Liberal establishment and citizens to put their money where their mouths are? Start buying from American companies and/or at least product and services made by American workers? And if they really believe in Unions, buying mostly Union made product and services.

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  10. Laurie,
    Keep the Faith

    Trump may even surprise himself...

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  11. "how do we get the Liberal establishment and citizens to put their money where their mouths are?" Liberals would do such things through force of government. Conservatives believe that you should make such choices easy by getting government OUT of the free market. Examples abound of companies freed from high regulations, taxes, mandates and meddling, that go on to succeed. Suppose US companies became the low-cost producer, which they can?

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  12. As I noted elsewhere...

    Many of those regulations and burdens are there because irresponsible people and businesses abused the freedoms at the expense of our society.

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  13. do you have any examples of God using a sociopath?

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  14. John, I disagree. Those regulations and burdens are there because (mostly liberal) politicians thought they could prevent the tide from coming in, like King Canute. In the firm belief that they knew better than the rest of us and that we had to be protected from our own freedoms, they created law after law that merely prevented us from doing business. For example: We have laws that say I can't work for less than $7.50/hour, and that I cannot as an employer pay less than that. If I need a job and am willing to take less (hey, maybe it's just pin money), what business is it of government to say I cannot? Here's another: AFAIK, I cannot buy a stock until I have at least acknowledged I have "read the prospectus." If I'm stupid enough to buy a stock without looking into it, isn't that MY lookout?

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  15. Jerry,
    As I said, I agree that there are some unnecessary regulations.

    However, there are many that were triggered because greedy and / or lazy people abused other citizens and/or our environment for their own personal gain.

    Be it dumping waste improperly, giving out mortgages without proper vetting, claiming non-existent assets on their company financials, selling questionable /non-existent equities, price fixing, setting up monopolies, violating employee trust, clear cutting highly erodible areas, etc, etc, etc.

    Those free loaders are out there, looking for ways to benefit personally while transferring the costs to other citizens and/or society.

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  16. I think you (and the liberal politicians) miss the whole point of law and regulation. Dumping waste improperly is correctly seen as a crime if it harms, or can harm, other people. But government can and has drawn that line at ridiculous points. For example, CO2 is NOT a pollutant harmful to human health, but the EPA tries to regulate it. There is a law in Ohio now that strip mines have to be returned to "original contour" rather than the previous practice of building lakes and forests for recreation and future timbering. And Obama has given a major pass to windmills to kill as many eagles as they want, while making it a criminal federal offense to accidentally shoot one.

    It used to be that giving out bad mortgages fell back on the bank or lender, so they didn't do it. Then the government ordered them to do it AND bought up those loans so the banks wouldn't get hurt by their "mistakes." How many kinds of stupid is that? Price-fixing and monopolies are already punishable, so we do not need additional laws about such things, yet government seems to want to take EVERY variation of fraud as a special case and therefore punish entire industries for the one offender. How many millions of man-hours have been spent responding to Sarbanes-Oxley, just because Exxon did some shenanigans that were illegal under the law already? How many billions of shoes have been taken off and inspected at the airport? And yet the shoe bomber got on the plane, and they have never caught another. Yes, some law and regulation is justified. Right now, the vast bulk of it is not.

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  17. I think we will have to disagree... I may go up to 50/50...

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  18. I think 50% would be an excellent start and in fact far beyond what I would expect our all-wise and most beneficent masters in DC would ever allow to escape their clutches. I would settle, for the moment, for rolling back half of just Obama's new regulations, so long as Dodd-Frank and the Clean Power plan (momentarily stalled) were included in that half. Sarbox has been largely absorbed into the economy, I think.

    By the way, if we are going to pick a number like 50%, are we going to measure by number of titles, by number of lines of written regulation, or by economic cost to the economy? I would think measuring by the latter would get you to 50% FAR faster than by either of the other two.

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  19. It is overwhelming how many pages there are.

    No wonder the Bureaucrats, Lawyers, Consultants, Lobbyists and Accountants love this complexity. They just keep growing the size of their business, whether their is any real benefit to the citizens / country or not.

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  20. I do not see the costs of all this regulation anywhere in those charts, though I do see that it cost us $60 billion just to pay all of these bureaucrats. The total cost of regulation has been estimated at some $1.1 trillion dollars. I see one chart supposedly outlining the benefits of this regulation but those numbers are highly suspect. It's like those ads telling you that you can save two thousand dollars off the price of a new car but failing to mention the cost of the car.

    I wonder what percentage of the current (what, 160,000 pages) of the current federal regulations would survive a rigorous and objective cost-benefit analysis?

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  21. propose or try to privatise medicare - hopefully this will succeed, because the current system is not only broke, but broken. Simply converting this to a quote premium support system" will lead to better care at lower cost, simple as that. All proposals will I have heard for it will make it strictly optional. What's wrong with that?

    repeal Obamacare- the number of people who will lose their Obama care coverage is about like the number, including me, who lost their insurance when Obama care came along. About three fourths of the "newly insured" are those who were eligible for Medicaid before but had not signed up, and that will continue. Most of the repeal plans have provisions for continuing Obama care coverage at least until something better becomes available (and frankly that won't take long.)

    major cuts in environmental regulation and reg of the financial sector - two quite different things, but environmental regulations like the "clean power plan" have tremendous costs and essentially zero benefits, so by any definition of common sense they should be eliminated. The financial regulations put in place by Dodd-Frank have been a disaster with hundreds of small banks being forced out of business, and small businesses being unable to obtain startup money. That too needs to go ASAP.

    smallish cuts in SS - we may see an attempt to change the cost of living rules, or even to increase the minimum retirement age, but I hope not. What is really needed is to start a 40 year transition to fully private accounts, mandatory and government approved if you insist. The benefit to retirees and to the economy as a whole would be huge and would probably save the program from the semi-bankruptcy it inevitably faces.

    major cuts to snap-I do not know where you are hearing such proposals, but welfare reform done right ought to be very high on the agenda. And if SNAP is replaced with the program that spends just as much but helps people get off of it over time, isn't that better?

    major tax cuts for the rich- I don't care. Every time we "reform" the tax code seem to need to "soak the rich" and as a result they can no longer afford our goods and services. Our taxes go down but it's because we lost our jobs.

    major increase in the deficit - I don't think so. Democrats were the ones making drunken sailors look like Scrooge. I'm sure the debt will continue to rise, but unless the GOP is just stupid drunk, the deficit will start to come down. Of course, the best way to do it is all of these other things that you have been worrying about! :-)

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  22. Laurie's comment was getting lost over on the freeloader topic, so I thought I would move it here and respond, second half first.
    "about my side topic - the radical GOP - here is a little bit about what I expect them to do, which seems radical to me:

    major cuts in medicaid - highly likely"

    I don't think it highly likely at all. First of all, Medicaid is largely paid for and administered by the states. The most likely thing to happen to Medicaid is that the federal government will "block grant" the current amount of money to the states and allow them to set up their own programs, which will be more efficient and less costly. Minnesota's was, before Mark Dayton jumped on MNSURE. What a fiasco.

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  23. Laurie, I left out one important note in the above. It is that you are not going to be happy so long as you continue to categorize what the GOP is trying to do, or actually accomplishes, in negative terms. My concern is that the GOP will NOT accomplish these necessary and beneficial things, and consider my chances of disappointment greater than yours.

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  24. Religious and secular people with morals cannot get past the brutal, dehumanizing aspects of abortion. I can't say I blame them, in fact I can empathize with them completely.

    I wish with all my heart it wasn't so, but being the realist I am, I think it's important to remember that Planned Parenthood keeps millions of future leftists, moral reprobates and wards of the state from hitting the streets or the voting booth. Importantly, it allows these groups to voluntarily self limit their numbers.

    Succinctly stated, on one hand, it lowers American society to the standards of a Mongol horde, but the alternative is lowering American society to Mumbai standards of living.

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  25. Fred, I almost agree with you, so long as those having the abortions are limited to "future leftists, moral reprobates and wards of the state." But I don't believe 70+% of black women fit into any or all of those categories. I believe that with proper help, most of them could become decent and responsible citizens. It wouldn't be easy and would require government to quit treating them as "leftists, morally acceptable and wards of the state" and start treating them as valued members of society with human potential. I swear, government treats them like the cows in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

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  26. Please remember that if effective forms of birth control were free and readily available to all women, abortions would rarely be necessary.

    Strangely the same Religious people who are against abortions are also against taking this simple low cost pragmatic step to help prevent the need for them.

    Of course, this shouldn't surprise me too much since those same religious folks only seem to be concerned about the child's health, well being and education until it is born. Then it is the irresponsible Baby Maker's problem. :-)

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  27. I have seen it as a New York city statistic, but I haven't seen data that suggests that 70% of black women abort their kids nationwide. Besides, the groups I identified come in all colors.

    We have been trying, mightily, for 40 years to help them become valued members of society with human potential, and failed just as mightily. Most American cities of any size have neighborhoods that fit the description of third world war zones. We simply cannot continue like this for the simple reason that the least productive people are out breeding the productive class.

    John, contraceptives are readily available, free or at reduced price, everywhere. They hand the stuff out in public schools for Christ's sake. The problem is feckless, irresponsible people won't use them of their own accord, and the liberal government bureaucracies refuse to provide the motivation to make them use them.

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  28. Fred,
    You misunderstood the 72% reference

    And no the effective methods are not free or readily available as compared to other modern countries. See the comments here for more useful links

    If you have a web address that proves differently please post it.

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  29. $4 at Walmart
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/business/27cnd-drug.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

    $9 at Target
    http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/9-price-months-supply-birth-control-pills-target-3-miles-georgetown-law

    Free

    http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-birth-control/
    https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-minnesota-north-dakota-south-dakota/archive/no-cost-birth-control
    http://www.livestrong.com/article/70512-birth-control-pills/
    http://www.reproductiveaccess.org/resource/low-cost-birth-control/
    http://healthservices.illinoisstate.edu/pharmacy/birth-control.shtml
    https://www.birthcontrolbuzz.com/

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  30. John, I see you're stepping in for Jerry to explain he was referring 72% of black kids being born out of wedlock, most to one parent homes.

    That is terrible, but we were talking about abortion so you can understand how I misunderstood Jerry.

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  31. "Please remember that if effective forms of birth control were free and readily available to all women, abortions would rarely be necessary."

    Would you care to offer some reasonable proof for that wild speculation? The most effective birth control seems to be improved economic status. Why do white women have abortions, if birth control is readily available to them?

    You are right, I was counting the percent of unwed motherhood. Add to that the abortions: "Among black women, the current abortion ratio is 420. That means there are 420 abortions for every 1,000 live births. Statistically, 30% of black pregnancies end in abortion (excluding miscarriages). Among white women, the abortion ratio is 121—which means less than 11% of white pregnancies end in abortion." It is clear there is "too much conceivin' goin' on out there."

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  32. "It is clear there is "too much conceivin' goin' on out there."

    Well, too much conceivin by people that are not qualified to have a pet turtle, for sure.

    There are a lot of reasons we are plagued by feckless, irresponsible behavior, but IMO, one of the biggest drivers is the normalization of feckless, irresponsible behavior; we have removed shame from the equation.

    Shame is a powerful motivator. No one likes to be shamed, and folks will go to extreme lengths to avoid it. I'd welcome a return of shaming people for behaving in shameful ways.

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  33. Thanks John. Any response to the links?

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  34. Fred,
    For some reason Jerry considers my supporting free and readily available LARC as a plan to eliminate all undesirables. Where as I just want them to have the same choices as well off adults do.

    Please remember that Birth Control availability and family planning services did improve under President Obama. Unfortunately now the GOP wants to eliminate the ACA mandated benefits, Defund Planned Parenthood, etc. None of which bodes well for poor sexually active adults or their unplanned for babies.

    Please also note that $9/mth and a yearly doctor's exam to get the prescription is a lot of money for people who are struggling to keep a roof over their head and food in their belly.

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  35. Please also note that $9/mth and a yearly doctor's exam to get the prescription is a lot of money for people who are struggling to keep a roof over their head and food in their belly.

    WADR; when was the last time you saw anyone in poor neighborhoods without a cell phone? I'm sorry, but that dog won't hunt.

    With the exception, perhaps, of homeless drug addicts and alcoholics, everyone can afford $9 a month. And if that is really too much to afford, you have more important things to do than bed hopping.

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  36. Jerry,
    You are like the liberals in that you always want to make this about Race. I don't care about race. I care that babies are only conceived by and born to Parents who wanted them, planned for them and are mature enough to care for them. Anything we can do to promote this is a GREAT Thing.

    The stats are worse for Black families, but they are bad for all families.
    Living Arrangements
    Mother Only Households

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  37. You may not make it about race, but race contributes mightily to the circumstances to which you object (without a solution). We allot funds to schools based on race. We allocate [non-]punishment in schools based on race. The purpose of Planned Parenthood was to reduce the "undesirable" black population and some black leaders have called it "creeping genocide" that black children are aborted at 3-5 times the rate for whites. And it is undeniable that unwed mothers are more than 3 times as common in the "black community" as they are among whites.

    All that is not to say that race must figure in the solution, in fact the opposite. We need to get rid of the idea that just because you are black you cannot be educated, married, and hold down a good job.

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  38. "...black children are aborted at 3-5 times the rate for whites."

    And what are the correlating levels of poverty? Are black people living in poverty at 3-5 times the rate for whites?

    Joel

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  39. I must be missing something. If being poor causes abortions, then why aren't we trying to cure being poor? And on the other shoe, if being fatherless causes crime, why are we not trying to fix THAT? Some people, apparently, want to fix the blame more than fix the problem.

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  40. I think you should get right on fixing those things. You got some of that snake oil you are promoting? :-)

    Thanks for giving me an excuse to pull out some golden oldies.
    G2A Blame vs Contributions
    G2A Causation vs Correlation
    G2A Why are Poor People Poor

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  41. Nah. I want to see you try your approach first, of just getting them to "take responsibility." They're already "takers," right? It shouldn't be too difficult and if it works, it's much easier than the great upheaval against liberal government that I propose. Besides, I'm still pushing on the schools to do their job, with the "unlucky kids" we already have.

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