Loyal Readers:
We will be away on vacation and will resume blogging on Wednesday, December 2. Thanks for all your support!
Gratefully,
AnnotatedOpinions
From the New York Times:
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ABORTION financing has become an important stumbling block in negotiations over health care reform. An amendment sponsored by Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan . . . would The Stupak amendment’s effect on any individual woman’s insurance coverage for abortion depends on what kind of insurance she has now. About 12 percent of the 62 million American women of childbearing age — ages 15 to 44 — are now covered by public insurance plans like Medicaid. For them there will be no change because current law already prohibits the use of federal funds to cover abortion costs. Likewise, the amendment would change nothing for women who now have no insurance — about 20 percent of women of childbearing age. The women whose abortion coverage would be at risk are those who are covered by private insurance — some 42 million women aged 15 to 44. . . Privately insured women tend to be older, with higher family income, and women in these groups are much less prone to seek abortions. [AO: I don’t doubt the analysis and concede that the conclusions are sound given the data. However, it seems the writer, Professor Phillip Levine, misses an important point : That the Stupak Amendment can’t assure what is sets out to do and as a result simply disadvantages some women who choose to get abortions. More specifically, the Amendment claims to preserve the status quo by eliminating all government funds from paying for abortion. The Amendment does neither of these. Under the status quo, government funds do reach abortion. Moreover, although the Amendment alters the status quo, it does not prevent all government funds from paying for abortion. Ultimately, it simply makes it harder for some women to get an abortion.
The Amendment is not about maintaining the status quo Supporters of the Amendment argue that the Amendment preserves the status quo. Under current conditions, federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. But by disincentivising private insurers to provide abortion coverage, the amendment goes beyond the status quo. The Amendment disincentivises private insurers to provide abortion coverage by prohibiting any health insurance plan that provides abortion from participating in public insurance exchanges. The aim here is to prevent any government financial benefit from accruing to private insurers who provide abortion coverage. This is in contract to an alternative whereby a private health insurer might be allowed to participate in the public insurance exchanges as long as the funds used to pay for abortion coverage did not come from the government. The apparent problem with this approach is that money is fungible. In short, this goes beyond the status quo because current law does not penalize private health insurers who provide abortion coverage on account that money is fungible.
The Amendment cannot prevent all government funds from supporting abortion However, preventing any federal benefit from accruing to private insurers who provide abortion is impossible when you consider that . . . money is fungible. The federal government provides fund via programs that are unrelated to healthcare or health insurance. Because money is fungible, assistance from various government programs that provide funds to individuals, including cash assistance programs, unemployment compensation, and even tax breaks, could wind-up supporting abortions. Take for example the home sale tax break. Under this tax break, an individual can exclude up to $125,000 of any profits earned from the sale of their house. These are federal funds that, as a result of the tax exclusion, become available for anything the homeowner chooses, including abortion. One can imagine a similar scenario with unemployment benefits. But you don’t have to consider examples that seem so far removed for direct government payments. There are no reasons why an individual receiving fund under welfare’s Cash Assistance program cannot use those funds to pay for an abortion. So, the Stupak Amendment neither preserves the status quo nor does it prevent all government assistance from supporting abortion. Simply, because money is fungible, government cannot insure that no dime of its assistance goes to abortion. All the Amendment does is makes it harder for some women without to obtain an abortion without achieving its goal.] |
Read the full opinion HERE.
From the Washington Post:
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Visits from three senior U.S. officials in three weeks indicate troubles in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Washington has failed to deliver on the regional strategy it promised this spring, and friction with Pakistan seems to be contributing to the long delay in announcement of a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. . . Any surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan would depend on the Pakistani army’s help to protect the truck convoys that would supply the extra Western troops in landlocked Afghanistan. Washington would need even greater clandestine cooperation from the Pakistani military in targeting terrorist hideouts along the border. . . U.S. troops cannot roll back the Taliban in southern and eastern Afghanistan without the Pakistanis cutting off the men and materials the Afghan Taliban can draw on. If U.S. and NATO troops stay on in Afghanistan and beat back the Afghan Taliban in the next few years, the Pakistani military is likely to cooperate with the West. If, however, President Obama speaks soon of an exit strategy . . . the Pakistani army is likely to push Afghan President Hamid Karzai to accept a Pakistani-brokered deal to form a pro-Pakistan government with the Taliban in Kabul. . . To avoid a regional debacle and the Taliban gaining even more ground, Obama needs to fulfill the commitment he made to Afghanistan in March: to send more troops . . . as well as civilian experts, and more funds for development. He must bring both India and Pakistan on board and help reduce their differences; a regional strategy is necessary for any U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to have a chance. The United States needs to persuade India to be more flexible toward Pakistan while convincing Pakistanis to match such flexibility in a step-by-step process that reduces terrorist groups operating from its soil so that the two archenemies can rebuild a modicum of trust. . . [AO: “A regional strategy is necessary for any US strategy in Afghanistan to have a chance.” Which countries should be part of this regional strategy? Pakistan sits between Afghanistan and India. Also, has anyone considered inviting Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran to join this regional strategy? These countries, unlike India, actually share a boundary with Afghanistan. Moreover, as the writer explains, actions in Pakistan will determine whether the Afghan war is successful or not. It’s the Pakistani army that must provide everything from troop support to fighting terrorists in Pakistan if the Afghan war is to be successful. “The United States needs to persuade India to be more flexible toward Pakistan while convincing Pakistanis to match such flexibility in a step-by-step process that reduces terrorist groups operating from its soil . . .” By flexibility, of course, the writer means India should stop demanding that Pakistan first eliminate terrorist groups targeting India from Punjab and Karachi. That is, the writer is recommending that before moving forward in the fight against terrorist in Afghanistan, the U.S. must persuade an ally that suffered a 9/11 style attack, India, to stop demanding that Pakistan eliminate the source of those terrorists who attacked India. This is an odd and seemingly illogical demand considering that, vis-à-vis India, the point of the Afghan war is the same as the point of its demand. Also, it is difficult to see why Pakistan needs India to stop demanding that Pakistan eliminate certain terrorist on its soil before moving forward against other terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.] |
Read the full opinion HERE.
Pre- Thanksgiving Day:
Race haunts politics: Will it ever be OK to go there without name-calling? [Chicago Tribune] A home remedy: Paid sick leave could help deter spread of swine flu [Houston Chronicle] Reform isn’t illegal: Congress has every authority to force every American to buy health insurance. [Washington Post] False Alarm on Abortion? What is being overlooked in the abortion debate is the other benefits that expanded health insurance coverage could bring to women’s reproductive health. [New York Times] A pro athlete’s lament: U.S. health care discriminates [USA Today] Europe’s bland new leaders: Last week, Europe’s presidents and prime ministers finally had the chance to select an EU president and a foreign minister. [Boston Globe] Who’s watching Glenn Beck? [LA Times] Rhode Island bishop errs in targeting Patrick Kennedy: Bishop Thoms J. Tobin is within his rights to ask Representative Patrick Kennedy to refrain from seeking Holy Communion. Yet the standard to which the bishop is holding Kennedy for his views on abortion is unfair. [Boston Globe] Keeping Personal Data Private: There are many important issues competing for Congress’s attention, but passing a law to keep people’s personal information safe should rank high on the list. [New York Times] Concussions: Colleges should follow the pros – If the House Judiciary Committee can humble the National Football League into taking concussions more seriously, then it should reconvene to admonish the National Collegiate Athletic Association. [Boston Globe] Sisters in arms: Remembering women who count their beatings in the once-fair country of Zimbabwe. [Washington Post] The struggle after the fight: Pakistan can’t just kick out the Taliban. It must rebuild its tribal areas, too. [Philadelphia Inquirer] Mahmoud Abbas, the Mideast’s big loser: A reported deal for an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap has benefits for all involved, except the weakened Palestinian Authority leader. [LA Times] Caring for the elderly: It’s ironic that at a time when thousands of Americans are struggling to find appropriate care for their failing parents, the field of geriatric medicine appears to be vanishing. [Boston Globe] Don’t Forget the Gulf States: Unless Congress acts quickly, more than 6,000 housing units for poor families might never get built in the Katrina-ravaged Gulf states. [New York Times] Her love of ‘little plants’ lives on [USA Today] To befriend or unfriend, that is the question [Chicago Tribune] |
From the Chicago Tribune:
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If you have any doubts about the future of American health care when Washington runs it, just look at the uproar over a government anel’s recommendations about breast cancer screening. . . Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who joined other congressmen in criticizing the panel, saw an implicit warning in the action: “This is the way rationing, . . . will begin to enter the marketplace . . Unrelated? If the White House and Democrats would take off their blinders, this is exactly what half of Americans fear about the colossal health care “reform” that has passed the House and is under debate in the Senate. . . You need to consider exactly what’s in the health care legislation to understand why the breast cancer uproar is instructive and frightening. The legislation provides for the creation of a Health Choices Administration headed by a Health Choices commissioner. . . The commissioner is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The law creating this, the Affordable Care for America Act, goes on at some length describing their duties. But that’s just the beginning because the duties are described so vaguely that the agency will certainly pad them out with volumes of clarifying regulations. . . [AO: Did you see that? The writer, Dennis Byrne, tells us that we should expect health insurance reform to lead to health insurance rationing. But how does that happen? The White House says the breast cancer recommendations scenario is entirely unrelated to the health insurance legislation. Byrne disagrees and offers to explain how this is related to health insurance reform. According to Byrne, the bills under consideration provide for creation of a Health Choices Administration. This Health Choices Administration has no authority to ration healthcare. Read: there is no rationing in the bills under consideration. But according to Byrne, the duties of the Administration as described in the bills are so vague that the commissioner of the Health Choices Administration will pad his or her duties, allowing her to ration healthcare. In other words, according to Byrne, a rogue commissioner of an obscure government agency will unilaterally interpret her duties to allow her to ration health care for the rest of us. As a result, we should not pass health insurance reform that benefits millions of Americans. I’ll leave it at that.] |
Read the full opinion HERE.
 Ways Obama can tend bonds with India: President Obama must balance a short-term need for progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan without losing sight of our equally important long-term ambitions with India. [Boston Globe]The Values Question: Like all great public issues, the health care debate is fundamentally about values, about whether we have a moral preference for vitality or security. [New York Times]
Health care polling reveals uncertainty [Chicago Tribune] Health-care rationing: The honest solution to an out-of-control system. [Washington Post] Obama’s Afghanistan strategy must be more than more troops: A plan that doesn’t also deal with the Karzai problem and economic development is doomed to failure. [LA Times] Lonely superpowerdom: Obama may soon discover that there are no allies with which to work. [Washington Post] Signs of Hope: The U.S. has the intellectual resources and expertise to lead in the development of clean energy. It just needs the will to make it happen. [New York Times]
No ‘No More Wilderness’: The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, should reclaim the authority to identify wilderness study areas and protect them. [New York Times] What do scientists think about religion? Members of the scientific community are often seen as doubting Thomases, but the reality is more complex. Even Charles Darwin may have made room for God. [LA Times]
Turkey and the Kurds: Turkey’s plan to grant long-denied rights to its Kurdish minority, despite opposition from nationalist politicians, is a show of courage and good sense. [New York Times] The relentless ghost of Christmas future: In this holiday season, Charles Dickens would find that his own little ghost story, ”A Christmas Carol,” is still very much alive. [Boston Globe] Television: Two standards, or too racy? There’s beauty in restraint. [Boston Globe] The NFL tackles concussions: There’s nothing like being compared negatively to the tobacco industry to get a business’ attention. And so it is with the NFL. [USA Today] |
From the LA Times:
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The Ft. Hood massacre was not the first violent tragedy that conservatives have blamed on political correctness. But it might be the first one in which they actually have a point. . . But however PC things were during the major’s career, what went wrong with him and the system surely can’t be reduced to one bugaboo; it is deeper, broader and more complicated than that. In any case, as conservatives should know, political correctness doesn’t kill people — angry, crazy people do. [AO: The writer, Gregory Rodriguez, is correct: “political correctness doesn't kill people -- angry, crazy people do.” But there is an interesting point that struck me reading his article. I kept wondering why Hasan’s superiors allowed his outrageous behavior to continue. Leading to the shootings at Fort Hood. If those actions had been the actions of a non-Muslim soldier, it seems reasonable to conclude that his superiors would have acted sooner. So what gives? One potential explanation is that it is not political correctness that prevented Hasan’s superiors from acting sooner in the Fort Hood case but ignorance. In other words, his superiors knew what to expect in other soldiers. They understood that Hasan’s actions, coming from, say a Christian soldier, was an indication of a disturbed individual. On the other hand, they saw that behavior coming from a Muslim and assumed the behavior was normal. Why would his superiors assume it was normal for Muslims to engage in such disturbing behavior? In any case, ignorance appears to be more relevant here. Ignorance and, perhaps, a desire to act politically correct.] |
Read the full opinion HERE.
From the Chicago Tribune:
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. . . No doubt Michael Kelly, sole owner of the holding company that controlled Park National and several other community-type banks, made some ill-advised loans in recent years. In this economy show me a bank that hasn’t. But it turns out his worst investment — the one that pushed his FBOP Corp. over the edge — was in the preferred stock of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. . . None of which made any difference at closing time Sept. 30, when agents of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. descended on FBOP’s headquarters, declared it insolvent and announced its assets were being transferred to a mega-bank out of Minneapolis called U.S. Bancorp. . . . “The smaller banks like Park National, the banks we depend on here in the neighborhoods, aren’t being helped. They’re being fed to the big banks. Meanwhile the big banks are being bailed out by the taxpayers. What’s going on here?” [AO: Bob Vondrasek, quoted in the paragraph immediately above, asks an important question. What is going on when the government seizes small banks and “feeds” them to big banks that are only surviving because of taxpayer handouts? What’s going on when the small banks seized were denied the same handouts that enabled the big banks to survive and take over the smaller ones? These are the actions of a government under tremendous internal and external pressure to limit interventions in the economy by using taxpayer funds to keep struggling banks open. As a result of this pressure, the government tries to stay out of the banking system unless it is absolutely necessary. Here, necessity is defined by too big to fail. This approach creates to systems of regulation for banks. Banks that are not too big to fail get the traditional treatment. Pursuant to the traditional treatment, when a bank becomes insolvent, it is taken over by FDIC. Under the non-traditional system, reserved for banks that are too big to fails, the government will step in to keep a bank open after it becomes insolvent. As a result, small bank are being feed to big banks that are too big to fail. But what is the solution? Should small banks also be given handouts? Should too big to fail be redefined to include any bank that needs assistance? But can we afford to have the government guarantee the solvency of all banks, big and small? Perhaps too big to fails should be redefined to consider banks that are making loans to individuals in communities. Perhaps. But until too big to fail is redefined, it seems seizing small banks to feed them to big banks will continue.] |
Read the full opinion HERE.
Let women keep their abortion coverage [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] Immigration reform, again: Obama and the Democrats want another crack at it, but nothing is certain. [LA Times]
Weighing the benefits of a mammography: Although we all would like to think that public health pronouncements are the unmitigated truth about any issue, rarely is that the case. [LA Times] Giving thanks in secular, holy ways: At Thanksgiving, the secular and religious impulses, usually taken to be antagonists, salute each other respect. [Boston Globe] Ft. Hood and the bugaboo of ‘political correctness’: Look deeper at a killer and what do you usually find? An angry, crazy person. [LA Times] The Church and the Capital: Washington lawmakers should negotiate the language of a same-sex marriage bill with the Catholic archdiocese without selling out same-sex couples. [New York Times]
For American savers, the mattress beckons: Banks pay microscopic interest even as they recover. [Philadelphia Inquirer] The Phantom Menace: The scare stories from Wall Street seem to be intimidating Washington from doing more to rescue the economy. [New York Times] What the Pilgrims really sought: Their trip to the New World wasn’t about tolerance or diversity. It was about purity. [USA Today] Tim DeChristopher’s wild legal ride: He disrupted an oil and gas lease auction last year by posing as a buyer. Now a judge has rejected his last-ditch defense strategy. [LA Times]
Hot times: As a crucial climate change conference nears, more evidence of a warming globe [Houston Chronicle] Obama needs to feel the heat: The melting arctic ice is unimpressed with his climate-change efforts. [Washington Post] A green future for old buildings: Many existing buildings, especially those built before World War II, embody environmental and energy-conscious design. [Boston Globe] GPS and Privacy Rights: A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., should rule that police need a warrant before putting a GPS device on a suspect’s car. [New York Times] Heal thyself: The slow reaction by the Department of Veterans Affairs to a flawed cancer-treatment program in Philadelphia suggests an agency that would rather forget its mistakes than learn from them. [Philadelphia Inquirer] Afghanistan Plan C: Obama tries to think his way around the all-in-or-all-out dilemma. [Washington Post] In El Salvador, a grim reflection, and a glimmer of hope: The president has bestowed the country’s highest honor on six Jesuit priests massacred 20 years ago, more evidence that peaceful change is possible, if slow to come. [LA Times]
Slang from the mouths of babes [Chicago Tribune] From vinyl to digital, my obsession lives on: Technology has made the pursuit of our pleasures much easier. But in so doing, I often wonder if it has made them less sacred. [Boston Globe] A Luddite in the library: Search engines are all well and good, but sometimes the best place to find something is a library. [LA Times] |
prohibit both government-run insurance plans and any private insurance plans purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions. . . 
State Courts at the Tipping Point: State budget cuts are impeding core court functions, forcing court closures and narrowing of access to justice. [
Biotech bills give drugmakers too many years of exclusivity: The long-awaited Biotech bills emerging from the House and Senate give too many years of exclusivity to the original makers of biotech drugs [
An Obama gray: Where is the man who once demonstrated keen moral clarity? [
Free speech: It’s the ACLU’s deal: For Americans liberal and conservative, the organization continues to support their right to speak. [
Crunching the numbers on bioenergy rules: The right rules will encourage the development of fast-growing grasses and trees that can greatly increase the amount of carbon absorbed by plants on marginal land. [
India and us: South Asia is a tar pit filled with failed and dysfunctional states, save for one. [