Some thoughts for “Values Voters”

Will anti-abortion zeal reelect President Obama?

No president can, much less will, materially reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States. Nor will any president's Supreme Court appointees. If you think otherwise, check out Table One. A mere 13 states accounted for just a touch under 75% of all abortions performed in United States during 2008. Those statistics hold the key to important realities that "values voters” would do well to consider while casting their ballots in 2012 Republican Presidential primaries and caucuses.

Table 1
2008
Total US	1,211,500
State	Number	Percent	CumPct
California	214,190	17.68%	17.68%
New York	153,110	12.64%	30.32%
Florida	94,360	7.79%	38.11%
Texas	84,610	6.98%	45.09%
New Jersey	54,160	4.47%	49.56%
Illinois	54,920	4.53%	54.09%
Michigan	36,790	3.04%	57.13%
Maryland	34,290	2.83%	59.96%
Ohio	33,550	2.77%	62.73%
North Carolina	33,140	2.74%	65.47%
Pennsylvania	41,000	3.38%	68.85%
Georgia	39,820	3.29%	72.14%
Virginia	28,520	2.35%	74.49%
[Number of abortions by state of occurrence from surveys of hospitals, clinics, and physicians identified as providers of abortion services conducted by the Guttmacher Institute. The Guttmacher Institute  reallocates abortions to the woman's state of residence for survey years. Abortion rates are computed per 1,000 women 15 to 44 years of age on July 1 of specified year]
For more information:
http://www.guttmacher.org/
Internet release date: 09/30/2011
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/

For 38 years, anti-abortion advocates have spent millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours failing to “overturn Roe vs. Wade.” None of those efforts has reduced the number of abortions one scintilla. Moreover, had they managed to overturn Roe vs. Wade, Table One demonstrates that they would not have accomplished much more than the nothing they have accomplished so far.

A little background. If the Supreme Court reversed itself tomorrow and overturned Roe vs. Wade, abortions would not suddenly become illegal anywhere, much less nationwide. A reversal would simply enable individual states to pass new laws restricting or banning abortions; just as when the Supreme Court partially reversed its nationwide ban on the death penalty. That reversal did not reinstate the death penalty; it allowed states to reinstate the death penalty—albeit, under specific guidelines. Reversing Roe vs. Wade would doubtless operate in much the same way.

Possible exception: According to Wikipedia, some states, including Illinois, have passed “trigger laws” that would reinstate abortion bans if the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade. This might reduce some abortions if bright blue Illinois does not repeal the trigger. Thus, the impact of trigger laws remains to be seen. For now, your author will stand by his premises.

Cold hard facts. Without considering the oft debated moral, theological and freedom issues swirling about the abortion debate, consider some facts that clearly demonstrate the ruthless bottom line on abortion. Seven of the 13 states in Table One are “bright blue”; that is, they virtually always vote overwhelmingly Democrat in national elections. Three of the states are “purple”; that is, they sometimes vote Democrat; they sometimes vote Republican. Second, remember that Roe vs. Wade originally applied only to the first trimester of a pregnancy; although that has crept up to around seven months today.

In 2003, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which the Supreme Court upheld, outlawed some late-term abortions; thereby stripping away the arguably most powerful anti-abortion argument. A reversal of Roe vs. Wade might lead to state laws outlawing other late-term abortions; but, those are generally few in number. Thus, while Table One's three red states, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, might restrict some abortions, they probably have gone about as far as is feasible already.

One must recognise that, as in the case of "values voters", pro-abortion voters tend to passionately hold their positions. Those passions, the large numbers of abortions in those 13 states, and the existing latitude states already have make it unlikely, arguably remotely likely, that any states in Table One will materially restrict abortions further.

What about a constitutional amendment? Some have glibly suggested passing a constitutional amendment, in the unlikely event Congress fails to outlaw all abortions nationwide after a hypothetical reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Remembering that 39 states must ratify a constitutional amendment, take a second look at Table One. The reader will not see the eight blue states of Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wisconsin, Delaware, Connecticut, or Rhode Island. That makes 15 bright blue states that almost surely will not ratify such a hypothetical and fanciful constitutional amendment—at least not much before hell freezes over. Given the math, the idea, when emanating from a leader, seems either delusional or demagogic. It will never happen—and this from someone who “never says never.”

What have Anti-abortion advocates accomplished? Instead of reducing the number of abortions, antiabortion advocates have elected myriad pro-abortion fanatics, most of them leftist democrats. Some would argue that antiabortion advocates gave Bill Clinton just the edge he needed to beat George H. W. Bush. Moreover, President Clinton paid no political price when he vetoed a bill banning virtual infanticide! One can further argue that, in league with the tea party, “values voters” let the democrats hold the Senate in 2010. How! By nominating an airhead to run against the supposedly “doomed” Harry Reid; an airhead who had publicly acknowledged at least dabbling with witchcraft. Anti-abortion and Tea Party fanaticism gave the Democrats their 51st vote—a clear, if thin majority in the Senate. Congratulations, “values voters”.

For almost 38 years, “values voters” have done little more than “tilt at windmills!” Along the way, they have weakened their own Cause, enabled democrats to weaken and damage the military readiness and economy of the United States; and they have given people of faith a bad name. The Nation has sustained far too high a cost to justify a 38‑year‑long "feel‑good statement." “Values voters” would do well to leave such things to the "Losertarians".

Implications.” Insisting on candidates with impeccable “right to life” credentials has only elected people with whom "values voters" intensely disagree! “Values voters” need to recognize that they have lost the battle among the electorate. Through the ballot box, "values voters" have accomplished almost nothing; they have not materially reduced, and almost surely will not materially reduce, the number of abortions. They need to find other, non-violent, means to reach their goal. Perhaps more importantly, “values voters” need to recognize that “one trick pony” Rick Santorum will begin any General Election campaign with a huge number of women deeply, and intansingently committed to his defeat. He has no more chance of winning in November than does yours truly. For myriad reasons, it seems almost equally likely that Mitt Romney would lose in November as well—polls and pundits notwithstanding.

Today, America needs a conservative and practical visionary to win the Whitehouse and start pulling the nation out of the morass into which it has sunk. From this observer’s perspective, only Newt Gingrich satisfies those criteria.

“Values voters” need not concede their deeply held moral and theological concerns about abortion. They do need to recognize the practical implications of their dogged insistence on solid anti-abortion credentials in every Republican candidate and consider their next steps!

ADDENDUM: Since this post went up on February 10, 2012, Senator Santorum has unleashed a torrent of inflammatory comments on topics ranging from the evils of birth control to the nauseating nature of the separation of church and state. One might think that the Senator wanted to make sure he never won another election in his life, much less the Presidency in 2012. Perhaps Senator Santorum is a mole for the Obama campaign.

DJ

Good News; Bad News

A post on a Yahoo Group to which your Faithful Correspondent subscribes decried some rather troubling news. Disturbingly, the post claimed that on May 11, 2010, President Obama abolished the “Veterans Preference” in Federal hiring. A bit of research turned up both good news and bad news. On that date, President Obama issued the:

“Presidential Memorandum – Improving the Federal Recruitment and Hiring Process.”

First, the good news:

The following paragraph contained the only reference to the Veterans' Preference in the Memorandum:

“(2) a goal-focused, data-driven system for holding agencies accountable for improving the quality and speed of agency hiring, achieving agency hiring reform targets, and satisfying merit system principles and veterans' preference requirements....”

Nothing in the cited paragraph supports the assertion, even to your utterly GOP, but still Faithful, Correspondent, that President Obama had abolished the Veterans' Preference.

Now for the possibly bad news:

“(a) consistent with merit system principles and other requirements of title 5, United States Code, and subject to guidance to be issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), adopt hiring procedures that:

“(1) eliminate any requirement that applicants respond to essay-style questions when submitting their initial application materials for any Federal job . . . .”

Many jobs require the ability to write clearly and concisely. Essay questions can reveal a great deal, but not everything, about the writing ability of a candidate. For example, since the paragraph above addresses the initial application, typically completed online, an applicant might have someone else wrote the essays--although that seems a bit unlikely.

Used properly, essay questions can help weed out many applicants early in the process who will not measure up. Secondly, subsequent rounds of the process might include essay questions under controlled conditions. This would eliminate those who had no chance at the position early; thus, to the extent that essay questions remained, the new rule could save costs.

A question remains as to whether essay questions now included in initial applications would find their way back into a second round of examining candidates. In addition, essay readers need to remember the necessarily subjective nature their task.

Despite the possible flaws of using essay questions, your Faithful Correspondent sees no benefit or value in completely tossing them out. Doing so would almost certainly result in a longer, more costly hiring processes; and a somewhat less qualified Federal workforce than otherwise would be the case. So much for the possibly bad news.

Now for the really bad news:

First, a bit of historical context. As presidents have left office, they have typically reclassified the statuses of some jobs from “discretionary appointment” to Civil Service. Doing so kept the incoming presidents from firing cronies the outgoing president had appointed, and replacing them with-----their own cronies.

With the foregoing historical perspective, consider the following paragraph from the Memorandum:

3. 
   

   provide for selection from among a larger number of qualified applicants by using the "category rating" approach (as authorized by section 3319 of title 5, United States Code), rather than the "rule of 3" approach, under which managers may only select from among the three highest scoring applicants;

Likely Translation: “To the victors go the spoils.”

Crafting “category definitions” to fit the background of one's cronies would not seem likely to "strain the brains" of many executives. Over a century ago, the blatant corruption of the “Spoils System” led reformers to the create the Civil Service System. A linchpin of those reforms was the “rule of 3”. While one can criticize the rule of three for many reasons, it has, for over a century, protected Civil Service and the Nation from many abuses inherent in the old “Spoils System”.

Perhaps President Obama prefers the “efficiency” and convenience inherent in weakening the Civil Service System to its time-tested safeguards. Perhaps President Obama misses his “Chicago roots” more than we all realized.

Here is a link to the Memorandum text:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-improving-federal-recruitment-and-hiring-process

Picking Apart the Health Care Takeover

Your correspondent has not heard anyone discuss the idea that the Preexisting Condition Requirement of the Health Care Takeover amounts to an "unconstitutional taking." Thus, the Fifth Amendment could provide a strong argument for overturning at least what is perhaps the most onerous provision of the Health Care Takeover:

Amendment V (1791)

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

As I wrote to my son, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, last night:

"The first form hospitals will have anyone sign when they comes into the emergency room, or are admitted generally, will be an application for a Cadillac insurance policy."

Said differently, when those who forgo health insurance and suffer that huge $700+ annual fine, hospitals and doctors will routinely have them "buy" insurance upon admission for a critical injury or illness. Ultimately, they will probably develop a standard form that combines signing over benefits and applying for insurance should the person not have it. So, "Pay an annual $795 fine; get busted up in an auto accident; sign here--your covered. Insurance company can't say no."

Given the foregoing scenario, private insurance companies will become insolvent long before Obama Care starts paying benefits. Accordingly, the preexisting condition provision will almost surely lead to the bankruptcy of, or the dramatic decline in the value of, every health insurance carrier in America. That would seem to give "standing" to the following "persons" to file suit asking for the overturn of this most onerous provision of the bill:

• Health Insurance carriers
• Stockholders of Health Insurance carriers
• Bondholders of Health Insurance carriers
• Unsecured Creditors of Health Insurance carriers
• (Conceivably) Those dumb enough to actually buy health insurance
  

The argument from the Fifth Amendment could provide a means to overturn, or at least nibble at the edges of, the Health Care Takeover.

One last point, the exact calculation of the fines remains a bit unclear to yours truly at this moment. Still, the calculations reported to date all come in well below the unsubsidized cost of my COBRA coverage.

DJ

Corn Husker Kick Back -- What to Do?

I hope everyone reading my blog has heard about the Corn Husker Kick Back and the Florida "Medicare Advantage" given in exchange for "Yes" votes on the Health Care Takeover bill by their "undecided" Senators. While we citizens can seemingly do nothing about the bill now, I think we have one card to play. Here is what I did:


Dear Senator Feinstein:

Please fight to get California the same benefits under the Health Bill as it bestows on both Nebraska and Florida.

The desire of President Obama to sign a "deficit neutral" bill should not force California into bankruptcy. The Health Bill could do just that as it pushes a big Medicaid burden onto the states. With the California economy on life support, no state needs more relief from the increased costs than ours. California has far fewer per capita resources to absorb the Bill's large unfunded Medicaid mandate. At the same time, a greater percentage of Californians than Nebraskans rely on Medicaid.

If the new Medicaid burden will give Nebraska a headache, it will give California a concussion!

In addition to pushing costs onto the states, the Health Bill takes away an important senior benefit: Medicare Advantage--except that is for seniors living in Florida. Before my late father passed away, he frequently extolled the virtues of his Medicare Advantage plan. Imagine then, the frustration that thousands of California seniors will feel when their benefits disappear. Realizing that Floridians will continue enjoying their Medicare Advantage plans will only compound that frustration. While you may not be able to undo the unfair "Florida deal;" you can at least get California the same deal.

One would expect that having an experienced, loyal and highly regarded Senator would bring significant benefits to California. Instead, your loyalty to the cause of Health Care seems to have brought Californians less value and higher taxes.


Merry Christmas to all; and to all, a good night.

DJ

The Great Health Care Takeover

As Compared to Health Insurance

During an apparently unplanned moment of candor at his press conference on July 22, 2009, President Obama seems to have accidentally “tipped his Health Care hand.” He did so by honestly answering a question from Ms. Jane Strum about how he would have handled a health care situation faced by her mother. The primary physician had recommended that her then 100-year-old mother receive a pacemaker. The cardiologist said she was too old; fortunately, a second cardiologist agreed with the primary physician. In the event, her Mom got the pacemaker; mom is still vibrant and “still kicking around” at 105.

In contrast, the President essentially told Ms. Strum that under his plan, her mother would have gotten pain pills and been told to “go home and die.” Does that last seem a bit acerbic? Perhaps one might better paraphrase the comment as, “Dr. Obama says, ‘Take two aspirin, and don’t call me in the morning--or any other time! {deleted, see addendum}.’”

President Obama insists he wants everyone “to have coverage”—an insurance term, incidentally. His answer to Ms. Strum highlights the sharp contrast between his proposed Health Care Takeover and actual “insurance”:

in·sur·ance

2. a. Coverage by a contract binding a party to indemnify another against specified loss in return for premiums paid.

More generally, for almost four thousand years, insurance has meant that one party assumed some of another party’s risk of loss in exchange for money in advance:

The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC, and practiced by early Mediterranean sailing merchants. If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender's guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen. (See the History of Insurance caption in the linked article.)

Does President Obama really want everyone “to have coverage?” If that were true, the plan would spell out the all risks it was taking on, and those it was not. Moreover, since the plan forces everyone into the System, one would expect it to “cover” any and all risks now covered by our “broken, profit ridden, greed plagued, and inefficient” health insurance system. His accidental moment of candor shows that President Obama has no plan to cover all the risks currently assumed by insurance. In fact, no one can know which risks the government will cover at any given moment.

Clearly, the President has no more intention insuring anyone than he has of resigning his office. Instead, he wants to force everyone into a system of capriciously dispensed medical care; a system that will definitely include “go home and die” for some; and inferentially, “go home and suffer” for others.

Whatever you choose to call the President’s plan, please do not call it “insurance.”

==============================================================

Addendum: Reflections upon some acerbic comments

We ought to recognize that in his rather callous remark, President Obama breached an extraordinarily difficult point: an enormous percentage of a person's lifetime medical spending occurs in the last months of life. No compassionate society seems to have dealt effectively with that seemingly intractable issue; thus, Medicare is actuarially bankrupt; and European economies stagnate under almost unbearable tax burdens. At the same time, scrapping the current, admittedly flawed, essentially market based system for a "pig in a poke" patterned on flawed European models that have met with enormous difficulties does not seem wise.

A couple of acerbic terms:

• "apparently unplanned moment of candor"
  



• "accidental moment of candor"




President Obama has become well known for carefully choosing his words. Telling someone, "I would have sent your mother home to die" while trying to sell a health plan seems quite uncharacteristic of either the President or any salesperson. In addition, the comment seems clearly more candid than President Obama's typical style. Thus, while somewhat harsh, the two phrases seem fitting enough.





dj

Identity Theft Gets a Boost!

Congress should move quickly to allow businesses that protect consumers from identity theft to continue doing so.

An article in the on-line magazine Wired.com reported that Federal District Judge Andrew Guilford ruled the protection offered by LifeLock, and presumably other companies that provide a similar service, was illegal. Reading the article could give one the idea, at least in your correspondent's mind, that the judge might have wanted to protect credit-reporting agencies from competition. In doing so, he exposed millions of consumers to identity theft.

We live in an era in which businesses; including credit-reporting agencies, “routinely” lose critical identifying data belonging to millions of consumers. We have seen far too many stories about a single breach exposed information on millions of consumers. In light of that fact, Judge Guilford’s ruling seems far worse than "unfortunate."

To cite a personal experience, two companies have purchased me credit-monitoring services: one for two years; one for a single year. They did so after they, or a vendor they used, lost or compromised my personal data. While not detailed here, I did give Senator Diane Feinstein some details in a letter— regardless of your experience, I hope you will write an equivalent letter demanding action.

Please note that, so far at least, my experience pales before the nightmares suffered by tens of thousands of identity theft victims. Some have suffered financial losses following an identity theft; others have spent hundreds of hours trying recover from identity theft; many have lost both money and hours.

The fact that Experian was the plaintiff in the case particularly galled me. A couple of years ago, two of the three primary credit-reporting agencies finally agreed that I had not resided in my former wife's “post office box”! This was after several years of on and off effort on my part; albeit, probably not more than twenty or thirty hours in total.

The third credit bureau insisted that I had indeed once lived in that 6 x 6 x 18 inch space; they had verification of my residence there! Moreover, the website of that bureau provided no reasonable means to correct their error. The address presumably remains on my credit report; I have not checked in a couple of years. Hence, you can imagine my sense outrage at seeing Judge Guilford take the side of Experian, and credit bureaus generally, in the case at hand.

As the article appeared in May, 2007, Congress may have moved to correct the law, called FACTA, so that businesses may once again protect the privacy of consumers.

In the likely case that Congress has not yet acted, please consider sending your Senators and member of the House a polite email asking them to address this issue during the current session.

Clicking on the title of this post will take you to the article at Wired.com.

What’s wrong with this Picture?

Today, June 4, 2009, Yahoo news featured this headline:

"As of 9:18 a.m. PDT •
"Can Obama win Muslim hearts and minds?

"Bin Laden threat"

Presumably, the writer of the headline thought that some chance existed that President Obama , in his Cairo speech, could indeed “win (a large number of) Muslim hearts and minds,”. Keep in mind that Muslims have harbored hostility towards the West, the Jewish People, and Christians generally since at least the Crusades, the last of which ended about A.D. 1296, if not longer.

Said differently, the headline seemed to presume that the President had at least a fighting chance to achieve what one could arguably call a miracle. Let us hope the writer was not educated in the United States; however, your correspondent remains dubious about that possibility.

Fortunately, in his Cairo speech, the President cautioned everyone, worldwide:
“I know there's been a lot of publicity about this speech, but no single speech can
eradicate years of mistrust nor can I answer in the time that I have this afternoon
all the complex questions that brought us to this point.”

Perhaps someone should caution the President against the dangers of excessive humility. After all, if he keeps saying things like that, the entire world could lose all hope for the future.

OK, that last paragraph was somewhat tongue in cheek. At the same time, it did seem to capture the general tenor of the President’s words; particularly since, instead of saying, “years of mistrust,” the President should have said, “centuries of mistrust.”

The most disturbing thing about the President’s remarks was that he seemed to feel compelled to include them in the speech at all. Of course, we do have that disturbing headline. Still, including the lines must say something about the President's view of the American People, the people of the world in general, his own powers of persuasion, or some combination of the three.

Regardless of his view of the hearers of his speech, one hopes the President believed his own cautionary words.

DJ