Planned Parenthood Shooting: The Ex-Wife Speaks

From local media outlet KRDO:

Michaux divorced Dear in 1993 and alleged he had a violent temper. She told NBC that she is convinced Dear didn't start shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic by coincidence.

She paints a picture of a devout man of poor judgment as she knew him 20 years ago.  That's quite a while ago. Given his solitary lifestyle since, it's impossible to really assess his frame of mind, but I won't be surprised to learn he has sincerely held beliefs and no mental illness. In principle he is no different from Scott Roeder, the man who assassinated Dr George Tiller in the vestibule of Tiller's church one Sunday morning. But Roeder only had one target in mind. Dear didn't limit himself.

Defund in Haste, Pay Up Later

The current fuss over Planned Parenthood funding through the Medicaid program has a number of the usual suspects feigning outrage over deceitfully doctored videos. While it seems this cabal of Congress is simply manipulating headlines for electoral gain in a campaign season, there are real life consequences to Congressional actions that need to be part of the public debate.

If a House Freedom Caucus-mediated plan to defund Planned Parenthood for a year passed and became law (unlikely under an Obama veto promise) there would in fact be some immediate savings to the government, but at the cost of perhaps 25% of current Planned Parenthood clients losing access to reproductive services.

But one gift this Congress shares with all others is the ability to wildly extrapolate from insufficient data. If a one year suspension of Planned Parenthood funding is shown to reduce costs without increasing unplanned childbirth (likely enough, since a pregnancy lasts 9 months) it's easy to imagine a "more of the same" push to make defunding permanent. Therein lies the problem. As the Congressional Budget Office reported:

 ...the bill would increase direct spending for Medicaid by $20 million in 2016, by $130 million in 2017, and by $650 million over the 2016-2025 period. Most of the increased spending for the pregnancies that occur in 2016 will take place in 2017. Netting those costs against the savings estimated above, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would increase direct spending by $130 million over the 2016-2025 period.

I think funding for PP is safe - this year, anyway - but if there's a change in White House occupants come January of 2017 we may see this faux controversy erupt all over again - just in time for the 2018 midterms.

And that's really what this fuss is all about.

Conservative Republicans Want to Shut Down Government

Because it worked so well in 2013, the ironically named "Freedom Caucus" of far right House members is committed to opposing any budget deal that funds Planned Parenthood, and they're willing to close everything down if that's what it takes.

“Given the appalling revelations surrounding Planned Parenthood, we cannot in good moral conscience vote to send taxpayer money to this organization while still fulfilling our duty to represent our constituents. We must therefore oppose any spending measure that contains funding for Planned Parenthood.”

The irony of staking a "moral conscience" stand on demonstrably deceitful videos seems lost on these guys. And, to be sure, they also seem unaware that it is only "guys" on the bandwagon - the letter they circulated contains not a single female Representative's name.

But more to the point, the "Freedom Caucus" seems bent on depriving a significant segment of their constituency, poor people, of access to valuable preventative health services, like long acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), that have been shown to dramatically reduce demand for abortion, which is the goal of this muddle-headed effort in the first place.

Maybe a better name for this tribe of tyrants is "Freedom From Thought Caucus."

Committee on Energy & Commerce Clears Planned Parenthood

Committee Democrats released a report this morning summarizing Planned Parenthood's participation in fetal tissue donations and the role of the Center for Medical Progress in perpetuating manufactured outrage. It's unlikely the report will calm the political tempest over PPFA, particularly as a significant number of Republicans seem bent on stripping PPFA funding, even willing force a government shutdown to achieve their goal.

To date, the Committee has received no evidence to substantiate the allegations that Planned Parenthood has engaged in the sale of fetal tissue for profit. Furthermore, the Committee has received no evidence to support the allegations that fetal tissue was procured without consent, that Planned Parenthood physicians altered the timing, method, or procedure of an abortion solely for the purposes of obtaining fetal tissue, or that Planned Parenthood physicians performed intact dilation and evacuation in order to preserve fetal tissue for research....

 The Committee received evidence that the individuals making these unsubstantiated claims misrepresented themselves in order to gain access to Planned Parenthood personnel and facilities, and that the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) are incomplete, selectively edited, and intentionally misleading.

Awkward: When an "Evil" Agency is More Ethical than the Government Investigating It

Florida's Governor Rick Scott, whose previous job earned him the Biggest Medicare Fraud Fine Ever Levied Against a Hospital Corporation, became so upset over the deceptive Planned Parenthood videos he ordered an immediate investigation into Florida's 16 Planned Parenthood clinics. Well, fine, every state has an agency to do this sort of thing and they do inspect regularly, so at best the Governor's order would serve to reassure Floridians that their PP clinics were legitimate healthcare providers, or at worst find evidence of wrongdoing and thus get those bad actors shut down.

But when the state investigators returned a clean bill of health for all 16 clinics, the Governor did something far worse than the convicted felon who created the dishonest videos in the first place: he chose to edit his own investigators' report to lie to the citizens of Florida about those findings.

The state released its findings of the Planned Parenthood investigations on Aug. 5. Emails between the governor’s office and AHCA, obtained by POLITICO Florida through a public records request, show the agency prepared a press release that same day noting that “there is no evidence of the mishandling of fetal remains at any of the 16 clinics we investigated across the state.”

Scott's office revised the release to exclude that sentence, an email sent by Scott’s communications director, Jackie Schutz, shows.

Congressional Investigations - Elapsed Times

As a general thing, certain events follow a crime. Investigation, for example. Then there's indictment and arrests, prosecution, conviction and sentencing. Here's why I just can't take Republican-fueled "scandals" and "investigations" too seriously.

*The IRS hearings began 30 months ago.
*Congress has been investigating Fast & Furious since June 2011 – 52 months.
*The Congressional investigations into Benghazi have been ongoing for 39 months.
*The House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation into Planned Parenthood handling of donated fetal tissue - 2 months.

No indictments, no arrests, no prosecutions, no convictions, no sentences.

Another Duh-bya Moment

OK, now can we get back to teaching facts?

US teen pregnancy and syphilis rates rose sharply during George Bush's presidency, Centres for Disease Control finds | World news | guardian.co.uk

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

Not to be too snarky, but the home of so many fundigelicalS and core Republicans rates special mention in the report:

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

Planned Parenthood Ad - Birth Control or Viagra, Senator?

This ad is about to hit the Colorado media:

The Dobsonites will likely have foaming conniptions, but I'm doubtful this will change many minds here. "Health care" means considerably more than "birth control."